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[ecrea] cfp new media ecology

Fri Sep 17 09:17:56 GMT 2010


CALL FOR PAPERS: THE NEW TELEVISION ECOSYSTEM


The whole media system, and the television in particular, is undergoing strong changes, especially related to the process of digitalisation and to the diffusion of the broadband society. Television has had, for nearly fifty years, a precise and relatively stable status: at least, we could define in a rather clear way what we meant by “television experience” or “watching TV” (Abruzzese, 1995; Scaglioni & Sfardini 2008). But especially in the last decade strong processes of innovation, diversification and hybridization have begun to reshape the current framework of producing and consuming television. The television is one of the devices which is subjected at the same time to a double process, both of divergence and convergence (Fortunati, 2008), while its screen has both expanded and shrunk dramatically from the flat screens to the tiny windows of mobile phones and iPods (Hilmes, 2009). The analogue television is planned to be overcome (the European Commission has set to the beginning of 2012 the date for the digital switch-off in all Member States) by the digital terrestrial television and by the new opportunities supplied by the Internet (Van den Broeck & Pierson, 2008). Furthermore, other opportunities are offered by mobile devices which have prompted a call for the switch of frequencies from TV to mobile telephony.

The actual television scenario is complex and fragmented, since many different kinds of TV cohabit: ‘traditional’ analogical TV, digital terrestrial TV, IPTV, time-shifting technologies such as Personal Video Recorder and Video on Demand that offer the possibility to record, sometimes without any advertisement, on supports like DVDs or Hard Drive, TV programs to be seen afterwards, thus mitigating the rigidity of the consumption time and of the spatial immobility in the consumption, Mobile TV and Net TV which is also known both as IPTV and Web TV, which is the TV on the Internet. These forms of TV are complemented by the satellite and cable TV.
Television experience is broadening and multiplying, both in quantitative terms (becoming more available) and in qualitative terms (through a process of personalization). Television series and programs are now being spread on physical digital supports such as DVDs and Blue-Ray discs, and on Internet portals like Apple’s iTunes, where it is possible to access and download a huge catalogue of television series and movies. Old distinctions among media contents do not work anymore, when facing the new media complex media environment: broadcast yourself is the slogan of the biggest video portal in the world, Youtube, where users can upload their own videos without any mediation (so-called UGC, User Generated Content). Television advertising is also reshaping by inspiring to the Internet banners and by becoming interactive and even more pervasive.

The present television context is undergoing a strong and multi-faceted evolution, a diversification and a transformation, where the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ coexist and entwine, rather than a revolution, as some authors prefigured in the past (Van Djik, 1999). Keeping in mind that the most important features of the television experience have been since long time outlined as the configuration of space, time, services, and audiences, produced by a negotiation between editorial networks and users (Thompson, 1995; Aroldi & Colombo, 2003), the development of the new television scenario is better framed in the light of processes such as the rise of e-actors and of their practices of use, strength of innovation and counter-power resistance  (Fortunati et al., 2010). E-actors represent the convergence and the integration of different figures: user, consumer, buyer, customer, producer, everyday innovator, citizen, non-user, audience. A consequence of this convergence process is that audiences too have reconfigured themselves, their habits, expectations and aspirations, needs and desires, attitudes and behaviour, becoming networked, augmented and integrated audiences. So, the new forms of television should be seen as originated from the merging between technological innovation and new practices of agency and consumption performed by e-actors. Thus the new television scenario can be seen as a broad, fragmented and stratified analogue/digital ecosystem made up of traditional media and technological innovations and products as well as traditional and new practices and modalities of their use such as business TV, school and universities TV, street TV, city TV, neighbourhood TV, etc. In this new television ecosystem, media convergence (Jenkins, 2006) is only one of the processes, based on the technology of digitalization and located at the interstice among markets, institutions, cultural and social forms and ways of consumption/appropriation.

This call for papers focuses on the complexity of the television ecosystem, trying to build a comprehensive map and to offer a guide through this field providing research papers based on a wide array of television experiences. Topics of particular interest include (but are not limited to) projects, experiences, practices, innovative uses and theories about:

analogue television
digital television
cable TV
satellite TV
Mobile TV
Digital Terrestrial Television
time-shifting technologies
user-generated contents (on both mainstream platforms like Youtube but with a particular focus on bottom up experiences)
Web TV and micro TV (street TV, school TV, university TV, videoblog, videocommunity, etc.)
IpTV
business TV
interactive advertising
Convergent media consumption
Mobisodes
Webisodes

Deadlines:
Abstract: end of September 2010
Abstract acceptance: end of October 2010
Full papers acceptance: 31 December 2010
 
A selection of papers will be published in an collection with Peter Lang (Berlin) edited by Alberto Abruzzese, Nello Barile, Julian Gebhardt, Leopoldina Fortunati.

Contact:
Julian Gebhardt <(julian.gebhardt /at/ uni-erfurt.de)>


References

Abruzzese, A. (1995) Lo splendore della TV. Origini e destino del linguaggio audiovisivo.  Genova: Costa & Nolan.
Aroldi, P. & Colombo, F. (2003) (eds.), Le Età Della TV. Indagine su Quattro Generazioni di
Spettatori Italiani, Milano: Vita & Pensiero.
Fortunati, L. (2008) Mobile Convergence. In K.Nyiri (ed.) Integration and Ubiquity. Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence. Wien: Passagen Verlag, pp.221-228.
Fortunati, L., J. Vincent, J. Gebhardt, A. Petrov i , and O. Vershinskaya (eds.) (2010)  Interacting with Broadband Society. Berlin: Peter Lang.
Hilmes, M. (2009). Television sound: Why the silence?. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image
2(2), 153-161.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
Scaglioni, M., Sfardini, A. (2008) MultiTV. L'esperienza televisiva nell'età della convergenza
Thompson, J. B. (1995) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Van den Broeck, W. & Pierson, J. (eds.) (2008). Digital television in Europe. Brussels: VUBpress.
Van Dijk, J. (1999) The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media. London: Sage.


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