[ecrea] ECREA@LSE_2011 Media and Communications International Symposium

***DEADLINE APPROACHING: 16 SEPTEMBER 2011***

ECREA@LSE_2011
Media and Communications International Symposium
London School of Economics, 16 - 17 December 2011

Organised by: ECREA Communication & Democracy section – ECREA Gender and 
Communication section – YECREA (Young Scholars Network – ECREA) with the 
collaboration of the Department of Media and Communications of the LSE

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor John B. Thompson and Dr Jo Littler

Extended deadline for submissions: 16th September 2011
Decisions will be communicated by 30th September 2011.

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSALS THROUGH: 
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msmo2011

Contact email: (ecrea2011 /at/ hotmail.com)

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We would like to invite the submission of abstracts and panels for the 
ECREA Media and Communications symposium 2011 that will take place next 
December at the London School of Economics.

The symposium will welcome proposals from scholars working in the broad 
fields of politics and/or gender in relation with the media or culture. 
Proposals from the fields of journalism, communication, (new) media, tv, 
film, radio, social movements, citizenship, internet and cultural 
studies are therefore encouraged. Submissions from young scholars and 
PhD students are also welcome.

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THEME: The Mediation of Scandal and Moral Outrage

In the light of recent events and phenomena, the organising committee 
proposes the following theme for the symposium: The Mediation of Scandal 
and Moral Outrage (see below). We invite the submission of paper and 
panel proposals related to the central theme of the conference, 
including (but not limited to) the following topics:

.- Political journalism and scandal
.- Mediation of political scandals through new media
.- Political campaigning and scandal
.- Privacy and the surveillance society
.- Celebrity, scandal and moral outrage
.- Violent protest and moral outrage
.- Sex, morality and scandals
.- Gendered scandals
.- The concealment of scandal
.- Peer2Peer surveillance and micro-scandals
.- Individual meaning, appropriation and the audience of scandals
.- The political economy of scandals
.- Methods and strategies of mediated scandalisation
.- Historical accounts of scandals and mediated moral outrage
.- News International and the ethics of journalism

The mind conscious of innocence despises false reports: but we are a set 
always ready to believe a scandal. (Ovid, Fasti - IV, 311)

The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honored or 
begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. (William 
Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece - l. 1,004)

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. (Oscar Wilde)

Scandals and the moral outrage they invariably provoke are not new, but 
the networked synoptic viewer society that we have become, makes 
scandalitis more permanent, more global and above all a highly 
profitable business for media organisations.

The advent of crowdsourcing, web 2.0, blogging, CCTV, mobile phones with 
video capacity and an ever more hungry media eager to produce scandal 
and direct moral outrage, has made that not only celebrities and 
politicians are the object of scandal, but ordinary people caught doing 
something morally condemnable are increasingly thrown into the media 
frenzy as well, while police brutality has become easier to expose 
through so-called sousveillance or 'inverse surveillance' - watching 
those that watch. In politics, the fostering of a culture of scandal and 
the mobilisation of moral outrage has very much become a core activity 
in political journalism and an essential part of (negative) campaigning 
by political parties/candidates and civil society. Unsurprisingly, sex 
scandals involving male or female politicians or other celebrities 
remain of particular interest to the media and the public at large. 
These are often based on a moralistic agenda advocating heteronormative 
monogamy whilst constructing a sense of normality. A gender divide can 
also be observed in moral standards being projected on women and men. 
This symposium aims to bring a critical perspective to the way scandals 
are mediated, produced, consumed, and how they increasingly feed a 
polyoptic society whereby everybody is watching and watched by 
everybody. Recent events in the UK have also shown how this phenomenon 
driven by commercial and ideological interests can have negative 
consequences for trust in politicians, the police and journalism. The 
eagerness with which News International was chasing scandals became a 
scandal in its own right and the object of widespread moral outrage.

Extended deadline for submissions: 16th September 2011.
Decisions will be communicated by 30th September 2011.

PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSALS THROUGH: 
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msmo2011

Contact email: (ecrea2011 /at/ hotmail.com)

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