Archive for March 2013

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[ecrea] transnational and transcultural communication research in central and eastern europe: trends, developments, debates

Fri Mar 08 11:42:19 GMT 2013





Call for Papers



TRANSNATIONAL AND TRANSCULTURAL COMMUNICATION RESEARCH IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: TRENDS, DEVELOPMENTS, DEBATES



Conference of the International and Intercultural Communication Section of the German Communication Association (DGPuK)



October 4-5, 2013

Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna; Comenius University, Bratislava





Only in recent years has an established body of internationally comparative research in the communication sciences emerged. The roots of that research lie in the dramatic political and economic changes which have occurred over the last two decades, of which the fall of the Iron Curtain is one of the most important ones. Most of these research efforts have focused on the impact and effects that these phenomena have had on the structural development of media systems and journalistic cultures as well as on the impact of these changes on the transition and consolidation processes in the new democracies. While acknowledging the wealth of findings on these topics, this conference wants to leave behind national borders in order to focus on communication processes between and across states or cultures. This seems particularly relevant to Central and Eastern Europe where processes of democratization are coinciding with processes of economic and political globalization.



RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN STATES, THE MEDIA, AND THE PUBLIC

There is no doubt that the role of the media is crucial in the social construction of reality. Not only do the media provide information about and raise public awareness of certain issues, the media also “constructively patterns that of which it speaks,” as Roger Fowler has put it. This seems especially true for the perception of international relations issues, which are essentially second-hand reality to most people. More than in other areas, the media shape the knowledge that people have of other countries and other cultures. However, there is no agreement on the factors foreign media coverage depends on and the impact it may have. In media and communication studies, there are generally two opposing approaches to studying the role of the media in international relations. One approach assumes that politics and the media go hand in hand, with the media expected to parallel the government’s news agenda and viewpoints (as the so-called “indexing” hypothesis suggests). The other assumes a “CNN effect” or “Al Jazeera effect” caused by developments in communication technologies, claiming that media coverage may affect the conduct of foreign policy as a result of nonstop, real-time television footage from around the world. This trend toward more powerful media is fostered by the increasing uncertainty of how to deal with a more fluid and less clear-cut international order since the end of the Cold War (which is, perhaps, in CEE countries more prevalent than anywhere else). The papers in the first section will thus explore the changing nature of the relationships between states, the media and the public in comparative settings.



IMAGES AND IDENTITIES

Usually, public opinion concerning the relations between states, peoples and cultures is less concerned with “hard facts” than with images of who “we” and “they” are. More recent approaches in international relations theory acknowledge the importance of these images and insist that international relations cannot be reduced to rational action within material or institutional constraints at the national and international levels, but must be understood as a pattern of action that shapes and is shaped by social identities, i.e., how states (or supranational entities) see themselves in relation to other entities. Collective identities, however, are not fixed conceptions ready to be called forth when needed. This has become especially clear since the end of the Cold War. The end of the bipolar world system brought with it the end of any certainty in how to interpret and to manage new and sometimes unexpected conflicts and crises. Moreover, globalization, increasing immigration, and the spread of powerful social and occasionally fundamentalist movements challenge present conceptions of national identity as well as notions of cultural diversity. In light of all these developments, social identification is rather to be conceived as a dynamic process of (re)considering and (re)negotiating the self in relation to others. It is necessarily related to the public sphere as the arena in which identities evolve and in which the media are the main actors. In the second section, therefore, appropriate approaches, methods and tools for examining the role of the media in identity formation processes at various levels will be discussed.



CULTURAL TRANSFER

Obviously, images serve as an important filtering mechanism in the perception of the self and the other, and such perceptions are, in turn, one of the key elements influencing individual and collective behavior. Images linger in the mind, sometimes creating stereotypes, entering our subconsciousness and becoming part of our culture. In modern societies, culture, in the sense of patterns of shared ideas and their manifestations in behaviors and artifacts which are peculiar to a certain community, is distributed, reproduced and, to a certain degree, changed by the mass media. This has been the case since the establishment of the mass press in the 19th century, but, so far, very little attention has been paid to the role media as cultural institutions play not only in linking together the many diverse people within a community, but across communities, societies, and states. Nevertheless, according to Juergen Habermas, transnational – and transcultural – integration can be assumed to be based on national public spheres (or other more homogeneous entities), which remain and should remain intact, but exist in a communicative network, which explores cultural similarities and overcomes cultural barriers. Regarding the geographical area this conference focuses on, the third section seeks to analyze such transfer processes from the time of the Habsburg Empire, which covered a wide area of Central Europe, to that of the European Union and the present controversy regarding its future enlargement.



DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION RESEARCH IN CEE COUNTRIES

In a thematic open session, the development of international and intercultural communication research in CEE countries will be discussed more generally. The transitional context has not only been provoking comparative research into factors and indicators that help model and measure transnational transformation processes, but has also imposed certain implications on the development of research in CEE until the present time. Moreover, growing research efforts in CEE are challenging Western approaches at both the structural and cultural level of international communication research by developing own theoretical understandings and methodological frameworks. Therefore, submissions dealing with the development of international and intercultural communication research in the CEE countries (e.g. reflecting the state of the art), highlighting special aspects and approaches in CEE and discussing future developments are also welcome.



SUBMISSION AND SELECTION OF PAPERS

We invite paper proposals addressing one of the main topics. Conference submissions are for 20-minute presentations and should be made in English or German. The abstract must not be longer than 8,000 characters (including blank spaces). Please add a title page to the abstract containing the name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) and the title of the presentation. Please send your proposal to the organizers ((cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at)) no later than April 30, 2013 (using a PDF file). All submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed according to the criteria of originality, relevance, theoretical foundation, appropriateness of the methods used, clarity of language, and reference to the conference theme. All submitters will be informed about the outcome of the selection process by June 15, 2013.



INTEGRATED PhD WORKSHOP

The conference will be supplemented by a workshop in which PhD students can present their dissertation research in international and intercultural communication without any thematic restrictions imposed. Renowned scholars will comment on the presentations, thus offering a unique opportunity to obtain constructive feedback from experts who would otherwise not be readily available. Abstracts for submission to the PhD workshop can also be in English or German, must not exceed 8,000 characters (including blank spaces) and should also be submitted to (cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at) no later than April 30, 2013. The PhD workshop takes place on October 3, 2013.





The conference is hosted by the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Alpen-Adria-University of Klagenfurt in cooperation with the Department of German, Dutch and Scandinavian Studies at Comenius University in Bratislava and the Austrian Foreign Ministry.



Deadline for the submission of proposals: 30 April 2013



Paper acceptance will be communicated within: 15 June 2013



Conference website: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/cmc/iic2013



Contact: Prof. Dr. Matthias Karmasin, Dr. Gabriele Melischek M.A., Dr. Josef Seethaler, Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Klagenfurt, 1010 Wien, Postgasse 7, (cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at), Phone +43-1-51581-3110, Fax +43-1-51581-3120

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