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

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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