[ecrea] Call for Papers:Engaging Media Cultures: Films and beyond

Call for Papers:Engaging Media Cultures: Films and beyond

25th June 2013 Leeds Trinity University
An interdisciplinary one-day conference for researchers and practitioners

Media cultures are the localised, collective, multiple and dialogical 
sites of routine and symbolic interactions with media, through media, 
and across media.

‘Media cultures’ provide a framework for conceptualising the complex and 
situated relations for individuals and social groups between the 
everyday and the discursive/mediated surrounds of media productions. 
They encompass the interplay of agency and constraint, the intersections 
of audiences, media, socio-historical contexts and institutional networks.

Media cultures matter because media matter to audiences, because culture 
is always significant, always matters, whilst they also illustrate the 
various, contested and imbricated definitions of the place, nature and 
value of media and culture in society, including but extending beyond 
the centrifugal figure of the audience.

We are interested in three broad questions and approaches to media 
cultures, specifically in relation to ‘film’ and would like to hear from 
researchers and media practitioners, and those involved in both, to 
develop this discussion.

1)                  How are media cultures engaging film?
How do audiences engage with films, and the various paratexts and 
discursive surrounds for both contemporary films and broader film 
cultures? How do audiences find films engaging?
What different kinds of participation (to use the term espoused by Henry 
Jenkins and used by Martin Barker and the title of the online journal he 
founded) are deployed in a range of activities developing out of 
audience’s contact with films? What are the entry points, motivations, 
pleasures and meanings underpinning these participations - not only of 
individuals but supported across and within diverse social and cultural 
contexts and formations?

2)                  How do media culture scholars trace/engage with 
these activities? Issues of methodology and how we conceptualise and 
analyse audiences in both broader terms (not simply invested audiences 
and fans) as well as accounting for local detail and richness.

3)                  How do media and culture researchers and producers 
engage in media 
cultures?                                                     How do we 
intervene in issues affecting these media cultures and their activities, 
where our critical and research stance/framework or cultural authority 
enables reconsidering/reframing problems (of power and regulation, the 
consequences of figures of the audience, contestation of value and 
values) in this era of 'impact'?
How do we work in tandem with film cultures? How do we bring the Academy 
to media cultures?

Potential topics include, but are not restricted to:

Media Culture Engagements

Online talk about film – blogs, forums, social networks and films 
mediated within digital everyday life

Digital film cultures – streaming and downloads, film related apps, 
critical and promotional sites and discourses, cultures around the 
distribution and exhibition of an ‘ephemeral’ digital cinema of attractions

Engaging production cultures – practitioner researchers and their role 
in nascent or existing film cultures

Local/regional/national/transnational film cultures

Subcultures and film – how is film adopted/repurposed by subcultures, 
cult/camp/cool and film related or inspired identities

Film culture and identity – taste and value markers, 
self-representations and profiles

Film within and across everyday cultures of entertainment (and 
celebrity/stars) – for instance film stars on chat shows, breakfast 
television, telethons etc.

Film cultures of convergence and transmedia/cross-media engagement – 
adaptation contexts, multimodality and film stories, characters and 
worlds for readers/gamers/theatregoers/television viewers etc.

Methodologies

Modalities of film cultural engagement

Critical reception cultures for film

Performativities of film cultural engagement

Historical reception and cultural contexts for films

Spaces and places of film cultures

Netnography and film

Cultures of exhibition/distribution/broadcast – festival cultures, 
blockbuster cultures, cult film cultures, gallery cultures for films as art

Tracing Ephemeral film cultures

Tracing enduring film cultures – Cinephilia then and now

Fan studies and film cultures/fan cultures – how do films correspond to 
fan objects of investment and affection

Production cultures and prod-users – blurred boundaries between 
producers and audiences/consumers

Interventions

Challenging/Creative production cultures – screenwriting and production 
to engage the audience

Contesting figures of the audience

Challenging the audience

Challenging power inequities in and around film cultures

Challenging the political tech-onomy of contemporary film culture

Challenging regulation and imposition upon film cultures

De-marginalising cult fans, blockbuster audiences, niche film cultures

Changing the discourse on Demonising media in relation to violence

Politicising film cultures

Alternative/activist film cultures – documentaries and networks of 
(h)activism


The event is open to both early researchers and established scholars, as 
well as practitioners working in film or producing other media related 
to film cultures (websites, podcasts, radio or television, documentary, 
interactive media about film or particular cultural engagements with 
‘film’).

Proposals for papers of 20 minutes, including any audio-visual clips.


Please submit Abstracts of 200-250 words, including name, institutional 
affiliation and preferred contact details by 30/3/2013 to: Jason Scott, 
(j.scott /at/ leedstrinity.ac.uk)
marked with the subject ‘Engaging Media Cultures’.


----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Universit�ibre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------