[ecrea] Call for papers: ViNM conference

In November 2017, the Universities of Neuchâtel, Zurich and Bern in 
Switzerland will host the first international conference to focus 
specifically on visual communication in/about new media. In this regard, 
we invite the submission of abstracts for scholarly presentations in any 
of four overlapping thematic areas.

1. Social interaction

Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the communicative uses of 
visual resources in the context of new media; for example: orthography 
and typography, graphematic design, the use of emojis (pictograms, 
emoticons, smilies), and/or the social-interactional uses of video, GIFs 
and non-moving images.

2. Meta-discourse

Here, we envisage presentations that focus on people’s talk or writing 
about visual practices; for example: journalistic commentary about 
visual practices in new media (the use of emojis, for instance) or 
communicators’ discussions about their own or others’ visual practices 
in new media spaces.

3. Visual ideologies

Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the visual depiction of 
new media in, for example, the context of commercial advertising, print 
or broadcast news, cinema and television narratives and/or public policy 
and educational settings.

4. Industrial design

Here, we envisage presentations that focus on perspectives related to, 
for example, the visual-material design of technologies and apps, as 
well as the look or layout of screen interfaces, especially insofar as 
they concern the communicative (as opposed to technical) affordances of 
new media.

In selecting presentations, the conference team will privilege those 
adopting a multimodal approach to visual communication; in other words, 
studies that focus on visuality but attend to its interaction with other 
communicative modes – especially linguistic ones. We take a broad and 
critical approach to labels like “new”, “digital” and “mobile” as they 
are applied to communication technologies; we are nonetheless 
principally interested in more current, social, interactive media spaces 
such as micro-blogging, messaging, forums, gaming, video- and 
photo-sharing, and social networking.

The principal language of the conference will be English; however, the 
conference team welcome presentations and posters presented in German, 
French, and Italian (ideally, with slides or handouts offered in 
English). In such an interdisciplinary field, we also invite presenters 
to use their preferred style of delivery, whether it’s a read paper, an 
unscripted slideshow or some combination of the two.

Titles, abstracts and basic biographical information should be submitted 
using our online submission system available here: 
https://www.conftool.net/vinm2017/. Abstracts should be between 300 and 
500 words and written in the same language as the presentation or 
poster. If the abstract is in a language other than English, please 
provide a list of five keywords in English. We ask that you also 
indicate which of our four thematic areas (above) your paper addresses 
as well as if it is a presentation or a poster. The deadline for 
proposals is February 28th 2017 with an anticipated decision date of 
April 30th 2017.

Here is the conference website for more information: 
http://www2.unine.ch/vinm2017


Best regards,
Vanessa Jaroski


Vanessa Jaroski
SNF doctoral candidate
Assistant in Language and Communication
Department of English
University of Bern
Switzerland


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