[ecrea] cfp - Connecting to the Masses: 100 years from the Russian Revolution, From Agitprop to the Attention Economy

Connecting to the Masses: 100 Years from the Russian Revolution
 From Agitprop to the Attention Economy

November 13th, 2017 at the International Institute of Social History, 
Amsterdam

The relationship between governments and the people they govern has been 
always hostage to rhetoric, propaganda, and strategic public relations, 
as well as aggressive marketing and the influence of contemporary media 
industries, altering the dynamics of healthy political communications. 
Often, this relationship has thrived on charismatic leaders, the 
"avant-garde", who could feel the pulse of their population’s 
grievances, demands and hopes for the future. Whether the Russian 
revolution of 1917 is interpreted as a product of class struggle, as an 
event governed by historic laws predetermined by the alienation of the 
masses by monopoly industrial capitalism, or as a violent coup by a 
proto-totalitarian Bolshevik party, the Russian revolutionaries 
understood and connected to the masses in a way that the autocracy, 
bourgeois elites and reformists alike failed to do.

In the midst of rage, desperation and harsh everyday life conditions, 
due to the pressure and failures of WW1 against Germany, food shortages, 
growing poverty, inequality and alienation, the Bolsheviks felt the 
undercurrents in the seas of history and spoke to the people, exactly 
when the relationship between the Tsar and the population, and between 
the Provisional government and the Soviets were at a crucial tipping 
point. The Bolsheviks grasped the opportunity to change the world for 
themselves in the here and now, rather than waiting to reform in the 
future for their children. They did so violently and unapologetically 
with the effects of their move running through the Cold War and the 
confrontation with the West, all the way to the complex and intense 
relations between Russia and the United States, in terms of failed 
engagements of the past 25 years since the fall of the USSR, the first 
socialist state in the world.

Connecting to the masses is critical for the success of any movement, 
resurrection, protest, and revolution. The communication mechanisms for 
this connection have some times evolved and other times undergone 
revolutions of their own. Since the Russian centennial, scholars have 
examined how media and communication affects this connection to the 
masses in a double yet complimentary dynamic: how governments connect to 
the masses and how masses connect to their governments.
Therefore, we invite participants to debate this relationship and the 
strategies and lessons of "connecting to the masses", in light of the 
development in media, technology and communication strategies over the 
last century.

Potential questions include: Is it still about charismatic leadership 
and movements that connect to the general population or has algorithmic 
communication intervened to amplify and commodity populist leaders, 
without bringing into fruition claims of digital democracy/reform or 
radical socio-political change? Are the social media protests we witness 
a flash in the pan or able to sustain movements, parties, organizations 
in the long durée? What communication and what technologies do 
contemporary movements need to advance their goals?

Areas the conference addresses are the following:
- Evolution of propaganda: From leaflet bombs to Twitter
- Artificial attention, political packaging and the so-called attention 
economy
- Tactical media and tech activism in the 20th and 21st centuries
- Strategies and lessons for the use of ICTs in mobilization
- Impact of technology on revolutionary social change in the 
macro-perspective
- Revolutionary-era media and communist rhetoric and transition to 
post-communism
- Mediated contestation, surveillance, censorship and systems of control
- From journalism to social media gatekeepers
- Spheres and systems of political deliberation
- Evolution of the ownership of means of communication, processes of 
labour reproduction in the media, culture and communication industries
- (R)evolution of technology at work, digital labour, alternative 
production models
- Intelligence and cyberespionage in the 100 years span.
- Technosocial infrastructures and the politicization of health, illness 
and biopolitics.

Invited Participants*
Richard Aldrich, Anton Allahar, Franco Berardi, David Berry, Sebastien 
Broca, David Chandler, Cholpon Chotaeva, Cristiano Codagnone, Gabriella 
Coleman, Lina Dencik, Anastasia Denisova, Mats Fridlund, Myria Georgiou, 
Goodwin, Andrji Gorbachyk, Galina Gorborukova, Baruch Gottlieb, Jason 
Hughes, Arne Hintz, Gulnara Ibraeva, Anastasia Kavada, Olessia Koltsova, 
Garnet Kindervarter, Iliya Kiriya, Mathias Klang, Maros Krivy, Adi 
Kuntsman, Adele Lindenmeyr, Geert Lovink, Peter Lunt, Jacob Matthews, 
Dan Mercea, Galina Miazhevich, Peter Mihalyi, Gerassimos Moschonas, 
Phoebe Moore, Zenonas Norkus, Alex Neumann, Jonathan Ong, Tamás Pál, 
Despina Panagiotopoulou, Korina Patelis, Thomas Poell, Vincent Rouzé, 
Maria Rovisco, Paul Reilly, Ellen Rutten, Michael Schandorf, Markus 
Schultz, Nikos Smyrnaios, Serge Sych, Irina Tjurina, Marc Tuters, 
Giuseppe Veltri, Anastasia Veneti, Stefania Vicari, Alex Wood.

*To be updated as attendance is confirmed. Please follow us on 
Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/events/471967253135039/ 
<https://www.facebook.com/events/471967253135039/>and on Twitter 
(@cttm_conference) for regular updates.

The conference is organised through a collaboration between Athina 
Karatzogianni from the School of Media, Communication and Sociology of 
the University of Leicester; Stefania Milan from the DATACTIVE research 
group at the Media Studies department of the University of Amsterdam; 
Andrey Rezaev from the Department of Sociology at St. Petersburg State 
University; the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam; 
and the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki.

Please email abstracts (250w max) and/or any inquiries to Athina 
Karatzogianni (athina.k /at/ gmail.com) by July 1st 2017 latest.
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