[ecrea] Call for the ICA 2018 Pre-Conference “Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices”

---

Call for the ICA 2018 Pre-Conference

“Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices”

Sponsored by the Philosophy, Theory and Critique (PTC) Division of the 
International Communication Association

Event date: 24 May 2018, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Prague, Czech Republic
Venue: Main Conference Hotel

Deadline for proposals: 10 January 2018 (300-500 words abstract)

Organizers: Christian Pentzold (University of Bremen), Kenzie Burchell 
(University of Toronto), Olivier Driessens (University of Cambridge), 
Alice Mattoni (Scuola Normale Superiore), John Postill (RMIT 
University), Cara Wallis (Texas A&M University)


“Media matter most when they seem not to matter at all.” (Wendy Chun) 
But how can we understand the practices through which innovations in 
media and digital data move from being unexpected, novel, and impactful 
to the negotiated, embedded, and habitual?

The pre-conference takes issue with the mundane yet pervasive nature of 
media habits, rituals, and customs. It assesses the purchase of 
practice-based approaches in order to see under what conditions and with 
what consequences they enter studies in communication and media. In 
particular, we invite participants to consider the expressive and 
performative dimension of what people actually do and say in relation to 
media and to the wider communication ecologies in which these 
articulations take place. We are especially interested in contributions 
that examine how voices are expressed, represented, or muted and that 
study the ways practices of voice combine, overlap, or collide with 
other mediated activities in contemporary societies. With this, we 
strive for an explanation and critical appreciation of media practices 
whose accomplishment is a perennial exercise in which we find ourselves 
immersed.

We welcome theoretical and/or empirical contributions on questions 
including:

●	How can we theorize and study the interplay between media-related 
practices and technologies, discourses, or institutions? How are these 
constellations created, maintained, and transformed? How do 
praxeological approaches correspond to other inquiries into speech acts, 
media rituals, or media habits?
●	What resources and skills are mobilized in order to perform voices? 
What is the meaning of the work that goes into activities of voicing? 
How do they contribute to or undermine the constitution of public 
spheres, privacy, and civic life in past and contemporary societies?
●	How do we grasp media practices empirically, and how do we analyze 
them across modes of expression, across cultures, different times, and 
ages? How can we challenge and advance the kinds of translation and 
transformation happening in-between the situated enactment of media 
practices and the descriptions and stories of scholarly accounts?
●	How can we understand the ways through which media practices are 
accomplished in social fields? How are they deployed in struggles for 
gaining voice and visibility as in political communication and 
journalism, participation and mobilization, health communication, or 
science communication? How have media practices changed over time and in 
relation to innovations in digitization and datafication?

Responses to the contributions will be given by Elisenda Ardèvol 
(Universitat Oberta de Catalunya); Maria Bakardjieva (University of 
Calgary), S. Elizabeth Bird (University of Southern Florida); Nick 
Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science).

Please email a 300-500 words proposal to Christian Pentzold 
((christian.pentzold /at/ uni-bremen.de)) by January 10, 2018.

Authors will be notified of their acceptance before January 31, 2018.

Please direct any questions to: Alice Mattoni ((alice.mattoni /at/ sns.it)) or 
Christian Pentzold ((christian.pentzold /at/ uni-bremen.de)).


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please
use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------