[ecrea] CfP Innovative methods in measuring political polarization in the age of hybrid media

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CfP: Innovative methods in measuring political polarization in the age 
of hybrid media

Conference: 11th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media 
Conference (CEECOM 2018)
Dates and place: May 30 – June 1 2018, Szeged, Hungary
Panel: Innovative methods in measuring political polarization in the age 
of hybrid media
Panel chairs: Svetlana S.Bodrunova (St.Petersburg State University)
          Gabriella Szabó (Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian 
Academy of Sciences)
Deadline of submission: January 31, 2018

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Polarization in politics has recently acquired great importance as a 
subject of discussion in Central and Eastern Europe. The panel aims to 
bring media and communication scholars together and examine the 
application of new analytical tools in measuring political polarization 
in the media spaces. Inspired by the thesis of hybridity and the 
networked publics, we create forum for academic dispute in which we 
recognize the media sphere (incl. social media) as spatial imagination 
of representations and narratives on politics that carry the potential 
to make the invisible publicly visible and maintain connection between 
the key communicators. It is argued that today’s media ecosystem is more 
than a convergence of offline and online spaces: it is the transcendence 
into a new form of interactions by allowing for a rapid conversation on 
politics across multiple platforms with virtual proximities and 
distances between the actors.
The body of scientific thinking depicts polarization as the divergence 
of politics, which highlights the creation and stabilization of 
political blocs, separate political communities. Speculations began to 
rise that there has been no such thing called mainstream media sphere in 
CEE countries, but distinctive group of media outlets have evolved to 
create ideological ‘bubbles’. In this ‘bubble’, the lines between 
audiences, journalists and politicians are blurring: instead of being 
neutral carrier of messages, media have become a focal point of 
politically relevant communities. Nowadays, the key question to be 
addressed is whether the fragmented and heavily partisan media sphere is 
inclusive enough for connecting divergent journalistic opinions or there 
has been a gradual emergence of political polarization because of the 
media instrumentalization of political agents.
There is however pressing need for refreshing the methodological 
apparatus for innovative examinations of political polarization in 
media. With this in mind, we invite empirical contributions to 
investigate the different aspects of the widened and widening discursive 
gap between media outlets having left and right, or liberal and 
conservative political orientations. The panel promotes the relational 
approach to study polarization meaning that architecture of the media 
space can be defined through the relations among the media platforms. 
Qualitative and quantitative researches, single case studies and 
cross-case comparisons form the body of this panel. We pay special 
attention to the use of mixed methods such as the combination of 
content-oriented examinations and network analysis. Particular attention 
will be devoted to the cross-country comparability of the datasets and 
to the regional specificities, therefore the contributors are encouraged 
to discuss the potential common framework for the analysis of the 
forthcoming 2019 European Parliamentary election campaign during the panel.
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A special issue is planned to be published based on the best papers 
collected for the panel.
Please submit your individual paper proposal abstract through the 
conference official submission platform 
(http://ceecom2018.hu/index.php/call-for-papers/) until January 31, 2018.
More information on the 11th Central and Eastern European Communication 
and Media Conference is available at http://ceecom2018.hu/



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