[ecrea] cfp - MiT10: A reprise - democracy and digital media

MiT10: A REPRISE - DEMOCRACY AND DIGITAL MEDIA
MAY 17-18, 2019
MIT IN CAMBRIDGE, MA
Paper proposals due February 1, 2019. Registration will open soon after.
 In 1998, MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program held the first Media 
in Transition (MiT) conference and inaugurated a related book series. 
Research from that first MiT conference appeared in Democracy and New 
Media, Jenkins & Thorburn, eds., (MIT Press, 2003). Now, twenty years 
later, we are organizing the 10th iteration of the event. Much has 
changed over these two decades, but the theme “democracy and digital 
media” is as urgent as ever. Twenty years ago there was no Facebook, 
Twitter, or Netflix. iPhones and Samsung Galaxies had not yet hit the 
shelves. And Siri and Alexa were still in development. Since 1998, media 
have undergone major transition. We have witnessed a shift from Napster 
to Spotify, from Web 1.0 to 2.0, from CU-SeeMe to Twitch TV, and beyond. 
We have experienced the rise of social media, civic media, algorithmic 
cultures, and have seen ever greater concentration of media ownership. 
The events of 9/11 catalyzed intensified state surveillance and 
privatized security using various media technologies. Undergirding these 
shifts have been major transformations in global media infrastructure, 
the platformization of the Internet, and the ubiquity of the mobile phone.
In the US, we also have seen changes in the news ecosystem with the 
likes of ProPublica and community engagement journalism. At the same 
time, public trust in media has dropped from 55% in 1998 to 32% in 2016, 
according to a Pew report. For better and worse, a growth of interest in 
media ritual and a decline in the more familiar transmission paradigm is 
underway. Given such changes, concepts of participation, trust, and 
democracy are increasingly fraught and have been powerfully 
repositioned. How will our news media look and sound in the next decade? 
What can we learn from news media of the past? What can international 
perspectives reveal about the variability and plasticity of media 
landscapes? How are non-traditional sources of learning, knowledge 
production, and participation reshaping civic spheres?
We are interested in how these issues play out across media, whether as 
represented in television series and films, or enacted in rule set and 
player interactions in games, or enabled in community media, music, 
social media, and talk radio. We welcome research that considers these 
issues in public media and commercial media, with individual users and 
collective stakeholders, across media infrastructures and media texts, 
and embedded in various historical eras or cultural settings.
Paper proposals might address the following topics/issues:
•	politics of truth/lies, alternative facts
•	future of civic media & Indymedia
•	media, authoritarianism, and polarization
•	virtual reality, extended reality, and the return of media effects
•	diversity in gaming / livestreaming / esports
•	new lords of the global village (Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Alibaba)
•	making or breaking publics with algorithmic cultures/machine learning/AI
•	environmental media (from medium theory to climate change) and activism
•	media infrastructures as public utilities or utility publics?
•	datafication, privacy, and the future of public service media
•	machine vision and biometrics: surveillance without seeing or knowing
•	social media, creating consensus, and bursting filter bubbles
•	designing media technologies for inclusion
•	listening publics: sound, podcasts, radio, music
•	audiences / fandoms and the civic imagination
•	rhetoric and poetics of democracy and civility
•	diversifying creative labor in Hollywood and beyond
•	the #metoo movement and its impact
•	new texts/contexts (Black Panther, Handmaid’s Tale, Blackish, Black 
Mirror, Insecure)
•	lessons from the 19th century partisan press
•	the ritual of right wing radio
•	social media platforms (FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, etc), politics, 
and civic responsibility
•	Twitter, viral videos, and the new realities of political advertising
Submission Details
Please submit individual paper proposals, which should include a title, 
author(s) name, affiliation, 250-word abstract, and 75-word biographical 
statement to this email address: (media-in-transition /at/ mit.edu) -- by 
February 1, 2019. Early submissions are encouraged and we will review 
them on a rolling basis. Full panel proposals of 3 to 4 speakers can 
also be submitted, and should include a panel title and the details 
listed above for each paper, as well as a panel moderator. We notify you 
of the status of your proposals by February 15, 2019 at the latest.
Registration
Registration will open in February 2019. Participants will be 
responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation expenses, 
and there will be a registration fee of $100 for faculty members and $50 
for graduate students. MIT participants are exempt from this fee. Coffee 
and snacks will be provided each morning and there will be a hosted 
conference reception on the evening of May 18. Further information will 
be posted on the conference website.
The conference is organized by faculty in the Comparative Media 
Studies/Writing department and supported by the MIT School of 
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences along with its programs in 
Anthropology, Global Studies & Languages, History, Literature, Political 
Science, and Science, Technology, & Society.

Venue
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tang Center, 70 Memorial Drive, 
Cambridge, MA, USA
www.mit.edu



---------------
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
---------------