[Commlist] cfp: Media Control as Source of Political Power in Central and Eastern Europe

Call for Papers

*Media Control as Source of Political Power in Central and Eastern Europe*

Workshop at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

Organized by the Russian Media Lab in collaboration with the Research 
Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen

Helsinki, 02 – 03 September 2019

We invite proposals for papers to be discussed at an intensive two-day 
workshop on “Media Control as Source of Political Power in Central 
and Eastern Europe” at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki 
on 02 – 03 September 2019. The workshop will involve around 15 scholars, 
and early-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply. Travel 
expenses and accommodation costs of invited participants will be covered 
by the organisers.

The workshop aims to bring together approaches from political science, 
media studies and other relevant academic disciplines to get a more 
comprehensive picture of the role of media control in consolidating and 
expanding political power in authoritarian regimes and in “backsliding” 
democracies. The focus of the workshop will equally be on the interplay 
of media and political actors and on the effect of this relationship on 
regime dynamics.

Several studies have shown that in electoral or competitive 
authoritarian regimes media manipulation is used more often than most 
other types of manipulation when regimes attempt to shift the “playing 
field” in their favour. This makes media one of the major battlefields 
in political power struggles. Similarly, in backsliding democracies, 
media are one of the first targets of authoritarian tendencies.

However, the numerous studies on the role of mass media for political 
power rarely go beyond the question of control over mass media, 
implicitly assuming that media ownership means successful manipulation 
of public opinion via reporting, and thus a strengthening of 
authoritarian politics.

The workshop starts from the notion that the most interesting story 
often starts once ownership has been established and media outlets have 
to negotiate both market conditions and political restrictions. Which 
message should be delivered? How to bring journalists into line? How not 
to lose the audience? How to deal with rival mass media and alternative 
online sources of information? In sum: how to make sure that the 
population is exposed—mainly—to messages framed by the actors dominating 
the political regime?

To examine these questions, our workshop wants to look at a broad range 
of actors (including journalists, political office-holders regulating 
media and entrepreneurs owning media) and at a broad range of 
interactions (including legislative and organisational issues as well as 
actual media reporting). The focus of invited papers, however, should 
always be on the role of media actors, media ownership and media 
reporting for political power struggles and political regime dynamics.

Deadline for the submission of paper proposals is *31 March 2019*.

In addition to a 300-word abstract, please include a brief biographical 
statement in your submission. Selected paper-givers will be invited by 
30 April 2019. Full papers will be due 31 July 2019.

We plan to publish selected workshop papers in a special issue of the 
Scopus-listed open access journal /Studies in Russian, Eurasian and 
Central European New Media/ (_http://www.digitalicons.org/_).

Paper proposals and any questions should be addressed to the workshop 
organisers:

Dr Mariëlle Wijermars, Aleksanteri Institute: 
(_marielle.wijermars /at/ helsinki.fi) <mailto:(marielle.wijermars /at/ helsinki.fi)>_

Prof Dr Heiko Pleines, Research Centre for East European Studies at the 
University of Bremen: (_pleines /at/ uni-bremen.de) <mailto:(pleines /at/ uni-bremen.de)>_

The workshop is co-organized by the research project „Media control as 
source of political power: The role of oligarchs in electoral 
authoritarian regimes“, which is conducted by the Research Centre for 
East European Studies at the University of Bremen and receives financial 
support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research 
Foundation) – grant No. 391270526.

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