[Commlist] CfP - conference on refugees and asylum-seekers in/and the media

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*Sanctuary Songs: Refugees and asylum-seekers in/and the media: **an 
academic conference and cultural festival – June 2023***

The academic conference will take place between 19-21 June 2023 during 
UNHCR Refugee week) at Newcastle University, a University of Sanctuary. 
The conference will be *in person* *only,* although**we will record the 
keynote presentations. The cultural festival will take place in 
buildings and sites on campus and at venues around the city of 
Newcastle, a City of Sanctuary, between 19-25 June, although some 
exhibitions might extend into the following weeks.  Further details 
about the cultural festival including a programme of events and 
activities, will be available nearer the time.

*Call for Papers – EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS*

The experiences of refugees and asylum-seekers remains salient in and 
for the media as journalists report from one conflict zone to another, 
with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine adding immediacy to the coverage of 
war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, (re)animating public and political 
debate about how ‘we’ should respond. At the same time, major crises in 
regions such as DR Congo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, 
Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi and Ethiopia go largely unreported 
(Wanless et al, 2022). Generations of Palestinians have now grown up in 
UN-administered refugee camps in the Middle East, around one million 
Rohingya people from Myanmar are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, 
and the accelerating climate crisis is leading to the further 
displacement of millions of people worldwide.  Some scholars suggest 
that media coverage of war often lacks context or historical 
perspective, so that discussions about the economic and cultural aspects 
as well as the wider structural issue of migration, are largely ignored 
(Fengler et al, 2022). It is scarcely original to suggest that 
mainstream media outlets play an important role in informing the public 
about refugees and asylum-seekers – for example, the number of people 
attempting (and sometimes tragically failing) to enter Britain 
informally via the English Channel are a regular feature of UK national 
news – but the /way/ the issue is reported is seen by many commentators 
as contributing to the rise of hostile populism across Europe and 
beyond.  However, refugees, asylum-seekers, activists and others 
interested in calling media to account are not standing passively by, 
but are increasingly using both legacy and social media platforms and 
technologies to challenge and contest misinformation and negative and 
polarising and narratives, not least in order to tell their own stories 
in their own words.

For the academic conference, we now welcome abstracts which focus on any 
aspect of the relationship between refugees, asylum-seekers and the 
media from a range of contributors including academics, media 
professionals and media practitioners, especially those with lived 
experience and/or experience of collaborating with refugee or 
asylum-seeker communities. We are keen to receive abstracts of work 
which will be presented in a variety of formats including text, screen 
and sound-based based forms, as well as multi-media work*.  Topics could 
range from, but are definitely not limited to:

§representations in mainstream or social media

§reporting policy and/or legal responses

§refugee and asylum-seeking media practices, websites and/or social 
media accounts

§refugee and asylum-seeking experiences as sources or subjects of news 
discourse

§alternative media and community media representations

§refugees and asylum-seekers making media

§citizen journalism and the refugee and asylum-seeking experience

§participatory media projects with refugees and asylum-seekers

§practices of journalists and media practitioners with lived experience 
as refugees

§the ethics of reporting

§refugee and asylum-seeker voices in the public sphere

§empathy and affect in media discourse

§journalism education in relation to covering refugees and asylum-seekers

§collaborative media projects with refugee or asylum-seeker communities

§refugees, asylum-seekers and the adoption/adaptation of media technologies

*Publication opportunity*

After the conference, we will be inviting full papers to be submitted 
for possible inclusion in a special double issue of /Ethical Space: The 
International Journal of Communication Ethics /which will be published 
in 2024 (issue 2, summer; issue 3, autumn).//

*Dates for your diary***

§13 January, 2023 – submission of abstracts/poster descriptions (350-500 
words)

§10 February, 2023 - decisions announced

§27 February, 2023 – registration opens

*Posters *

PhD students are welcome to submit abstracts but can, as an alternative, 
submit a research poster.

For further information, please contact Karen Ross and David Baines at:

(sanctuarysongs2023 /at/ newcastle.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(sanctuarysongs2023 /at/ newcastle.ac.uk)>

*depending on the technical requirements

**

**

*References*

Fengler, S., Bastian, M., Brinkmann, J., Zappe, A.C., Tatah, V., 
Andindilile, M., Assefa, E., Chibita, M., Mbaine, A., Obonyo, L. and 
Quashigah, T. (2022) Covering migration - in Africa and Europe: Results 
from a comparative analysis of 11 countries. /Journalism Practice/, 
/16/(1), pp.140-160.

Wanless J., Michou H., Peyre-Costa P., Schembri K., Kårstad I., Olivesi 
M., Foster E, Toure M., Vu M.,  Taylor J., Skarstein T. (2022) The 
World’s Most Neglected Displacement Crises 2021. Norwegian Refugee 
Council. Availableat: NeglectedList2021_ENG_LR.pdf 
<file:///C:/Users/local_njdrb/Temp/Temp1_Neglected%20Crises%20report%202021.zip/NeglectedList2021_ENG_LR.pdf>


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