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[Commlist] Locating Media Industries: Cities, Spaces, Places Conference CFP
Tue Jan 03 12:37:22 GMT 2023
*Locating Media Industries: Cities, Spaces, Places*
**
A Three-Day International Interdisciplinary Conference
King’s College London
Bush House, 30 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG
*19-21 June 2023*
Co-organisers: Professor Paul McDonald, Kings College London;
Professor Andrew Spicer, University of the West of England Bristol
Deadline for Proposals: *15 January 2023*
We invite proposals for papers, panels, or roundtables
conceptualising, defining, analysing, discussing, or mapping
relationships between media industries and locality. Proposals are
invited from across the full breadth of media industries research. We
hope the conference can provide an inclusive inter-disciplinary meeting
ground, so welcome proposals from all disciplinary traditions relevant
to the topic.
The importance of locality to the media industries has been widely
debated through a range of perspectives. Harvard economist Michael
Porter claimed that ‘clusters’ – which he defined as ‘geographical
agglomerations of firms that collaborate and compete with each other’ –
provide ‘enduring competitive advantages in a global economy’ through
local knowledges and relationships ‘that distant rivals cannot match’
(1998: 78). Studies of clustering activity in media industries have
focused on ‘a specialized form of clusters designed to produce mediated
content’ (original emphasis, Picard 2008: 4), recognizing how these take
form in both planned and organic ways, but also the different types of
cluster that emerge from such developments (Komorowski 2016 and 2017).
Porter’s emphasis on the economic significance of location has
been challenged by other studies that focus on the significance of
historical factors and the importance of long-term cultural traditions.
In his seminal The Cultural Economy of Cities (2000), Allen J. Scott
argues that place has a particular significance for creative production
because of the ways in which locality and culture are intertwined.
Places, he argues, leave ‘deep traces on the form and cognitive
meanings’ of creative products emerging from ‘localized systems of
industrial activity’. These ‘symbolic and sentimental assets’ derive
from the ‘distinctive historical associations and landmarks’ that make
each particular place unique (2000: 3).
Discussing how the concentration of film and television production
in Louisiana formed ‘Hollywood South’, Vicki Mayer (2017: 3) focused on
the ways in which ‘life in a film economy shapes and is shaped by its
location’. A focus on locality can therefore ground our understanding of
how media industries are actually inhabited and lived, but also how
media workers contribute to the formation of locations. Analyses of
cities as ‘sites of passage’ (de Valck 2007: 9) connected through the
‘film festival circuit’ (Loist 2007), or of global television
marketplaces (Havens 2006; Choi 2021), illuminate how industries
temporarily congregate to exchange and circulate media in and through
specific locations. Other studies have investigated the representational
dimensions of locality in media industries (e.g., Brunsdon 2007; Young
2022): the importance of locations to narrative, iconography, and
characterisation (places as characters) and the ways in which these
contribute to imagining and imaging a sense of regional identity and
consciousness. There has been significant work on where media production
takes place (e.g., Ganti 2012; McNutt 2021) as well as the specialized
facilities in which media production is performed (e.g., Goldsmith and
O’Regan 2005), the operational and emblematic role of media buildings
(Evens 2022), of local place-making activities including media tourism
and ‘places of the imagination’ (Reijnders 2011), and the ways in which
places accrete symbolic images (‘brands’) for international consumption.
Analyses of ‘the world media cities network’ (Krätke 2003),
‘global media cities’ (Hoyler and Watson 2012), ‘film cities’ (O’Regan
2018) and ‘media capitals’ (Curtin 2003) highlight the importance of
global cities as loci for media creativity and flows. At the same time,
attention has also been given to concentrations of media industries in
marginalised centres (e.g., Haynes 2007 on Lagos) and regions (e.g.,
Szczepanik 2021 on Central and Eastern Europe). While perennial tensions
between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ have a long history, these have become
more urgent and pressing over the last decade. In many countries this
has an explicitly political dimension with governments directing – or
encouraging through regulatory systems – the deployment of increased
resources into regional screen production in an attempt to strengthen
local economies and identities thereby encouraging more diverse and
sustainable screen industries that support a range of voices. The
importance of locality and spatial plurality has been accentuated in an
era of accelerating internationalisation of the media industries in
which Public Service Media (PSM) are losing audiences to satellite
channels or streaming platforms that operate to a global commercial
logic. However, the streamers’ business models are themselves changing
and, as Ramon Lobato argues (2019), this new logic does not entirely
displace or supersede the older logics of analogue broadcasting but
introduces new layers of spatial complexity that need to be investigated
and analysed. This invites a broader question: why, how, and where are
networked forms of media reconfiguring the spatial organisation of media
industries?
These perspectives variously foreground the importance of linkages
between media industries and locality. Yet the Covid pandemic disrupted
those links. Remote and hybrid working became habituated across all
areas of professional life. In the media sector specifically, impacts
materialized with the movement of media conventions and festivals
online, threats to the future of location-specific entertainment such as
music venues, and greater use of commercial livestreaming as an outlet
for large-scale media events. Cumulatively, with these and other
developments, we might therefore ask: to what extent is locality
retaining importance for the media industries?
Proposals can be for single research papers, or pre-constituted
panels and roundtables. Topics to be addressed include but are not
limited to the following:
• Locality in media production networks
• Locality in media and communication infrastructures
• Spaces and places as media production locations
• Media companies and attachments to place
• Civic/social role of media companies
• Media companies and urban renewal
• Media and the built environment
• Cities as media distribution hubs
• Environmental impacts of media on places
• Media ‘clusters’/‘hubs’
• ‘Media Cities’
• Media industry events, e.g., festivals, conventions
• Spaces and places of media work
• Locality and the production and circulation of diasporic
media
• Media and urban or rural/regional economies
• Media and urban or rural/regional policy
• Media tourism
• Media industries and place branding
*Proposal guidelines*
Proposals are welcomed in three categories and should be submitted
through the following links:
1) Open Call Papers https://form.jotform.com/223075189624359
Format: solo or co-presented research paper lasting no more than
20mins.
2) Pre-constituted Panels
https://form.jotform.com/223074632587359
Format: 90mins panel of 3 x 20mins OR 4 x 15mins thematically
linked solo or co-presented research papers followed by questions.
3) Pre-constituted Roundtables
https://form.jotform.com/223083000136338
Format: 90mins interactive forum led by a chair bringing together
4 to 6 participants (including the chair as a participant if speaking as
well as chairing) to offer short (up to 6 minute) position statements or
interventions designed to trigger discussions around a central theme,
issue, or problem. As such, a roundtable does not involve the
presentation of formal research papers but rather is designed to create
a forum for the participants and audience to engage in a shared
discussion. The format is flexible and can be adapted to allow members
of the roundtable to introduce exercises or other activities where
appropriate.
Delegates can make TWO contributions to the conference but only
ONE in any category, i.e., presenting an open call paper and
participating in a roundtable will be permitted but presenting two open
call papers will not be. Chairing a panel or roundtable will NOT count
as one of those contributions.
Papers (either open call or as part of a pre-constituted panel)
maybe presented individually or by a pair of co-presenters.
When submitting a proposal, each
presenter/co-presenter/participant is required to provide:
• name
• institutional affiliation (if any)
• contact e-mail address
• short professional biography (max. 100 words)
In addition, different proposal categories require the following:
1) Open Call Papers
• title
• abstract of no more than 400 words
• 3-5 keywords
• 3-5 sources relevant to the paper
2) Pre-constituted Panels
• nominated chair (either one of the presenters or another
delegate)
• panel rationale of no more than 400 words
• 3-5 key words
• individual proposals (presenter/co-presenter details,
title, abstract, keywords, sources) for 3 x 20mins OR 4 x 15mins
research papers
3) Pre-constituted Roundtables
• nominated chair (either one of the presenters or another
delegate)
• rationale of no more than 400 words
• 3-5 key words
• details for each participant accompanied by a statement
of no more than 100 words outlining a participant’s intended contribution
Paul McDonald ((Paul.McDonald /at/ kcl.ac.uk) <mailto:(Paul.McDonald /at/ kcl.ac.uk)>)
Andrew Spicer ((Andrew2.Spicer /at/ uwe.ac.uk) <mailto:(Andrew2.Spicer /at/ uwe.ac.uk)>)
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