[Commlist] CfP: Unlocking Television Archives in the Digital Era

*Call for Papers: Media Mutations 16 International Conference*
*Unlocking Television Archives in the Digital Era*
***Proposals deadline: February 10th, 2025***

Date and location: May 26th-27th, 2025 - Bologna, Dipartimento delle 
Arti, Palazzo Marescotti
Organised by Luca Barra, Matteo Marinello, Emiliano Rossi (Università di 
Bologna), Susanne Eichner (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, 
Potsdam) and Anne-Katrin Weber (Université de Lausanne)

Confirmed keynote speakers: Kit Hughes (College of Liberal Arts, 
Colorado State University) and Ethan Thompson (Texas A&M 
University-Corpus Christi)
Details here (_site.unibo.it/atlas/en/final-conference 
<http://www.site.unibo.it/atlas/en/final-conference>_) and here 
(_mediamutations.org/callforpapers 
<https://www.mediamutations.org/callforpapers>_)
***
The opportunity to store and preserve full records or fragments of 
already aired programmes has been a crucial challenge for the entire 
television industry since its inception, implying issues of material 
feasibility, editorial advantage and, not least, economic viability. 
Despite substantial geographical discrepancies and various capacities, 
PSBs and legacy networks have mostly initiated in-house archives and 
digitised repositories. On the other hand, local channels and less 
institutionalised TV companies have been inconsistent, with the result 
that significant portions of their cultural heritage have been lost, or 
are barely available. Concurrently, from the second half of the 1990s, 
the interdependence between media and audiovisual archives has undergone 
a radical evolution: digitisation, recovery, preservation, access, and 
sharing have gradually become buzzwords of any creative chain, while 
video collections have been widely reinstated as tools for storytelling, 
memory/identity-building, and corporate branding.
The 16th edition of Media Mutations international conference – developed 
within the scope of the PRIN 2020 research project ATLas - Atlante delle 
televisioni locali (Atlas of Local Televisions, _site.unibo.it/atlas/en 
<http://www.site.unibo.it/atlas/en>_) – will explore and engage with the 
history and recent developments of TV archives, investigated both on a 
theoretical, technical and operational basis and with attention to their 
commercial potential. In an age of multi-channel and digital platforms, 
the use of archives as sources entails constant renegotiations of the 
ties between technology and memory, opening unexpected glimpses in 
public history and delving into the political dimension of cultural 
heritage’s reuse, exploitation and enhancement. Accordingly, the 
conference aims to foster dialogue on current practices, policies and 
emerging trends as far as the establishment, curation and maintenance of 
media corporations’ archives are concerned, while raising complex 
questions around their fair use(s). In such a frame, the coverage of 
minor, less-known case studies drawn from a European, international and 
transnational scale will be appreciated.
By bringing together academic researchers, professionals, and experts, 
Media Mutations 16 encourages submissions covering diverse topics, 
approaches and methodologies, such as:
-      creation, classification and preservation of TV archives, within 
or beyond academic research: specificities, challenges, ethics, 
historiography, and methodological tools;
-       the peculiarities and complexities of local, private, commercial 
television archives, and their relevance at a regional, national and 
transnational level;
-       digitisation of audiovisual and non-audiovisual (e.g. production 
documents, press releases, sound recordings, images) sources: projects, 
experiences, examples;
-       audiovisual archives between preservation, restoration and 
curation procedures;
-       promotion and implementation initiatives related to TV 
archives and content circulation, including digital exhibitions and 
multimedia showcases;
-       regulation: norms, laws, policies and institutional guidelines 
concerning TV archives;
-       archival and production cultures: the use of TV archives to 
investigate the medium backstage and professional routines, also through 
the enhancement of ancillary resources (e.g. paratexts, interstitial 
programmes, promotional materials);
-       the exploitation of TV archives for entertainment, information 
and other commercial uses;
-       TV archives, society, and public history practices: the 
connection with audience, local communities, and the broader public, 
against the backdrop of national, regional and local identities;
-       infrastructural and operational logics of digital collections: 
logics and strategies for selecting and classifying documents, data 
management arrangements, IP and copyright protection;
-       international alliances between audiovisual archives and 
co-operation schemes;
-       audiovisual heritage and the decolonisation of archives: 
procedures, knowledge and communication;
-       long-term conservation, social responsibility and environmental 
sustainability of audiovisual archives: exploitation of labour 
avoidance, climate-neutral digital hosting, socio-ecological footprint 
and related best practices;
-       the integration of AI into audiovisual archives: the advancement 
of AI-generated content and the applications of AI and machine learning 
to manage and retrieve stored items.
*The language of the conference is English. Abstracts (max 250 words) 
should be sent to luca[dot]barra[at]unibo[dot]it, 
emiliano[dot]rossi5[at]unibo[dot]it, 
matteo[dot]marinello3[at]unibo[dot]it by February 10th, 2025*. Please 
attach a short biography (max 100 words) and an optional selection of 
sources (up to five titles) relevant to the topics addressed in the 
proposal. The conference will be in person, with no option for remote 
presentation. Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 5th, 
2025. A registration fee will be requested after notification of paper 
acceptance (€80 for speakers and professional attendants).
This Conference is promoted by the Media Mutations Association 
<https://www.mediamutations.org/> (_mediamutations.org_) and financially 
supported by PRIN 2020 ATLas and DAMSLab. The Conference is also 
organized in collaboration with /VIEW. Journal of European Television 
History and Culture/, /SERIES. International Journal of Television 
Serial Narratives/, and the TV Studies section of ECREA – European 
Communication Research and Education Association.
The acts of the conference will be published by Media Mutations 
Publishing 
<https://publishing.mediamutations.org/> (_publishing.mediamutations.org_).

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