[Commlist] CFP: Media in a Scandalous Age

Call for papers: Media in a Scandalous Age
Organizer: British Sociological Association, Media Study Group
Event Date: 10th December 2025
Event location: Online (FREE, virtual event).
Abstract submission deadline: 21st Nov 2025 (details below)
CFP URL: https://tinyurl.com/3j2tyses
A continuous process of ‘scandalisation’ is defining our modern times. 
 This includes both an observed growth in media scandals alongside an 
argued reduction in these scandals’ overall potency and impacts (von 
Sikorski and Kubin 2022). Adapting, subsequently, are the factors that 
underpin the character and content of emerging scandals (Thompson 2000), 
including those of changing political norms and cultures (Hendrix and 
Haller 2023), changing media professional contexts and economics 
(Mancini 2018) and the recognised growth and use of media technologies 
(Zulli 2021). Some of these emerging scandals are developing beyond 
national borders (Tumber and Waisbord 2019), while others are reflecting 
particular national contexts and related cultural and historical 
complexities (Prusa 2024).
In recognising such developments, this event seeks to take stock of what 
we know about the functioning of the media in scandalous times. It aims 
to explore recent media scandals and observe the different forms they 
adopt, the media and its related affordances in which they appear, 
alongside the marked temporal process by which scandals develop. 
Analysed, also,  will be the whistleblowers and interested actors that 
help to make visible various scandalous revelations. Acknowledged, in 
turn, will be the media practitioners – some traditional and some new - 
and their differentiated practices which define the process of producing 
media scandals from emerging revelations. Finally, while recognising the 
activation events and scandal hype that appear in different media and 
across hybrid media systems,  the event seeks to look at the impacts of 
mediated scandals, including their influence (or lack of) on the 
reputations of the people and institutions directly involved alongside 
the potential longer-term changes to relevant policy and governance.
This FREE event welcomes 20-minute papers that will explore the media in 
a scandalous age. Relevant themes will include, but will not be limited 
to, the following:
-New forms of media scandal and scandalisation
-Changing political contexts and media scandal
-Scandal and media instrumentalism
-Technologically-informed media scandals
-Whistleblowers, interested actors and media scandal
-Media practitioners, practices, and the process of scandal making
-Changing forms of media scandal content
-Scandal represented in hybrid media systems
-New activation events and scandal hype
-Scandal impacts (…on people, institutions, policy, and governance etc.,)
*Abstract submission:*
Please send 250 word abstracts, including name and institutional 
affiliation,  for 20 minute papers to Julian Matthews 
((_jpm29 /at/ leicester.ac.uk) <mailto:(jpm29 /at/ leicester.ac.uk)>_).
Deadline for abstract submission: *_21st November 2025_*.


---------------
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/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------