[Commlist] MeCCSA 2026 Annual Conference, CFP - From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing practices, publics and persuasion

Call for papers: From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing 
practices, publics and persuasion
MeCCSA Annual Conference
University of Leicester
2-4 September 2026
Submission deadline: 20 February 2026.
We welcome submissions to the MeCCSA Annual Conference that align with 
the conference theme and / or any areas covered by MeCCSA, its sections 
and networks.  This includes submissions of abstracts for scholarly 
papers, themed panels, posters, film screenings, performances, 
installations, and other practice-based or artistic research contributions.

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CFP: From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing practices, publics 
and persuasion
The media have been operating against the backdrop of recent large-scale 
developments and within unsettled times. But with what consequence? In 
seeking to capture the moment, the conference will take stock of the 
present configuration of media developments and showcase our growing 
understanding of prevalent aspects of continuity and change found within 
the mainstream and margins of media systems. It seeks to cast light on 
the changing situation of media institutions, practitioners and 
practices (deprofessionalisation / precarity of established media 
workers among them) and the assumed agile creativity and fluidity 
characterising modern media work. It proposes to explore the evolving 
‘publics’ (or audiences) to which the media shape, speak and listen at 
these times, observing both changing relationships and evidence of 
substantive responses and challenges. Recognised, likewise, is a need to 
re-examine our understandings of media persuasion, including the 
newfound forms these are assuming, from public messaging to 
disinformation and propaganda, and related concerns of cohesion, power 
and control.  All of which, this suggests, must be situated in context 
of increasingly interconnected ‘hybrid’ media systems which as entities 
are evolving amid prevalent forms of both global and domestic politics, 
economics and policy at this time.
This conference invites research insights from the full range of the 
specialisms of MeCCSA colleagues.
Themes for this conference include - but these will not be limited to:
-Media pasts, presents and futures
-Media developments within, and outside, the nation
-Technologies and evolving cultural practices/content
-Cultural work, professional cultures and (the value of) human ‘creativity’
-Media presence and evolution in the mainstream and margins
-Publics / audiences and everyday interactions
-Representations and issues, crises and conflicts
-Media hybridity and the interconnectedness of media forms and flows
-Cultural policy, regulation and change
-Mediated interactions between institutions, groups and individuals
Submission
Individual Papers: Please submit abstracts for individual papers (max 
250 words) with presentation title, up to 5 key words, your name, 
affiliation, and email address

Practice-as-research: We actively support the presentation of 
practice-as-research and have a flexible approach to practice-based 
papers and presentations. This includes opportunities to present papers, 
screenings, etc, in the same session or as part of a separate strand.

Panels:  Panel proposals should include a short description and 
rationale (200 words) together with abstracts for each of the 3-4 papers 
comprising the panel (150-200 words each including details of the 
contributor/s), and the name and contact details of the panel proposer 
with up to 5 key words. The panel proposer should integrate the separate 
abstracts to comprise a single proposal

We particularly welcome submissions from early career and postgraduate 
researchers.
Use the following link for all submissions: 
_https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=meccsa2026 
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=meccsa2026>_
For any queries, please contact the chair of the organising committee: 
Julian Matthews  ((_jpm29 /at/ leicester.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(jpm29 /at/ leicester.ac.uk)>_),  cc’ing the conference comms team 
((meccsa2026 /at/ leicester.ac.uk))


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