The Audience Section invites submissions for its
open sessions at the IAMCR to be held in Braga
(Portugal) 2010 from July 18-22. The conference
theme for 2010 is Communication and Citizenship. Rethinking Crisis and Change.
The Audience Section invites papers within this
overall theme and which reflect the Section?s
interest in new approaches and thinking to
audience research in the context of citizenship and communication.
The Section encourages and aims to inspire
greater interest in exploring and understanding
audiences in diverse settings. The section also
encompasses investigations of the
appropriateness of 'Western' theories and
methods in 'other' settings. It gives special
attention to reassessing the theories, methods
and issues that inform practices of audience
researchers. The nature of audiences as
'knowledge communities' and producers,
ethnographic approaches to researching them and
their embeddedness in everyday life, and the
extent to which traditional classifications of
audiences (masses, publics and markets) are
being challenged by the fluidity and ephemeral
nature of virtual and mobile audiences are important concerns.
Themes:
In addition to the open call for papers, we
would like to invite papers and proposals for
panels which address the following themes:
Citizenship, social integration and the changing nature of audience publics
Against the background of rapidly transforming
media environments and changing audience
formations, much interest has been expressed in
the potential for fostering citizenship and
greater social integration through enhanced
media participation. We invite papers that
interrogate this proposition and explore through
theory and empirical research the world of
contemporary audience publics, examining how
they are constituted and addressed both
technologically and discursively. We are
interested in different forms of mediated
participation, online and offline, and whether
new forms of interaction and engagement, as for
example via Web 2.0, do in fact facilitate
greater citizenship. Are there insights that can
be drawn from the long tradition of audience
research or media ethnography in mass media
forms such as television? We anticipate a
wide-ranging debate that reflects the diverse
interests of audience researchers focused around
a core concern of twenty first century society.
Resistant audiences, critical audiences.
Central to the audience research tradition has
been a commitment to examining forms of
resistance and opposition exhibited by
audiences. Much of the seminal work of audience
studies was forged in a time of economic crisis
through the 1970s and 1980s when forms of
audience resistance revealed deep-seated social
tensions and a charged political environment.
Are similar patterns evident in the current
global economic crisis? How is the resistant and
critical audience manifest across today?s more
complex media landscape? How do audience members
discuss, evaluate and trust alternative and
mainstream media? How do media organizations and
professionals deal with the resistant and
critical audiences? We invite papers that look
across the full spectrum of audience experience
and examine diverse accounts of readings, modes
of engagement and mediation of audience relationships with the wider society.
Decentralizing the audience
Audience studies have often implicitly
centralized mediated experiences while at the
same time contextualizing, qualifying and
decentralizing the role of media in people?s
everyday lives. This tension has lead to an
over-emphasis on audience activity, both at the
level of media consumption and media
(self-)production, while more passive and
indifferent media uses and referential
interpretations are under-theorized and
under-researched. We invite papers that focus on
the everyday passiveness of (some) media
audiences and their acceptance of or
indifference to the media frameworks that are
offered to them. Moreover, we also call for
papers that theorize or research the sometimes
limited importance attributed to media in the
everyday life of audience members.
Children as audiences
Children and young people represent are a hugely
important constituency for today?s media and are
frequently seen to be in the vanguard of new
audience trends and emerging practices of
consumption and engagement. As a distinct
audience grouping, children are the focus of
special public policy provisions including codes
regarding media content, professional guidelines
regarding children as subjects and participants
in the media, and a host of initiatives designed
to foster citizenship and creativity through
media literacy. Empirical work on children as
audiences remains scarce however and in this
stream we invite papers that explore audience
experience from the child?s perspective, and
that examine opportunities, risks, and
challenges faced by children in the current
media environment. Questions might include the
extent to which media literacies are evident in
children?s audience practices or how agency
supported or strengthened through civil society,
educational or governmental action?
Proposals for papers under any of the above
should be made by submitting an abstract of
between 300-500 words long through the
conference website. Each abstract must include
title, name(s), affiliation, institutional
address and email address of
author(s). Proposals for panels, containing
details of each paper, are also welcome. IAMCR
accepts presentations in English, French and
Spanish. However, it is requested that
abstracts, if at all possible, be submitted in English.
For more on the submission of abstracts,
registration, theme, location, etc., please go
to the conference website or visit IAMCR's website.
The deadlines are as follows:
January 31, 2010: Submission of abstracts
(papers will be assessed by double blind review of abstracts).
March 15, 2010: announcement of acceptances.
April 30, 2010: Full papers due.
For enquiries or further information, please contact:
Section Head (Interim):
Brian O?Neill
School of Media
Dublin Institute of Technology
Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Ireland
e: (brian.oneill /at/ dit.ie)
Deputy Head:
Nico Carpentier
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels ? Belgium
e: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Note: Brian O?Neill acts as Section Head
following retirement of Virginia Nightingale and
Nico Carpentier joins as Deputy Head. The
Business Meeting at the conference will elect
officers for the next four year term.
