[ecrea] CFP The Mediation of Scandal and Moral Outrage - ECREA Symposium 2011

ECREA Symposium 2011
Communication and Democracy – Gender and Communication – YECREA

* Call for Papers *

The Mediation of Scandal and Moral Outrage

16-17 December 2011 at the LSE (UK)


The mind conscious of innocence despises false reports: but we are a
set always ready to believe a scandal. (Ovid, Fasti - IV, 311)

The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honoured or
begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
(William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece - l. 1,004)

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. (Oscar Wilde)

Scandals and the moral outrage they invariably provoke are not new,
but the networked synoptic viewer society that we have become makes
scandalitis more permanent, more global and above all a highly
profitable business for media organisations. The advent of
crowdsourcing, Web 2.0, blogging, CCTV, mobile phones with video
capacity and an ever more hungry media eager to produce scandal and
direct moral outrage has resulted in not only celebrities and
politicians being the object of scandal, but ordinary people caught
doing something morally condemnable are increasingly thrown into the
media frenzy as well, while police brutality has become easier to
expose through so-called sousveillance or ‘inverse surveillance’ –
watching those that watch. In politics, the fostering of a culture of
scandal and the mobilisation of moral outrage has very much become a
core activity in political journalism and an essential part of
(negative) campaigning by political parties/candidates and civil
society. Unsurprisingly, sex scandals involving male or female
politicians or other celebrities remain of particular interest to the
media and the public at large. These are often based on a moralistic
agenda advocating heteronormative monogamy whilst constructing a sense
of normalcy. A gender divide can also be observed in moral standards
being projected on women and men. This symposium aims to bring a
critical perspective to the way scandals are mediated, produced,
consumed, and how they increasingly feed a polyoptic society whereby
everybody is watching and watched by everybody.

We invite paper and panel proposals related to the central theme of
the symposium, including (but not limited to) the following topics:

•	Political journalism and scandal
•	Mediation of political scandals through new media
•	Political campaigning and scandal
•	Privacy and the surveillance society
•	Celebrity, scandal and moral outrage
•	Violent protest and moral outrage
•	Sex, morality and scandals
•	Gendered scandals
•	The concealment of scandal
•	Peer2Peer surveillance and micro-scandals
•	Individual meaning, appropriation and the audience of scandals
•	The political economy of scandals
•	Methods and strategies of mediated scandalisation
•	Historical accounts of scandals and mediated moral outrage

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Professor John B. Thompson and Dr. Jo Littler

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 26 July 2011
Abstract Submission: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msmo2011
Contact email: (ecrea2011 /at/ hotmail.com)


----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------