[ecrea] CFP: Media Transatlantic IV: March 29 - 31, 2012University of Paderborn, Germany

Media Transatlantic IV

March 29 – 31, 2012

University of Paderborn, Germany

Traffic

video: _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM_

Please send your title and an abstract of about 500 characters to:

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Winkler: _winkler@uni-paderborn.de_ 
<mailto:(winkler /at/ uni-paderborn.de)>

*Deadline for submissions is August 31, 2011.*

Traffic Call for papers

Harold Innis taught us to look at the media as a form of traffic. Media 
products/signs travel just

like things and people; constantly flowing, they overcome space and 
time, partly on communal

and partly on dedicated networks.

Traffic is the sum of its parts, made up of an infinite number of acts 
of transport and transfer. It

is, however, more than that, because traffic has its own logic and forms 
its own structures and

rules.

Traffic is frequently compared with water: it finds a way, forms 
trickles, raging currents and

dissipative structures. In certain places it collects, accumulates, 
stands still; or seeps away.

Traffic and sign traffic cannot be stopped: they overcome any obstacle, 
penetrate everything and

wear away anything fixed: one can plan, steer and direct them, but 
probably not control them.

Sign traffic poses a particular problem when it comes to observation. 
There is no “royal overlooking

position” from which there would be a view of the entire proceedings; it 
is difficult to

describe in qualitative terms, while empirical approaches must rely on 
counting.

This conference is intended to take up the image proposed by Innis and 
view the media as a form

of traffic. To this end, the following questions, for example, are of 
relevance:

• Which media phenomena can be described in traffic terms more 
accurately than in another

perspective? Is it just a metaphor, or more?

• Which conceptions of traffic are represented in which fields of 
knowledge? Which of them

are viable in an analysis of the media?

• Is a comprehensive traffic science, encompassing the traffic of 
commodities, people and

signs alike, conceivable?

• Would this be identical to a kind of media ‘logistics’? Or to a theory 
about society on the

whole, if Marx speaks of ‘forms of intercourse’ and Luhmann of 
‘communication’?

• Which associations do the different connotations of the term entail? 
In English drug traffic,

illicit transactions und air traffic control, in German communication in 
general, and sexual

intercourse…

• What is the relationship between traffic and infrastructure? Is 
traffic only possible on the

basis of established infrastructures, or does infrastructure come as a 
consequence of traffic’s

requirements? What is the relationship between traffic and technology?

• Are there specific economic rules that steer the flow of traffic?

3

• Does traffic –as an adaptive system– allow for a bridging of media 
theory, fluid dynamics

and the analysis of complex systems?

• What do network theories contribute to the understanding of sign traffic?

• What role does storage –Innis refers to staple production– play in 
relation to flow and traffic?

• Are there also traffic accidents, tail-backs or blocks in the media 
sphere?

The scheduled conference continues a series of events, which started in 
2007 and aim to bring

together media scholars from the USA, Canada and Germany:

- Re-Reading McLuhan:

An International Conference on Media and Culture in the 21st Century,

Feb. 14-18, 2007, Schloss Thurnau, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Hosts: Klaus Benesch, Kerstin Schmidt, Martina Leeker, Derrick de Kerckhove

Publ.: de Kerckhove, Derrick; Leeker, Martina; Schmidt, Kerstin (ed.):

McLuhan neu lesen. Kritische Analysen zu Medien und Kultur im 21. 
Jahrhundert.

Bielefeld: Transcript 2008

- Media Theory on the Move.

Transatlantic Perspectives on Media and Mediation

May 21-23, 2009, University of Potsdam, Germany

Host: Dieter Mersch

- Media Transatlantic

Media Theory in North America and German-Speaking Europe

April 8-10, 2010, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Hosts: Norm Friesen, Richard Cavell

The Media Transatlantic IV – Traffic conference is organised by the 
Graduiertenkolleg

“Automatisms” (Research Training Group) at the University of Paderborn, 
Germany

http://www.upb.de/rtg-automatisms . The Research TG will cover part of 
your travel expenses.

Please send your title and an abstract of about 500 characters to:

Prof. Dr. Hartmut Winkler [ (winkler /at/ uni-paderborn.de) ].

Deadline for submissions is August 31, 2011.