[ecrea] Leeds conference on media transformations, July 2012

*Call for Papers: Deadline Tuesday 6 March, noon *

Abstracts to (TransformationICSConference /at/ leeds.ac.uk) 
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*An international conference on* *Transformations in/of Broadcasting *

Where: *Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds*

In association with The ECREA Media Industries and Cultural Production 
Temporary Working Group; The Media Industries Research Centre, 
University of Leeds; Centre for Digital Citizenship, University of Leeds

When: *July 12-13^th 2012*

Confirmed speakers include: Stephen Coleman, John Corner, Des Freedman, 
Sylvia Harvey, David Hesmondhalgh, Lynn Spigel, Graeme Turner

The media continue to undergo remarkable change.  To what extent have 
recent and continuing changes enhanced or constrained broadcasting’s 
potential to benefit societies, citizens and publics? This international 
conference addresses this broad question, across a number of themes, 
including (but not confined to) those below. The aim is to bring 
together researchers across a number of specialisms, to discuss 
questions of transformation across some of the traditional research 
divisions.

Papers and panels relating to civic engagement and participation and 
transformations related to digitalization are most welcome, as is 
historical research.

We welcome the submission of papers involving research within and across 
any national contexts. Although the focus is contemporary, we welcome 
historical research that adds to understanding of current 
transformations and continuities.

· *Audience/hood.* How have broadcasting audiences changed? What new 
challenges are changes in audience behaviour throwing up for audience 
research, both within industry and among academics concerned with 
questions of identity, meaning and pleasure? How are social media 
monitoring, opinion mining, sentiment analysis impacting onto 
understandings, conceptions, and practices of audience engagement? Are 
interactivity and user-generated content useful concepts in the new 
broadcasting ecology, and if so, how might we understand them in 
relation to agency, consumerism, choice, democratization?

· *Representation and aesthetics *To what extent have transformations in 
broadcasting involved changing relations between representation and 
power? What notable changes have there been in representations of 
gender, of ethnic and religious groups, of different types of body? What 
new forms and genres are developing to represent contemporary experience 
and identity? How are traditional genres mutating, and with what effect 
on quality? How are certain genres such as news, journalism, and reality 
TV adopting to the emerging challenges of transformations? How are new 
technologies, such as HDTV and widescreen, changing the aesthetics of 
television and other media?

· *Industry and institution*. What are the impacts of commercialization 
of public broadcasting and how is this occurring? What are the 
implications of the continuing multiplication of channels for notions of 
quality, professionalism, integrity? What is the impact of co-creation 
and amateur forms of production for broadcasting and the cultural 
industries more generally?

· *Policy and regulation *How are policy makers and regulators 
responding to transformations in broadcasting? How are questions of 
copyright and intellectual property affecting dynamics? What principles 
ought to guide policy in this changing environment? Are concepts such as 
neo-liberalism and marketization adequate to characterise tendencies in 
policy over recent decades? Regulators, policy, localism, issues of 
copyright, ownerships, power relations within industry, power relations 
(between brands, service providers and audiences etc)

Abstracts 300 words maximum

Panel proposals should consist of 3-5 papers. Panel descriptions should 
include paper abstracts; a maximum of 1000 per panel description

David Hesmondhalgh
Professor of Media and Music Industries
Head of the Institute of Communications Studies
University of Leeds

(d.j.hesmondhalgh /at/ leeds.ac.uk)

PA: Anne Macklin, (a.macklin /at/ leeds.ac.uk)

twitter: @hesmondthing