[ecrea] COST Final Conference

CfP REMINDER - DEADLINE APPROACHING (September 1st, 2013)

The future of audience research:
Agenda, theory and societal significance

Open Conference of the COST Action IS0906
Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies
http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu

Presented in collaboration with ECREA (Audience and Reception Studies 
section), IAMCR (Audience section) and ICA (Communication and Technology 
division & Mass Communication division)

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, February 5-7, 2014

Since March 2010, the COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming 
Societies has been coordinating and stimulating research efforts into 
the key transformations of European audiences within a changing media 
and communication environment, identifying their complex 
interrelationships with the social, cultural and political areas of 
European societies.

The final conference of the COST Action will be held in Ljubljana on 
February 5-7, 2014. This is an open conference and the COST Action 
explicitly invites non-members to submit proposals.

The contributions should reflect on the future of audience research from 
three different but interrelated perspectives:

Research agenda. The agenda of audience research has changed 
substantially along with social changes and new media developments. 
Social changes are visible in phenomena such as globalisation, 
transnationalisation, individualisation, commercialisation, or 
mediatisation. Changes in the technical possibilities of the media 
system, for example the development of the internet and subsequently of 
social media and user-generated content, have brought about yet more 
conditions and opportunities for audiences. Considering these 
transformations reception-related issues have lost their centrality in 
audience research, and the topics of (prod)usage, participation and 
social networking have gained much importance to a point where they can 
now be considered as key components of a new mainstream agenda. The 
conference provides a timely moment for a critical discussion of this 
new agenda – which means interrogating merits and weaknesses of current 
research, and defining new priorities for
 the future. Among other questions, one can ask:
·    In what ways do the ongoing cultural, political and technological 
transformations challenge the agenda of audience research?
·    How can “traditional” aspects of audience and reception research 
reconciled and integrated with recent lines of research? What are the 
“old” questions that still need to be asked in the contemporary media 
and communication environment?
·    What aspects of social media and user-generated content are still 
unaddressed or unresolved, and what are the means that need to be 
developed in order to move the field forward?
·    How does the changing agenda of audience research impact on the 
identity of the field (in relation to other fields and disciplines 
within and outside media and communication studies)?

Theoretical visions. The transformations of audience practices have 
given rise to new theories or approaches where notions such as user, 
collaboration, participation, convergence, crossmedia, transmedia and 
(social) networks are seen as cornerstones. The conference aims to 
evaluate how fruitful these theoretical shifts are, and to discuss 
further visions that could pave the way for future audience research. 
Thus the conference invites paper proposals that address conceptual 
issues and theoretical approaches in the light of changing audience 
practices. The following questions, among others, can be addressed:
·    What conceptual or theoretical developments are needed in audience 
research in order to better account for and understand contemporary 
audience practices?
·    What can be gained from audience theory so far for developing 
frameworks based on concepts such as collaboration, participation and 
social networking?
·    How to make sense of people’s diversity of modes of engagement 
with/through media as texts, genres, organizations and technologies?
·    How to relate agency to structural changes in the contemporary 
media and communication environment?
·    In what ways can other fields and disciplines (e.g. education 
science, information science, performance studies, museum studies, 
marketing) feed the conceptual and theoretical reflections in audience 
research?

Societal significance. The significance of academic audience research 
for stakeholders is an issue often overlooked or only debated in 
relation to the industry and market research. Yet this issue touches 
upon the social legitimacy of academic audience research and concerns a 
wide range of stakeholders among the state (policy makers, regulatory 
bodies, etc.) and civil society (general public, journalists, 
associations of viewers and listeners, NGOs, community media, grassroots 
civic movements, etc.) as well. The conference invites paper proposals 
that discuss whether and how academic audience research should/could 
build bridges with stakeholders. The following questions, among others, 
provide relevant starting points:
· What factors shape the relationship between audience research and 
social practice?
· What kinds of successful communication or collaboration between the 
academia and specific groups of stakeholders can be implemented?
· How could audience research be useful for which stakeholders in the 
future?
· How could the knowledge, experience and competences of stakeholders 
feed audience research?
· How can audience research strengthen the position of media users in 
the communication environment?
· What is the role of audience research in forming public discourses on 
media- and communication-related issues?
· What are the challenges and possible solutions for audience research 
with regard to the Europeanization and globalization of media industry 
and media governance?
· What pressures are exercised by public and private funding 
institutions on the applied perspective and commercial usefulness of 
audience research, and what consequences do these pressures have among 
audience researchers?

The COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies invites 
paper proposals from within or outside of the Action that address any 
aspect of the conference themes. Papers that connect with the topics 
covered by the working groups of the Action are particularly welcome. 
The working groups are:
- New media genres, media literacy and trust in the media
- Audience interactivity and participation
- The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships
- Audience transformations and social integration

Apart from individual submissions, panel proposals of 4-5 individual 
presentations in a coherent context are also welcome.

Submission guidelines

- Abstracts should highlight the original contribution to at least one 
of the conference themes. Empirical research papers are welcome as long 
as the empirical study serves as an impetus for discussion on research 
agenda, theoretical visions or societal significance.
- Word count: 250 words max. (excluding references). For panel 
submissions, the panel abstract and the individual abstracts should have 
no more than 250 words each.
- Submissions should contain a title page with the title of the 
presentation (in case of panel submissions: title of the panel and 
titles of the presentations) and the names and email address of all authors.
- Please send the document containing title page and abstract in a Word 
file, and be sure to remove all author identification from the abstract 
itself, as proposals will be submitted into blind peer review.
- The deadline for submission is September 1st, 2013. Submissions should 
be sent via email to (patriarche /at/ fusl.ac.be) and (igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si).

The abstracts will be submitted to blind peer review; participants will 
be notified about results by October 15, 2013.

The overview of the programme is available on the conference webpage at 
http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/node/1030.

Registration

Registration will open on October 15, 2013. The deadline for early bird 
registration will be November 15, 2013. The final deadline for 
registration will be January 7, 2014.

Organization

For the local organizers:

Igor Vobic, Boris Mance and Irena Brinar
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Email: (igor.vobic /at/ fdv.uni-lj.si)

For the COST Action:

Geoffroy Patriarche, Helena Bilandzic and the Steering Group of the Action
Email: (patriarche /at/ fusl.ac.be)

COST: http://www.cost.eu
ECREA: http://www.ecrea.eu
IAMCR: http://www.iamcr.org
ICA: http://www.icahdq.org/


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