[ecrea] CfP: Changing Media - Changing Democracy?

CALL FOR PAPERS



Changing Media – Changing Democracy? Exploring the Democratic Potential 
of Social Media



20 Anniversary Conference of the Institute for Comparative Media and 
Communication Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences



Along with the 4th Research Conference of the Austrian Research 
Association - Working Group on the Future of Democracy

& the 2014 Workshop of the Network “Media Structures”



November 6-7, 2014; Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences



TOPIC AND AIM OF THE CONFERENCE: In January 2014, Facebook reported 
profits that beat Wall Street’s expectations, and its worldwide user 
base grew to 1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 16% from a 
year earlier (even when Facebook is gaining fewer new users than in past 
quarters). In the German speaking countries, on average 3 (!) out of 8 
people are active Facebook users. Unsurprisingly, there is widespread 
consensus that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are 
changing political communication. However, no such consensus exists when 
it comes to assessing the effects that the emergence of social network 
services, blogging environments, online discussion forums, and content 
communities have on political processes. On the one hand, it is argued 
that the widespread use of the Internet for social networking, blogging, 
video-sharing, and tweeting fosters participatory democracy. Just as the 
decentralization of media leads to a reduction in the distance between 
the actors of political communication, the classical division of roles 
between actors in and around the political system become less distinct. 
Politicians and media are no longer the sole producers of political 
information; instead actors from civil society, i.e., citizens and NGOs 
are appearing as contributors to the political discourse. What is being 
expressed here is the hope for the democratic ideal of a deliberative 
communication forum on the Web, based on the expectation that the 
diversity and accessibility of media options lower the barriers to 
engage in public discourse.

This optimistic view of a universally accessible, transparent discourse 
is challenged by the notion that it is precisely the universal 
accessibility and global public sphere of the digital networks that can 
also facilitate forms of use which threaten democracy. One of the main 
reasons for this more pessimistic view is that governments as well as 
large private-sector corporations are increasingly using social media as 
a means of maintaining ever-greater control over citizens. In this view, 
social media are perceived as highly centralized networks in which 
content is disseminated through just a few influential hubs, and in 
which most users, regardless of their personal background, defer to 
these conventions of form and content. A further critical perspective on 
the structural features of the Web relates to the danger that the public 
sphere may disintegrate into fragmented partial publics 
(“Teilöffentlichkeiten”) that can no longer connect sufficiently to form 
a shared public world. Consequently, with regard to the potential for 
intel­lectual reflection, it is argued that Internet users are presented 
with content which is perfectly tailored and filtered to meet their 
preferences. These two evaluations of the influence of online media on 
the political process refer to two contra­dictory theses: the so-called 
“normalization thesis”, which sees what is being done with the methods 
of the new media as a continuation of earlier, offline communication 
practices, however, in a more comprehensive way and, thus, jeopardizing 
former democratic achievements, and the “innovation hypothesis”, which 
focuses on the potential of online media to revitalize a broad 
democratic discourse.

The Viennese conference aims to shed light on these developments by 
exploring the changes to political processes as triggered by the 
changing media structures along three perspectives, which might be 
responsible for different assessments of the democratic potential of 
social media: citizens, politicians, journalists.



THE CITIZENS’ PERSPECTIVE: Processes of political communication used to 
be primarily linear, and shaped by professional communicators. The 
question arising now is to what extent social media disrupt this linear 
form. The underlying idea of such media is that everyone on the Web can 
potentially take part in discussions and initiate topics, an area 
previously monopolized by mass media and other professional 
communicators. On the Web, topics are generated in an interactive 
exchange in which citizens can (at least) partially assume the functions 
of journalism. As reflected by the concept of “produsage”, production 
and usage form a joint process in which contents are changed dynamically 
by means of interactivity, multiple user groups and thematic shifts. 
Research questions are concerned with the consequences of this 
tremendous acceleration in processes of interaction and the exchange of 
information, brought about by the ubiquity of media communications, as 
well as with the ability of social media to promote a “bottom-up” form 
of political opinion-making (as opposed to former top-down influences) 
due to low access barriers, a great number of various discussion forums 
and the aid of a new, participatory journalism. Last but not least it 
has to be asked whether an “autonomous public sphere” (as conceived by 
Habermas) can be revived in the digital age, thus turning the linearity 
of political processes in a “networking democracy”.



THE POLITICIANS’ PERSPECTIVE: After all, it is not only citizens but 
also those involved in political PR who are increasingly learning how to 
react flexibly to the challenges posed by the new communication 
techno­logies. The prime goal here is to adapt one’s strategies to the 
multitude of different media channels and the even greater diversity of 
media usage. Thus for example there are moves to revive decentralized 
(but centrally regulated) forms of communication, and to coordinate 
marketing activities so as to precisely target segmented groups. In 
order to be able to make profitable use of Internet-based communication, 
i.e. to combine the control capacity offered by direct technologies with 
more accurate targeting and lower costs, data on media use and personal 
profiles of users are required as well as constant efforts to fine-tune 
the methods deployed to gather this information. Therefore, on the one 
hand, it has to be asked as to how the roles of communication 
specialists and managers, polling institutes and “spin doctors” are 
changing and whether these consulting services are becoming even more 
important than in the days of mainstream television. This is bound to 
have significant repercussions for politics. Moreover, the interplay 
between rapidly advancing communication technologies, corresponding PR 
strategies, and new opportunities for participation, combined with 
increasing competition between politicians and parties canvassing for 
votes, gives rise to a dynamic which enables political actions to take 
place as “permanent campaigning”, the consequences of which for the 
viability of democratic structures should be considered.



THE JOURNALISTS’ PERSPECTIVE: Finally, a further consequence of digital 
communication applications in the “network society” (as Castells has 
called it) concerns the changing relationships within the media system. 
The prevalence of social networks has not only led to a change in media 
usage, culminating in an (inter)active approach to the online media, and 
given new importance to direct forms of communication, but has also led 
to a diversification of the range of media available, combined with 
simultaneous shifts within media structures. This pertains both to the 
fundamental changes in the television sector, in which a large number of 
specialized programmes (“narrowcasting”) have replaced what was formerly 
main­stream television, and to similar processes of specialization in 
the press, which have occurred at least partly in response to the new 
digital channels of distribution. In these more competitive structures, 
at least some of the previous players are becoming less important while 
those remaining in the market are forced to enter into new inter-media 
processes in which the roles of “sender” and “receiver” are far less 
clearly divided than traditional journalism would like them to be. It 
has become clear that (particularly) political journalism as we know it 
is in search of a redefinition of its purpose and social contract, as 
well as a reconstitution of its boundaries that have become alarmingly 
fuzzy with the rise of participatory modes of communication. Given the 
fact that information on politics is to most people “second hand” 
information, the implications of this redefinition for the journalism’s 
normative functions and performative roles are one of the most important 
challenges in democratic societies.



SUBMISSION AND SELECTION OF PAPERS: The call is open to all social 
sciences. We invite paper proposals which address one of the three main 
perspectives or focus on comparing and relating two or more 
perspectives. Conference submissions are for 20-minute presentations and 
should be made in English or German. The extended abstract must not be 
longer than 8,000 characters (including blank spaces). Please add a 
title page to the abstract containing the name(s) and address(es) of the 
author(s) and the title of the presentation. Please send your proposal 
to the organizers ((cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at)) no later than July 15th, 2014 (using 
a PDF file). All submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed according 
to the criteria of originality, relevance, theoretical foundation, 
appropriateness of the methods used, clarity of language, and reference 
to the conference theme. All submitters will be informed about the 
outcome of the selection process by August 31th, 2014.



INTEGRATED PhD WORKSHOP on November 7th: The conference will be 
supplemented by a workshop in which PhD students can present their 
dissertation research in media structures without any thematic 
restrictions imposed. Renowned scholars will comment on the 
presentations, thus offering a unique opportunity to obtain constructive 
feedback from experts. Abstracts for submission to the PhD workshop can 
also be in English or German, must not exceed 8,000 characters 
(including blank spaces) and should also be submitted to (cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at) 
no later than July 15th, 2014.



CONTACT: Dr Josef Seethaler, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for 
Comparative Media and Communication Studies, 1010 Wien, Postgasse 7, 
(cmc /at/ oeaw.ac.at), Phone +43-1-51581-3110, Fax +43-1-51581-3120, 
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/cmc



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