[ecrea] Media and Fear CFP

*Call for Papers*

*Media and Fear*

*International Conference at Lund University,*Sweden**

Department of Communication and Media, *March 16th 2017*

Organisers: Annette Hill, Michael Rübsamen, Tina Askanius and Zaki Habibi

Fear is a key factor in today’s media landscape. A dynamics of fear 
frequently frames the news about the environment or immigration, it 
dominates discourses of security and surveillance, and it permeates 
people’s lived experiences in precarious times. This symposium seeks to 
address the range of forms and practices within which fear is mediated 
in its many varieties, researching across political and public spheres, 
policy and industry sectors, audio-visual content, digital and social 
media, and audiences and popular culture.

The politics of fear, both past, present and future, cast a shadow on 
the media and its power to shape and influence publics and audiences. 
Media often trade in fear at different levels of intensity, working 
within the political economy of emotions and anxieties about ourselves 
and others, or about individual lives and public institutions. The 
social construction of fear and insecurity in media representations, 
policies and regulations, and in popular culture, can highlight conflict 
and violence, and discourses of identity and othering. We see this in 
the imagination of fear in popular storytelling such as crime, fantasy 
or horror genres. We see this in the rise of populism within Europe or 
America, where the subject positions of ‘us and them’ can lead to 
xenophobia and political extremes. And we see this in the increased use 
of surveillance in crime and policing, intelligence gathering, or within 
commercial data gathering and geo location tracking, highlighting the 
pervasive presence of surveillance and the difficult questions that need 
to be asked regarding regulation and privacy.

We invite contributions to this symposium on media and fear that address 
the following areas of enquiry: histories of media and fear; a politics 
of fear; political activism, surveillance and fear; representations of 
fear in fiction and factuality; audiences, publics and fear. The 
research questions include: 1. What are the various relations between 
media and fear? 2. How can we critically examine the politics of fear in 
news, radio and television, film, digital and social media? 3. How and 
for what reasons do audiences engage, both positively and negatively, 
with narratives of fear in politics, society and culture?

These research questions can be applied to a range of theories, ideas 
and problems concerning political culture, citizenship and democracy, 
television, film, radio and print media, digital and social media, 
popular culture, as well as other topics. Different approaches to 
research on media and fear can include media, communication and cultural 
studies, media history, film studies, sociology, political 
communication, memory studies, cultural geography, amongst others. The 
aim is to provide a platform for international scholars from various 
disciplines to dialogue on the politics of fear as it relates to 
knowledge, people and power.

The schedule includes a combination of keynote addresses, 
pre-constituted panels, and open panels. Confirmed speakers include Nico 
Carpentier (Uppsala University, Sweden), Joke Hermes (In Holland 
University, Netherlands), Annette Hill (Lund University, Sweden), 
Anastasia Kavada (University of Westminster, UK), Jane Roscoe (London 
Film School), Tarik Sabry (University of Westminster, UK), and Roza 
Tsagarousianou (University of Westminster, UK).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words in English by *December 12th 
2016* to the conference email: (mediaandfear /at/ kom.lu.se) 
<mailto:(mediaandfear /at/ kom.lu.se)>. For further information please consult 
our website _www.kom.lu.se/en/research_There is a registration fee of 
750 SEK (80 Euros) that covers food and drink for the day and an evening 
buffet.


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