[ecrea] CFP: Post-Representative Participations: Engaging with Civic Action in the Times of Digital Citizenship

CFP Deadline Extended to 1st September 2018

Post-Representative Participations:
Engaging with Civic Action in the Times of Digital Citizenship

16th Nov 2018, School of Media, University of Brighton (UK)

Keynote speakers:
– Professor Nico Carpentier, Uppsala University.
– Dr Frauke Behrendt, Director of the Centre for Digital Media Cultures, 
University of Brighton

The Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association’s 
Postgraduate Network (MeCCSA PGN), the Participatory Communication 
Research (PCR) section of the International Association for Media and 
Communication Research (IAMCR), and the Centre for Digital Media 
Cultures, University of Brighton invites postgraduate students, 
early-career researchers, filmmakers, civil society members and 
activists to submit proposals for our joint one-day conference at 
University of Brighton.

The aim of this conference is to provide a platform for the critical 
dialogue between Participatory Communication Research communities and 
media practitioners (such as activists, filmmakers etc.) to examine the 
issues of social, political and cultural change in the times of digital 
media, giving a particular focus on ‘digital citizenship’. It also aims 
to bring together international academics and media practitioners to 
explore the creative participatory methods. We are keen to involve not 
only academic presentations, but also workshops and film screenings by 
media practitioners at the event, giving them the chance to present 
their work, ideas and practices to an international audience.


About the Conference Theme

The contemporary era can be seen an experience of schisms, created by 
living in an increasingly connected world with highly polarized social 
contexts, a situation that has been referred to as living in "the era of 
the both" (Carpentier, 2018). Even as media technologies continue to 
proliferate and evolve to stimulate new(ish) socialities (Jenkins et 
al., 2016), the global political environment seems to turn towards 
intolerance and hatred. Arguably, increased levels of participation form 
one of the antidotes to this violence, but this antidote can no longer 
consist out of the older forms of civic participation, which were almost 
exclusively grounded in the logics of representative democracy.

The context for democratic struggles has shifted more than ever towards 
the usage of a mélange of different technologies that are deployed to 
engage in civic action, at a variety of political levels, some of which 
concern institutionalized politics, but others which do not. To refer to 
a book co-edited by Henry Jenkins: Civic action is organised "by any 
media necessary" (Jenkins et al., 2016). Digital participations feature 
prominently in this mélange, which has structurally enriched the 
repertoires available to civic action, but we should not ignore the 
articulation of digital activist practices with many other 
participatory-democratic practices outside the digital realm. 
Simultaneously, also the digital industries are now increasingly 
becoming object of media critique, which aligns them with the older mass 
media industries, which have been endlessly targeted by civic activists, 
e.g. critiquing these media for manufacturing consent (Herman and 
Chomsky, 1988).

As academics and scholars, we need to engage with these newer forms of 
participations that are encoded in the language of old and new 
industries, activist practices and the performance of different politics 
that transcend the representational, such that we can adapt and 
influence strategies to continue fostering a diverse and a tolerant 
vision of the future.

The central theme of the seminar is Post-Representative Participations: 
Engaging with civic action in the times of digital citizenship. Possible 
topics include, but are not limited to:

•	Participatory Communication
•	Participatory Methodology
•	Representation and civic action
•	Digital Citizenship
•	Digital Activism
•	Social Media and Social Movement
•	Mobile Communication and Activism
•	Activism, Surveillance and Datafication
•	Digital Literacy and manufactured consent
•	(Digital) Nomadism and civil participation

Please send your abstract, of no more than 250 words for 
presentation/workshop/film screening/art-projects, along with a resume 
detailing your work, to (e.graves206 /at/ canterbury.ac.uk) by 1st September 2018.

For panel proposals, please include a brief rationale for the panel and 
abstracts for all papers, including authors and affiliations. Panel 
slots are one hour long, thus please include between three and four 
papers in your panel proposal.

You will receive a notification from the conference organisers 
confirming whether your abstract has been accepted by the 15th 
September. The deadline for the submission of full papers and films is 
the 3rd of November. The submission of a full paper is desirable but not 
obligatory for conference participants. It is required in order to be 
considered for the special issue publication. Films have to be made 
available to the conference organisers before the 3rd of November. A 
selection of papers will be considered for publication in a special 
issue of Networking Knowledge, Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate 
Network, depending on receiving a sufficient number of high quality 
papers. We would thus like to encourage delegates to write up the full 
version of their papers. Visual essays, and other, less common, formats 
will also be considered.

We look forward to your abstracts. For any queries, please contact Emma 
Kaylee Graves (e.graves206 /at/ canterbury.ac.uk)


References

Carpentier, N. (2018) Foreword – The Era of the Both in ‘Networks, 
Movements and Technopolitics in Latin America: Critical Analysis and 
Current Challenges’. Palgrave Macmillan.

Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. (1988) Manufacturing Consent: the 
Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.

Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S. L. Gamber-Thompson, N. Kligler-Vilenchik, A. 
Zimmerman (2016) By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. New 
York: NYU Press.


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