[Commlist] cfp: Infrastructures and Inequalities: Media industries, digital cultures and politics

Infrastructures and Inequalities: Media industries, digital cultures and 
politics

Call for Papers ECREA Mid-Year Section Conference

21-22 October 2019, University of Helsinki, Finland

Joint Conference of three ECREA Sections:
Communication and Democracy; Digital Culture and Communication; and 
Media Industries and Cultural Production

Abstract Deadline 1 June 2019

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Lisa Parks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kaarina Nikunen, University of Tampere

In a turn to ‘infrastructuralism’ (Peters 2015), media and communication 
scholars are increasingly attentive to the materialities and politics of 
the technological, organisational and cultural infrastructures that 
underpin media today. Platforms, data centres, software, but also new 
forms of organising cultural production and labour, shape the politics 
of digital cultures and transform the media industries. Digital and 
media infrastructures have become elemental to everyday life. They are 
significant in reproducing existing social and cultural inequalities, as 
well as creating new power struggles. As digital/media infrastructures 
unfold in everyday life, they bring challenges across multiple domains, 
from the foundations of social justice to the industrial structures 
underpinning our everyday interactions with media and communication 
systems. This conference aims to address the politics and inequalities 
that emerge, as technological and media industries adopt, dismantle and 
transform infrastructures to channel and process communication flows. 
Media infrastructures (broadly) operate under different and uneven 
conditions that configure media labour, media production, and the 
politics of communication and access (Starosielski and Parks 2015). This 
conference seeks to examine digital/media infrastructures and 
inequalities from an inter- and multi-disciplinary perspective, inviting 
papers to interrogate the significance of the ‘infrastructural turn’ in 
media and communication studies to our understanding of media 
industries, democracy and digital cultures.

During this joint-ECREA section conference, we aim to engage with 
questions concerning inequalities and the infrastructures of digital 
culture, media industries and (digital) democracy through addressing 
topics such as (but not limited to):

The value, significance and relevance of infrastructure studies to media 
industry studies, the study of media and democracy, as well as digital 
culture
The industries and labour that operate and control specific 
technological media infrastructures, such as data centres, cloud 
computing, cable/satellite networks, content delivery networks
The politics and power dynamics of digital/media infrastructures
The significance of digital/media infrastructures in everyday life, 
especially related to the reproduction of social inequalities
The impact of digital/media infrastructures on culture, society, 
politics and democracy
The impact of digital/media infrastructures on media labour and cultural 
production
The organisational and cultural infrastructures of the media industries
Experiences and affective relationships that emerge in connection with 
media infrastructures
Forms of logistical media
Temporalities of media infrastructures
Emerging questions for the foundations of social justice in the digital 
media infrastructural turn


Submission details
Please submit a 300-word abstract for individual proposals.
Panel proposals should include a 300-word panel rationale plus 
individual 200 word abstracts from a minimum of four speakers.
All abstracts for individual as well as panel proposals should be 
submitted through EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=infrastructuresandin

Deadline for submission is 1 June 2019. Notifications of acceptance will 
be issued by 30 June 2019.

Registration and Fees
Early bird and ECREA-members fee:  €100 (until 12th August)
Early bird reduced student fee (for students who are also ECREA 
members): €50 (until 12 August)
Full fees and non-ECREA members: €120  (to be paid until the 15th of 
September)
Student, non-ECREA member fee: €60 (to be paid until the 15th of September)

Conference 
website:https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/infrastructures-and-inequalities

For more information and enquiries, contact:
Julia Velkova, University of Helsinki at (julia.velkova /at/ helsinki.fi)
Anne Kaun, Södertörn University at (anne.kaun /at/ sh.se)
Sander de Rieder, University of Ghent at (sander.deridder /at/ ugent.be)

Or consult the conference website:
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/infrastructures-and-inequalities

Scientific Committee:

Ysabel Gerrard, University of Sheffield
Catherine Johnson, University of Huddersfield
Ana Jorge, Research Centre for Communication and Culture, Universidade 
Católica Portuguesa
Anne Kaun, Södertörn University
Maria Michalis, University of Westminster
Christina Neumayer, IT-University of Copenhagen
Sander de Rieder, University of Ghent
Emiliano Treré, University of Cardiff
Julia Velkova, Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki

Related conferences in Helsinki during that same week:

ECREA section conference on “Communication Rights in the Digital Age”, 
24-25 October, keynote speaker is Philip Napoli (Duke University):
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/communication-rights-in-the-digital-age/call-for-papers

Alexanteri conference 2019 on “Technology, Culture, and Society in the 
Euras­ian Space”, 23-25 October, among the keynote speakers are Benjamin 
Peters (University of Tulsa) and Natalie Koch (Syracuse University).
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/technology-culture-and-society-in-the-eurasian-space/

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