New Media Workshops in UK

[Seth Graham]

NEW MEDIA IN NEW EUROPE-ASIA 

 

Two linked one-day workshops

 

Birmingham-London, 2010

 

Organisers: Drs Natasha Rulyova and Jeremy Morris (CREES, U. of Birmingham), Seth Graham (SSEES, University College London), Vlad Strukov (University of Leeds)

 

These two linked workshops will explore the role and development of new media across Russia, Eurasia, Central and South-Eastern Europe, and will examine how these media are embedded in the social, political and cultural contexts of the region. We encourage a range of qualitative, quantitative, comparative, disciplinary, inter-disciplinary, and multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of new media and digital technologies, focusing particularly on a comparative dimension of the use of the Internet. Selected contributions will be published in special issues of the journals Europe and Asia Studies (EAS) and Digital Icons: Studies of Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media.

 

Our programme of speakers is essentially full, but not finalised.  It includes scholars and media professionals from across the region, Western Europe, and North America.  

 

Please see http://eurasia.vladstrukov.com/ for regular updates on the workshop programmes.  Please direct any queries to Natasha Rulyova at n.e.rulyova at bham.ac.uk.

 

 

WORKSHOP ONE: ‘NEW MEDIA AND SOCIETY: RE-IMAGINING POLITICS AND SOCIAL PRACTICES IN THE INFORMATION AGE’ 

 

CREES, University of Birmingham, 30 March 2010

 

This workshop will focus on four themes: 

 

(1) the Internet and politics

(2) new media and government

(3) social media

(4) new media and the mass media

 

Specific questions include:

 

1) Does the Internet provide liberation from socio-political norms or is it conditioned by them? How does the map of Internet usage correlate with the new political map of the region? 

 

2) What tactics do governments apply to use and control the Internet and new media? How effective are e-government/e-security tools?

 

3) What is the role of social media (such as blogs and video-sites, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and their various national versions)? How does the specific political and cultural context of the region inform the function of web-enabled media? 

 

4) What is the future of the mass media in the age of digital technologies: popularity versus authority in societies with ‘managed democracies’? How does the convergence of old and new media take place in different parts of the region?

 

 

WORKSHOP TWO: ‘NEW MEDIA AND THE EVERYDAY: IDENTITIES, COMMUNITIES, AND CULTURAL PRACTICES’ 

 

SSEES, UCL, 28 May 2010

 

The workshop will focus on four themes: 

 

(1) globalisation and/in communication

(2) local communities and the Internet

(3) new media and pop culture

(4) the Internet and collective memory

 

Proposed research questions include:

 

1) Have the effects of the globalisation in communications been comparable in Russia, Eurasia, Central and South-Eastern Europe? What is the impact of globalisation on cultural production in the region?

 

2) How do new media affect Internet users’ relationship with their local communities? How does the regional cultural context inform their online activity? 

 

3) What impact have new media had on pop and celebrity culture in the region? Do the Internet and new media liberate popular culture from the hegemony of large mass communication corporations?

 

4) How are digital environments used to project collective memories of the past (such as that of the Soviet regime)?



http://eurasia.vladstrukov.com/ 

 

Queries: n.e.rulyova at bham.ac.uk



_____________
Dr Seth Graham
Lecturer in Russian
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University College London
Gower St
London WC1E 6BT
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7679 8735
s.graham at ssees.ucl.ac.uk

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