16th Conference of the European Sociological Association
16th ESA Conference – RN18 Submit Your Abstract!
We would like to invite you to submit your work to 16th ESA Conference – RN18 call for papers or any of our joint sessions.
You will find the call for papers here below and more information on the conference website.
RN18 Sociology of Communications and Media Research
Coordinators:
Thomas Allmer, Paderborn University, Germany
Paško Bilić, Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia
Tatiana Mazali, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Critical Media Sociology Perspectives on Tensions, Trust and Transformation
Tensions
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the contradictions of capitalism to the surface, strongly affecting lower socioeconomic classes. These groups absorbed a disproportionate risk from unreliable, untimely information and vaccine availability. The European Union is pouring money into its Recovery and Resilience Facility, feeding new technological solutionism. The digital public sphere is still filled with ideological clashes, where any semblance of a rational debate is an afterthought. The regulation aims to challenge the consequences of the capitalist media system without addressing commodification as the cause of tension.
Trust
Citizens are becoming increasingly detached from democratic institutions, journalism, and the media, distrusting traditional news production and avoiding news altogether. They have grown accustomed to commercial digital platforms despite increasing awareness of surveillance, privacy abuse, tax avoidance, and worker exploitation. As daily usage routines strengthen, US and Chinese tech conglomerates solidify their economic position. Unreliable sources of information become starting points for forming opinions.
Transformation
While trust is the fabric of a well-functioning society, it can only be regained by transforming the media and developing new public services. Transformation requires awareness of increasing tensions and distrust in media and society, new forms of citizen action and politics. Whether capital-induced, as in the case of financial crashes, or biological, as in the case of COVID-19, we can expect compound crises to increase.
Tensions and transformations impact large-scale and small-scale social processes, systems, and subjectivities. RN18 calls for contributions that shed new light on theoretical, empirical, and analytical insights that help shape critical media sociology perspectives on tensions, trust, and transformation from macro to micro perspectives by sociologists in communications and media, regardless of specific focus.
- Conference website
- Remember to submit your work thru the conference platform until January 15th, 2024.