MeCCSA 2023: Connected Futures?
4-6 September 2023
Join us for the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (MeCCSA) Annual Conference 2023 at Glasgow Caledonian University. Registration will be live on this page from March 2023.
Conference theme and keynote speakers
Rapid changes in the media industry have meant both producers and consumers have had to adapt very quickly to the many transformations of recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated some of these existing trends, including the rise of streaming services and the 24-hour news cycle, both of which have had significant impacts on production and consumption habits.
Media bring people together but also keep them apart, simultaneously connecting and separating, bridging physical distances, yet also potentially creating emotional voids. It is often said media technology is speeding up the pace of human life at the expense of connecting and relating to fellow human beings, though arguably, this has been a perennial concern and anxiety about communication media for at least the last century.
This conference wishes to open up the whole question and theme of our connected media futures: exploring where we are, how we got here, and where we might be heading in the future. What are the implications of technological developments for content producers, screenwriters, journalists, scholars, and other professionals?
The draft programme is now available to view on the Easychair pages.
Early Bird registration available until 1 June
Standard registration available until 31 July latest
| Delegate Status | Standard till 31 July | Early Bird till 1 June |
| MeCCSA member Waged (3 days) | £375 | £315 |
| MeCCSA member Unwaged/Student (3 days) | £200 | £150 |
| MeCCSA non-member (3 days) | £450 | £425 |
| MeCCSA member Waged (1 day) | £150 | |
| MeCCSA non-member (1 day) | £225 | |
| MeCCSA member 1-day doctoral student rate | £50 | |
| (Doctoral student status checked at conference registration desk) |
The First draft programme is now available on Easychair, but is subject to amendment.
* Please do not forget, we will be holding a conference dinner and ceilidh in the Radisson Blu hotel on Tuesday 5th September which is an additional cost of, £50 on top of registration so please do not forget to add this if you wish to attend the conference dinner and ceilidh! It's going to be a great night with one of Scotland's top ceilidh bands (no experience necessary!).
Keynote: Platform Imaginaries
Professor Annette Hill (Jönköping University, Sweden)
Streaming platforms recognise the extent to which the potential audiences for their products are now made up significantly of “roamers,” people finding diverse routes through the options available and combining them in different ways.
This presentation reflects on methodological and theoretical developments for understanding the precise movements, combinations and connections that become possible for roamers in commercial entertainment platforms. A key question is how do we imagine entertainment platforms today, yesterday or tomorrow?
Drawing upon a qualitative transnational audience study in South East Asia and Europe , the presentation considers how to analyse patterns of movement across streaming services, for example Netflix, entertainment platforms, for example YouTube, music platforms such as Spotify, alongside national cable and public television channels.
Through the use of visualisations of platforms, combining creative and walking methodologies, this empirical entry point to platform imaginaries enables perspectives by roamers themselves regarding spatial, mobility and affective relations. How we create, talk about, dislike and dispute platform imaginaries is of pressing concern for citizens, media researchers and industry professionals.
Annette Hill is a Professor of Media and Communication at Jönköping University, Sweden. Her research focuses on audiences and popular culture, with interests in media engagement, everyday life, genres, production studies and cultures of viewing.
She is the author of ten books, and many articles and book chapters in journals and edited collections, which address varieties of engagement with entertainment platforms, reality television, news and documentary, television drama, entertainment formats, live events and sports entertainment, film violence and media ethics.
Her latest books are Media Engagement (with Peter Dahlgren Routledge 2023), The Handbook of Mobile Socialities (with M Hartmann and M Andersson Routledge 2021) and her next books are Roaming Audiences (Routledge 2024) and the Companion to Media Audiences (with Peter Lunt, Routledge 2024).
Narinder Minhas - Chief Executive Officer, Cardiff Productions.
Narinder is an award-winning executive producer and creative leader. With over sixty productions under his belt, he's delivered shows across all genres for the world's top broadcasters.
Born in India, Narinder moved to Britain with his family when he was a child. He grew up in a working-class community in South East London, where Punjabi was the main language.
His varied career has seen him move from executive positions at the BBC (working on blue-chip series like Panorama and The Money Programme); to Channel 4, where he became a commissioning editor; and into senior roles in the independent sector, where he helped to build superbrand companies and make award-winning content.
As a programme maker, Narinder has produced a huge range of critically acclaimed and popular shows: from the heart-wrenching Peter: The Human Cyborg (Channel 4), to the provocative We Are Black and British (BBC), and the groundbreaking White Tribe (Channel 4) - to name a few.
Narinder has also worked with a broad mix of high-profile individuals - from Noam Chomsky, to Francis Fukuyama, Nigella Lawson, Andrew Marr, Tan France, Bill Clinton and Zeze Millz.
Passionate about television, film, education and the arts - Narinder is an Honorary Research Fellow at his alma mater, the University of Exeter, and a member of BAFTA.
Graham Meikle is Professor of Communication and Digital Media at the University of Westminster, and Director of its Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). He is a National Teaching Fellow, and has led Westminster’s MA in Social Media and Digital Communication since 2013. Graham has published eight books, including Deepfakes (2022), The Internet of Things (with Mercedes Bunz, 2018), and Future Active (2002).
Deepfake Videos and Connected Futures
Synthetic media are videos, images, audio, or other texts that are created or significantly altered using AI techniques such as deep learning. Deepfakes are among the most prominent examples so far of synthetic media. This paper will argue that deepfake videos are not just significant in their own right, but that they also offer important perspective on the wider digital media environment of the 2020s.
The theme of this conference is “connected futures.” Deepfakes point to some ways in which our futures are being connected without our consent. Deepfakes did not just happen to emerge in the time of social media — they are a product of those media. Through two decades of everyday sharing on social media platforms, we have unwittingly created vast archives of images, video, text and audio. These data have been appropriated as raw material that enable machine-learning researchers to train AI systems to recognise, classify and create images for use in synthetic media. Deepfakes expand the social media environment in which the public and the personal converge. They are a logical extension of those social media business models in which all human experience becomes content to be shared, data to be exploited.
This talk will give an overview of some key uses of deepfakes to date, including satirising the powerful, reimagining histories, conscripting women into non-consensual pornography, and resurrecting the dead.
MeCCSA AGM invited speaker: 3pm, Tuesday 5 September 2023, W011.
Dr Lena Wånggren is a researcher and teacher at the Universities of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt. Her work concerns the role of literature and arts in social change, feminist writing and activism, gender and intersectionality, and workplace/social justice. She is also a trade union representative, and until recently (2021-23) served as President of University and College Union Scotland.
Abstract
Higher Education in the United Kingdom has witnessed a rise in the number of casualised staff, that is to say workers who are employed on insecure hourly-paid or fixed-term contracts: some numbers show that more than half (54%) of all academic staff in the UK are employed on these types of contract (UCU 2016). While a generation ago, these contracts may have been part of a ‘rite of passage’ before permanency, the precarisation of work has become the defining feature of a majority of academic workers’ lives.
This talk, built on a forthcoming book, provides a snapshot of the experiences of a generation of teachers and researchers for whom insecurity and ill health is the norm. Combining critical analysis of employment statistics with qualitative data from interviews with 22 casualised workers, the talk will share not only experiences of insecure work but also strategies of resistance.
Call for Papers
The Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association is pleased to invite the submission of abstracts, panel proposals and practice-based contributions for the MeCCSA 2023 Conference, to be held 4-6 September 2023 at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK.
We welcome submissions aligned either with the conference theme or any area covered by MeCCSA and its networks.
The event will take place in person at our Glasgow campus located in the city centre.
Further details of the event's Call for Papers.
We encourage not only focusing on where we are going but also on any potential solutions. We also want to consider how media affect relationships of all kinds where, for example, technology in film and television stories often acts as narrative glue. What are the processes and qualities of the various relationships between people, communication media, and content?
We invite proposals for scholarly papers, themed panels, posters, film screenings, and other practice-based contributions. Proposals might engage with the various social, political, economic, artistic, individual, collective, institutional, representational, and technological dimensions of media futures and connected relationships.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Changing journalistic practices, production, and consumption
- Representations of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and social class in media narratives
- The future of television SVODs, FAST, AVOD, TVOD, and public service broadcasting
- The future of the cinema industry and of movie theatres
- The future of music consumption, podcasts, and radio
- The future of nations and regions media
- Media safety and privacy
- Social media including activism/influencing
- Virtual and augmented reality
- Media disconnections.
Submitting your proposal for an individual presentation
Please submit abstracts for individual papers (max 250 words) online with the presentation title, up to five keywords, your name, affiliation, and email address.
Submitting your proposal for a panel, roundtable, screening, or event
Proposals should include a short description and rationale (200 words) together with abstracts for each of the three to four papers (150-200 words each including details of the contributor), and the name and contact details of the proposer with up to five keywords.
The proposer should coordinate the submissions as a single proposal. Again, the proposal should be submitted online.
We actively support the presentation of practice-as-research and have a flexible approach to practice papers and presentations. This may include opportunities to present papers and screenings in the same sessions or as part of a separate screening strand. We also welcome shorter papers in association with short screenings.
We welcome abstracts from early career and postgraduate researchers.
Key information
MECCSA delegate information - hotels
Glasgow City Centre is blessed with a wide range of hotels to suit any purse. Glasgow Caledonian University offers special discounts for the following nearby hotels:
Holiday Inn, 161 West Nile Street
Phone: +44 (0)141 331 6800 - Email: reservations@higlasgow.com - Quote code/reference: GCU
Ibis Styles Glasgow Central, 116 Waterloo Street, Glasgow
Phone: +44 (0)141 428 4477 - Email: HB1C4-re@accor.com - Quote code/reference: Glasgow Caledonian University
Ibis Styles Glasgow George Square, 74 Miller Street, Glasgow
Phone: +44 (0)141 428 3400 - Email: H9684-re@accor.com - Quote code/reference: Glasgow Caledonian University
Mercure Hotel, 201 Ingram Street, Glasgow
Phone: +44 (0)141 441 1022 Email: reservations@mercureglasgow.co.uk - Quote code/reference: Glasgow Caledonian University
Please note all rates are subject to availability and hotels may only offer a limited number of discounted rooms. Delegates are advised to book early to take advantage of the discount and please contact the hotel directly with queries on availability, quoting the above discount code.
In addition, however, Glasgow city centre has a wide range of budget hotels (some for less than £100 a night) which can be found at this link to "Cheap Hotels in Glasgow."
Again, delegates are advised to book early to take advantage of the best rates.
See full booklet of discounts and stays for the institution here.
Updated: MeCCSA Conference Bursary Scheme Now Closed
28 April 2023: We are pleased to announce that the MeCCSA Conference 2023 Bursary winners are as follows:
- Gavin Brewis, Glasgow Caledonian University
- Lisa Garwood-Cross, University of Salford
- Gummo Clare, University of Leeds
- Kaidong Guo, UCL
- Abigail Jenkins, University of Glasgow
- Jan Lewis, Bournemouth University
- Ankita Mishra, University of Sheffield
- Sijuade Yusuf, University of Brighton
- Christine Williams, University of the West of England
Huge congratulations to all of these scholars and look out for their papers in September!
_____
The MeCCSA conference bursary scheme is now closed. The process followed is outlined below.
MeCCSa offered eight bursaries for our annual conference at Glasgow Caledonian University, September 4 – 6, 2023. Each bursary provides a full waiver of the conference fee and £350 to assist with the cost of travel and accommodation. Please see below for guidance on eligibility and criteria.
Eligibility
If you are a member of MeCCSA (either individually or as an institutional member) who is not able to apply for institutional financial support to cover costs to attend conferences, you are eligible to apply for a bursary. You may be a retired member, a PhD or postdoc who does not receive conference funding, a precarious lecturer unable to apply for university conference funds, or other circumstances related to your employment status that prevent you from applying for conference funds from an academic institution. (Please note: personal circumstances are not part of the eligibility criteria).
Criteria
Assessment of applications was based on your eligibility combined with the quality of the academic work you are proposing to present. Bursaries will be awarded to the strongest eight applications.
The criteria for assessment are:
a) Originality/quality of the research;
b) Its potential to further the field in significant ways and/or addresses a pressing issue in the field;
c) Its relevance to the field of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies and topics outlined in the Call for Papers.
Application Process
Your application should contain a 250-word statement that outlines:
- The originality of the research,
- Its potential to further the field and/or address a pressing issue
- Its relevance to the field of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies and/or conference topics outlined in the Call for Paper
- A brief explanation of why you are unable to apply for conference funds from an academic institution on the basis of your employment status (rather than personal circumstance) (see guidance above).
Please do not simply resubmit your conference abstract – that will make your application ineligible.
If you have any questions about the MeCCSA Conference Bursary Scheme, please contact Milly Williamson at milly.williamson@gold.ac.uk
Please submit your word application form directly to Milly Williamson including the following information: Name, Address, Email Address, Phone Number, Employment Status, Institutional Affiliation (if you have one), Abstract Submission Number, 250-word statement.
Final deadline for applications was 31 March 2023.
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