Next november, the workshop ‘Media practices and cultural producers’ will be held at the UOC, organized by Elisenda Ardèvol and Sigurjon Baldur, as part of the Media Anthropology Network events. The workshop addresses media practices and the arenas of cultural production in the context of the “new media” landscape. In broad terms, the workshop will inquire into the leading theoretical and methodological perspectives for doing anthropological research on digital mediated practices and their implications for the understanding of people’s interaction with media. The workshop will explore the circulatory flows of media practices and in particular, how digital technology use is changing media culture, cultures of media circulation and the very definition of cultural producer. There is a call for ‘research in progress’ presentations.
Second EASA Media Anthropology Network
Barcelona, 6-7 November, 2008
The workshop addresses media practices and the arenas of cultural production in the context of the “new media” landscape. In broad terms, the workshop will inquire into the leading theoretical and methodological perspectives for doing anthropological research on digital mediated practices and their implications for the understanding of people’s interaction with media. The workshop will explore the circulatory flows of media practices and in particular, how digital technology use is changing media culture, cultures of media circulation and the very definition of cultural producer. Anthropological and ethnographic studies of media have been largely focused on analyzing reception of media products (television, radio, press and film) and media consumption related to domestic appropriation of technologies. There is also a wide body of research devoted to the study of the political dimension of alternative and indigenous media. However, there has been a separation between media and Internet studies, and between the analysis of media reception and practices of self production, such as family photography or home video. Current digital media practices urge scholars to examine self production contents and media flows from a broader perspective that cross-cuts divisions between public and private, media corporative products and people releases, home production and cultural industry, political activism and domestic affairs. The workshop aims to become a locus for discussing innovative theoretical and methodological approaches that deal with such interwoven practices of media production and consumption. The workshop will address questions like: how is self production entering circulatory matrices of media and power? How does cultural production itself become a practice of reception or consumption? What are the implications of understanding audiences as cultural producers? Do new media practices redefine the role of cultural producers? Are self production and content sharing new cultural forms of media production? What are the cultural implications of people’s media productive practices? Far away of an uncritical celebration of people’s empowerment, this workshop encourages exchange of research experiences about ways of doing ethnographic research by following social networks and the circuits of new media practices.
Coordinators Elisenda Ardèvol and Sigurjon Baldur Hafsteinsson
EASA Media Anthropology Network Second Workshop
http://www.media-anthropology.net
Organization CommitteeGemma San Cornelio, Begonya Enguix,
Edgar Gomez Cruz, Toni Roig, Adolfo Estalella
Studies of Humanities and
Studies of Sciences of Information and Communication
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya