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 carrying out anthropological research on digital mediated practices and their implications for the understanding of people’s interaction with media. The aim is to 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 cuts across the divisions between public and private, corporate media and the general public, cultural industry and home production, 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 production practices? Rather than an uncritical celebration of people’s empowerment, this workshop encourages exchange of research experiences about ways of carrying out ethnographic research by following social networks and the circuits of new media practices.
Keynote speakers
Elizabeth Bird (University of South Florida)
Don Slater (London School of Economics)
Dorle Dracklé (University of Bremen)
Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths, University of London).
Coordinators
Elisenda Ardèvol
Open University of Catalonia
www.uoc.edu
Sigurjon Baldur Hafsteinsson
Coordinator of the Media Anthropology Network
European Association of Social Anthropologists
http://www.media-anthropology.net
Organization Committee in Barcelona:
Begonya Enguix
Edgar Gomez Cruz
Adolfo Estalella
Humanities Department
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Gemma San Cornelio
Toni Roig
Information and Communication Sciences Department
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya