“The Revolution will not be televised?” Media and Protest Movements after 1945

Call for Papers/Travel Grants “The Revolu­tion will not be tele­vised?” Media and Protest Move­ments after 1945



Inter­na­tional confer­ence at Volda Univer­sity College, Norway, Novem­ber 26–28th, 2008 Suppor­ted by The Free­dom of Expres­sion Found­a­tion, Norway



Conveners: Rolf Werensk­jold, Erling Sivertsen (Volda Univer­sity College), Martin Klimke (Univer­sity of Heidel­berg), Joachim Schar­loth (Univer­sity of Zurich), Kath­rin Fahlen­brach (Univer­sity of Halle)



Loca­tion: Faculty of Media and Journ­al­ism, Volda Univer­sity College, Norway. Date: Novem­ber 26–28th, 2008 Hosted and organ­ized by Volda Univer­sity College and the Inter­dis­cip­lin­ary Research Forum on Protest Move­ments, Activ­ism and Social Dissent (IFK Protest, Inter­d­iszip­linäres Forschung­skolloquium Protest­be­we­gun­gen). Suppor­ted by the Marie Curie Research Network “European Protest Move­ments Since 1945” (www.protest-research.eu)



The confer­ence will direct its atten­tion towards cent­ral aspects of the inter­ac­tion of social/polit­ical protest move­ments and the media in the era after Second World War. Given the 40-year anniversary of the inter­na­tional revolt of “1968,” a special focus will be laid on the 1960s and 1970s and the notions of mass media and demo­cracy in a glob­al­ized news world.



Recent research has emphas­ized the role of the mass media in the dissem­in­a­tion of protest ideas and prac­tices across differ­ent coun­tries and regions. However, the crucial role of the media played in a time of instant­an­eous satel­lite commu­nic­a­tion and increased time-space compres­sion has largely been seen taken for gran­ted. Only few stud­ies have analyzed the way in which vari­ous media systems covered the protest move­ments around the world and their exchange and recon­tex­tu­al­iz­a­tion of ideas and cultural prac­tices. The rela­tion­ship of protest move­ments’ rela­tion­ship to the mass media in the period was often ambigu­ous, fraught with both inter­ac­tion and conflict. In consequence, activ­ists often sought to estab­lish altern­at­ive media struc­tures or their own news services.



The confer­ence there­fore follows a twofold goal: It aims to invest­ig­ate the journ­al­ists cover­ing protest and dissent in vari­ous geograph­ical regions and polit­ical circum­stances, thus creat­ing the public images of the protest move­ment and their goals. From such a perspect­ive, the mass media can be seen as a vant­age point from which to further eval­u­ate the estab­lish­ment’s reac­tion to domestic and inter­na­tional protest. On the other hand, the confer­ence will also focus on the vari­ous ways in which activ­ists tried to reach out and presen­ted them­selves to the public, whether it was through the tradi­tional mass media such as news­pa­pers, radio and tele­vi­sion or other chan­nels of commu­nic­a­tion.



In doing so, we want to exam­ine the complex inter­re­la­tion between instru­mental and express­ive protest actions and the media cover­age more closely: How do protest­ers design their protest actions in order to attract media atten­tion of the media? And how, conversely, does the media assim­il­ate the visual and perform­at­ive aspects of the symbolic protest actions? Keep­ing these two strains in mind, the confer­ence is dedic­ated to the creation of new approaches on the ways social, cultural and polit­ical protest is medi­ated.



Them­at­ic­ally, we there­fore call for contri­bu­tions from stud­ies within:



• theor­et­ical perspect­ives on the medi­a’s cover­age of the protests and dissent (includ­ing recep­tion research, fram­ing theory and discourse analysis)

• protest and media world­wide (compar­at­ive or stud­ies of trans-national commu­nic­a­tion are encour­aged)

• the depic­tion of protest move­ments in mass media (tele­vi­sion, radio, news­pa­pers)

• the role of imagery and pictures in news cover­age of protest

• the use of polit­ical cartoons in fram­ing protest move­ments or events

• stud­ies of journ­al­ist cover­ing protest and dissent

• edit­or­ial processes that direc­ted or influ­enced news cover­age

• inter­na­tional media struc­tures and news trans­mis­sion

• protest move­ments featured in the media debate (includ­ing the women’s liber­a­tion, the envir­on­ment­al­ist or peace move­ment, or new and contem­por­ary social move­ments)

• media strategies of activ­ists (includ­ing the use of posters, pamph­lets, under­ground radio and news­pa­pers, and the inter­net)



The confer­ence will feature work­shops with lead­ing media schol­ars and histor­i­ans; panel discus­sions of trans-discip­lin­ary and general them­at­ical approaches. The purpose is also to promote a lively inter­na­tional and inter­dis­cip­lin­ary dialogue and create a basis for future schol­arly team­work across national, cultural and regional borders.



Applic­a­tions from post­gradu­ate students, early stage research­ers (PhD-students), postdocs and young schol­ars from all discip­lin­ary and national back­grounds are strongly encour­aged.



Success­ful applic­ants will be provided with living allow­ance that should cover all neces­sary expenses during the confer­ence. The organ­izers will also provide a limited travel grant.



The confer­ence language will be English.

Dead­line for applic­a­tions and abstracts: April 1, 2008.

Selec­tions will be made by: May 1, 2008.

Please use online applic­a­tion at: http://www.hivolda.no/protest

Further ques­tions or sugges­tions: rofhivolda [ punto ] no (rof[at]hivolda[dot]no)