*CFP* “LOCAL, REGIONAL, COMMUNITY AND PROXIMITY MEDIA”, UBI CONFERENCE 2019

Local Media Fal(l) School 

Local, Regional, Community and Proximity Media

19-21 de septiembre de 2019

University of Beira Interior 

Covilha, Portugal

The project Remedia.Lab - Laboratory & Incubator of Regional Media and LabCom.IFP (University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal) recognize the existence of increased interest in local media in the form of diverse scientific, academic, professional, normative and empirical approaches. Local Media Fal(l) School assumes the role of local journalism in the new digital ecosystem as an fall school around local, regional, community and proximity media. To this end, it develops from September 19 to 21 an event that seeks to respond to this need and brings together some of the best academics and practitioners in a dynamic and mobilizing environment where team spirit and the exchange of knowledge are essential. To meet various needs and profiles, this school launches a call, proposing a flexibility of registrations that allow to satisfy several profiles and approaches.

*CFP* "AT THE EDGE", ISSUE #14 MEDIA FIELDS JOURNAL

While researching the Hells Angels in the 1960s, Hunter S. Thompson wrote “The edge…there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” Conceiving of the edge as both a site of orientation and a sharp drop-off, Thompson gestures towards its dual denotations: as “the line where an object begins or ends” and “the cutting side of a blade.” Thus, the edge can act both as a form of speculative orientation that provides boundaries or points of entry, and as a threshold that offers the possibility of “going over.”     

As contemporary media scholarship continues to think through the proliferation of internet and screen cultures, their edges remain crucial to a comprehensive understanding. Scholars such as Adrian Mackenzie, Lisa Parks, and Mel Hogan have explored media technologies at or beyond their edges, asking how edge environments or experiences might alter their ‘typical’ use. Edward S. Casey writes that edges supply “a species of boundaries, that is, porous edges that take in as well as give out—in contrast to borders, which act to delimit institutions and concrete practices in the life-world.” Casey’s provocation suggests that studying media at the fringes or peripheries of society necessitates a discussion of the edges that construct their marginality. Additionally, edges establish relationalities between entities through their capacity to connect the nodes of distributed networks and complex systems. In this way, exploring media technologies and practices ‘at the edge’ can help locate imagined horizons and connections that inform the boundaries of identity, community, and globality.