“Infrastructures and
Inequalities: Media industries, digital cultures and politics”
ECREA Mid-Year Section Conference
21-22 October 2019
University of Helsinki, Finland
In a turn to ‘infrastructuralism’ (Peters 2015), media and
communication scholars are increasingly attentive to the materialities and
politics of the technological, organisational and cultural infrastructures that
underpin media today. Platforms, data centres, software, but also new forms of
organising cultural production and labour, shape the politics of digital
cultures and transform the media industries. Digital and media infrastructures
have become elemental to everyday life. They are significant in reproducing
existing social and cultural inequalities, as well as creating new power
struggles. As digital/media infrastructures unfold in everyday life, they bring
challenges across multiple domains, from the foundations of social justice to
the industrial structures underpinning our everyday interactions with media and
communication systems. This conference aims to address the politics and
inequalities that emerge, as technological and media industries adopt, dismantle
and transform infrastructures to channel and process communication flows. Media
infrastructures (broadly) operate under different and uneven conditions that
configure media labour, media production, and the politics of communication and
access (Starosielski and Parks 2015). This conference seeks to examine
digital/media infrastructures and inequalities from an inter- and
multi-disciplinary perspective, inviting papers to interrogate the significance
of the ‘infrastructural turn’ in media and communication studies to our
understanding of media industries, democracy and digital cultures.
During this joint-ECREA section conference, we aim to engage
with questions concerning inequalities and the infrastructures of digital culture,
media industries and (digital) democracy through addressing topics such as (but
not limited to):
- The value, significance and relevance of infrastructure studies to media industry studies, the study of media and democracy, as well as digital culture.
- The industries and labour that operate and control specific technological media infrastructures, such as data centres, cloud computing, cable/satellite networks, content delivery networks.
- The politics and power dynamics of digital/media infrastructures.
- The significance of digital/media infrastructures in everyday life, especially related to the reproduction of social inequalities.
- The impact of digital/media infrastructures on culture, society, politics and democracy.
- The impact of digital/media infrastructures on media labour and cultural production.
- The organisational and cultural infrastructures of the media industries.
- Experiences and affective relationships that emerge in connection with media infrastructures.
- Forms of logistical media.
- Temporalities of media infrastructures.
- Emerging questions for the foundations of social justice in the digital media infrastructural turn.
Joint Conference of three ECREA Sections:
- Communication and Democracy
- Digital Culture and Communication
- Media Industries and Cultural Production
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Submission details
Please submit a 300-word abstract for individual proposals.
Panel proposals should include a 300-word panel rationale
plus individual 200 word abstracts from a minimum of four speakers.
All abstracts for individual as well as panel proposals
should be submitted through EasyChair.
Deadline for submission is 1 June 2019. Notifications of
acceptance will be issued by 30 June 2019.
Registration and Fees
Early bird registration €100 (until 12th August)
Early bird reduced student fee €50 (until 12 August)
Full fees €120 (to be
paid until the 15th of September)
Reduced student fee €60 (to be paid until the 15th of
September)
For more information and enquiries, contact:
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