ECPR Graduate Conference – Tartu, 2016: Call for Papers

Are you a graduate? The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) offers you a good chance to present your research on linkage between media and social movements.

ECPR Graduate Conference will  take place between 10-13 July in Tartu, Estonia. Section Media & Politics will gather researchers working on the impact of media in terms of new online and offline leadership emergence, gender roles, empowerment of marginalized groups, consolidation of communities and more. Graduates are encourages to apply to the following panels:

Media, social participation and democracy

Media can both reinforce distances between communities and create connections during social movements, giving voices and helping some issues to regain their public nature. This panel holds a discussion on how collective action is represented; how voices of marginalized groups are raised and how media adapt to challenges of inclusion and integration.

Controversy building in the light of new media technologies

This panel proposes to analyze influence of media in the emergence and consolidation of public issues, but also the influence of digital networks over mass media. The panel searches also to debate how social movements and citizen collectives have been using media and the ICTs in order to interfere in this process.

Collective and connective action

In this panel construction of a new information ecology is debated. In this ecology various types of media interact and converge, favouring organization of collective action and  legitimacy of new sources of knowledge. Moreover, how offline initiatives in the communities sum up with actions online is also a part of discussion.

Media and political leadership

This panel covers issues of mediatisation of activism. Why do journalists tend to focus on a few charismatic figures and how they select these individuals? Can activists resist against this process? If so, by which procedures and practices? What is a new type of public leadership supported by ICTs?

The media manufacturing of the political illegitimacy of women

By crossing the research on sexual division of activist work and the research on the relationship between media and politics, this panel addresses such questions as, for instance:  How will the media coverage of the political sphere challenge the political illegitimacy of women?

Media strategy and community building  

Internet has led to an important decrease in communication costs, hence allowing new forms of both external and internal communication. This panel discusses creation of alternative public spaces with social media; new media practices that emerge from this tendency and consequences of such media strategies on social movements.

Want to find out more and submit an  Individual Paper? Find out how here. Deadline is 20 January 2016.

Image via ECPR website