“Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices”

• 24.05.2018 – 24.05.2018
• Main Conference Hotel (Hilton, Prague, Czech Republic)

24. Mai 2018, Prag, Tschechische Republik

Sponsored by the Philosophy, Theory and Critique (PTC) Division of the International Communication Association

Event date: 24 May 2018, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, Prague, Czech Republic

Location: Main Conference Hotel (Hilton, Prague, Czech Republic)

Organizers: Christian Pentzold (University of Bremen), Kenzie Burchell (University of Toronto), Olivier Driessens (University of Copenhagen), Alice Mattoni (Scuola Normale Superiore), Cara Wallis (Texas A&M University)

“Media matter most when they seem not to matter at all.” (Wendy Chun)

But how can we understand the practices through which innovations in media and digital data move from being unexpected, novel, and impactful to the negotiated, embedded, and habitual?

The pre-conference takes issue with the mundane yet pervasive nature of media habits, rituals, and customs. It assesses the purchase of practice-based approaches in order to see under what conditions and with what consequences they enter studies in communication and media. In particular, we invite participants to consider the expressive and performative dimension of what people actually do and say in relation to media and to the wider communication ecologies in which these articulations take place. We are especially interested in contributions that examine how voices are expressed, represented, or muted and that study the ways practices of voice combine, overlap, or collide with other mediated activities in contemporary societies. With this, we strive for an explanation and critical appreciation of media practices whose accomplishment is a perennial exercise in which we find ourselves immersed.

The Book of Abstracts can be downloaded here.

Please register for the event here.

Conference programme
8:30

Opening by the Convenors: A Practice Turn in Studies of Communication and Media?

8:45

Panel I: Off the Ground: Maintaining the Media-Suffused Everyday

Jesper Pagh, Fiona Huijie Zeng & Signe Sophus Lai, U of Copenhagen, Denmark: “Show and Tell – Mapping communicative patterns in everyday life”

9:00

Richard Davis, U of Essex: “Internet use as ‘just something I do, rather than something I thought about doing’: a study into the domestic practices of UK households, and the significance of habit and routine in online behaviour”

9:15

Claus Toft-Nielsen, Aarhus U, Denmark & Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Aalborg U, Denmark: “Voices of inclusion and exclusion – the intersection of practice theory and media studies”

9:30

Paul Frosh, Hebrew U of Jerusalem, Israel: “Objects as Practice: The Case of the Screenshot”

9:45

Peter Gentzel, U of Augsburg, Germany: “The Forgotten Subject? Why subjectivity matters after practice and material turns”

10:00

Response: Peter Lunt, U Leicester, UK

10:15

Q+A

10:30

Tea & Coffee Break

10:45

Panel II: In the Air: Speaking Practice – Practice Speaking

Paddy Scannell, U of Michigan, USA: “Voice(s) on air”

11:00

Mark R Johnson, U of Alberta, Canada & Jamie Woodcock, U of Oxford, UK: “Conversation, Discourse and Play: Interaction and Moderation in Twitch.tv Video Game Live Streaming”

11:15

Margreth Lünenborg, Freie U Berlin, Germany & Christoph Raetzsch, Aarhus U, Denmark: “From Public Sphere to Performative Publics: Developing Media Practice as an Analytic Model”

11:30

Sahana Udupa, U of Munich, Germany: “Enterprise as practice: Fun and aggression in online political discourse”

11:45

Hanna Klien-Thomas, Oxford Brooks U, UK: “Navigating cultural citizenship – Voice and address in transcultural media practices of young Trinidadian women”

12:00

Response: Elizabeth Bird, U of Southern Florida, USA

12:15

Q+A

12:30

Lunch Break

13:00

Panel III: On the Move: Advancing activism

Alice Mattoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy: “The mutual anchoring of mundane-oriented and politics-oriented media practices in the construction of voice. The case of anti-corruption movement organizations in Southern Europe”

13:15

Hilde C. Stephansen, U of Westminster, UK & Emiliano Treré, U of Cardiff: “Theorizing citizen media practices: agency, power, and social change”

13:30

Yoav Halperin, NYU, USA: “We Will Not Be Silenced: Algorithmically-Informed Activism and the Amplification of Political Voices on Social Media”

13:45

Philipp Budka, U of Vienna, Austria: “Indigenous Articulations in the Digital Age: Reflections on Historical Developments, Activist Engagements and Mundane Practices”

14:00

Yang Wang, National U of Singapore & Sun Sun Lim, Singapore U of Technology and Design: “Transnational positionality in mediated communication: Digital asymmetries, contextual constraints and strategic negotiation”

14:15

Response: Maria Bakardjieva, U of Calgary, Canada

14:30

Q+A

14:45

Tea & Coffee Break

15:00

Panel IV: At a Distance: Reporting and Representing Media Life

Steffen Moestrup, U of Copenhagen, Denmark: “The journalist as performance in a crossmedia landscape”

15:15

Kenzie Burchell, U of Toronto, Canada: “Mapping Strategic Interference in Global Reporting Practices”

15:30

Chaim Noy, U of Southern Florida, USA: “Paper voices and performativity in the digital age”

15:45

Nina Grønlykke Mollerup & Mette Mortensen, U of Copenhagen, Denmark: “The Contested Visibility of War: Actors on the Ground Taking and Distributing Images from the War in Syria”

16:00

Christian Pentzold, U of Bremen, Germany & Manuel Menke, U of Augsburg, Germany: “Social practices, communicative practices, discursive practices: Formulating an analytical distinction”

16:15

Response: Nick Couldry, LSE, UK

16:30

Q+A

16:45

Final Discussion by the Convenors: “What are the future perspectives for a practice-based study of communication and media?”