Researching Citizen Media Workshop: Abstracts
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Researching Citizen Media Workshop: Abstracts
An interdisciplinary workshop to be held at the University of Manchester, UK, on the 15th-16th September 2016.
Keynote presentations:
Lilie Chouliaraki | Witnessing Conflict Today |
Cristina Flesher Fominaya | Methodological and Ethical Dilemmas in Researching Activist Communication Strategies |
Panel abstracts (listed in alphabetical order):
Keynote presentations:
Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK |
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![]() Witnessing Conflict Today
Digital witnessing, our engagement with death through local participants’ own recordings of the conflict zone, introduces new challenges in the journalism of conflict. Whilst, like past practices of journalistic witnessing, this one also invites its publics to witness the suffering and death of conflict as a moral event that requires a response, digital spectacles differ from past ones in that they inject into the practice of witnessing three different kinds of doubt: doubt around truth (how do we know this is authentic?); doubt around sincerity (how do we know this is all there is?); and doubt around appropriateness (should this be shown or not?). Corresponding to the three pragmatic claims of the communicative public sphere, these three forms of doubt around truth, sincerity and appropriateness simultaneously challenge the limits of traditional journalism to act as a public institution that confidently narrates conflict to its publics and invites us to take a stance. This is because, given the multiple actors filming in conflict zones, digital witnessing breaks with the professional monopoly of the journalist and becomes a complex site of struggle where competing spectacles of death and suffering, each with their own interest, vie for visibility. How the journalism of conflict and its public ethics of witnessing change under the weight of this new epistemic instability is the focus of this presentation. References Chouliaraki, Lilie (2016) ‘Authoring the Self: Media, voice and testimony in soldiers’ memoirs’, Media, War and Conflict, 8(4). Chouliaraki, Lilie (2015b) ‘Digital Witnessing in Conflict Zones: The politics of remediation’, Information, Communication & Society 18(11): 1362-77. Chouliaraki, Lilie (2015a) ‘Digital witnessing in War Journalism: The case of post-Arab Spring conflicts’, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 13(2). Chouliaraki, Lilie (2013) ‘The Humanity of War: Iconic photojournalism of the battlefield, 1914–2012’, Visual Communication 12(3): 315-40. Chouliaraki, Lilie (2012) ‘Re-mediation, Inter-mediation, Trans-mediation’, Journalism Studies 14(2): 267-83. |
Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has written extensively on media ethics, particularly the problem of mediated suffering, digital journalism, human rights/humanitarian communication as well as Discourse Theory and Analysis. She is the author of fifty peer-reviewed articles or book chapters, two of which are award-winning; and author or editor of seven books, including Discourse in Late Modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis’ (EUP, 1999 with Norman Fairclough); The Spectatorship of Suffering (Sage, 2006/2011) and The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (Polity, 2013; Outstanding Book Award 2015; International Communication Association). |
Cristina Flesher Fominaya, University of Aberdeen, UK |
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Cristina Flesher Fominaya is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Aberdeen. She was a Senior Marie Curie Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth from 2013-2015. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an editor and founder of Interface Journal and an editor of Social Movement Studies Journal. Her latest book is Social Movements and Globalization: How Protests, Occupations and Uprisings are Changing the World, from Palgrave Macmillan. |
Panel presentations:
Jess Allen, University of Manchester, UK |
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Jess Allen is an aerial dancer, ecological performer and walking artist from Aberystwyth. She is currently completing a (second) PhD in walking and moving in rural landscapes as an eco-activist arts practice, for which she was awarded a President’s Doctoral Scholarship from the University of Manchester. She uses walking to create unexpected performance encounters in unusual locations. Originally a biologist, she gained her first PhD from Aberystwyth before re-training in contemporary dance, latterly at Coventry with an MA in Dance Making and Performance. She has worked as landscape officer for local government, dance lecturer (experiential anatomy/improvisation), arts facilitator (AHRC Multi-Story Water) and as an aerial performer for Blue Eyed Soul (UK/US), Full Tilt and EVERYBODY dance (UK/Europe). She recently guest edited – with Bronwyn Preece and Stephen Bottoms – ‘Performing Ecos’, the ecology and climate change-themed special issue of international theatre ethics journal Performing Ethos. allinadayswalk.org.uk | dropintheocean.org.uk | tiltingatwindmills.org.uk | trans-missions.org.uk | watertreatmentwalks.org.uk |
Bolette B. Blaagaard, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark |
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Dr. Bolette B Blaagaard is Associate Professor of Communications at Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research focuses on the intersections of culture and journalism with an emphasis on citizen produced and disseminated media, and she has published on this topic in international journals including Visual Communications, Journalism Studies, and Social Identities. She is the co-editor of among others Deconstructing Europe. Postcolonial Perspectives (Routledge 2012) with Sandra Ponzanesi, After Cosmopolitanism (Routledge 2013) with Patrick Hanafin and Rosi Braidotti, Cosmopolitanism and the New News Media (Routledge 2014) with Lilie Chouliaraki, and Citizen Media and Public Spaces (Routledge forthcoming 2016) with Mona Baker. Blaagaard is moreover the co-series editor of a new Routledge book series entitled Critical Perspectives on Citizen Media, with Luis Peréz-Gonzaléz and Mona Baker, Manchester University, which aims to define and advance understanding of citizen media as an emerging academic field located at the interface between different disciplines and practices. |
Nadine El-Enany, Birkbeck School of Law, University of London |
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Nadine El-Enany is Lecturer at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, where she co-directs the Centre for Research on Law and Race. Nadine teaches and researches in the fields of migration law, European Union law and criminal justice. She has published widely in the field of EU asylum and immigration law. Her current research focuses on questions of race and criminal and social justice in migration, protest and death in custody cases. Nadine is Chair of the Runnymede Trust Emerging Scholars Race Forum. She has written for Media Diversified, the Guardian, London Review of Books, Truthout, Left Foot Forward and Critical Legal Thinking. |
Kevin Gillan, University of Manchester, UK |
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Kevin Gillan is a scholar of social movements with a particular interest in understanding the development and communication of political beliefs and values that are critical of contemporary capitalist structures. He has researched and published on theories of social movements (particularly in relation to the framing perspective), anti-war and peace activism, globalisation and new media. These themes came together in a book titled Anti-War Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age (Palgrave, 2008, with Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster). Recent publications include two edited collections: Research Ethics and Social Movements: Scholarship, Activism and Knowledge Production and Occupy! A Global Movement (both Routledge, 2015). Kevin is Editor-in-Chief at Social Movement Studies and Chair of the research network Movements@Manchester. |
Rebecca Johnson, University of Manchester, UK |
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![]() Renarrating Occupation: The Parkour Guide to Gaza
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I am a 3rd year AHRC-funded doctoral student at CTIS, University of Manchester. My thesis is a socio-narrative exploration of performative responses to Islam and the War on Terror, drawing on a data set of 12 audiovisual texts in French, Spanish, English and Arabic. The performative genres are hip hop, comedy, punk and parkour. I argue that the texts are part of an epistemological groundswell that is symptomatic of our time, whereby contradiction and aesthetics emerge as key tools for resistance to neoliberal hegemony. Prior to commencing my PhD, I worked for five years as a freelance translator, and before this I worked for different organisations linked to international affairs. I have two master’s degrees: Translation & Interpreting Studies (University of Manchester, 2012), and International Relations (University of Birmingham, 2008). |
Henry Jones, University of Manchester, UK |
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Henry Jones is a final-year PhD student in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. His research investigates Wikipedia from a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on the networks of volunteer translators operating within and between the English- and French-language versions of the multilingual user-generated encyclopedia. Henry holds a Masters degree in Translation and Interpreting Studies from the University of Manchester and a BA in French Studies from the University of Sheffield. |
Tanya Notley, Western Sydney University, Australia |
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Tanya Notley is a communication and social change practitioner, educator and researcher. She has 15 years of experience working in the areas of social justice and human rights, community-based and online media initiatives. Tanya is employed as a Lecturer in Internet Studies and Digital Media in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University and she is a researcher with both the Institute for Culture and Society and the Digital Humanities Research Group. She collaborates with a number of human rights and social justice organisations to design communication initiatives for social impact. Her current research projects are focused on the emotional mapping of cities, human rights micro-tasking and investigating the politics of data centres. |
Neil Sadler, University of Manchester, UK |
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Neil Sadler is a final year PhD student at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester and also holds an MA in Translation Studies from the same institution. His doctoral thesis focuses on the analysis of bilingual narratives of the 3 July 2013 military intervention in Egypt, as told on Twitter in English and Arabic, using an approach combining sociological and narratological theories of narrative.
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Gemma Sou University of Manchester, UK |
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Gemma is Lecturer in Disaster Management at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester, and she completed her PhD in Development Studies at the University of Manchester (2015). Her research focuses on the representations of human vulnerability, with a particular focus on humanitarianism. She also looks at the interplay between cultures and disasters in the ‘global south’. In particular, she is interested in the cultures of vulnerable populations and humanitarian organisations, and the effects these cultures have on disaster response. Gemma has worked on diverse projects for BBC Worldwide, Goldsmiths University of London, the ESRC and DFID, the Ford Foundation, The Natural Environment Research Council, the World Bank and UNOY Peacebuilders, based in The Hague. |
Chuan Yu, Hong Kong Baptist University |
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Chuan Yu is a final year PhD candidate in the Translation Programme at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her current research focuses on collaborative translation, online translation communities, translation competence, translator identities and the use of ethnographic methodologies in TS research. Her PhD project titled, Collaborative Translation in Online Communities of Practice: An Ethnographic Study of Yeeyan, is an interdisciplinary study which intersects with Media and Communication Studies, Anthropology and Sociology. Chuan Yu also undertakes translation work, as well as providing teaching assistance for the Programme. Her translation and editing work includes academic textbooks such as An Introduction to Language and journal/magazine articles published on open access platforms. Before joining HKBU, she was employed as a Lecturer in China and as a Confucius Institute Teacher in the US. |
Derya Yuksek, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) |
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Derya Yuksek holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Trieste and is a doctoral researcher at the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her research interests include alternative and new media, participatory communication, conflict transformation, social movements, and youth. Her doctoral thesis explores the potential of participatory media production processes for conflict transformation, focusing on the specific context of Cyprus conflict. Prior to joining VUB, she worked as a manager and consultant in various international cooperation projects in the fields of culture, education and media. |
Andreja Zevnik, University of Manchester |
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Andreja Zevnik is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research is inspired by psychoanalysis, continental philosophy and aesthetic politics and mainly focuses on the production of subjectivity in acts of resistance. Her most recent project examines how the experience of anxiety alters forms of political participation, produces different political/resisting subjectivities and moulds new political realities. She is particularly interested in the various struggles associated with the civil rights movement in the US and the BlackLivesMatter campaign. Dr. Zevnik is convener of the Critical Global Politics research cluster and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Narrative Politics. She is author of Lacan, Deleuze and World Politics: Re-thinking the ontology of the political subject (Routledge 2016), and co-editor (with Samo Tomsic) of Jacques Lacan Between Psychoanalysis and Politics (Routledge 2015), (with Bostjan Nedoh) of Lacan and Deleuze: A disjunctive synthesis (Edinburgh University Press 2016), and (with Emmy Eklundh and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet) of Politics of Anxiety (Rowman & Littlefield 2016). |