CfP: “Digital Media, Political Polarization and Challenges to Democracy”

An International Symposium organized by the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Alpen-Adria University (Maren Beaufort, Josef Seethaler) and the Centre for Political Youth Culture and Communication, Department of Sociology, University of York (Brian D. Loader)

21-22 September 2017 / Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Public Lecture:

W. Lance Bennett (Department of Political Science, University of Washington)

Keynote Speakers:

Michael X. Delli-Carpini (Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania)

Jörg Matthes (Department of Communication, University of Vienna)

Barbara Pfetsch (Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Free University of Berlin)

The Viennese conference intends to bring together experts from the fields of media and communication studies, politics and linguistics to explore the role of the media in today’s polarized social climate, fueled by growing political distrust, confusion, and conflict, which seem to shake the democratic system to its foundations. The symposium aims at discussing not only the causes and developments that led to the current state of society, but also proposals for citizens, journalists and politicians for how to manage the current move away from the established structures of representative democracy – with their group-based identities and mainstream issues – towards a wider repertoire of personalized political experience and individually motivated concerns in a digitally networked society. Special emphasis will be paid to comparative research across time and space.

Please send a PDF of your proposal (8,000 characters including spaces) to cmc@oeaw.ac.at <mailto:cmc@oeaw.ac.at> no later than April 9, 2017. For more information see: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/cmc/digital-media

2017-04-06T10:39:28+00:00