CALL FOR PAPERS
International ZeMKI conference
"The Mediatization of Time: New perspectives on media, data and temporality"

7-8 December 2017
ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen, Germany

Recent innovations in the digitalization and datafication of communication fundamentally affect how people conceptualize, perceive and evaluate time to create the kind of world they live in. The conference invites participants to think through the interplay of media and data in respect of the way social time is constructed, modulated, and experienced. This allows to appreciate how new technologies and representations deeply affect the temporal organization of today’s media suffused societies, and it also sheds light on transformations in mediating time. We assume that mediatization as a fundamental societal change that interweaves with the development and spread of communication and information technologies leaves its mark on the ways we process and order the pace, sequence, rhythms and of social reality.

This conference invites to think through the role of media and data people have or had at hand to time their interactions, relations, and states of being. It encourages submissions related to the mediation of time and the timing of media(ization), and includes, but is not restricted to, the following themes:

- Transformativity of mediatization processes: How can we grasp the historically changing mediation of time and the relation to diachronic processes of mediatization? What are the dynamics between the transforming construction of time and the ongoing formation of mediatization?
- Temporality and mediation of time: Are there temporal affordances of media and how do they influence the experience of mediated time? What time principles characterize today’s media-saturated life? How do media technologies relate to the various temporalities of media practices?
- Memory and the rearrangement of the tenses: What temporal meanings are generated by the media? How are media used in order to knit together past, present and future?

Please send a 300-word abstract, along with your name, e-mail address, academic affiliation, and short bio to: [email protected]

Abstract submission deadline: September 1, 2017
Acknowledgment of acceptance: September 15, 2017
Conference dates: December 7-8, 2017

Confirmed speakers include: Staffan Ericson (Södertörn University): Mediatization in Time; Andreas Hepp (University of Bremen): Datafication and Temporal Media Practices; Johan Fornäs (Södertörn University): Media as Third-Time Tools; Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo): Modes of Synchronization; Emily Keightley (Loughborough University): Zones of Intermediacy; Irene Neverla (University of Hamburg): Media/Time Rhythms; Elizabeth Prommer (University of Rostock): Work, Time, Media; Espen Ytreberg (University of Oslo): Networked Simultaneities. 

The conference is organized by Christian Pentzold and Christine Lohmeier from the ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen in cooperation with Anne Kaun, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Stockholm.

For more information, please contact [email protected]

Troubling Time: An Exploration of Temporality in the Arts
University of Manchester
Friday, 2nd June 2017.

This conference aims to consider time and the multifaceted ways it manifests in and structures the arts - in film, performance, television, theatre, video games, music, dance, live broadcast, and visual art, to name just a few. At first glance, the arts appear to be unavoidably time-bound, largely dependent on our understandings of chronological time and space. However, the arts are also capable of finding ways for different types of temporalities to irrupt, to disrupt, to resist, and to bubble beyond the surface.

Troubling Time is an interdisciplinary conference that aims to bring together postgraduate students, early career researchers and established academics to explore the issues of time and temporality in the arts.

The organisers of this interdisciplinary conference warmly invite proposals for 20 minute presentations/provocations/performances/creative approaches to time in the arts. We actively encourage contributions that engage practically with their duration, with the aim of fostering methodological diversity.

Topics include but are not limited to:

•       Issue of time and medium specificity
•       Modalities and methodologies of research into time and the arts
•       Homogenous/heterogeneous time
•       Time and space
•       Liveness/deadness
•       Haunting or possession by the past
•       Approaches to the archive and time
•       Re-enactment and re-embodiment
•       Documenting the present
•       Futurity or lack thereof
•       Ageing - growing up and growing old
•       Indexicality and the arts
•       Linear and non-linear time
•       Time as politics

Please send your abstract (250 words), its title, and a short biography (100 words) to [email protected] by Friday, 3rd March 2017. Successful applicants will be notified by the end of March. At the moment, the organisers are envisioning a one-day event but there is the possibility of extending it to two days if the level of response requires it.

Call for Papers
CRCC symposium on Media and Time
Loughborough, UK, 15-16 June 2017
 
We are inviting applications for a symposium on Media and Time, organised by Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, due to take place in Loughborough on 15-16 June 2017. 
 
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK
Professor Paddy Scannell, University of Michigan, USA
 
Media and communication technologies are inextricably bound up with the passage of time. Different forms and genres of mediated communication shape our sense of time in different ways, structure our daily routines, invite us to join in festive occasions, and help us manage the unexpected. They offer narratives and images of the past, contribute to the formation of collective memories, and help us imagine the future. Media are also themselves subjected to the passage of time: established forms of communication are unsettled by new technologies, as well as by the economic, political and cultural changes occurring in the society at large. Finally, media old and new play an important role in both furthering social change and reproducing the status quo, a fact that only becomes fully apparent once we study the media over a longer stretch of time.
 
Despite the ubiquitous presence of time in mediated communication, the relationship between the two has so far received only sporadic attention, and is often discussed across different disciplinary field and subfields. This two-day symposium seeks to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to discuss selected aspects of the relationship between media and time. The event will be organised around three key themes, each addressing a set of related questions:
 
·         Theme 1: The challenges of temporal comparison: While comparative media research typically engages with spatially defined units, it is also possible to apply comparison diachronically, across different points in time. What challenges are brought by shifting from a synchronic to a diachronic plane of comparison, and what are the possible solutions to them?
·         Theme 2: Times of memory, times of media: Remembering and mediation are of necessity time-bound practices, yet so far we know rather little about how the temporalities of memory and media interact. Does, for instance, the temporal organisation of mnemonic practices change depending on the temporality of the media form used? How do new technologies, both historically and today, impact on the perceptions of time passing and subsequently also on the way we remember past events?
·         Theme 3: The temporalities of media history: Engaging in historical research inevitably involves dealing with temporally bound phenomena, but the temporal character of historical developments in media is rarely explicitly reflected upon. What can be gained by paying more explicit attention to issues of temporality, such as periodization, the differing pace of historical change, or the relationships between simultaneous vs. successive developments? 
 
Convenors: Melodee Beals, Ele Belfiore, Emily Keightley, Thoralf Klein, Sabina Mihelj, Simone Natale, Alena Pfoser, James Stanyer and Peter Yeandle.
 
Please submit a c. 250 words abstract with a brief bio to Emily keightley ([email protected]) and Peter Yeandle ([email protected]) by Monday 12 December 2016.
 
Participants will be asked to contribute a small fee to cover meals and related expenses (up to £50, with a discount for PhD students and participants from low-income countries).

Call for Papers
CRCC symposium on Media and Time
Loughborough, UK, 15-16 June 2017
 
We are inviting applications for a symposium on Media and Time, organised by Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Culture and Communication, due to take place in Loughborough on 15-16 June 2017. 
 
Confirmed key-note speaker: Professor Paddy Scannell, University of Michigan
 
Media and communication technologies are inextricably bound up with the passage of time. Different forms and genres of mediated communication shape our sense of time in different ways, structure our daily routines, invite us to join in festive occasions, and help us manage the unexpected. They offer narratives and images of the past, contribute to the formation of collective memories, and help us imagine the future. Media are also themselves subjected to the passage of time: established forms of communication are unsettled by new technologies, as well as by the economic, political and cultural changes occurring in the society at large. Finally, media old and new play an important role in both furthering social change and reproducing the status quo, a fact that only becomes fully apparent once we study the media over a longer stretch of time.
 
Despite the ubiquitous presence of time in mediated communication, the relationship between the two has so far received only sporadic attention, and is often discussed across different disciplinary field and subfields. This two-day symposium seeks to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to discuss selected aspects of the relationship between media and time. The event will be organised around three key themes, each addressing a set of related questions:
 

• Theme 1: The challenges of temporal comparison: While comparative media research typically engages with spatially defined units, it is also possible to apply comparison diachronically, across different points in time. What challenges are brought by shifting from a synchronic to a diachronic plane of comparison, and what are the possible solutions to them?
  
• Theme 2: Times of memory, times of media: Remembering and mediation are of necessity time-bound practices, yet so far we know rather little about how the temporalities of memory and media interact. Does, for instance, the temporal organisation of mnemonic practices change depending on the temporality of the media form used? How do new technologies, both historically and today, impact on the perceptions of time passing and subsequently also on the way we remember past events?
  
• Theme 3: The temporalities of media history: Engaging in historical research inevitably involves dealing with temporally bound phenomena, but the temporal character of historical developments in media is rarely explicitly reflected upon. What can be gained by paying more explicit attention to issues of temporality, such as periodization, the differing pace of historical change, or the relationships between simultaneous vs. successive developments? 
  

 
Convenors: Melodee Beals, Ele Belfiore, Emily Keightley, Thoralf Klein, Sabina Mihelj, Simone Natale, Alena Pfoser, James Stanyer and Peter Yeandle.
 
Please submit a c. 250 words abstract with a brief bio to Emily Keightley ([email protected]) and Peter Yeandle ([email protected]) by Monday 12 December 2016.
 
Participants will be asked to contribute a small fee to cover meals and related expenses (up to £50, with a discount for PhD students and participants from low-income countries).