Call for Papers: Emotional Publics and Political Feelings in Participatory Media, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Call for Papers
Emotional Publics and Political Feelings in Participatory Media
6 July 2017, University of Amsterdam
Organised by the research group “Participatory Cultures: post-socialist new media cultures” (UvA)
Supported by ARTES and SPIN, UvA
Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2017
Keynote speakers:
Dr. Joke Hermes, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Department of Media and Culture
Prof. Dr. Joep Leerssen, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Department of European Studies
The workshop “Emotional Publics and Political Feelings in Participatory Media” aims to bring together scholars whose research considers the role of emotions in the performance and articulation of political identities in the participatory spaces of everyday media.
The pervasiveness of media, the ‘everydayness’ that stems from their accessibility, has dramatically changed the scope, the scale, and the nature of political participation. Placing such everyday media in focus, this workshop will be a platform for work on emotional citizenship, or the emotional and affective articulation of belonging to a larger group such as (but not limited to) the nation.
Much of the articulation of political subjectivity in everyday media, in the form of audience call-ins, micro-blogs, or tweets and social networking, is pervaded with emotion. These spaces, usually not regarded as political, involve affective participation more often than ‘rational’ debate. This affective participation bears tremendous significance as the routine political talk that sustains democracies.
We therefore encourage workshop papers to focus on participatory media as a cultural space that mediatises emotions in these acts of everyday politics. The acknowledgement that communities are bound together by emotional ties and emotional vocabularies compels us to consider at what point these communities can be said to constitute ‘publics.’ What forms of engagement, conversations, or interactions can be considered political, and what makes social networks, fan communities, or twitter communities ‘publics’? We expect contributions to address the dynamic between online and offline engagement in this regard. We also invite our participants to think about how emotions render the personal political in all such instances, and how they affect styles of political interaction and engagement. What kinds of topics and issues of common interest become rallying points for people’s participation, and what vocabularies and discursive tools become available to them?
We welcome papers that are concerned with both West and East Europe, and would be equally open to papers on the transnational nature of participatory media and their role in fostering cosmopolitan emotions and political participation.
Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.
We intend to publish selected workshop papers in book form.
Please submit an abstract of no longer than 250 words which includes your name and institutional affiliation to politicalfeelingsworkshop@gmail.com (organisers: Dr. Sudha Rajagopalan and Dr. Krisztina Lajosi-Moore).