LSE Media and Communications PhD Symposium 2015
Struggle and Resistance in Media and Communications: Structure versus Agency?
Date: Friday 19 June 2015 Time: 09:00-18:00 Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE Keynote: Dr Bart Cammaerts Opening Address: Dr Myria Georgiou
Struggle and resistance against established and emerging hierarchies and hegemonies constitute one of the central themes in contemporary media and communications research. On one hand, struggle and resistance broadly constitute newsworthy content in the framework of media production practices. On the other, media are themselves used as tools of protest and participation by individuals, groups, and movements actively engaged in modes of struggle and resistance against power in various manifestations. Further, media as discursive and material social forms have long been subject to diverse challenges and contestations in their own right.
Explorations of this power/resistance dialectic are often considered analytically by drawing upon the opposition or dualism of structure and agency. To what extent do structure and agency serve as a useful heuristic for considering the sorts of questions posed by current scholarship in media and communications?
This symposium seeks to provide a forum for PhD students to engage with questions of struggle and resistance, or structure and agency, as they pertain to the media and communications landscape. We invite PhD students to explore these issues as they relate to the following topics:
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News, journalism and political communication
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Media technologies, big data and surveillance
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Communications labour and forms of work
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Agency, resistance and forms of protest
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Media regulation, institutions and globalization
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Media, ICTs and development
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Research approaches in media and communications
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Media and Communications Phd Symposium Struggle and Resistance in Media and Communications: Structures Versus Agency
PhD researchers from around the world — and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds — participated in a one-day symposium on June 19 focused on ‘Struggle and Resistance in Media and Communication: Structure Versus Agency.’ The event, hosted by the London School of Economics’ Media and Communications Department, highlighted current debates surrounding media as a key site of struggle in the contemporary world.
This symposium provided PhD students with an opportunity to engage with questions of hegemony and resistance in the media and communications.
PhD students explored several issues, including:
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News, journalism and political communication
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Media technologies, big data and surveillance
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Communications labour and forms of work
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Agency, resistance and forms of protest
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Media regulation, institutions and globalization
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Media, ICTs and development
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Research approaches in media and communications
Researchers highlighted their PhD research, provocative ideas and engaging questions.
The symposium was geared towards PhD candidates in the early stages of their research. The emphasis was on thoughtful discussion and engagement with fellow researchers, along with feedback from leading academics at the LSE Department of Media and Communications.
Keynote speaker Dr. Bart Cammaerts kicked off the one-day symposium with an address highlighting his research about the Occupy movement in the UK. Cammaerts outlined how Occupy ideas (or frames) reverberated through media and the larger public.
The event has been kindly supported by the Department of Media and Communications and the LSE’s Teaching and Learning Centre.
The symposium was organized by Paula Kiel, Anthony Kelly, James Deeley and Nora Kroeger.
Opening
09:00 Registration
09:30 Opening remarks: Dr. Myria Georgiou
09:45 Keynote speaker: Dr. Bart Cammaerts
Panel 1: Representing Resistance
Chair: Paula Kiel, Respondent: Dr. Myria Georgiou
10:30 Hannah Barton, Birkbeck, University of London
Memes of Protest
10:40 Eva Cheuk-Yin Li, King's College London
Festivalisation of Protest: A Study of Protest Art of Social Movements in Post-Colonial Hong Kong
10:50 İmge Yıldırım, Yeditepe University
Struggle and Resistance with Media through Media: An Extraordinary Case from Turkey
11:00 Ayesha Omer, New York University
Sit-ins with the Dead: Hazara Protests in Pakistan
11:10 Q&A
11:40 Coffee Break
Panel 2: Agency and Elites
Chair: Angelos Kissas, Respondent: Dr. Bart Cammaerts
11:55 Vladimir Cotal San Martin, Örebro Univeristy
It's Not You and Me!: Labour Media on the Web and the representation
of Workers' Working Conditions
12:05 Juan Ramos Martín, University of Salamanca
Rhizomatic Structures of Alternative and Community Media:
Influence on Bolivian Policy Making
12:15 Brooks DeCillia, LSE
Hegemony, Struggle & Resistance: The Contested Framing Dynamic of Canada's Military Mission in Afghanistan
12:25 Brieuc Lits, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Astroturfing: When Power Entities Create Their Own Resistance Movements
12:35 Nicholas Benequista, LSE
From Resistance to Recognition: Reconceptualizing Journalistic Autonomy After the Moral Turn
12:45 Q&A
13:15 Lunch Break
Panel 3: Conceptual and Structural Instabilities
Chair: Nora Kroeger, Respondent: Dr. Wendy Willems
14:15 César Jiménez-Martínez, LSE
From the Streets to the Stadiums: Struggling for the Image of Brazil in a Time of Crisis
14:25 José Antonio Brambila, University of Sheffield
The Subnational Comparative Approach in Communication Studies
14:35 Ayman Alrehaili, Nottingham Trent University
Media (re)organization in the Arab Spring Countries: How Social Media Redefined Journalism and the Wider Media in Egypt and Tunisia
During the Arab Spring
14:45 Richard Fern, University of Sheffield
Are Environmental Correspondents Extinct?
14:55 Q&A
15:25 Coffee Break
Panel 4: Agency - Virtual and Actual
Chair: Anthony Kelly, Respondent: Dr. Alison Powell
15:40 Rupert Knox, University of Sheffield
Exploring Mexico's Recent Human Rights-Based Resistance
Movements and the Role of Social Media
15:50 Güneş Tavmen, Birkbeck, University of London
Open Data in the City: Smart Citizens and Agency
16:00 Arash Anghaei, University of East London
Interactive Media, Female Participation and Democracy: Lessons from Iran's Green Movement
16:10 Jacob Johanssen, University of East London
Affect, Data Ownership and Agency
16:20 Q&A
Closing
16:50 Overall Response to Panels: Dr. Bart Cammaerts
17:00 Closing Discussion
17:30 Wine Reception
To download the symposium schedule, please click here. To download the book of abstracts, please click here.