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Working Group on ‘Diaspora and the Media’ Call For Papers

IAMCR 2007 conference - ‘Media, Communication, Information: Celebrating 50 years of Theories and Practices’, in Paris, France, July 23-25, 2007.

The working group successfully conducted its second sessions in Cairo in July 2006, and is calling for papers for a session of the working group meeting in Paris 2007, to continue to foster research in this exciting new field.

Media research and theory has given a great deal of attention over the last three decades to increasing flows of media products and services on a global scale, although it has only recently shown interest in the flows of people which the media tend to follow.

Migrants, refugees, sojourners, exiles, expatriates and especially diasporas of people who are living outside their actual or imagined homelands form markets for cultural or language-specific programming, both from global and local sources, and generally make use of the media in new and interesting ways. This fluid, adaptive relationship of media and people on a global basis has implications for national media and cultures, as we have known them, even for our understanding of the very concept of culture itself.  

Thus, as the relationship between diasporas and globalization is enhanced and intensified as a result of the transnationalization of the media, processes of reconfiguration of place, space and culture are set in motion which affect everyday life for diasporic communities.  Electronic media, old and new, increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, thus fostering the deterritorialization/ reterritorialization of diasporic identities, and challenging and transforming established notions of the nation-state; of tradition, heritage and citizenship; and of modes of belonging.

The Working Group is coordinated by Shehina Fazal together with John Sinclair, Annabelle Sreberny and Roza Tsagarrousianou  and aims to bring together interested researchers to discuss these processes and their broader implications, and to present empirical and theoretical work around the following general themes:

  • the interplay of the transnational & the local in diasporic communications
  • diasporic communications & diasporic identities
  • diasporic audiences & diasporic cultural politics
  • diasporic cultural production & consumption
  • the tension between integration, cultural separatism & hybridity

Deadlines:

Abstracts should be submitted to the coordinator before 15 February 2007 (revised submission date).  Approval of abstracts will be announced to prospective authors by 1 March 2007.  Further information and the regulations for papers are available here.

If you are interested in presenting a paper please send a message in the first instance to the coordinator- Shehina Fazal, mentioning your name(s), name of institution, and the title of your abstract/paper, so that we know what to expect.

Abstracts should contain

  • title of paper,
  • name(s) of author(s) including name of institution, postal address, telephone, fax and e-mail addresses,
  • the abstract text (at least 300 but not more than 500 words).