Eva Bognar, Kate Coyer and CMDS Fellows Present their Work at the 2016 IAMCR Conference
The annual conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), took place at the University of Leicester, July 27-31 with more than 1,300 papers and panels to be presented. Acting executive director of CMDS, Eva Bognar presented new research on “Media representation of the refugee crisis in the Hungarian and Austrian media” in the panel entitled “Representations and refugees”, while Kate Coyer, director of the Center’s Civil Society and Technology project presented research as part of the Center’s work on the VOX-Pol project in the session “Problematic uses of ICTs”, where she presented research from her forthcoming report on social media and violent extremism online. Kate also participated in a UNESCO roundtable entitled “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development”, and presented her work on communication access for refugees in the session “Digital Cultures and New Platforms Speakers”, where she was joined by non-resident CMDS fellow, Arne Hintz, who also presented work in the panel on “Regulating the Surveillance State: Policy Reform in the UK After Snowden”.
Reflecting on the conference, Eva Bognar said: “The annual conference of IAMCR is always a fantastic opportunity to connect and re-connect with colleagues from around the globe and to present our work to the community of researchers and practitioners working in our field. IAMCR strongly encourages us to reflect and engage with current state of affairs. The fact that most of our Turkish colleagues were not able to attend the conference because the Turkish government imposed a ban on foreign travel for academics was probably the strongest reminder of the sincerity of alarming trends threatening people`s lives and freedoms globally. Our colleagues were sorely missed.”
Other speakers of the IAMCR conference include non-resident CMDS fellows Sandra Ristovska, who presented her paper “From Activism to Advocacy: An Examination of the Role of Video in Human Rights Work” in the section entitled “Video, Film and Participation in Community and Alternative Media”, Lina Dencik, who presented “Mobilising 'Data Justice': Reframing digital surveillance in relation to social justice” on “Activism and Civil Society in Relation to Media and Communication”, Susan Abbott, who presented her research in the panel on “Media and the Development Challenge: New Frontiers in International Media Development Research”. Omar Al-Ghazzi, who was a guest lecturer of our Media and Change series in January 2016, presented his paper “Making sense of the global digital news ecology: Power dynamics in the reporting of Syria” in the session “Citizen Journalism and the Construction of History in the Making” and “A Grendizer phenomenon? Japanese anime and revolutionary nostalgia in Syria” in the session entitled “Looking Forward by Looking Backwards: Nostalgia as an Agent of Change”.
The abstracts of the papers presented at IAMCR are available for download at the following link: http://iamcr.org/leicester2016/abstract-books