Welcome to Media Trends 2015: Power and Media: Ownership, Sponsorship, Censorship
A conference hosted by Webster Vienna Private University 10-12 September, 2015
We have lined up a diverse group of academics, media professionals, IGO and NGO representatives and students to critically analyze:
Click here for conference panels, full abstracts and biographies
Click here for the extended call for papers
We look forward to seeing you in Vienna!
Sarikakis: University of Vienna
Political disobedience and the fourth model of public service media in Europe: This paper explores in detail the concept and praxis of political disobedience in the process of the state's dismantling of public service media, with the specific example of Greece’s Hellenic Public Broadcaster and the model of self-governance developed and applied for 23 months. After a survey of the conditions of structural changes among PSBs in Europe, the paper discusses the motivations, dilemmas and challenges, legal, political and financial, in pursuing a sustainable form of political disobedience and establishing self-governance as the fourth model of public service broadcasting governance in Europe.
Rozgonyi: University of Vienna
The fading nature of ‘public interest’ in spectrum management - the governance of broadcast digitalization in Europe during the last decade: During the past decade the European and global digital switchover process (DSO) has implicated major changes on media markets, having severe impacts on media and electronic communications policy and regulation. The key expectations towards technological changes addressed critical policy goals, including more benefits to the citizens and the elimination of the information gap. The DSO is a special phenomenon in converging policy aspects: digitalization of broadcasting networks is at the crossroads of media and telecommunication policy and regulation; therefore the different approaches, rationales and interests of these distinct but related fields are present at the same time. The global and European trends of deregulation, liberalization and privatization of telecommunication, accompanied by the emerging concepts of the European Information Society and the single European information space - promoting a competitive digital economy and emphasizing the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a driver of inclusion and quality of life - have resulted in overwhelming representation of telecoms policy aspects during the DSO process, although named as an “integrated approach to information society and audiovisual media policies in the EU” (European Commission, 2005).
Wenzel: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Public funding of media organizations - democratic media performance? The situation in Switzerland:The thesis of this paper is that public funding of journalism is the most effective tool in order to safeguard democratic media performance (Kiefer 2011; McChesney 2014). In order to address this research question, central criteria of democratic news performance in a digital environment will firstly be identified. Secondly, look at the situation in Switzerland. The analysis will include structural data (organizational and journalists' routines, but also usage of their content) and content analysis in five different states.
Moderator: Alison Langley
Kwak: University of Sydney, Australia
Corporate influence on the media in South Korea: The case of Samsung: Since 1987, when South Korea achieved partial democracy, the state-media relationship has undergone a revolutionary change during a period of democratisation. However, it is questionable if the same phrase can be applied to the relationship between the business conglomerates and the media. In order to maintain their dominance of the market, mainstream (conservative) newspapers have consistently supported business conglomerates.
Degirmenci & Parlak: Pamukkale University, Turkey
From Doxasophus to victim journalists: Zaman newspaper journalists’ discursive metamorphosis: The Zaman newspaper is part of a media group which is directly aligned with the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen (and his movement, the Gülen Movement). In February 2011, Turkish police raided the OdaTV website and the homes of its owner and the journalists, and accused them of attempting to launch a coup against the government headed by Tayyip Erdogan. In this paper, we will explain the differentiation of Zaman newspaper's evaluation of the arrest of the journalists in 2011 and in 2014 through its relationship with the government. We will focus on how they built a discursive approach to the issues and explain those via examples from the articles.
Piasecki & Gresselmeyer: CVJM Hochschule - University of Applied Sciences, Kassel, Germany
Nudging: „Soft" mind-bending through politics and media: A modern issue for civil rights activists? This paper deals with the following questions: What is nudging and which danger accrues from it from the points of view of citizen rights and human rights? What roles do the media and social networks play in nudging? Since when and why is nudging used in politics and media as a method for paternalistic “correction of behavior" in general, and specifically in the USA, UK, and Germany? Which practical uses and, on the other hand, which dangerous uses does nudging have in our daily lives?
Nudging is a new way of influencing the process of making opinions and decisions. Through convincing arguments and motivation tactics citizens are pushed to a certain kind of behavior: to separate their waste, vote, volunteer, eat healthily, and other things. The will to manipulate and other dangers are undeniable, and yet nudging has become part of the governmental programs of the USA, UK, and recently Germany.
Elshhati: OFID, OPEC Fund for International Development, Vienna
E-diplomacy of the Islamic State: Increasingly, a wide range of new non-state actors, insurgencies and terrorist networks have utilized social media to engage in direct public diplomacy efforts on an international scale, enabling them to reach an international audience, and allowing for powerful statements to be made even with the absence of any media commentary. By analyzing the case of the Islamic State and its sophisticated use of social media in its communications with the international community, this paper seeks to further evaluate how the IS utilises media to guide public opinion.
Kaya: Ankara University, Turkey
Looking for lost integrity: Governmental censorship and journalistic dissent in Turkey: As the media sector becomes further incorporated in the capitalist class, the practices of censorship have undergone a change in form, moving further away from practices of direct pressure and control and more towards reinforcing the practices of self-control, avoidance and restraint in journalists’ everyday activities of newsmaking. This process has led to a shift from open and visible mechanisms of censorship to covert forms of censorship, which are singularly exemplified by the practices of self-censorship in Turkish media. This study is an attempt to peg down the mechanisms of self-censorship in the journalistic practice in Turkey through in-depth interviews with 28 reporters working in Turkish media; the conclusion is that latent forms of censorship have been more corrosive for journalistic practice in Turkey, as the mechanisms of self-censorship undermine the integrity of journalism as a whole rather than the possibility of performing journalistic work.
Löwstedt: Webster Vienna Private University
Postmodern racism and the media: The media treatment of police killings of Black Americans (and others) in the USA in recent months has raised questions about a possibly continued central role of race in power structures, not only in the USA. The blanket coverage of sometimes deteriorating relationships between Christians, Muslims and Jews in Europe, northern Africa, western Asia and elsewhere has highlighted related concerns in a more geo-strategic and slightly different ideological manner. What roles do the media play in race relations? According to postmodern theory, the media are increasingly crucial when it comes to the racial dimension of power. This paper is a theoretical research review and an attempt to point out both strengths and weaknesses of the postmodern analysis of the relationship between racism and the media.
Zeitel-Bank & Battisti: Management Center Innsbruck, Austria
Scrutiny of the Austrian media system in special consideration of asylum and refugees: This paper focuses on the media system in Austria with particular interest in the portrayal of asylum-seekers and refugees. The objective is to define conditions, processes and content issues in order to point out their influence on the mass media coverage of the mentioned topic. As a framework for analysis the concept of the three political dimensions – polity, politics and policy, is used
Benesch: University of Vienna, Austria
Transmedia storytelling - the flow of content across media: Transmedia storytelling is devoted to the question of how learning content is no longer linked only to a single medium. It has now become possible to learn by using a broad range of modern communication technologies such as games, books, events, cinema, television, social media and more. This enables one to reach full effects in recipients and represents a kind of logic for thinking about the flow of content across media. Learning contents are conveyed through multiple media, as no single medium corresponds throughout to the curiosity of all addressees. Due to the continuous use of transmedia storytelling, implicit learning in terms of constructivist learning theory is possible. Transmedia storytelling could be defined by radical intertextuality, multimodality and additive comprehension.
Birch: University of Cambridge, UK
The power of news: Journalism and the nineteenth century: The press was powerful, or deemed to be so, long before Frank Capra’s 1928 film, The Power of the Press. And modern pronouncements about the newspaper’s apparently imminent demise have by no
means banished this particular cliché to the margins. So much debate, in recent years, has turned on the media’s capacity to shape the public realm, and we need only turn to discussions in and around the Leveson Inquiry in the United Kingdom to identify a language of power and influence at work in modern reflections on the press. In this paper, I want to remind the audience that concerns about the scope of the newspaper’s power are in no way limited to modern times: the nineteenth century, in fact, saw numerous debates about the nature (and limits) of the media’s influence. I hope to outline the nineteenth-century’s conception of press power. I will also aim to evoke various theoretical perspectives crucial to these concerns – not least those of Michel Focuault and Marc Angenot.
Skeie: Webster University Geneva
Life after genocide: The story is about a person going back to his childhood neighbourhood of Mugina, Gitarama, around an hour away from the capital Kigali in Rwanda. Reverien lost his entire family in the 1994 genocide. All 43 of his family members were killed in front of him – the killers thought he was dead as well. Reverien was 15 years old. Today, Reverien lives in Switzerland. Last New Year, we went back to visit his village. On our way, we also visited some of the people he met while at the Red Cross field hospital. Javier is one, she was 11 years old in 1994; today, she lives in Kibungo, near the border with Tanzania. She is paralysed from her neck down. Prior to going to Rwanda, the same topic was approached, investigated and documented in Bosnia. The presentation will be about how to prepare and come to the stories that develop while one investigates a topic such as this.
Moderator: Monika Schwärzler-Brodesser
Screening
Interview with the film's director by another award-winning documentary filmmaker with a discussion about the power of the documentary film and the information media in general.
Kathy Corley has enjoyed teaching at Webster University's St. Louis, Leiden and Geneva campuses since 1985. As someone who practices what she teaches, she is an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened in international film festivals and on PBS and national cable channels. Corley's filmmaking career covers documentaries, narrative film, video art and new media performance art. She coordinates the documentary production and film studies programs in the School of Communications.
Corley is the recipient of the 2005 Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 2005 Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. She also has been honored with teaching awards from Webster University's Media Association and Women of Webster organizations.
Trionfi: International Press Institute, Vienna
On the importance of freedom of expression and information in Arab countries and communities: More than four years after the Arab Spring the press freedom situation in most countries in the Arab world is, according to many observers, even worse than before the 2011 upheaval. Today, journalists in most Arab countries are faced not only with restrictive laws, but also with torture, murder, attacks, deliberate targeting, kidnapping and detention, security and investigative summons by authorities, confiscation, and barring of information. What are the reasons for this failure to bring about greater press freedom? What are the challenges that journalists face today in covering Arab countries? This speech will focus on the situation in Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan, and look at trends, commonalities and differences.
Abou Zeid: Ain Shams University, Egypt
Egyptian television challenges in the 21st century: Egyptian television is facing many challenges in the 21st century, mainly because Egypt has witnessed two revolutions - 25 January, 2011 and 30 June, 2013. This has lead to a dramatic change in political life in Egypt, and Egyptians are waiting for and expecting a dramatic change in media. This research studied the challenges that face Egyptian public television in the 21st century, outlining the relationship between media and the different powers influencing Egyptian television from the points of view of the cultural and political elites. The researcher conducted a survey of 50 members of Egyptian cultural and political elites including university professors, authors, journalists, politicians, activists, actors, actresses, singers, athletes, bankers and television presenters to ask how Egyptian media should be organized for democracy to exist.
Gollatz & Ganguli: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society; The London School of Economics and Political Science, Germany/UK
“You own your content, but…” - Tracing changing notions of ownership over user content in social media platforms’ policies: Owing to the widespread reluctance to create statutes combined with the proclivity of social media platforms for contracts (Bygrave, 2013), the ownership of digital content, especially those generated by users are increasingly being controlled through platforms’ Terms of Service (ToS). These ToS constrain ownership by defining “what the consumer is allowed to do” (Brown, 2013). Drawing on philosophical approaches for justification of ownership, we track the evolution of control over ownership by analyzing the changes in ToS across varied social media websites. We selected six major social media platforms with diverse features - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and LinkedIn. We apply a philosophical approach to corporate policy making that advances our understanding of the policies that govern the control and ownership of user content. Second, we develop a system of categorization, which allows us to conceptualize the notion of ownership over data and content in commercial online settings. Finally, we highlight how this notion has changed in an increasingly intermediated online communication environment.
Smith: Webster University St Louis, USA
How the website "YouNow" changes the typical media power structure: The triumph of Web 2.0 technologies has been the democratization of content production. We are no longer held captive solely by outlets controlled by government or corporate entities thanks to the Web. In addition, consumers are no longer passive, we crave interactivity. There is perhaps no better example of this revolution than the website YouNow, which offers streaming television-like programs of anyone with a cell phone or a webcam. My presentation in Vienna will consider a YouNow overview, an analysis of the user demographics as well as any corporate sponsorship that live-streamers may be using. I would also demonstrate a way in which YouNow could be used as a teaching tool in a university-flipped classroom, where students are empowered to take control of their own learning through media.
Duffy: Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA
A look at global norms surrounding media law: While definitions of free expression can vary widely from country to country, judiciaries and other bodies agree on many areas regarding the regulation of speech and the media. This talk will explore the emerging “global norms” that can be found by surveying the legal environment in many nations, particularly those that value good journalism and robust free speech. These global norms are particularly recognized by agencies inside the United Nations and the rulings of International Regional Courts such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Ferreira: Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal
Marketing strategies of political engagement: Aristotle's Rhetoric is an important legacy to this field of study because the philosopher presents a definition of rhetoric, its object and how the speaker should argue to effectively reach an audience. We begin with a reference to the concept of ethos because we understand that this is no more than the character or profile that shows while the speaker utters his speech and that, in our view, corresponds to the image that the speaker/political entity broadcasts. We will focus on the upgrading of political discourse, subjected to grammar specific language of the media and their aesthetic standards, generating - and asking - new skills of politicians, such as knowledge about the target, good appearance and image management but also about anything that concerns audiences in order to create engagement.
Rodriguez-Amat: Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Phatic rules: From communicative contents to spaces of interaction: Cloud and data enclosures, ubiquitous computing, software and social networking sites, interface and mobile research, geolocated media or information and big data are concepts that do not go easily together. They coincide under timely coordinates but seem to refer to disperse aspects of a complex environment of technological developments. However, these areas can all be understood as symptoms of a fundamental epistemological shift that opens a discussion on ownership, legitimacy, governance and power. This paper explores the diverse facets of available literature and identifies the theoretical and empirical frames from which this field can be explored. The intention is to elaborate a conceptual map that deals with the extension of what seems to be a major epistemological and theoretical communicative shift in the governance of media-information.
Moderator: Anthony Löwstedt
Sakai: Bunkyo University, Japan
Responsibility of media studies for information governance in relation to nuclear power technology: The Japanese media fell short in its monitoring of the nuclear accident in Fukushima, which was unquestionably a manmade disaster brought about by neglect and “law of the nuclear power village,”. Prior to the disaster, citizens had believed that nuclear power plants are safe and information disclosure is unnecessary. Employing a framework that draws concepts from sociology and media studies, the current research aims to clarify the different contexts for nuclear power policy, on which coverage by the Japanese media has been unsatisfactory, and help enhance the practice of information management as regards nuclear power technology. Toward this end, this study analyzed news articles on the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster gathered from newspapers and websites.
Kovarova-Simecek: Fachhochschule St. Pölten, Austria
Financial illiteracy as a supportive aspect of the failure of financial journalism: One of the most notable features of a financial crisis has been the post-crisis critique of financial journalism. This criticism is based upon the normative expectation that financial journalism can and should prevent financial crisis by reporting the emerging evidence of a possible collapse and alerting the public to the signs a catastrophe (Manning 2012; Ragas, Tran 2014). Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.
Sterba: St John's University / College of St. Benedict, USA
Corporate pressure on U.S. TV series content as exemplified by Joss Whedon’s battle with Fox over Dollhouse and Firefly: Fox Television is a noticeably schizophrenic corporation. The company divides into a conservative news branch and a television entertainment division that strove to be alternative and innovative in order to attract an audience and guarantee it success as the up-and-coming, fourth network in the 1980s and 1990s. Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and Firefly series were heavily leaned on and modified by the network in terms of content. In examining network treatment of the shows, it seems that neither Theodor Adorno’s model of culture industry pablum for the masses nor Walter Benjamin’s vision of a new free technology for the masses can explain the tenor of the Whedon shows that ended up being broadcast.
Moderator: TBA
