[acc-cca-l] CFP - Eyewitness Textures: User Generated Content & News Coverage in the 21st Century (May 23-24, 2019)

Michael Lithgow malithgow at gmail.com
Tue Jan 15 15:32:28 MST 2019


*Call for Papers: *



*Eyewitness Textures:
<https://symposiumamateurvideojournalism.wordpress.com/>**User Generated
Content & News Coverage in the 21st Century
<https://symposiumamateurvideojournalism.wordpress.com/>*



*CFP Extended Deadline:  January 20, 2019*



May 23-24, 2019, MacEwan University (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)



Among the many changes introduced by new media technologies to news
practices, the growing utilization of User Generated Content (UGC) is one
of the most challenging. Members of the public are capturing dramatic
events around the world and then sharing them, not only on social media
platforms, but with professional news media organizations which are eagerly
incorporating posts, tweets and images into professionally produced news
stories. The presence of amateur content in news discourses is a growing
phenomenon that is reshaping the profession of journalism, news coverage
and public expectations.



The issues raised by these practices often involve tensions between labour
precarity and professionalism, entertainment and evidence, centralized and
decentralized management of news rooms, traditional and emerging forms of
social media news narratives, truth and immediacy.



The symposium <https://symposiumamateurvideojournalism.wordpress.com/> will
bring together scholars and practitioners to share ideas and experiences in
connection with the utilization of UGC in professional news coverage.



Keynote Speakers



The *keynote speaker on May 23 *will be *Dr. Lilie Chouliaraki*, Professor
of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political
Science. Her main research interest lies in the histories and challenges of
mediated suffering. She is the recipient of three international awards for
her publications, more recently the Outstanding Book of the Year award of
the International Communication Association (ICA 2015, for ‘The Ironic
Spectator’). Dr. Chouliaraki’s work has focused on three domains in which
the human body-in-need appears as a problem of communication: i)  disaster
news, ii) humanitarian campaigns & celebrity advocacy, iii) war & conflict
reporting. She has published extensively on how digital platforms and
genres (twitter, mobile phone footage, selfies) are fundamentally changing
conflict reporting and the witnessing of war today. Her book on the topic,
entitled ‘Witnesisng without responsibility. Digital testimonies from
conflict zones’ is forthcoming in Columbia University Press. Her work has
been published in French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Greek and
(currently) in Chinese.



The *keynote speaker on May 24* will be *Dr. Mette Mortensen,* Associate
Professor of media studies at the University of Copenhagen and a CARGC
Faculty Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communication.

She is the Principal Investigator of the large, collective research project
“Images of Conflict, Conflicting Images” (2017-2021). She is the author or
editor of seven books, including the monograph *Eyewitness Images and
Journalism: Digital Media, Participation, and Conflict* (Routledge 2015).
She has published articles in international journals such as *Journalism
Practice*, *Information, Communication & Society*, *Media, Culture &
Society*, and *International Journal of Cultural Studies. *Moreover, she is
a member of the editorial collective of *Northern Lights: Yearbook of Film
and Media Studies *and serves on several editorial boards of book series.



Invited Participants



Among the invited talks will be presentations from Derek Thomson,
Editor-in-Chief of the Observer Program from *France24*; Padraic Ryan,
Senior Journalist, *Storyful*; Derek Bowler, Head of Social
Newsgathering, *Eurovision
News Exchange*; Paul Moore, Executive Producer of News, *CBC Edmonton*; and
Natalie Miller, Assistant Editor at the *BBC* *UGC Hub*.



 Call for Papers



We invite scholars to submit abstracts exploring one or more of the
following themes:



 1.   How is the use of UGC reorganizing professional practices?

   - User generated content and professionalism in news rooms
   - Role and significance of verification in news production
   - The problems of fake news when working with UGC
   - The growing shift of UGC onto private networks: threats and
   opportunities
   - The challenge and opportunities of new technologies for professional
   news rooms

2.   How is UGC transforming labour practices among journalists and the
structural organization of news media?

   - Changing labour practices in the newsroom
   - Changing structures, staffing and organization of news desks
   - Organizational changes and emerging business models
   - Emerging forms of produsers and precarious labour
   - Professional labour *vis-à-vis* labour of love

3.   How is UGC influencing the construction of meaning in news coverage?

   - The impact of user produced content on the form and aesthetic of
   visual news
   - Role of contextualization in UGC verification services
   - The influence of non-professional producers on news narratives,
   framing and agendas

4.   What are emerging themes and tensions in non-professional practices of
production?

   - Emerging motivations for creating UGC news content
   - Emerging practices and conventions for UGC production
   - Precarity and risk in UGC production

5.   What are the theoretical, methodological and historical considerations
helping to understand and explain the growing use of UGC in professional
news coverage?



**Other topics related to the above themes are welcome.



A selection of papers from the Symposium will be invited to participate in
an edited collection published by a university press.



*Deadline*: Abstracts (300-500 words, including references) should be
emailed to the convenors by *Jan 20, 2019 *clearly identified by “UGC 2019”
in the subject line. Email: *UGC2019Conf at gmail.com <UGC2019Conf at gmail.com>*



*Conference fees: $75 (CDN). *This includes lunch on May 24, a cocktail /
dinatoire reception after the Keynote Talk, and coffee / pastries during
breaks.



*ACCOMMODATIONS*: Rooms have been reserved with campus housing ranging from
$79 (Summer Suite) to $129 (Boutique Hotel Room). For more information
contact Guest Accommodation Services
<https://www.macewan.ca/wcm/CampusServices/GuestAccommodationServices/GuestRooms/index.htm>
directly.



For more information, got to the symposium website
<https://symposiumamateurvideojournalism.wordpress.com/> or contact Michael
Lithgow at: UGC2019Conf at gmail.com



Symposium Committee:



Dr. Michael Lithgow, Assistant Professor, Athabasca University (Edmonton,
Canada)

Dr. Michèle Martin, Professor Emerita, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)

Dr. Arnaud Mercier, Professeur, Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris, France)

Dr. Lucille Mazo, Professor, McKewan University (Edmonton, Canada)


-- 

Michael A Lithgow, MA, PhD
Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Athabasca University
Tel: (514) 983.1965
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucalgary.ca/pipermail/acc-cca-l/attachments/20190115/5edf4b1c/attachment.html


More information about the acc-cca-L mailing list