[acc-cca-l] Webinar: Promotional culture and society: Taking a global perspective

[Sibo Chen]

[△EXTERNAL]


Hi, Everyone,

Apologies for cross-posting. I am part of a webinar that discuss the new Sage Handbook of Promotional Society and Culture<https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-promotional-culture-and-society/book281570>. If you are working on critical public relations or related topics, please feel free to join us,

Best regards
Sibo
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Promotional culture and society: Taking a global perspective
Tuesday 10 March 2026, 5-6.30pm

Online event - register here<https://lse.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2vi7XBc_Sr6sJPWMBLdsDw#/registration>

This webinar examines the nature of contemporary promotional cultures and societies, as they have evolved in different global contexts. The panel will feature contributors from the new Sage Handbook of Promotional Society and Culture<https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-handbook-of-promotional-culture-and-society/book281570>, who explore how promotional ecologies, identities and practices shift across geographies, audiences and industries, to shape our environments in different ways. Focusing on marginalised voices and cross-cultural scholarship, the panel echoes the mission of the Handbook, to dewesternise academic discussions of promotion through contributions from and about a broad range of countries and contexts beyond the Global North, providing a well-rounded picture of promotion as the international phenomenon it is today. By reflecting on the questions of what promotional culture is today, how it has evolved, and where it is practiced and by whom, this webinar will give participants essential food for thought about current and future research and debates in this dynamic field.

Speakers: Dr Sibo Chen, Dr Nova Gordon-Bell, Professor Mehita Iqani and Professor Burçe Çelik.
Respondent: Dr Clea Bourne.
Chair: Professor Lee Edwards.

Presentations and bios
The Political Economy of Environmental Communication: The Chinese Context
This presentation addresses the ways in which environmental communication in China is shaped not only by internal economic interests and political imperatives, but also by the Chinese government’s geopolitical ambitions of environmental leadership. On the one hand, a domestic focus on harmonious ‘ecological civilization’, where humans and nature co-exist, may be positive for the environment. On the other, it is in practice a top-down imposition in which citizens have little say. From this perspective, Chen argues, China’s promotional claims of environmental concern reflect a performance of ‘green nationalism’ that serves to legitimize its aspiration for global leadership.

Sibo Chen, PhD is an Associate Professor at the School of Professional Communication, Toronto Metropolitan University. His research interests lie in the intersections of environmental communication, risk and crisis communication, social media, and transcultural political economy. Currently, he serves as Business Manager of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Co-Vice Chair of the Environment, Science & Risk Communication Section at International Association of Media and Communication Research.

Promotional Culture(s): Rediscovering and Revisiting Ideology: The Case of Jamaica
In the Caribbean as in other parts of the world, digital content production has been heralded as democratising influence, a remedy to cultural imperialism in the global south. Despite the spread of entrepreneurial, self-managed content production over the past decade, Gordon-Bell historical investigation of promotion from colonial times finds that Jamaica’s promotional sector has always been in the hands of elite groups. Gordon-Bell argues that promotional culture may be understood to serve both a civic and ideological function, often directly involved in potentially explosive social and cultural contexts, including political conflict. 

Nova Gordon-Bell, PhD is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the Caribbean School of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies, Mona. With a background in newspaper journalism, Dr Gordon-Bell brings professional experience across journalism, public education, and advertising to her scholarship in media and communication studies. Her research and teaching focus on Caribbean media, society and culture.

Enter the “Sci-Fluencer”? Personal Branding, Race, and Gender in Online Science Communication
In this presentation, Mehita Iqani explores intersections between promotional communication and science communication through the phenomenon of ‘sci-fluencers’ – science experts whose popular content raises questions about the place of science in promotional culture. Taking two cases of women scientists of colour, @TeamKorie and @OnlineKyne, Iqani explores the unique matrix of gendered performance, promotional rhetoric, and science communication to interrogate promotional culture’s inherently exploitative commercial logic on marginalised identities and femininity. 

Mehita Iqani, PhD is Research Professor of Science Communication in the Journalism Department at Stellenbosch University. She is the author of African Luxury Branding (Routledge, 2023), Garbage in Popular Culture (SUNY, 2019), Consumption, Media and the Global South (Palgrave, 2016) and Consumer Culture and the Media (Palgrave, 2012) and has also published widely in journals.

The Promotional Pillar of Enduring Authoritarian-Populist Regimes: The Case of Islamic Charities in Erdoğan’s Turkey
Focusing on the political sphere, Burçe Çelik uses the example of Turkish President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party to offer a valuable lesson in how networks of promotional power can consolidate dominance in ways that are almost impossible to unpick. She discusses how President Erdoğan’s institutional and material power is embedded in the daily lives of Turkish citizens not only through the work of Islamic charities, but also through those charities’ promotional work to confirm President Erdoğan’s legitimacy. She argues that we must acknowledge the structural and structuring power of promotional culture in authoritarian and other contexts, to fully understand the interrelationship between promotion, politics and power. 

Burçe Çelik, PhD is Professor of Politics and History of Communications in the Institute for Creative Futures at Loughborough University, London. Her research focuses on (geo)politics of media and communications, political economy and social history of communications, decolonial thought, and the Middle East. Her latest monograph is titled, Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History, published by University of Illinois Press in 2023.

Respondent
Dr Clea Bourne, PhD is a Reader in Media and Market Studies in the School of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her current research examines technologies, markets and inequalities. Clea is the author of Public Relations and the Digital: Professional Discourse and Change, co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Promotional Culture and Society, and co-editor of Entangled Legacies of Empire: Race, Finance and Inequality. She has published widely in journals such as AI and Ethics, Journal of Marketing Management, Public Relations Inquiry, and New Media and Society. Clea is also an Associate Editor of the journal Economy and Society.

Chair
Lee Edwards is Professor of Strategic Communications and Public Engagement in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She teaches about strategic communications from a socio-cultural perspective, engaging with questions of power, social context, and inequalities that characterise the contemporary global communications industries and their practices. She has three main strands of research: first, how power operates in and through the promotional industries, and public relations in particular.

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I work flexibly and may send emails outside normal working hours. Please do not feel any pressure to respond outside of your own work schedule.

Sibo Chen (he/him)
Associate Professor & Associate Chair
School of Professional Communication
Interim Graduate Program Director
TMU-York Joint Program in Communication and Culture
Toronto Metropolitan University (Formerly Ryerson University)

We acknowledge that Toronto is in the 'Dish With One Spoon Territory’. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect.
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