Reframing the Nation: Media Publics and Strategic Narratives - Call for papers‏

CALL FOR PAPERS
Reframing the Nation: Media Publics and Strategic Narratives
18-19 May 2009 The Open University, Hawley Crescent, Camden Town, London.
A two-day international workshop Nation states have always used the media to project strategic nationalnarratives on the world stage. But recent shifts in geopolitical anddiplomatic imperatives, especially the 'war on terror', and the changingdigital media ecology, have generated new kinds of public diplomacyinitiatives. For example, the BBC World Service, funded by the UKForeign and Commonwealth Office, has recently cut radio services inEastern Europe to make way for BBC Arabic and Persian TV channels, withaccompanying tri-platform online services (text, audio and video). Theseinitiatives place high value on interactive debate, citizen journalism,and user generated content. But does such interactivity reallycontribute to the BBC's declared aim of fostering a 'globalconversation', i.e. democratic debate in the Muslim world in particular?And is a coherent strategic narrative about British interests abroadprojected by these channels? Several English-language transnational television channels recentlylaunched, including Al Jazeera English, Press TV (Iran), CCTV9 (China),France 24, and Russia Today. They pose further questions about strategicnarratives and public diplomacy in the new media ecology. Diasporicgroups, increasingly connected via digital media, are being recognisedas exploitable for diplomacy purposes. States can mobilise citizens bothat home and abroad in diplomatic media initiatives via internet chatrooms and news discussion sites. How are we to research and evaluatechanging configurations of media 'audiences' or 'publics', and the usesof digital diasporas by states for diplomacy purposes? And what aboutthe ways in which diaspora actors use digital media to challengestrategic national narratives? The media are essentially storytelling machines. When politicalnarratives represent future-oriented identity claims, they typicallyinvoke the past in order to articulate distinctive national positions onevents, issues, policy domains, or a country's place in world politicalnarratives. As social lives and political events become more open tobeing digitally recorded, narrated, stored and transported inunpredictable ways, the potential for citizens to disrupt such strategicnarratives and public diplomacy efforts also grows. Can citizenjournalism and digital storytelling constitute an effective form ofresistance to strategic national narratives? At a moment when emerging state powers such as China, India, and the EUpose a challenge to US pre-eminence globally, there is a need forcomparative studies of how citizens as well as state, political, andmilitary actors are using media to reframe and/or contest nationalnarratives. This exploratory workshop addresses these dynamics through discussion ofstudies of how the 'strategic narratives' of nation-states and also oftransnational actors, like the EU, are projected and interpreteddomestically and internationally. It brings together scholars fromSociology, Media Studies, Political Communications and InternationalRelations to address these key questions: * How can we identify, analyse and assess the impact of strategicnarratives? * How are configurations of audiences and publics changing as aresult of migration and media technologies, and how do such changesaffect the meanings and practices of (mediated) citizenship? * How do strategic narratives translate (or not) across linguisticor cultural boundaries within and/or between nations? * How do state actors work with the media, the military, NGOs,corporations, and other institutions to project strategic narratives? * How do political leaders assimilate international events intoestablished national narratives and/or change the narratives? * How do media users respond to attempts to shift strategicnational narratives? * What difference do strategic narratives make to internationalalliances, military interventions, and the domestic legitimacy ofleaders? * What forms of knowledge and understandings of history are drawnupon in mobilising and/or challenging strategic narratives? * What methodological tools (from the Arts and Humanities and theSocial Sciences) can help us research and interpret the political,social and cultural significance of strategic national narratives? Please send an abstract (150 words max) by 20th April to Karen Ho:k.d.ho@open.ac.uk . For further information contact either Marie Gillespie(m.gillespie@open.ac.uk) or Ben O'Loughlin (Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk) orcall Ben on 01784 443153. The exploratory workshop is funded by the Open University's ESRC Centrefor Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) and the New PoliticalCommunication Unit and the Centre for European Politics at RoyalHolloway College. It is also supported by the Centre for GlobalPolitical Economy at the University of Sussex. Dr. Ben O'LoughlinLecturer in International RelationsRoyal HollowayUniversity of LondonDepartment of Politics and International RelationsEghamSurreyTW20 0EX Tel: +44 (0)1784 443153Email: Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk Homepage: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/politics-and-IR/About-Us/OLoughlin/Blog: newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/npcu-blog/Book: Television and Terror<http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=275721%20> Journal: Media, War & Conflict <http://www.sagepub.co.uk/mwc>