Department of Communication and Media | March 14th 2019 | Organisers: Annette Hill and Magnus Johansson

Mixed modes of storytelling abound in the contemporary media landscape. There are mixed genres, such as political comedy or docudrama, that mine the generic elements of information and entertainment to create storytelling based on real events. There are mixed modes of production and distribution, such as webisodes, or cross media content in scripted reality, attracting audiences from dispersed sites of reception. And there are the inter-generic spaces of media content, such as crime documentaries or podcasts, that draw upon the real world spaces of true life, the dramatised spaces of reconstructions, and the created for media spaces of studios, social media and live events. The inter-generic spaces of media signal the various pathways to engagement and disengagement with factual and fictional content, and the practices of audiences, users and producers as they criss-cross the media landscape. This international symposium critically examines media mixing, addressing both mixed modes of storytelling across genre and representation, transmedia narrative and aesthetics, and mixed modes of production, distribution and reception in the media landscape.

We invite contributions to this symposium on media mixing that address the theme from empirical and theoretical perspectives. The symposium seeks to debate the mixing of generic content within information and entertainment, and how this is connected to dispersed sites of production, distribution and reception contexts. Contributions ought to address the following areas of enquiry: media and democracy, news, fake news and political engagement, social activism, mimetic and visual cultures, cultural citizenship and popular culture, genre and representation, transmedia storytelling, media assemblage, media audiences, media and creative industries, distribution and piracy, amateur media, amongst other areas of inquiry.

The research questions include:

  1. How can we critically examine mixed modes of storytelling across news, radio and television, film, digital and social media?
  2. In what ways can we understand the inter-generic spaces of content in the contemporary media landscape?
  3. How can we research the opportunities and challenges of mixed modes of media production, distribution and reception?

Different approaches to research on media mixing can include media, communication and cultural studies, political communication, sociology and anthropology, cultural geography, media history, film studies, memory studies, amongst others.

Confirmed speakers include Simon Dawes (Universitè de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France) Joke Hermes (InHolland University, Netherlands), Annette Hill (Lund University, Sweden), Kristian Mller (IT University, Denmark), Anna Reading (King’s College London, UK), Jane Roscoe (University of West of England, UK).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words in English by December 11th 2018 to mediamixing@kom.lu.se.  For further information please consult cstonline.netwww.kom.lu.se/forskning/konferenser-och-natverkstraffar/media-mixing/

There is a registration fee of 800 SEK (85 Euros) that covers food and drink for the day and an evening buffet.