ABSTRACT. Sarah Atkinson is Professor of Screen Media at King’s College London, Editor of Routledge Resources Online: Screen Studies, and co-editor of Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Sarah has published widely on the film, cinema, screen, and immersive technology industries. She is currently an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow and curator of GLOW: Illuminating Innovation, a new exhibition which showcases ground-breaking creativity by women in technology at various locations on Strand Aldwych, London. The exhibition stems from her forthcoming book with Vicki Callahan: Mixed Realities: Gender & Emergent Media (Wayne State University Press, 2025).

The creative technology industry faces a deepening crisis, where progress has been hindered by economic conditions and systemic exclusion of women and marginalised groups, with women remaining significantly underrepresented. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023 reveals that women comprise a mere 29.2% of all STEM workers.

This talk presents outcomes from research into the experiences of women, non-binary, and trans individuals in creative production using emerging digital technologies. These include the ground-breaking exhibition “GLOW: ILLUMINATING INNOVATION” which showcased the transformative artistic contributions of women spanning five decades. These creative trailblazers propelled technological advancements into the mainstream, despite inequities and funding disparities that previously led to the neglect and oversight of their significant innovations.

To transcend the current crisis of technocratic mediocrity – characterised by the unexceptional and socially unaware systems that perpetuate inequity, and which yet again threatens to undermine and obscure those at the heart of genuine creative innovation – this talk proposes a Feminist Futurism.

Feminist Futurism is shaped by creative risk-taking and artistic experimentation, breaking free from the caution and stagnation that characterize the present state of technological development. It is an urgent call to transcend the limitations of existing technology-driven systems and to create a future that is equitable, innovative, and socially conscious.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the reception, appropriation and digital distribution of movements like Black Lives Matter and Decolonize This Place in the Czech Republic. We deliver preliminary findings of interviews conducted with 20 key players from the spheres of journalism, activism, art and academia. From the information obtained, we trace the origin of this concern, seek the participants' roles within the movements and analyze communication strategies through which the goals of the movements are communicated. Depending on the platform used, respondents tend to choose different strategies in their digital communication and they consider the struggle a long-run. Although the self-description of the key players' activities could be considered as a part of the digital global action, they do not explicitly call themselves members of the movements or even oppose such signification, having specific local conditions in mind.

ABSTRACT. Greenpeace is one of the most prominent international environmental organisations. It has grappled for many decades with how to tackle environmental crises, and in recent years has campaigned on the intersection between the environment and social justice. This organisational shift was most notably recognised in the development of Greenpeace International’s Alternative Futures (AF) campaign in 2020. The AF campaign challenges the idea that there is a singular economic model that all countries must adhere to, and instead aims to spark system change by giving precedence to existing alternative socio-economic models, particularly those from non-western societies, that value equality, diversity, collaboration, and wellbeing.

This paper presents findings from an analysis of a year-long online ethnography into the dynamics, formation, and communication tactics of Greenpeace International’s AF campaign. To do so, a frame analysis, corpus linguistics, and multimodal analysis were employed to analyse interviews with key AF staff, over 500 internal campaign documents, as well as Instagram and TikTok content.

The paper discusses how the AF campaign diagnostically framed the problem, and the cause of current crises, around capitalism. It considers the AF campaign’s understanding and definition of capitalism, as well as how ‘capitalism’ came to be framed, and reframed in the AF campaign’s public outputs. Finally, the paper considers the AF campaign’s core diagnostic frame of a pluriverse, which calls for a society composed of many different socio-economic models, and what this might entail and mean for our future.

ABSTRACT. Critical research centres on emancipation, empowerment and social change. This aligns with the drive for academic research to have “impact”, to influence policy, and to facilitate action that brings about change. A state of permacrisis would suggest a need for critical research that questions the hegemonic state and promotes activism. However, there are very few empirical critical studies for researchers to draw upon for guidance (Myers and Klein 2011; Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000; Howcroft and Trauth, 2004). Further, research in progress which builds on Richardson and Robinson (2007) suggests there are few studies from the critical perspective.

At the same time, we have seen high profile media (documentaries, TV dramas, celebrity campaigns) that have challenged power structures and brought injustices to public attention. The recent UK ITV drama Mr Bates V The Post Office brought the scandal of a 20-year long battle with subpostmasters and Fujitsu Horizon system failure to the fore. It took a TV drama to effect the legal and political action and highlight the injustices.

We will present a number of case studies where we use Alvesson and Deetz's (2020) three elements, insights, critique and transformative redefinition as a framework for our analysis, the three elements are central to conducting critical research. We will demonstrate how, without being explicitly linked to critical theory, high profile media such as documentaries or TV dramas, show elements of critical research and are able to challenge taken for granted assumptions about the status quo. Finally, we will ask what critical researchers can learn from this.

References Alvesson, M & Deetz, S (2020), Doing Critical Research, SAGE Publications Ltd. Howcroft, D., & Trauth, E.M. (2004). The Choice of Critical Information Systems Research. Relevant Theory and Informed Practice. Richardson, H., and Robinson, B. (2007), The mysterious case of the missing paradigm: a review of critical information systems research 1991-2001, Information Systems Journal (17:3) 2007, 251-270. Myers, M. D., Klein, H. K., (2011). A Set of Principles for Conducting Critical Research in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 35 (1), 17-36.

ABSTRACT. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2008-15) was formed to examine Canada’s Indian Residential Schools system, which had forcibly removed children from their families and communities since the 19th century, and its devastating effects on generations of indigenous citizens. Although it concluded that the system was a “policy of cultural genocide” and produced a list of “94 Calls to Action” in an attempt to repair relations, the commission was criticised as being ineffective; however, it did bring the issue of the residential schools to the forefront of the public consciousness and acknowledge a trauma that had been previously forgotten or denied. The trauma, however, has still not been addressed; in 2021, after the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia, multiple commemorative events were held across Canada to protest the lack of action by state and provincial authorities. In response, the Canadian government pledged to fund the creation of a national monument to commemorate the victims of the Indian Residential School system, and are currently debating how this will be achieved. This presentation examines how Canada’s Indian Residential Schools have been recently represented in select Canadian museums and other commemorative sites. Building on Raymond Williams’s notion of “structures of feeling” – feelings and affective states that are associated with a group at a specific time and place that are captured and evoked in art and culture – this presentation examines how these sites do not only represent the trauma that occurred, but also provide affective experiences to the viewer/visitor, thus commemorating the victims and the traumas experienced in both cognitive and affective ways.

ABSTRACT. Historically, the mass media has been male-dominated and defined in masculinised terms, with female journalists largely relegated to “soft” news and women’s interest articles, or so the story goes. Research combining gender and journalism studies has sought to explore and challenge these traditional narratives. Moreover, recent oral history projects of women in journalism have endeavoured to not only preserve women’s voices, but to uncover hidden counter-narratives that reveal their critical importance in the field. In combining the areas of oral history and journalism, the intersects of two forms of storytelling produce a novel articulation, drawing on similar techniques while differing in other important areas. Added to this, there are the challenges and dynamics of turning an oral history focus upon a group of people themselves accustomed to a specific, journalistic style of interviewing. The presentation will discuss some of these complexities through a new oral history project exploring the experiences of women in print journalism in Scotland. The project itself focuses on the period c. 1960 to 1999, spanning four decades of rapid social, cultural, political, and economic change to explore the barriers they may experienced and impacts they had on the profession and wider socio-cultural change.

ABSTRACT. The escalation of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination encountered by Chinese migrants has become increasingly pronounced in the global context, particularly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (He et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). This study investigates the different forms of racism experienced by Chinese migrants in the UK and Germany, and how they exhibit resilience by employing various social media platforms to tackle racialised incidents and foster digital solidarity within migrant communities.

Digital ethnography is employed to observe and examine how Chinese migrants articulate their encounters of racism, race-based discrimination and exclusion, and involvement in anti-racism activism on several Chinese and international social media platforms (e.g., WeChat, Facebook, Little Red Book, Douyin, Tiktok, and Twitter). Simultaneously, semi-structured interviews are conducted to interrogate Chinese migrants’ racialised experiences and their practices for utilising social media to navigate these challenges in the UK and Germany (during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic age).

Preliminary findings indicate, first, that encountering racism and race-related discrimination, particularly in covert and subtle forms, has become increasingly ‘normalised’ in the everyday lives of some Chinese migrants residing in the UK and Germany. Second, our migrant participants engage in diverse digital activities across multiple social media platforms to cope with their racialised experiences, including for instance, (a) posting/sharing their stories through texts, images, and videos on their individual social media channels and within chat groups, (b) commenting on others’ posts of racialised. encounters to express support, and (c) participating in both digital and offline anti-racism advocacy and activism. Notably, these digital activities enabled by various social media platforms play a significant role in assisting Chinese migrant participants in releasing their negative emotions like fear, depression, and anger resulting from racailised incidents, seeking and obtaining emotional support, comfort, and a sense of security, developing strategies to tackle racial discrimination, forming communities and forging digital solidarity to combat racism, discrimination, and exclusion.

This research contributes to enriching the current body of studies on racism, particularly anti-Chinese racism, and the digital practices of migrant communities as they confront racial discrimination and inequalities. Our findings provide valuable insights and implications regarding the use of digital media as pivotal spaces for migrants to establish communities and virtual solidarity. This serves as an effective mechanism for navigating and coping with racism, demonstrating resilience in the face of such challenges and similar adversities.

ABSTRACT. As members of societies, both local and global, the intricate interplay of racialisation and representation have historically served as a foundational tool for the construction, preservation, and negotiation of narratives, and meaning. This mode of communication, as exemplified in newspapers, embodies an affective dimension, serving concurrently as both a subversive force challenging established norms and a complicit agent perpetuating prevailing power dynamics. Drawing upon primary source materials from the Black Cultural Archives, this paper delves into the pivotal role played by the editorial, the Asian Times' in shaping and documenting the racialisation of Britain's diasporic communities during the 1980s. Supported further by interviews with Keith Bennett, the former political editor at the newspaper, this analysis delves into the foundations of the Asian Times, establishing a connection between representation and British-Asian identity. In essence, this scrutiny of both friendship and solidarity as dynamic processes, as manifested in these archival records and interview data, establishes connections between histories of diasporic voice and the articulation of race and racism. Ultimately, the principle arguments in this paper seek to lay the groundwork for envisioning a future of anti-racisms that recognises the contradictions of our present as redefined by the constraints of our past.

ABSTRACT. Unique in terms of their content and organisation, social justice film festivals (SJFFs) use films and special events, such as lectures, Q&As and receptions, to prompt and facilitate discussion and social change. Every SJFF screening is effectively a temporary classroom — a space of/for "study" (Moten, 2013), critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), engaged learning (hooks, 1994), intellectual emancipation (Ranciere, 2010) and unlearning (Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012). SJFFs are deeply material, political, time-based events embedded into and indebted to a vast network of actors (such as local legislation, funding bodies, and distributors, to name a few), of which four — the film itself, its audiences, the festival team, and the invited guests (be it the filmmakers or hosts/chairs) — get to meet within the space of the screening room. If designed carefully and effectively, SJFFs can launch a process of what I propose to call decentralised mutual learning between people from all walks of life, some of whom would ideally possess and share lived or vicarious experience related to that depicted on the screen, enhancing and intensifying the overall viewing experience. Taking a certain SJFF — Screening Rights 2023 — as a case study and a point of departure, this paper is concerned with the educational potential of SJFFs and their role in raising awareness in times of global crises, such as the russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the occupation of Artsakh by the military forces of Azerbaijan, and the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the performance of identity through the digital networks of women who wear the face veil (niqab). The ‘selfie’ is a self-portrait created for distribution to a wide audience on social media platforms, often promoting a sense of identity or self-presentation. This raises some interesting questions for women who wear the niqab. With their faces covered and identity blurred presenting their self-image, but is distorted by external agencies, whose perceptions about these niqabis are uncovered through disparaging notions, myths, and cultural conditioning. The niqab denuded and embroiled in political discourse; Boris Johnson's comments of ‘letter boxes’ and bank robbers’ reinforcing the negative stereotypes and the general media viewing them as a homogeneous unidentifiable mass who conform to a culture that challenges western ideologies of freedom and feminism. Yet a different picture is emerging online where niqabis are using social media platforms to express, communicate and perform a sense of identity through their ‘selfies’, whilst still maintaining the privacy of their face and of their religious and cultural identity.

This paper presents an exploration of the ‘veiled selfie’ as an expression of identity, considering the selfie as the performer on a stage where the niqabi frames themselves within a context with visual markers/props that offer a more complex and multifaceted narrative of a public identity. Data is sourced from Instagram and Facebook groups and analysed using the conceptual framework. Erving Goffman’s (1979) dramaturgical approach is adopted as a conceptual framework to explore the visual characteristics of the online selfie.

ABSTRACT. Militaries are widely recognised as gendered institutions, in which masculinity and manhood are firmly ingrained and explicitly integral to the institutional hierarchy, policies, ideology, and culture. Consequently, women’s integration into the military is likely to encounter difficulties. This integration has garnered significant scholarly attention in numerous fields, especially from feminist scholars such as Enloe’s body of work in international relations and Tasker’s (2011) in media representation. All these works point to tensions in relation to inherent contradictions between femininity and militarised masculinity.

With the same token, my research draws attention to the group of Thai military women and their relationship with the military. I place my focus primarily on examination of women’s lived experience in the military and how they come to terms with being an integral member of the military, given preexisting marginalised and misogynist issues in the workplace, also presented in media representations. I further analyse the role of media, from both traditional media and social media, in meaning-making processes of gendered military ideology, and as a result, mediation of military women’s self-representation on social media.

Overall, the findings confirm tensions in relation to military women’s identity construction. While self-representation offers comfort for them to manage distress and misrepresentations. Their mediated self-representation on social media as a result demonstrates their effort to establish relevance and negotiate for visibility, while also conforming to traditional military ideology, procedures, and standards in order to self-represent while maintaining their employment.

ABSTRACT. Often referred to as ‘accented cinema’ (Naficy, 2000), ‘intercultural cinema’ (Marks, 2000), ‘cinema of borders’ (Bennett and Tyler, 2007) or ‘immigration cinema’ (Ballesteros, 2015), migrant films have gained wider academic recognition over the past decades as they tend to challenge notions of national cinema and raise questions around the issues of space, place and identity. Recent studies have explored how migrant films both perpetuated (Çelik, 2015) and disrupted (Bayraktar, 2019) the dominant Eurocentric discourse of the ‘crisis’ involving refugees, migrants and minorities. This paper builds on the previous studies and considers the narrative of ‘crisis’ in migrant cinema from a gendered perspective by exploring films directed by women with migrant backgrounds, like Inch’Allah Dimanche (Benguigui, 2000), Fremde Haut (Maccarone, 2005), and I am Nasrine (Gharavi, 2012). Tackling the complex and often contested notions of integration, adaptation and resilience, this paper explores how these films transcend the narratives of crisis or victimhood and articulate their migrant female characters as ‘active protagonists of migration’ (Morocvasic, 2014). This paper explores how the three films address the questions of displacement and transnationalism as inherently gendered, sexualised and racialised issues by concentrating on the female characters’ complex and fluid identities, their agency within bordered spaces, and their interaction with diasporic and adopted communities.

ABSTRACT. Examining the environmental impact of film and media production is a pivotal aspect of ecocritical film and media studies. As ecocinema and ecomedia studies evolve, they become focal points for exploring not only their thematic content but also their ecological footprint in production processes. The Turkish film industry, like many others, relies heavily on natural resources, prompting a critical examination of its environmental practices.

This research investigates the ecological footprint of film production in Turkey and explores initiatives aimed at mitigating environmental impact. Focusing on pioneering sustainable filmmaking projects within the country, such as the science fiction film "Once Upon a Future: 2121" (2023) and the drama "Neandria" (2023), this study delves into their production processes and environmental strategies.

Through a comparative analysis of these sustainable film projects and a survey conducted within the Turkish film industry, I aim to assess the industry's awareness and expectations regarding sustainable production practices. Furthermore, I contextualize these findings within the broader landscape of global sustainability efforts in film production, critically evaluating the influence of local industry conditions on environmental initiatives.

By shedding light on the challenges and opportunities for developing environmental sustainability in the Turkish film industry, this research contributes to ongoing discussions in ecocritical studies and encourages the adoption of sustainable practices within the realm of filmmaking.

ABSTRACT. The film and media sectors have substantial global influence as one of the most powerful transnational industries, yet efforts to reduce their negative environmental impacts lack a comprehensive global strategy within legal frameworks. While some countries with high production rates have taken significant steps to raise the issue, many others lack effective initiatives. This study aims to explore strategies for raising eco-sustainability consciousness in countries where legal regulations are reluctant to enforce mitigation measures in the film and media sectors. The discussion advocates for initiatives that emphasize the value of eco-sustainability efforts, highlighting the potential for improved career opportunities and working conditions in the film industry. Additionally, it includes suggestions for international collaboration to create a sectoral demand globally. Using the EkoFilm: Sustainable Production Platform in Turkey as an example, this presentation seeks to inspire similar actions worldwide, demonstrating that sustainable practices benefit not only the environment but also enhance the industry overall. The platform originated as a project of the Environmental Humanities Center of Cappadocia University and has since collaborated with international organizations and professionals nationwide, evolving into a collaborative platform. I will introduce the platform as an independent organization dedicated to transforming the film and media sector through structured awareness-raising strategies that include a step-by-step roadmap that guides industry stakeholders towards creating a sector-wide demand for a more sustainable future.

ABSTRACT. For decades, the Indian music industries have been dominated by film soundtracks. However, the emergence of music streaming platforms (MSPs) has given a much-needed fillip to non-film musicians whose survival was previously fraught with neglect by the films-facing Indian music industries. Scholars have explored the impact of technological developments on the livelihoods of musicians before digitalisation and in the contemporary age of MSPs. However, a striking gap exists with respect to the Indian music industries which are vital economic and cultural assets to one of the world’s largest countries but have been conspicuously ignored by scholarship on cultural work. This paper aims to start filling this gap by researching musicians in India’s non-film recorded music industry which has seen a meteoric rise under platformisation and is posing unprecedented challenges to the cultural hegemony of film music. Through semi-structured interviews with musicians in India, this paper explores the reshaping of this film/non-film dichotomy, unique to India, by unpacking the ways in which non-film musicians are navigating the opportunities and challenges of platformisation to build sustainable careers. Utilising analytical concepts from critical political economy, the paper shows that, despite increased opportunities for non-film musicians, platformisation reinforces the oligopoly of the Indian recorded music industry and maintains the dominance of film music. Taking direction from leading scholarship on cultural work, this paper contributes towards building a long-overdue research agenda on the sustainability of musical careers in India and enriches debates on developing modified frameworks for researching indigenous cultural industries in the Global South.

ABSTRACT. Within conditions of permacrisis, what makes hope possible? Raymond Williams famously emphasised the importance of “making hope practical, rather than despair convincing” (1989: 209). Who and what enables, constrains, and narrates hope are matters of urgent political significance. I have explored this, the ‘cultural politics of hope’, from a variety of perspectives over recent years (Gross 2019, 2020, 2021; Gross et al 2023). Building on that work, my current book project addresses the role of art and culture in enabling hope in times of crisis. Each chapter focuses on a selected cultural form (e.g., television, theatre), and examines the affordances it offers for hope in relation to a specific type of crisis (e.g., ‘crisis of government’, ‘crisis of community’) for which that cultural form raises particular questions. Each chapter proceeds via analysis of key examples of its selected cultural form produced recently in the UK. In this conference paper, I make three contributions. Firstly, I present a conceptualisation of hope within conditions of permacrisis. Secondly, I provide two illustrative examples of how one cultural form – television – offers affordances for hope in times of ‘crisis of government’: Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology (BBC 2021), and Gwyneth Hughes / James Strong’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office (ITV 2024). Thirdly, the paper summarises its case for what such examples can – and cannot – do in making hope possible. The paper thereby indicates the potential that cultural analysis has for identifying emerging practices of hope during indefinitely unstable times.

ABSTRACT. Ireland’s new strategy document for the creative industries, the “Roadmap for the Digital Creative Industries” (the “Roadmap”) was launched on 16 January 2024. The Roadmap’s stated objectives are to develop a forward-looking strategy for the digital creative industries in Ireland, with a focus on employment, export and regional development. Resolutely commercial in outlook, the document focuses on the sectors of commercial design, digital games and digital content creation.

This analysis looks at the key themes in the Roadmap within the wider context of cultural and creative industries discourse in an Irish context, focusing in particular on the intersection of state policy and market-driven dynamics.

This approach looks at how Bourdieu’s (1984) theories on how cultural capital is institutionalised might be utilised to unravel the particular role of the state in shaping the digital creative industries production landscape. Some understandings of new media industries emphasise the role of the free market. However, this paper contends that there is merit in focusing on the particular role of the state as regulator and how this impacts the digital creative industries.

The analysis of the Roadmap interrogates the role of culture within the digital, the digital beyond the national, and the rationale for strategic policy interventions like the Roadmap. The Roadmap is an assemblage of inputs from multiple stakeholders. In this context, the state is not a monolithic power but enmeshed with the processes of stakeholding. The Roadmap needs to be understood as an embodiment of a multiplicity of potentially competing desires within a framework shaped by both time and space. As a strategy document, it offers a framework to which stakeholders can align and it influences shared expectations and subsequent stakeholder, state and funder behaviour.

ABSTRACT. Founded in 1994, Nordisk Panorama is a major documentary forum and film festival held in Malmo, Sweden, every year. It brings producers and commissioners together from the Nordic block, and beyond, with the intent to make actual funding decisions on large scale multi-national co-production feature docs and series. It has a stated commitment to creative documentary, and to the liberal and progressive outlook traditionally associated with Scandinavia and the Nordic countries.

This paper outlines research into the history and present workings of the forum in particular, looking at how it operates, and how it balances the forces of competition and collaboration in a highly disrupted market; disrupted first by digital, then by PSB’s waning funding and now by A.I. (How) are partners around the table at the Nordisk panorama forum able to put aside their local imperatives, and come together to fund films of the very highest quality? And what kind of films are being created in the name of what has been one of creative documentary’s leading bastions over the last 3 decades?

The study uses the media ecology lens (e.g. Scholari) developed in Aaltonen, Kaapa & Sills-Jones’ recent (2023) book 'Documentary in Finland: history, practice, policy', together with the area of documentary film festival study (e.g. Vallejo & Winton) and the broader theoretical framework of media production studies (e.g. Caldwell, Mayer), to frame the gathering and analysis of interviews, observations and documents to assess how Nordisk Panorama approaches its organisational and productive aims.

ABSTRACT. As a field, oral history is undergoing a paradigm shift towards radical inclusivity. In this transitional moment, there are fundamental, core alignments with the ethos of community radios' remit of social gain.

When we think about project-based oral history models, they are built on oral historians as educators. However, the convergence of audio/oral history is perhaps enhancing a greater need for participatory community work and active citizenship in helping inform our knowledge of the past and present.

Co-created conversations are refurbishing how encounters are mapped between a professional interviewer with a participant or interviewee. Subsequently, we are convening towards shared experiences underpinned by models of co-production, co-design, and a heightened capacity for innovation when it comes to ‘storytelling’.

In this presentation, I will discuss the more creative interpretations of the hyper-local, local, and national oral history projects I have been involved in Communicating Connections, Tape Letters, A County Remembers, The Making of Black Britain and artist/practitioner-led Heritage funded, Arts & Culture projects from the University of Bedfordshire.

We will consider how we choose to tell certain stories, the questions we ask, and the additional information required to ensure narrative stories amplify and empower the people who share them with us.

I intend to posit oral history as essential to critically engaging with our communities. By respectfully navigating the ethical considerations of an individual’s lived experiences, we can collectively broadcast curated audio pieces that form pivotal parts of wider exhibitions, artistic outputs, and digital works.

ABSTRACT. Argentinian legend, Diego Maradona, stated: “Football isn't a game, nor a sport, it's a religion.” Viewed in this way, Benedict Anderson’s theory of ‘imagined communities’ (1983) – proposing nationalism is more about cultural construct – suggests we can understand football allegiances within migrant communities as “a deep, horizontal comradeship” which culturally resonates more profoundly than merely supporting a chosen team linked to ethnic identity. This interactive participatory documentary uses football as a portal, through which social history and cultural aspects of identity, citizenship and community entanglements are explored, while charting the spread of ‘the beautiful game’ across Latin America by migrant communities from the UK, Europe and the Middle East. During the last 150 years Latin America has boasted numerous clubs called Everton - Chile's Everton de Vina del Mar (est.1909) is the most successful of seven still remaining. Their formation is rooted in the industrialisation of Latin America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, reflecting the arrival of thousands of merchants and labourers from Merseyside. All have a connection to Everton FC in Liverpool (est.1898). No other club has such a storied link to the continent. A major trading hub in the British informal Empire, Valparaíso is the cradle of Chilean football, as documented in The Anglophone Chile Project in Universidad Adolfo Ibanez, collaborators with the documentary. Whilst storytelling is at it's core, interactivity will empower diverse audiences to upload their own stories and reflections, building a unique resource of social history, lived experience and enhanced cultural understanding.

ABSTRACT. During the covid pandemic colleagues from Sociology and Screen and Performance at Edinburgh Napier University collaborated with activist and community researchers to work with asylum seeking people in Glasgow to better understand and document their experiences of temporary accommodation. The research project used audio visual ethnographic methods to collect asylum seekers’ experiences of this time of crisis and to challenge the local authority and service providers in relation to housing provision which suddenly and without warning moved individuals and families from flats into mainly hotel and hostel type premises.

As well as producing reports and direct action, the project produced a short participatory documentary, “I’m Still Here” which was used during the remaining pandemic period and thereafter to raise awareness of the unsuitability of this type of accommodation and also its impact on the welfare of asylum seeking individuals. The film also points to the dehumanisation and marginalisation of asylum seekers within the asylum system, and how this was enacted as part of a broader pattern of behaviour from taxi drivers and hostel cleaners, to the denial of cash payments. All this on top of what were national restrictions on movement and which lasted longer in Glasgow and Scotland than in the rest of the UK.

The paper will discuss the collaborative and participatory process of production in a time of crisis and restriction and highlight some of the challenges and choices faced by the producers working with already vulnerable people.

ABSTRACT. Effective climate communication strategies require agency amongst those keen to make a difference. Not only that, but creative approaches to persuasive communications must be able to nudge others into action. One of the Blueprint for Sustainability goals at Leeds University Business School is to increase student awareness and mitigation of climate change through a myriad of projects that will also benefit the wider society and community. The presentation describes how art and creativity were used as part of the ‘Walking to Zero’ project to enable participants to understand how the changing landscape may affect us all, and that reducing the reliance on carbon-emitting transport through walking is a step in the right direction to changing our behaviour. The presentation discusses collaboration with the To Walk organisation to help students debunk their notions of walking and how capturing their resulting appreciation of the landscape through photography/drawing/sketching may have long long-lasting impact on reducing climate anxieties. The presentation provides visual examples of reflections that students have captured through the act of walking and the long-term benefits to their physical and mental well-being.

ABSTRACT. This presentation will discuss the findings to date of a PhD research project that explores stories from women who currently live or have lived in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait), focusing on their experiences as women living in the region using social media. The stories inform a series of short, animated films that will be released online. The films allow the women’s voices to be heard, telling stories that are stigmatised in their home countries. The representation of their stories through animation allows a degree of anonymity. The reception of the animated films online will be monitored and analysed through the number of views, likes, shared posts and comments to ascertain the success of animation as a delivery mechanism for a documentary subject and to explore whether the dissemination of the short animations has sparked a conversation or debate online about making change regarding women’s rights in the Gulf region. The study explores the various factors that impact the progress of women’s rights in the Gulf through the experiences shared and potential conversations and debates following the release of the animations, which may include culture wars and/or extremist views on tradition and religion. This presentation will address whether animation is a suitable tool to veil the discussion of difficult topics online by providing a degree of anonymity and encouraging stigmatised topics to be discussed online productively.

ABSTRACT. Racing the King Tide Documenting Philippine Island communities’ in-situ adaptation and mitigation techniques to sea level rise (SLR) and disaster risk and reduction management (DRRM) strategies using a participatory approach with Photovoice, Mobile Ethnography, and 360VR. This case study uses innovative research models and methodologies to help build the capacity of the Philippine Island communities to disseminate their own stories about adaptation and mitigation to Sea Level Rise and Disaster Risk Reduction and Management. The islands suffer complete (55 days) and partial flooding (120 days) caused by the 2013 Tubigon earthquake which induced 2 metres of subsidence on the islands. The islands were also struck by Typhoon Rai (16th December 2021), damaging homes and key infrastructure and inundating the islands with storm surges up to 4 metres high.

The paper will present how participatory documentary using the Islanders’ photovoice, mobile ethnography, and 360VR documentation over a 12-month period will inform and support policy change at local and national Philippine government level around disaster response and risk reduction and mitigation techniques to sea level rise. These documentaries will also feed into policy support and international debate around SLR and DRRM worldwide.

www.racingthekingtide.com

ABSTRACT. The project “Cemal Altun – I Want to Live” (Working Title) is a multidisciplinary collaborative narrative research and documentation project currently in progress by a group of artists, filmmakers, and activists in Berlin. The project, which will be published as an animated documentary film together with a graphic novel, depicts the tragic story of Cemal Altun, a Turkish political refugee who came to Berlin in the early 80’s fleeing persecution by the dictatorship in his country. He was subsequently arrested and a political deal was struck for his extradition, although his asylum case was deemed legitimate. On 30.8.1983, following a hearing in a Berlin court, Altun threw himself from the courtroom’s window, choosing death over the torture which would await him at home.

Altun’s death sparked the birth of the current pro-asylum movement in Germany, active until today. Mixing interviews with activists, lawyers, and politicians involved in the movement from the 80’s until today, together with a narrative, graphic retelling of Altun’s life story using animation and comics, the project aims to bring this important event in the history of the German left to a modern-day audience today, as well as serve as a form of narrative, artistic archive “from below” in the service of the movement and its future generations.

The presentation will discuss the production process of the project, in which I am involved as filmmaker, its implications for the community, and insights gained towards similar projects.

ABSTRACT. Panel Rationale: The panel examines contemporary political and sociocultural manifestations of racism and links them historically to the violence of capitalist expansion and its project of empire building. It starts from the premise that capitalism and racism are historically interwoven and indeed that capital has long, and continues to, depended on racism. From the denigration of refugees as a threat to ‘our’ nation, to online Islamophobia, to media and political celebration of statues of empire as representing ‘our’ values, racism today is a shaped by multiple crises that are deeply connected to historical and continued ravages capitalism and imperialism. But the dehumanising and othering of racialised peoples has not gone uncontested and this panel also explores cultural and media spaces of resistance and solidarities. It examines counternarratives against Islamophobia online, as well as the mass mobilisations of anti-racist activists in statues-must-fall campaigns internationally, and it finishes by asking what an anti-racist media would look like and how might we achieve it.

Crisis of Capitalism, Borders and Migration Gholam Khiabany, Goldsmiths University of London

Large sections of the media describe refugees as toxic waste, human flotsam, an unstoppable flood, and a terrorist threat. The hysteria towards refugees, asylum seekers and racialised communities promoted by large parts of the media and many politicians relies on two significant misperceptions:

Firstly, that borders are assumed as an unproblematic, natural and taken for granted ‘reality’ where the control of flow of migrant bodies is defended as a necessary measure to protect the ‘real citizens’ of a state polity. But membership of a national polity is not always generated ‘by the movement of people over borders, but by the movement of borders over people’ (Brubaker 2010:71). Some clear examples of this relate to the biggest waves of migration, in particular the enslavement of millions of Africans kidnapped to work in mines and plantations, the creation of white settlements in the ‘new world’ of countries known today as the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc., and later on the expansion of the United States into Mexico, the Caribbean and Pacific.

Secondly, that there is no ‘refugee crisis’ outside of the crisis of capitalism and the deadly consequences of increasing social inequalities at national and global levels, the financialisaton of global capital, rapid environmental degradation, as well as increased imperialist interventions in the Middle East and Africa; all major sources of forced migration and staggering levels of displacement. This paper argues that times of crisis are also and always (as history demonstrates) about migration.

Contesting Islamophobia: Tracing the dynamics of racist and anti-racist narratives within social media platforms Liz Poole, Keele University

There is a long trajectory of research that shows how online publics in times of crisis, can form to both racist and anti-racist ends (Papacharissi 2015). Yet the commercial logic of social media platforms limit their potential as tools for progressive politics and structural change. Since Twitter was acquired by ‘free speech’ advocate Elon Musk, and the subsequent reduction of moderation standards, X has been accused of allowing extremists back on to the platform, returning it to an online free for all. But what did it look like for marginalised groups prior to this?

Our research, which explores the potentials and limitations of Twitter for counternarratives against Islamophobia, examined 3 moments of crisis; Brexit, the Christchurch terror attack and Covid, demonstrating how these play out in different ways. In a time, post the Capitol Hill riots and pre- Musk, the project traces the uneven dynamics of solidarities towards Muslims in relation to these events, showing that the character/direction of narratives supporting or attacking Muslims cannot be assumed. Even within one dataset, that might appear predictable in its outcomes, the dynamics of narratives diverge in relation to its different aspects. This paper seeks to illustrate the unpredictable, complex dynamics of counternarratives across difference and over time.

Statues of Empire: racism, capitalism and resistance Milly Williamson, Goldsmiths University of London

This paper explores why statues of figures representing empire and colonisation became the focus of anti-racist protest in recent times. It argues that these statues must be understood historically as a cultural project that developed during the height of European capitalist empires at the end of the 19th century, when they were mass produced across the globe. I argue that these statues were part of the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm 1983) developed in this period to consolidate the expansionist capitalist social order and legitimise its values. This frenzy of statue erection had two purposes - to export European ‘values’ across the globe as part of the project of empire and to build national identities at ‘home’ steeped in notions of racialised national superiority.

The legacies of empire continue to shape the world today, and statues have accrued deep symbolic meanings which connect the brutalising violence, invasion and abductions of the past to continued state violence and oppression of communities of colour and indigenous populations today. These symbols of empire have become a focus of anti-racist activism at a time when political and media discourse tells us that racism is a thing of the past while many European nations simultaneously set out new laws and policies to prevent the removal of statues under the guise of ‘protecting’ ‘our’ ‘heritage’, curtailing democratic participation in decisions about public culture and delegitimising anti-racist activism.

ABSTRACT. Panel Proposal

Rationale: This panel explores female and feminist identity constructions and crises on television and in film in the context of neoliberalism’s perpetual challenges and crises. On-screen femininity has long suffered through an identity crisis, driven by the supposed need to be and have it all. Distilled into a simple tagline for Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie (2023): ‘She’s everything. He’s just Ken’, this panel looks at a wider range of television programmes and films from the past years. Emphasising the common-sense imperative that women take on a myriad of roles and be ‘everything’, Barbie is the latest example of a popular narrative that revolves around its female protagonist’s identity crisis. The papers in this panel will shed light on different, yet connected aspects of contemporary gender identity and performance through investigations of glamour and abjection in the makeover narrative in film, women’s resilience and femininity in Chinese TV drama, female dispiritedness and dark humour in contemporary British TV, and resilient, fragmented characters on current US TV. We are interested in showing how contemporary women-centric narratives in film and television express, perpetuate, and challenge norms and expectations of neoliberal and popular feminist discourses of the self, such as individualism, resilience, success, and empowerment.

Proposer: Sarah Lahm

Paper 1: Sarah Lahm Many Selves, Many Crises: Fragmented Feminist Subjects on US TV: This paper investigates current women-centric streaming series that articulate the contradictory demands on women to be resilient, self-managing, positive individuals in times of late-stage, neoliberal capitalism. This paper examines Search Party (TBS/HBO Max, 2016-2022), whose protagonist must work through multiple (identity) crises within a multitude of genres. As such, Search Party blurs the boundary between crisis and normality, mirroring the zeitgeist of crisis as normality. I will argue that the temporal affordances of the medium, including the women-centric half-hour streaming series, articulate and question dominant logics of neoliberal feminist resilience through genre blending and the construction of a fragmented protagonist over multiple seasons. To contextualise the trope of the split self in women-centric television and consider its role in the articulation of women’s emotion work, this paper will draw from recent scholarship on neoliberalism and neoliberal feminism, affect, and television. Sarah Lahm is writing up her PhD thesis at the University of Leeds. Her research is concerned with contemporary women-centric US TV, particularly the ways in which recent half-hour dramas articulate the contradictions of feminist discourse's current junctures.

Paper 2: Yuzhuo Wang Female dispiritedness, resilience, and religious tropes in Fleabag (2016—2019): This paper explores dispiritedness in female-led TV series and reflects on female ambivalence and resilience in the urban landscape and modernity context. Dispiritedness, rooted in psychology, emphasises a loss of spirit and suggests conflicts and exploitation women have encountered in the context of neoliberal feminist society. Using Fleabag (2016—2019) as a case study and drawing on television emotion studies such as Kristyn Gorton’s (2021; 2009), Anne Marit Waade’s (2017) and Faye Woods’ (2019) scholarship, this paper examines how dispiritedness as an aesthetic style is constructed and how it manifests female resilience via moments of epiphany. Firstly, dispiritedness has a dynamic relationship with resilience in that the two interact as both cause and effect regarding narratives; secondly, to manifest the character’s dispiritedness and the lost-and-found process of spirituality, Waller-Bridge introduces religious tropes which mirror the ambivalent sides of Fleabag’s internal world; thirdly, dark humour is an essential style and strategy to deliver dispiritedness, which bonds the narratives with its viewers due to the feminine, antipatriarchal characteristics of comedy. In conclusion, by closely looking at female dispiritedness in Fleabag, this research sheds new light on the construction of emotions in contemporary television drama. Yuzhuo Wang, from Communication University of China, is currently a visiting PhD student at the University of Leeds and specialises in dispiritedness in contemporary TV series.

Paper 3: Lingjun Wang The Negotiation Between Neo-liberalism Female and Traditional Gendered Roles in Chinese Television Representation: Why Compromise?: This paper aims to discuss neo-liberal women's representation in Chinese television drama and how they react when encountering different social and family expectations related to traditional gender roles. The paper will draw on the Chinese drama Love is True (2021) as a case study with a lens on the three main female characters in the drama to consider how they represent women’s archetypes in contemporary Chinese society: leftover women, mothers and housewives. The paper will provide a discussion of how women’s femininity has changed within the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, assessing, via textual analysis, their individualism, self-reliance, and the pursuit of economic success. It will also consider how the pursuit of success (as influenced by consumerism and neoliberal values) is visually articulated through the practice of negotiation, especially when navigating work-family conflicts. Finally, the paper aims to reveal whether Chinese television dramas challenge or reinforce prevailing norms and expectations regarding women’s resilience and success. Lingjun Wang is a first-year PhD student at the University of Leeds. Her research is concerned with Chinese family drama and the ways in which child-related policies in China have been represented and highlighted in family television dramas, as well as how such dramas may influence female audiences in their ‘real-life’ decisions about motherhood.

Paper 4: Clementine Vann-Alexander Everybody Wants to be Us: embodied and bodily identity crises in 'The Devil Wears Prada' (Frankel, 2006): What can films with makeovers tell us about how we shape and understand identity? Can you style your way into a stable sense of self? By placing a transformation at the centre of its narrative, the makeover film renders its protagonist abject through exclusion, and then presents a pathway to acceptability and power through change and consumption. In this paper, I explore the role of abjection and glamour as tools of identity formation in The Devil Wears Prada, drawing from psychoanalytic film theory and feminist scholars such as Kristeva (1982), McRobbie (2004), and Radner (2011). Rummaging through the film's wardrobe, from lumpy cerulean jumpers to beautiful Chanel boots, I consider the perpetual fragmentation and reformation of feminine identity under neoliberal capitalism and postfeminist thought. I will also interrogate how the film establishes and justifies pain, discomfort, and surveillance as necessary evils in order to sustain an elite beauty standard. Clementine Vann-Alexander is a third-year PhD researcher based at the University of Leeds. Her research is concerned with makeover narratives, beauty work and culture, cultures of social and aesthetic surveillance, and articulations of women’s identity on screen.

ABSTRACT. Panel – Meccsa Climate Change Network Panel Chair – Elke Weissmann

To also include Rob Coley’s paper and Leora Hadas’ paper – both submitted individually

Speaker 1: Chris Paterson, C.Paterson@leeds.ac.uk School of Media and Communication University of Leeds

Title: Gender and Information Ecosystems in Climate Change Adaptation

This paper reports on a research collaboration between the Universities of Nairobi, Ghana, and Leeds. Since 2019, our project has examined climate knowledge production in vulnerable East and West African rural communities. Women are key change agents in rural communities, yet their voices may be disregarded or relegated when externally-sourced information is privileged in adaptation strategies. Where rural communities may be at risk of information deficits because they are distanced from comprehensive flows of information that circulate in urban centres, it is unclear how 'local' or 'indigenous' knowledge might be interacting with increased information flows to facilitate effective adaptation strategies. We have started to understand, more deeply than prior research permitted, how local knowledge circulates and combines with information from digital media and other sources in order to assist in planning adaptation to climate change.

Speaker 2: Title: Enabling Change through Sustainability Education and Strategic Communications in a Higher Education Institution Name: Dr Mark Pope Email: mark.pope@imperial.ac.uk Affiliation: Imperial College London

Abstract This paper sets out an approach to exploring, communicating and innovating on sustainability issues. It presents how educators have put this into practice in the classroom, and then how students have adopted similar principles in projects outside of the classroom. It explores how such an approach to sustainability education relates to strategic sustainability communications. Principally, the paper outlines how our ‘Change Makers’ teaching team delivers a suite of undergraduate modules that ask students to research and identify areas for potential change, and then design proposals for action. It presents our student-centred and holistic approach that encourages students to imagine, embody and enact change that they can believe in - to improve themselves, their communities and the wider world (see our Live, Love, Learn philosophy, as outlined by Hauke (2020)). We aim to enable students to better contribute to sustainable development projects, and also to develop themselves personally, working towards Inner Development Goals. We view our approach as a means of developing deeper communications and practices for sustainability (Weder, 2021), within the context of a higher education institution. And we include examples provided by teachers and students. References Hauke, E. (2020) ‘Live, love, learn.’ URL: http://livelovelearn.education/. Accessed 10/2/24. Weder, F., (2021) ‘Sustainability as Master Frame of the Future? Potency and Limits of Sustainability as Normative Framework in Corporate, Political and NGO Communication’ in Eds (Weder, F., Krainer, L, and Karmasin, M) The Sustainability Communication Reader: A Reflective Compendium. 1st Edition, pp. 103-119.

ABSTRACT. As the film and television industries in the UK and worldwide increasingly recognize their material footprint in the climate and ecological crisis, a new department has emerged in screen production: the sustainability department works to mitigate productions’ environmental impacts. Academic scholarship in the last ten years has been paying increasing attention to the macro-scale strategies of an industry-wide green transition (Maxwell & Miller, 2012; Victory, 2015; Kääpä, 2018; Lopera-Mármol & Jiménez-Morales, 2021; Kääpä & Vaughan, 2022). However, little is known about the practitioners who carry out the on-the-ground, everyday work of designing and implementing greener production. While screen productions now frequently incorporate such roles as sustainability coordinator or green steward, these roles are currently yet unstandardized and unregulated, largely ignored by industry bodies, and often unrecognized even by crews on set.

Based on an AHRC funded collaboration with a major environmental consultancy for the UK screen industries, this paper explores the landscape for new screen sustainability roles: their characteristics, work culture, integration into the screen industries, and challenges faced in the field. Drawing on practitioner interviews, the study argues for the importance of examining green production practice within the screen industries through the lens of creative labour and production culture (Caldwell, 2008; Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2013). Findings highlight the complexities of carrying out multifaceted work roles in the intersection of creative industry work, environmental management, and science communication, and explore the unique experience of working at the driving edge of the industry’s green transition.

ABSTRACT. A MeCCSA Practice Network Creative Practice Research Workshop

Abstract:

This workshop is designed for creative practice researchers ready to articulate the impact of their work through compelling 300 word REF output statements. Building on a pre-conducted thematic analysis and a proven structural formula, this session will guide participants through understanding and applying this formula to craft their own impactful statements. Participants will be introduced to a distilled structural formula derived from a comprehensive thematic analysis of successful REF output statements. This formula represents the core components that make these statements effective and impactful. Researchers will engage in interactive exercises to apply this formula to their own work. By dissecting and understanding each component, participants will learn how to weave their unique research narrative into a compelling output statement. The workshop will facilitate discussions among participants, allowing them to share insights, provide feedback, and refine their understanding of what makes a powerful 300 word REF impact statement. Special attention will be given to the nuances and challenges specific to reporting and disseminating creative practice research, ensuring that the statements not only meet REF criteria but also resonate with the broader creative community. Participants will leave the workshop with a clear understanding of the structural formula, equipped with the skills to effectively communicate the significance and impact of their research.

The workshop will be facilitated by Dr Roy Hanney (Associate Professor Media Practise) and hosted by the MeCCSA Practice Network.

ABSTRACT. Originating from South Korea and translating to ‘eating show’, mukbangs are a niche of internet videos which feature a creator eating copious amounts of food. They have also become immensely popular within the Western world, with mukbang creators on YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms securing millions of views.

Mukbangs generally feature fast food brands, offer a form of vicarious pleasure for the viewer, and have become a bonafide part of online food culture. This study sought to examine mukbang content’s intersections with fast food brand identity and their influence on consumers’ brand engagement, perception, and purchase decisions.

An analysis was conducted on 622 videos from 8 mukbang YouTube creators having between 306,000 to 3.6 million subscribers. The study looked to determine the food brands most featured and how such content impacted consumers’ perception of brand identities. Additionally, an analysis was conducted on the comments sections of 76 videos, selecting the comments which featured the names of the top brands. The comments were coded as being positive, neutral, or negative towards the brands, with positive comments being the majority.

Further analysis also revealed that the comments were used by consumers to signal brand loyalty or dislike and to reinforce perceptions of fast food brands being indulgent or unappealing. Consumers also engaged with mukbang content as a means of communal bonding over the enjoyment of food, encouraging or discouraging purchase decisions, sharing recipes and tips, offering commentary on their political affiliations, and even encouraging boycotts.

ABSTRACT. “I had just quit my job, and the city had the social distance rule to fight the pandemic, so finding a new job was quite difficult. My life at that time was so stressful." - Thư Trần, host of the “My Sunny and Rainy Stories” podcast show, shared her motivation to start producing a healing podcast for herself and others struggling with post-COVID challenges (Thiên Thanh, 2022). Using media and discourse analysis, this study explores how healing podcasts in Vietnam have become a tool for emotional resilience in the post-pandemic context in this nation from 2021 to 2023. Post-pandemic is when social isolation causes severe disruption to life, when loneliness, fear of infection, fear of normalcy (FONO), fear of going outside (FOGO), suffering due to the loss of loved ones, and personal financial worries such as unemployment or reduced income remain prevalent concerns and unprecedented challenges. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, depression, stress, and anxiety have globally increased by 25% (WHO, 2022). In Vietnam, a survey at Ho Chi Minh City COVID-19 Resuscitation Hospital in 2021 recorded that 53.3% of patients treated here had anxiety disorders, 20% depression, and 16.7% stress (Tuổi trẻ News, 2022). As Vietnam continues to rebuild and recover, the importance of healing podcasts in nourishing emotional well-being will likely be a cornerstone of its recovery efforts. Concerning mental health, “Live Slowly” (Chầm chậm mà sống), “My Sunny and Rainy Stories” (Chuyện mình nắng-mưa), “Amateur Psychology” are some of the Vietnamese healing podcasts on the “mission” to "patch" listeners’ emotional wounds together and guide themselves towards a peaceful lifestyle. Minh Thư, the creator of the “Amateur Psychology” podcast channel, is a psychology student. Her podcast aims to raise awareness about mental health among its listeners by utilising her professional knowledge. As a young person with her own struggles, she talks about her lived experience honestly, making it easy for her peers to relate. She addresses the mental health needs of Vietnamese citizens in the post-pandemic and selects deeply personal topics, such as struggles with thoughts and emotions. Minh Thư hopes her podcast can help audiences soothe their spirits, shake off sadness, and alleviate their loneliness during quarantine. In a country with limited mental health resources and stigma, healing podcasts offer a subtle and accessible avenue and virtual communities for individuals to seek guidance and offer support to one another. By harnessing the power of storytelling, voice, intimacy, and personal nature, these healing podcasts have emerged as a ray of hope, providing individuals with the comfort, support, solace, and sense of connection needed to navigate through uncertain situations with strength and resilience.

ABSTRACT. This paper will explore how Scottish influencers promote good food practices through their content creation on Instagram. Discourses around food practices online face criticism for the elitism and nativism perpetuated by the boundaries it sets on what food is classified as good or bad. With such criteria leaving the ‘good food’ inaccessible for many due to socio-economic barriers (Porciani 2019; Mapes 2021). This raises questions about how food practices in Scotland are communicated to online audiences and the impact this may have on cultural understandings of local food in Scotland. Instagram is a media sharing application that is inherently multi-modal and allows users the ability to draw on various forms of semiotic modes to aid communication (Carah and Shaul 2016; Cara 2018). While the multimodality of social media has been explored by many scholars there is a gap of exploring the role technology plays in shaping content creation particularly the way social norms can be inscribed into the software and hardware of an application like Instagram (Van Leeuwen 2015). This research seeks to understand the interpersonal and technological affordances that allows for the creation and sharing of imagery around food and to better understand how food in Scotland is represented online, what is promoted and excluded based on the constraints of the technology and the social rules that govern content creation on Instagram .

ABSTRACT. In 2023, continuing their backlash against social justice movements in the UK (the so-called ‘war on woke’ (Authors, 2023)), using a series of different platforms and media outlets, campaigners turned their attention to Relationship and Sex Education (RSE)in UK schools. They used questions in Parliament1, a think tank report, social media, national newspapers, and television to claim there is a crisis in safeguarding and morality in British schools that signifies a wider threat to Western civilisation. Consequently, two schools found themselves overwhelmed by media attention and were subjects of snap inspections because these campaigners claimed these schools (and others) were teaching children there were 72 genders and allowing their pupils to identify as cats. The Prime minister and the Leader of the Opposition commented on the ‘crisis’2. Essentially, given that both inspections found no cause for concern, we conceptualise this series of events as moral panic: a media-facilitated synthetic crisis with a moral agenda. Then, we ask: why are this moral panic’s moral entrepreneurs intervening in schools; how are they able to use the media in this way; and why are they framing the issues in such stark moral and civilizational terms? We reveal a coalition of politicians, activist groups, pundits and educationalists who believe they have lost control of schools, want to take them back and restore their true function they see it: as transmitters of Judeo-Christian traditions including conservative ideas of gender, heteronormativity, national identity, and indigenous culture. 1. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-03-08/debates/A182F3E8-6CA8-4FBC-B10E-8045D9374E73/Engagements?highlight=72%20genders#contribution-F0AFE556-F489-4DA1-B8D8-407FAEE93BFD 2. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/03/08/rishi-sunak-launches-review-sex-education-schools/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/21/keir-starmer-children-self-identifying-as-cats/

ABSTRACT. This paper will examine the origins of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 in distorted and inaccurate stories about ‘cancel culture’ operating in universities. Many of these emanated from the Tufton Street ‘think tank’ Policy Exchange and immediately made their way into the echo chamber/hall of mirrors that is the right-wing press. And this in spite of the fact that all reliable opinion surveys conducted among students show that the vast majority of them do not feel that their right to receive and impart information on campus is imperiled.

The new Act requires universities, colleges and students’ unions to promote, rather than simply ensure, free speech on their campuses, but Article 19, Index on Censorship and English PEN have warned that the legislation, including the imposition of an Orwellian-sounding ‘Free Speech Champion’, ‘may have the inverse effect of further limiting what is deemed “acceptable” speech on campus and introducing a chilling effect both on the content of what is taught and the scope of academic research exploration’. Others have gone further and interpreted the Act as a culture war tactic designed by right-wingers to ensure that their views are heard on campus whether or not they are welcomed there. Meanwhile exactly the same political forces continually urge that the very real threats to freedom of expression on campus posed by Prevent are intensified still further.

ABSTRACT. Academic dishonesty is not new: It has been a major concern and part of everyday conversations and educational policies in most academic institutions across the world. Cheating behaviour has become permanent and commonplace due to the affordances of digital platforms and the rapid expansion of generative AI, which have been indicated as both the source and solution of the problem. In this paper, we provide insights to the escalation of tech-facilitated ‘cheating culture’ (e.g. ghost-writers, misuse of AI-driven platforms, expansion of fraud market and detection algorithms) in relation to our subject positions and experiences in a post-AI neoliberal university. The purpose is to explore how staff and students make sense of and deal with this increasingly widespread issue as well as the emotional stress, professional burden, and ethical concerns it poses by harnessing the power of social fiction as a creative and critical method in humanities and the social sciences. We begin our presentation with an introduction to social fiction as a research approach and a means to generate new knowledge. We then share flash fiction pieces that explore the variety of challenges posed to students and faculty by the tech-facilitated academic dishonesty. Subsequently, we outline how we develop interpretations and critiques of our contemporary era marked by increasing competition, financial insecurity and post-Covid challenges such as growing sense of insecurity and senselessness. We conclude our presentation with a reflection on the role, benefits and challenges of social fiction flashes to stimulate discussion and to explore potential collaborations on the subject.

ABSTRACT. I argue that where surveillance and data capture are inherent to contemporary digital life, and more so, where they produce precarious lives beset by threats of capture and epistemological foreclosure, these systems engender a state of crisis whose logics draw on the core logics of the closet and the black site. That is, in order to turn persons and communities into sources of information — and more so, into sources of ideological confirmation — these systems must first transform them into unclassifiable bodies whose illegibility occasions renewed investigation, pursuit, and capture. Much then as the epistemology of the closet turns on the production of a secret that can be endlessly adjudicated, and as the black site turns on the production of “known unknowns” that can be endlessly intercepted and interrogated within state security theatre, these systems desire and catalyze the very resistance, or rather, the very opacity they refuse (Sedgwick, 1990; Massumi, 2015). Where opacity has become a key term of resistance for a broad array of scholars and activists working to resist this “scopic vulnerability” (Benjamin, 2020), I show that, as opacity is itself motivated by a desire for transparency, it is constitutive of the very crisis it resists and thus names a double-bind. Via a close-reading of the videogames Portal and Portal 2, I show that loosening this double-bind requires investigating the closet and the black site for their specific nexus of affect, desire, and ambivalence, as well as for the “cruel promises” and complicated negotiations made therein (Berlant, 2012).

ABSTRACT. This paper is a reflection on the discourse of humanity’s role in ecological crises as seen through the lens of video games. Video games exist in a medium that has an outsized, adverse impact on the environment, and thus have self-reflexively addressed the climate crisis (Lumb, 2023). Video games such as the Civilization (1991–present) series have depicted the ecological damage wrought by the players’ extractive relationships with the environment, but the game mechanics allow players to ‘solve’ climate crisis while continuing to exploit the game world (Lundblade, 2020). Recent games have also depicted worlds where the climate crisis could not be alleviated by such player action, and gameplay then depicts ecosystems healing in the aftermath of apocalypse. This study examines two recent video games – Cloud Gardens (2021) and Terra Nil (2023), to argue that both produce an environmentalist message of the inevitability of human-made ecological disaster, as well as the necessity for human absence for nature to heal. In an absence of a critique of capitalist and colonialist modes of extraction, the message of these games becomes a reproduction of a misanthropic strain in environmental philosophy that prevents the emergence of new paradigms of society and ecology (Morris, 2017, pt. 3). Climate change requires radical alternatives to capitalist extractivism that do not erase the agency of those working to build better paradigms of human participation within nature (Demos, 2023). Games must depict more than extractivism or extinction to imagine ways out of permacrisis.

ABSTRACT. The mythologisation of the vast, geographically diverse North American Landscape has featured consistently in western cinema from the foundations of the Hollywood studio system to the present day; on-screen representations of the places on the edge of the historic frontiers balance deep societal reverence with an uncanny mystique which is to be understood as a fundamentally American aesthetic. In recent years, a series of films have emerged which lament the degradation, destruction and pollution of the American Landscape caused by heavy industry. This study explores key recent examples within the expanding canon of narrative fiction films which explore the effects of localised ecological damage to the American Landscape, with a particular focus on Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017). The filmic examples in the paper explore the impacts of ecological destruction perpetrated by the fossil fuel and petro-chemical industries on both the landscape and communities which reside within it. Drawing from interpretations of contemporary scholarly sources on eco-trauma cinema, post-industrial landscape scarring and eco-gothic themes, this paper seeks to explore, identify and draw focus towards a nascent sub-category of American Independent Cinema informed by the thematically and aesthetically by Ecocriticism and elements of the Eco-Gothic. Films which can be aligned to this emerging movement explore the intersections of environmental damage and economic decline, alongside identity as linked to senses of place, religion and the rural.

ABSTRACT. Black Sails (2014-2017) presented a prequel to Treasure Island mixed with real historical characters and events in a story of resistance against imperialist capitalism. The pirates were cast as rebels against a dominant system in which wealth is directed to those in charge, while those who work for it are left with little. The series dramatises the ways in which multiple different interests are brought together under this agreement, because of the situations that the characters have found themselves in due to their not fitting into the dominant society because of their gender, their sexuality, their politics, their race. While not an ideal society by any means, the pirate society that develops around Captain Flint and the island of New Providence is shown as one that manages to negotiate multiple interests and groups in the name of survival and resistance to a system that wishes to crush them. The relevance of these themes to current concerns is emphasised through the series' use of the Gothic mode, drawing on aesthetic and narrative codes to trigger associations with the Gothic's concerns with trauma (personal and cultural), violence and power imbalance, particularly those that stem from the past but continue to have influence in the present. The use of the Gothic mode in Black Sails thus serves as an additional signal that the representations of past injustices and struggles are still relevant in the present, that these traumas are part of our current crises.

ABSTRACT. “Value:

1. the amount of money that can be received for something. 2. the importance or worth of something for someone”

Cambridge Dictionary

We live in a world where data is increasingly extracted from our every movement and interaction. The digital traces and patterns of our life are broken down, reconstructed, bought, sold and interrogated for the purposes of economic and political gain. Artists and designers frequently use this data as material to explore, expose, interrogate and define what it means to exist in this environment.

Defining the ‘environment’ as a dual space which encompasses both our physical and digital existence we can consider that personal data forms part of the extended self. The invisible nature of computers, interfaces and data from a physical and linguistic viewpoint are contributing factors to people’s passivity in relation to propertisation of their digital identity. With Enterprise as the dominant steward of our data, blurred concepts of ownership and a power imbalance in collection, a lack of agency for the individual is a distinct and growing problem.

This practice-led, PhD study aims to create a suite of software programs that allow people to explore their personal Facebook data, selecting, connecting and visualising elements of it to create physical artworks that tell stories personal to them.

In promoting exploration of this data to produce artefacts that are personal, unique, anchored in the physical world and visible, the research seeks to engage a broader audience with an asset that we often give away freely.

ABSTRACT. Herbariums, loose leaf collections of annotated illustrations of plant specimens, have, since the 1500’s, captured not only the natural world, but also shed light on their collectors and the cultures they operated in. The South Liverpool Herbarium is a digital collection drawn together from three workshops of botanical printing, a collaboration between scientists, artists and gardeners sharing their environmental knowledge. The beauty of an herbarium is the ability to shuffle the loose sheets into various sets to communicate observations about the collection. This digital herbarium will be arranged in themes that emerge in the workshops, reflecting the thoughts, feelings, memories, folklore, recipes, botanical knowledge, and creativity of the workshop’s participants. Made using botanical printing techniques the herbarium will also reveal stories about plant chemistry and the interaction of plants with the process. Informed by the concept of ‘technobiophilia’ (Sue Thomas, 2013), the digital herbarium reflects the need for connection to the natural world and the conceptualisation of the digital sphere as organic. Recognised already as sites for wellbeing the pandemic reconfirmed the importance of our connection to green spaces. At the same time our web of digital connections became of paramount importance. In the face of the permacrisis these interconnections continue to create resilience and resistance. This will be a presentation of a work in progress. References: Thomas S. (2013) Technobiophilia Bloomsbury Academic

ABSTRACT. ...the landscape is now potentially altered for spectators by a new way of seeing. (James Leo Cahill, 2019)

How do we break the deadly cycle and permacrisis of the Anthropocene? How do we redefine our ecological frame to take into account and holistically exist with all the other that is a—anthropos? Via a performance-based paper, I, with the help of and in conversation with my non-human ethical consultants, will try and disentangle the above through the queering of human intellect in relation to other-than-human characteristics. Firstly, I am presenting a practice-based, new methodology of critical investigation with the inputs of non-human entities and, secondly, I aim hoping to draw a new epistemology of human-non-human collaboration with a consciously non-anthropomorphised exploration of the subject matter. The method and practice is the art of digital puppetry (L.Childs, 2022), trough which I set up a non-binary ontological frame in which to explore a new relation between human and ‘the other’. My research collaborators, the digital puppets, are the 21st century version of Painleve’s ‘oursins’: they are hors-sein (off centre) (Cahill, 2019, 1), allowing us to see, go beyond and investigate solutions to our permacrisis based on concepts of shared matter, Zoe (as used by Braidotti, 2016) and a universal stream of consciousness. As with immersive theatre (Machon, 2013, 152)and its embodied knowledge and practices, the ontological embodied sur-reality characterising digital puppetry allows us to experience a tantric elevation into the ‘other’ and away from ‘men’ and beyond the verbal and cultural language of the human. Immersive collaboration and concepts that ‘challenge the status-quo of being human’ develop from the inevitably non-anthropomorphised definition of life intrinsic to digital puppets, non-egotistic by nature.

References Braidotti R., The Critical Posthumanities; Or, Is Medianatures to Naturecultures as Zoe Is to Bios?, Cultural Politics (2016) 12 (3): 380–390. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3648930 Cahill, J.L., Zoological surrealism, university of Minnesota Press, 2019. Childs, L . The Quest for Life and Intelligence in Digital Puppets, 2022, CHILDS, Lucy_Ph.D._2022.pdf (bournemouth.ac.uk) Machon, J., Immersive theatres, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

ABSTRACT. The origin stories of the inhabitants of the Caribbean are as complex as the expansive histories of the region’s flora and fauna. Situated within these complex narratives exists problematic colonial legacies that shape our communities and cultural organisations. 

The locale of this presentation is the paradisal territory of the Cayman Islands. Situated awkwardly between postcolonial thought and colonial rule, the islands boast the highest GDP in the region, over 160 nationalities represented in a population pool of 81,000 people, and a large deficit in its arts and culture ecology. Additionally, it suffers from severe socioeconomic and cultural engagement divides, due to an absence of cultural policy implementation and diversity of dedicated exhibition spaces.   This presentation will look at the development of the project space Gram Bella’s in the Cayman Islands as a framework to speak of Bourdieu’s capital conversion theory, and explore Fanon’s examination of the sociopolitical and psychological impacts of colonialised cultural spaces on the islands. The Caribbean yard space has traditionally been a safe place to instinctually develop ideas and creativity blossoms. Through the erasure of historical customs and practices as a result of colonisation and Americanisation, the practice of meeting in the yard to connect and be creative has been abandoned.

Gram Bella's [Backyard] seeks to be a place where the 160+ cultures that reside in the Cayman Islands can navigate what it means to be “Caymanian” — whether new or generational — and a place where we can accumulate necessary capitals to grow together as Caribbean people.

ABSTRACT. Photovoice is a particular approach to research that emerged in the 1990s in response to wider developments within qualitative research. Researchers more formally recognised the power they held in the relationship to their participants and began to feel uncomfortable about the researcher-researched hierarchy. As a result, trends moved towards participatory and creative approaches to minimise these hierarchies, to reduce the power differentials between participants and researchers, and to equalise the responsibility amongst the stakeholders within the research (e.g. Wang and Burris, 1994, 1997). In addition, smartphones, tablets, or action cameras have eased availability of and accessibility to relatively cheap and simple means for recording through photography. Where once detailed knowledge of the photographic process may have been required to enable individuals to capture meaningful information and data, editing apps and software further facilitate the development of photography. As a result, research projects employing photographs became more prominent (e.g. Blinn and Harrist, 1991; Schwartz, 1989; Niessen, 1991).

A quick search on Google Scholar for the key terms "photovoice" and "photo elicitation" demonstrates just how significant that change has been. Articles relating to "photo elicitation" nearly octupled between the 1990s and the 2010s, whereas articles relating to "photovoice" multiplied by 120. The popularity of research studies using photography as an approach to gathering data is undisputable. However, the terminologies and conceptualisations are not always entirely clear.

Whilst photovoice and photo elicitation initially were two quite distinct approaches to research in the social sciences, the boundaries are more blurred nowadays. In part, this is due to researchers designing projects to suit their specific target communities and target participants, and so adjusting elements of a research method. In part, this is also due to developments that rendered photovoice and photo elicitation a kind of diary method with communities that would otherwise be difficult to reach. The social distancing rules that were put in place during the COVID19 pandemic exacerbated this trend of using photographs as a form of remote data collection. As the approaches along with the terminology have varied over time, many visual methods or forms of visual inquiry have also been used to describe what others define as "photovoice" or "photo elicitation". To untangle this web, I have reframed photovoice and photo elicitation as Photovoice as a framework and Photovoice as a method (Brown, 2024).

For this interactive workshop I propose to offer an introductory session on how Photovoice may be used as a framework and as a method. I will begin by outlining the main principles of photovoice in its original intention and sketching out how photovoice research has developed since. For the workshop activities, I will have images available that will enable attendees to experiment with aspects of photovoice research from data collection to analysis through to dissemination. Throughout the session, I will highlight ethical, methodological, and practical opportunities and challenges when using photovoice as a framework or as a method.

Methods: This is a proposal for a methodological workshop on how to use Photovoice in research. Unfortunately, many researchers using photographs in ethnographic research misinterpret or mislabel their work. The aim of this interactive workshop to clarify definitions of photovoice research and to learn about the opportunities and challenges, benefits, and drawbacks of photovoice as a framework and photovoice as a method.

The workshop offers conference delegates an opportunity to explore the foundations and theoretical underpinning photovoice as a method and as a framework, and to enable practical experimentation.

We discuss the foundations of photovoice in the context of social justice discourses, why we should be using photovoice as a framework in research, but also how we may introduce photovoice as a method in our existing paradigms. Subsequently, delegates actively experiment with "pick a card" activity (photovoice as a method), the process of analysing photovoice data and creating representations of experiences through the use of images. Visual research methods have been found particularly helpful in yielding rich qualitative data and thus provide a deep insight into research participants' experiences. The tasks in the workshop are explored in view of 4 guiding questions allowing delegates to focus on practical, methodological, and ethical considerations regarding photovoice as a method vs. photovoice as a framework. In line with the pedagogical principles of social constructivism the course is delivered as a mixture of interactive group tasks, discussions and lectures to enable active and experiential learning.

Conclusions: By the end of the workshop, it is expected that delegates feel comfortable with the differences in approaches of photovoice as a method and photovoice as a framework. Additionally, delegates will recognise the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of both aspects of photovoice research.

ABSTRACT. Ofcom has engaged with academics throughout its existence, and has recently put in place a more integrated approach and a more proactive set of activities. We want to build mutually beneficial relationships, to test and develop our own thinking, as well as raising more awareness of our own work and research. We are keen to have a diversity of perspective and a challenge function to our work. We want to work with departments that are new to us as well as continuing more established links. This session will describe Ofcom’s plans and activity, with time for Q&A and discussion.

ABSTRACT. Relaunch of the International Journal of Creative Media Research hosted by the MeCCSA Practice Network and the editorial board of the International Journal of Creative Media Research. IJCMR is an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to innovative approaches in creative media research. We will introduce the journal's new direction, enhanced focus areas, and innovative submission categories. With a commitment to pushing the boundaries of media and creative studies, IJCMR is poised to enter a new era with expanded focus areas and submission categories that reflect the evolving landscape of creative media research. The relaunch of IJCMR aligns perfectly with the Practice Network’s aims and objectives, offering attendees an exclusive insight into innovative research methodologies and creative explorations.