ABSTRACT. The precariarity of working in the creative industries, with peaks and troughs in commissioning, short-term contracts and portfolio careers can feel like a permacrisis. This is a challenging media landscape for graduates to navigate.

In summer 2022 Birmingham hosted the Commonwealth Games. 52 students from across Birmingham City University took part in paid media work at the Games through the Host Broadcaster Training Initiative (HBTI). The purpose was to train entry-level media professionals for work in the West Midlands.

In this case study we analyse how valuable this experience was in improving employability. Taking a longitudinal approach, we surveyed the trainees a year after the Games in 2023 and conducted focus group discussions in 2024.

This paper explores how the HBTI experience affected the trainees’ understanding of the media workplace and the negotiation of their professional identity. It examines how this complemented their university experience, with the learning of supplemental skills. Findings suggest that the building of networks was key to the success of the trainees in securing future work, but not all the students were able to enlarge their industry contacts. Conclusions are drawn on the extent to which the HBTI programme met its aim of upskilling a local entry-level workforce for the West Midlands, through tracking the trainees’ employment.

Wider questions are posed around the value of work experience in helping transform the employability of underrepresented groups, and the impact and value of political initiatives, like the HBTI scheme, in shaping a local skilled media workforce.

ABSTRACT. The feast-and-famine cycle of TV content commissioning in the UK tends to result in periods of aridity that are followed by high levels of demand accompanied by acute skills gaps and shortages. These periodic skills crises have tended to produce a flurry of activity focused on entry-level recruitment. Yet, their cause has never been a shortage of entry-level talent. Young people have always aspired to work in this industry in large numbers and frequently are prepared to be exploited and to self-exploit to do so. Rather, the skills crises are primarily a consequence of poor retention of the industry’s predominantly freelance workforce. In short, the TV talent pipeline has a leakage problem.

This paper describes the first six months of a project between Bournemouth University and the production conglomerate Fremantle (funded by the British Academy) seeking to better understand the freelancer experience. To date, research into why people leave this industry has highlighted many of the work-life tensions and pressures that come with TV work culture suggesting that TV freelancers often feel a profound ongoing sense of lacking support. This project’s aim is to design, develop and test an intervention to improve the support of freelance careers in TV at the point at which the individual’s contract with an employer is coming to its end – the process of offboarding.

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces findings from a two-year longitudinal study tracking 91 new entrants in the UK film and TV industry, to detail their working conditions and personal challenges as they attempted to establish themselves. The study showed that unpaid work is, concerningly, very much part of the landscape, with 80% of participants carrying it out at some point. It drops off quickly in favour of unpaid work, but is viewed retrospectively as exploitative; the study found no correlation between individual levels of unpaid work and successful career progression. Key challenges included geographic location, and lack of contacts, as new entrants rode a rollercoaster ride between optimism and frustration. Soft skills proved more beneficial than industry-specific craft skills, in a Bourdieusian ‘hysteresis’ where cultural capital from prior education had to be exchanged for social capital in the professional field. Many lacked confidence and were concerned about being disadvantaged by their identity; although there is some evidence that diverse applicants felt positively advantaged, an unexpected finding that this paper explores in particular depth.

ABSTRACT. Public service broadcast television in the UK is facing a number of crises. From threats by SVOD popularity to challenges in ownership and funding, from mass unemployment of freelancers to frustrating progress on issues on equity, diversity and inclusion, PSB television and its viewers are facing a lack of certainty about the future. This paper addresses how the AHRC funded research project ‘What’s on? Rethinking class in the television industry’ (2023-2026) works to approach the permacrisis of class inequalities in UK television and contribute possible solutions to socioeconomic barriers in the industry.

Situated between academia, policy, and industry, combining industry-focused research techniques investigating inequalities in CCIs (Brook et al 2020, Carey et al 2021), with cultural and media studies approaches to media production, texts, and representations (McElroy & Noonan 2019; Wood 2020, Forrest & Johnson 2017), the paper elucidates the interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to class inequalities that the research takes, mapping the methodologies and aims against key industry reports and broadcaster targets. Drawing on specially commissioned industry interviews, we will share initial findings related to class and off-screen labour in scripted drama, and discuss how these insights link to the representation and audience-focussed phases of the project which will take place in 2024/5.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the polarised media terrain evoked by the 2022 Leicester unrest as a symptom of diasporic tensions between (British) Hindu right-wing nationalists and (British) Muslims. In August 2022, a cricket match between India and Pakistan provoked strong reactions that snowballed into a month-long period of riots and ethnic violence between British Hindus and British Muslims in Leicester. These clashes were widely covered on social media, fuelled by contested narratives and media work of both right-wing Hindu influencers from India and the UK as well as the wider Muslim community. In examining this unfolding field of narratives and counter-narratives on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Reddit, as well as interviews among the local communities in Leicester, we explore how both Hindus and Muslims observe and articulate belonging and become players in a larger global conflict around religion, ethnicity, and the nation. Engaging with the longstanding Indian nationalist investment with social media celebrities as well as institutional media channels to cement a right-wing Hindu nationalist discourse, we outline the dialogic relationship between diasporic identification and South Asian nationalisms. Highlighting a strategic use of platform logics to forward anti-muslim and anti-left rhetoric - often through misinformation, in imagining a homogenous national community not only in India but also in the diaspora, we shed light on a postcolonial crisis unfolding across time and space as manifested in right-wing diasporic media work.

ABSTRACT. Summary

This PhD by Practice research project uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the potential of immersive journalism and interactive documentary to engage users and communicate climate change content to 18-25 year old media users.

Research exploring how journalists can refine current techniques and innovate effectively is increasingly important, as climate change predictions become exponentially severe, digital media audiences become increasingly fragmented and misinformation continues to distort debates surrounding climate change.

Contribution to knowledge

We suggest that interactive media formats and gamification techniques have the potential to engage audiences and communicate important information to users more effectively than legacy formats. Yet producers face an increasingly competitive and algorithmically driven media environment, as misinformation, disinformation and changing patterns of media use makes engaging audiences with content they will engage with increasingly challenging.

By investigating the thematic and structural properties of interactive documentary work and identifying elements of gamification and intersections with immersive journalism, we have then tested how elements of gamification can be applied to an original experimental artefact of climate change focused immersive journalism. Testing the potential of different gamification techniques to engage audiences and communicate knowledge to new audiences.

ABSTRACT. By treating counter-disinformation activities as a discursive practice producing knowledge in a specific cultural and historical context, this paper brings a vital new perspective to an incipient Critical Disinformation Studies agenda. It proceeds by interrogating the communicative strategies informing the proliferating Western counter-disinformation initiatives which have mushroomed in response to what is widely perceived to be one of democracy’s most potent threats, and which border on a ‘moral panic’ serving to conceal key ideological tensions. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis methods, a close reading of mission statements and related materials from the websites of 4 leading counter-disinformation units demonstrates how these texts interweave three functions - identity construction, performativity, and representation – to generate the overarching ‘discursive formation’ or ‘articulation’ constituting counter disinformation as modern liberal democracy’s core, but also exposing its fault lines. Specifically, the paper shows that a failure to reconcile competing accounts of truth (as scientific rationality and normative value) indexes deeper contradictions pitting the liberal emphasis on individual freedom and capitalist efficiency against the democratic prioritising of popular power, dispassionate observation against civic participation, and the promotion of transparency against the creeping power of surveillance. It concludes that the absolutist epistemology – a vestige of disinformation’s Cold War conceptual origins - designed to cover over these paradoxes masks the complex roles played by deception in politics, thereby hindering the emergence of alternative forms of knowledge capable of embracing truth in its radical contingency and plurality,

ABSTRACT. How do people start to hold beliefs that run counter to more mainstream views? What is the role of online communications platforms in the development of such beliefs? And what types of media literacy do these people display?

This paper will set out how minority beliefs – those that differ from the opinions of the majority of people in the UK – develop, spread and impact those that hold them. Drawing on our published research, we explore people’s experiences of holding minority beliefs in relation to health protection, climate change and the Russia/Ukraine conflict. The Covid-19 pandemic, a key contributor to the sense of living in permacrisis, is seen to be the catalyst for the development of many beliefs. Some of the online behaviours demonstrated by those holding minority beliefs might be considered ‘media literate’, but we will demonstrate the vital importance of underlying skills and knowledge, as well as behaviour in media literacy.

We will also show a short video setting out one journey from majority to minority belief, using our unique Adults Media Lives dataset, and illustrating the extent to which opinion can change over time, as life stage and circumstances also alter.

The Online Safety Act gives Ofcom new media literacy duties to heighten public awareness and understanding of the nature and impact of misinformation online. Our research reminds us of the range of factors involved in opinion-formation, and of the need for a nuanced and holistic understanding of media literacy to address the permacrisis of misinformation.

ABSTRACT. COVID-19 changed how people engaged with television (Johnson and Dempsey 2020). The changes to the normal associations with space and time saw people stuck in their homes, frequently with their television as a main agent of socialization, trying to mark the hours and days until the unforeseen end of the pandemic.

Yet, there is a lot we still do not know about the function of this increase in television viewing. To add to our growing knowledge on this topic, this paper uses discussion threads on the r/doctorwho subreddit to explore the relationship between Doctor Who fans and the pandemic. Using six pandemic-related search terms, I searched the forum for results posted between March 8th, 2020, and March 8th, 2021, returning 79 discussion threads that I included in an inductive textual analysis.

This study found that Doctor Who may have acted as a mediator (Nolan-Haley 1996) between COVID-19 and fans. I propose that there are three avenues by which fans may have mediated the pandemic through Doctor Who: engaging with media (i.e., watching or re-watching Doctor Who), the creation of media (i.e., various creative lockdown projects), and speculating on future media narratives (i.e., applying COVID-19 to the “content world” (Jenkins 2012) of Doctor Who). By means of Reich’s (2016) use of the “three core principles of resilience […] control, coherence, and connectedness,” I argue that these avenues of mediation may have helped Doctor Who fans, individually and collectively, to generate greater resiliency and adaptability during the early stages of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT. Nisu fans generally emphasize the femininity of male stars or depict them as females. Despite nisu culture being controversial and suppressed by mainstream culture in mainland China, the nisu fandom continues to flourish. This paper utilizes in-depth interviews and participant observation methods to explore how Nisu fans demonstrate their empowerment through social media, actively engaging in and promoting the development of nisu culture.

Although the negative stereotypes imposed on Nisu fans by the public, such as "gender cognitive disorders" and "insane", the cohesion within the fan community has not weakened as a result. They form tight social communities, which not only strengthens the cohesion of the fan community but also strengthens the sense of identity. Nisu fans wander in the text as "poachers" and "nomads", cleverly borrowing male language expressions and integrating them creatively into the creation of nisu texts. Under the influence of various factors such as the Internet and capital intervention, Nisu has been afforded a more enriched space for imagination and diversified creative sources. Concurrently, the distinctive culture symbols inherent to Nisu culture have progressively infiltrated mainstream fan discourse, facilitating both fandom cultural expansion and integration.

In conclusion, although nisu culture is considered a marginalized fan culture, as an emerging subculture, the initiative and productivity of nisu fans still promote the development of nisu culture. Nisu fans are positioned to emerge as the latest “wealth code”, impacting not only a star's career but also shaping the future dynamics between the star and their fandom.

ABSTRACT. This paper stresses the relevance of cultural studies approaches to media audiences, fan cultures, and platform participation (Livingstone, 2013) for researchers seeking to understand climate crisis communication and reception. The paper draws on analysis of a case study: a qualitative thematic analysis of Reddit discussion threads in which users responded to image and video of New York obscured by smoke from Canadian wildfires in June 2023. The paper argues that theoretical and methodological traditions in cultural studies of media audiences are crucial for understanding the way that climate change news stories are re-mediated and made sense of in participatory platform contexts. Reddit responses to images and video of a hazy, smoke obscured Manhattan drew upon a deep well of media references through which to interpret the news, from mediated news events such as 9/11 and Covid-19 shutdowns to fictional representations from action and disaster films, video games, and comic books. In line with Reddit’s platform cultures, responses to this climate crisis news story drew not only on pop culture references, but also memes, affective expressions of anger and ‘doomerism’ (Lamb et al., 2020), and personal stories and advice (Robards, 2018). We argue that the cultures, participatory norms, and relational affordances (Rand and Stegeman, 2023) of social platforms like Reddit are crucial to understanding this deeply ambivalent response to images and news of climate crisis (Hautea et al., 2021) This paper aims to demonstrate the vitality of a cultural studies contextual audience research approach for researchers seeking to understand how climate change is communicated and received by contemporary platform users. References: Bucher, T., & Helmond, A. (2018). The affordances of social media platforms. The SAGE handbook of social media, 1, 233-253. Hautea, S., Parks, P., Takahashi, B., & Zeng, J. (2021). Showing they care (or don’t): Affective publics and ambivalent climate activism on TikTok. Social media+ society, 7(2), 20563051211012344. Lamb, W.F., Mattioli, G., Levi, S., Roberts, J.T., Capstick, S., Creutzig, F., Minx, J.C., Müller-Hansen, F., Culhane, T. and Steinberger, J.K., (2020). Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability, 3, p.e17. Livingstone, S. (2013). The participation paradigm in audience research. The communication review, 16(1-2), 21-30. Robards, B. (2018). ‘Totally straight’: Contested sexual identities on social media site reddit. Sexualities, 21(1-2), 49-67.

ABSTRACT. A societal permacrisis arguably demands fresh thinking and solutions journalism is one such grassroots approach to find workable responses. Solutions journalism eschews traditional news values driven journalism as outlined by Harcup and O’Neill (2017). Instead of focussing on “conflict-based news coverage”, it seeks answers which can change the status quo (McIntyre, 2019). Such an approach arguably works best in a geographically limited, community-based setting and this paper examines award-winning publications the Bristol Cable and Greater Govanhill running solutions journalism operations in their communities. The well-established Bristol Cable, was started in 2013 by three university friends with a history in community activism. They wanted to create a new form of journalism focusing on excluded communities in a positive sense. The intention was to merge the elements of journalism and community action to produce change. It has not just given voice to disadvantaged people in the community but by promoting workshops has empowered them. In 2022 it won funding from the European Journalism Centre for a solutions-based project The Future of Cities project and this paper will discuss that project. Also receiving EJC funding was the much newer Scottish, community-owned social enterprise magazine Greater Govanhill, set up in Glasgow’s Southside in 2020. Its aim is community cohesion, and their money is funding a solutions-based project focussing on health inequalities in Govanhill. Sharing their premises in Glasgow is The Ferret an independent investigative journalism co-operative operation which is expanding the project across

ABSTRACT. In 2013, a news article on the BBC reported on claims that Birmingham in the UK was “top for hyperlocal online news sites” (BBC 2013). Research by Harte (2013) had indicated that there were 28 websites that were publishing “online news or content service pertaining to a small community” (Radcliffe 2012). The vast majority of these were websites run by local citizens largely on a volunteer basis. Their presence in the media landscape was seen as making a valuable contribution to local public spheres of communication, impacted then, as now, by the inexorable decline of the mainstream local press. By 2023 the number of such sites in Birmingham has reduced to single figures, their everyday communicative function supplanted in part by a multitude of local Facebook groups where audience participation is high but trust low (Karlsen & Aalberg 2023). This paper draws together reflections from those who ran hyperlocal journalism operations in the early 2010s, along with funders, advocates, and those involved in shaping media policy who were involved in attempting to “anticipate, assemble and animate a broader UK hyperlocal media ‘space’” (Rodgers 2017). The paper argues that despite the relative short-lived era of web-based hyperlocal publishing, it represented a progressive moment in citizen-led media by eschewing journalistic norms and offering the opportunity for audiences to see their everyday lives and places reflected back to them in spaces that facilitated wider social participation in the creation, participation and dissemination of journalism.

ABSTRACT. Public trust in the media is at an all time low, which emphasises the need for research into journalism ethics in the sector (Impress, 2022). Journalists working for established news titles in the UK draw primarily on an industry code of practice in defining journalism ethics (Stoker, 2020). Post-Leveson, there has been an emphasis on embedding The Editors’ Code into newsroom culture in organisations which subscribe to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). Journalists’ relationships with their community have a role to play in shaping their ethical practice, and while strong relationships with readers is deemed important, they are not explicitly recognised as driving ethical practice where the Code is foregrounded (Stoker 2023). In addressing the key theme of misinformation, this paper considers research with journalists working in hyperlocal news publications, based in non-traditional titles in newly emerging online spaces. Local news organisations often reflect the experiences and histories of ordinary people and their communities, giving a voice and representation which is missing from established news organisations (Wahl-Jorgensen and Boelle, 2023). This indicates that the definition of ethical journalism is heavily shaped by the communities they serve, where they frame themselves as citizens of those communities, and their connectedness determines the nature of their news content and their approaches to news gathering and production. It draws on data gathered through focus groups, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews conducted from January to March 2024 as part of an Innovate UK funded partnership between the University of Huddersfield and the press regulator Impress. It is part of a larger project to develop training in ethical practice for those working in British news industries.

Dr Ruth Stoker and Dr Beth Parkes (University of Huddersfield) are supervisor and associate on a KTP project with Impress to develop ethics training programmes for those working in British media news industries.

ABSTRACT. The more I join discussions about triggering change in the way platforms govern our expression, work and networks, the more I notice a sense of despair and defeat from activists and academics alike. The main question seems to be: does it even make sense to try and communicate with such opaque, profit-driven companies as social media platforms? This practice-based session consists in a series of talking points, consideration, advice and challenges related to communicating research and user needs to social media platforms in times of crisis. Starting with an autoethnographic approach, I share my experience of being a censored user and a known researcher activist, caught between platforms and users experiencing ‘automated powerlessness’ following increasingly adverse content moderation. Then, I continue by discussing techniques that have previously helped or hindered my communications with platforms: i.e., different styles of self-presentation, engagement with and language around activism, the sharing of research-based data, the amount of media noise made by certain issues.

Author info:

Dr Carolina Are is a platform governance researcher with a PhD in online abuse and conspiracy theories, currently working as Innovation Fellow at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens. Following her experiences of online censorship, she has been researching on algorithmic bias against nudity and sexuality on social media, and has published the first study on the shadowbanning of pole dancing in Feminist Media Studies. Her work has been published in Social Media + Society, Media Culture & Society and Porn Studies, and it has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Conversation, the BBC, Wired, the MIT Technology Review. She is also a content creator and blogger, as well as an activist and a pole dance instructor, on social media at @bloggeronpole.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents the argument that governance at the intersection of media and advertising is in crisis. The regulatory arrangements to address ‘hidden’ advertising remain a patchwork of rules that fail by implementation, and design, to match the rapidly mutating forms of creative content that merge media and marketing. The paper sets out the context and key explanations, presents findings from a 32-country study of regulations and governance, and sets out recommendations for reform derived from analysis of problems and potential mitigations.

This presentation comes at the start of the final year of a three-year international research project on branded content governance. This includes a study of laws and regulations across all EU countries, North America, Australia and UK, analysis of the media-marketing ecology (both published summer 2024) and further in-depth studies of advertising and media policy, discourses and governance in the UK and Spain.

While synoptic, the presentation will combine an explanation of the context, summarise findings and outline how we have engaged with academics, industry practitioners and policy stakeholders to develop a ‘theory of change’ framework to identify problems and outline mitigations/actions to support context-sensitive action for better governance.

The issues this project engages include ‘hidden’ advertising, identification of marketing communications and sources, misleading advertising and disinformation, adtech and platform governance, media literacy, convergence and regulation.

This is a joint presentation by the Principal Investigator for the BCG Project, Prof. Jonathan Hardy and the UK postdoctoral research for the project, Dr Hanna Kubicka.

ABSTRACT. Discussion of a polycrisis and what to do about it have taken up considerable space in political science scholarship on the European Union over the last decade. The challenges of the migration crisis; UK withdrawal from the EU and its implications; the rise of the far right; and the Covid 19 pandemic have loomed large. As media scholars would predict, these problems have been reflected in – and arguably to a significant extent have been shaped by – content created and exchanged across our media system. An increasingly high profile part of this system has been the Internet platform environment, dominated by what the EU terms Internet intermediaries. These - until recently barely regulated - platforms provide access to, and host, much of the electronic human communication which has, in various ways, engaged with the constituent issues of the EU’s polycrisis. The role of Internet intermediaries has been seen as increasingly problematic and what to do about them – specifically how to create an effective system for their governance - has emerged as a major international media policy challenge for the EU and is the subject of this paper. Academic work on understanding this response and its implications is in its infancy, since the EU’s legislative response – primarily in the form of the Digital Markets Act (2022) and the Digital Services Act (2022) – has been only recently established. Using a regulatory governance academic lens applied to a documentary analysis of the key legislation and perspectives on it elicited through EU-led public consultations, the paper characterises the current shape of the EU’s governance response to Internet intermediaries. The paper finds that, rather than relying on more flexible (and potentially more risky) self-regulatory Internet governance forms, the EU has opted for a more formal, tried and tested (in the telecommunications sector) trans-European regulatory network strategy. The paper argues that this reflects the perceived importance of the role of platform environments in the lives of EU citizens – not least in engaging with the issues which comprise a polycrisis - and the need to ensure that these platforms are at least effectively governable, and ideally governed effectively.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims at offering an overarching theoretical frame for analyzing different forms of direct and indirect influence of Big Tech on news media. It does so by expanding the concept of media capture to media environment capture. The latter provides an analytical tool that helps categorize various patterns of Big Tech’s influence on news media (as institutions) leading to the capture of information environments that journalism (as a practice) needs to work (well). The concept makes clear that tech giants do not simply capture “the news” or news media by means of acquiring media outlets and/or by producing and distributing the news. Instead, media environment capture stresses that Big Tech influence entire information environments, consequently shaping our life-world while privatizing the public sphere.

ABSTRACT. This MeCCSA Radio Studies Network panel explores the power and potential of audio communications through radio broadcasting and podcasting to serve the public interest and build purposeful connections between producer/presenters and listeners. Through close readings and content analysis of radio shows and podcasts, reflexive examinations of production materials and practices, and site-specific radio projects, these papers provide diverse perspectives on how podcasting can serve the public interest and how relationships are formed between practitioners and their audiences. Against the backdrop of the permacrisis, we ask what it is about this most intimate medium of audio that empowers us to communicate over the airwaves in such meaningful ways as could change our world for the better.

Paper A presented by Tzlil Sharon, University of Amsterdam

Inverse parasocial relationships with (imagined) podcast listenersBased on in-depth interviews with 12 prominent podcasters in the Israeli podcast scene, this study offers a unique perspective on the parasocial relationship between podcast creators and listeners. While previous studies have predominantly focused on studying parasocial relationships from the audience's viewpoint, we introduce the concept of inverse parasocial relationships to better understand how podcasters envision their listeners. In doing so, we provide valuable insights into the dynamics of this relationship and the modes of addressivity it evokes, particularly with the emergence of intimacy as a keyword in podcast studies. We conceptualize and define the notion of an ‘imagined podcast listener’ and propose a typology of eight different kinds of imagined relationships with imagined perceived listeners. Subsequently, we examine the contexts in which podcasters use the term ‘intimacy’ and communicate it to their listeners. Taken together, the findings lead us to argue that the starting point for the postulated intimacy between podcasters and listeners is an imagined addressee whom podcasters essentially conceive as similar to themselves. As a result, this relationship inherently carries the potential of being one-sided and illusory.

Paper B presented by Josephine Coleman, Brunel University London

Matters of the heart – communicating the global environmental crisis on local community radio In community radio, broadcast outputs and social media content reflect the interests of target audiences as experienced and interpreted by each station’s practitioners. These volunteer producers and presenters favour topics close to their heart; they source material by exploiting social capital to secure information and interviewees. So, when reporting on environmental issues, there can be a blurring between journalistic and activist roles. This paper applies notions of situated practice (Schatzki, 2002) and professional ‘fields’ (Benson and Neveu, 2009) to explore the tension between the two practices in the context of Ofcom-licensed local community radio in the United Kingdom. Focusing on selected environmental shows and features, we consider the extent to which practitioners knowingly distinguish between journalism and advocacy.Through thematic analysis of data derived from participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, listening-in, and close reading of media texts, this paper illustrates some of the ways that practitioners embrace and express their own commitment to environmental journalism through communicating climate-related, eco and sustainability discourses in their programme production.

References:

Benson, R., Neveu, E. (Eds.), 2009. Bourdieu and the journalistic field. Polity, Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA, USA.

Schatzki, T.R., 2002. The site of the social: a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA.

Paper C presented by Dr Magz Hall, Canterbury Christ Church University

Radio Air GardensThis paper will discuss my current practice-based research project Radio Air Garden, moving forward from my related art for the environment work, Tree Radio for Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2015), and Transmission Spores (2018) for the Ash Archive. It uses expanded radio research as a basis for practice-based research to illuminate air pollution via a bespoke radio air garden, which absorbs air pollution and taps into the lesser-known history of electro-culture. Its antenna-like structures create a living radio installation which doubles up as an outside expanded radio lab, bringing together practitioners, listeners, and new audiences. Several new works have already been produced: one with composer Peter Coyte focused on air and sea pollution, Don’t Listen Up (2022) for The Whitstable Biennale, and a participatory work in the Pyrenees focused on microplastics, called Long Wave (2023) and a  podcast recorded for Reina Sofia National Museum Madrid about the project, whilst an immersive expanded radio art installation and podcast on landfill pollution is in production called Wastelands: Rubbish Collectors supported by Screen South and the first public radio air garden is up at Windmill Hill City Farm Bristol.

References:Hall, M. (2015) Radio After Radio, Redefining Radio Art In The light of New Media Technology Via Expanded Practice. London: UAL. PHD.

Hall, M. 2015. Tree radio. Reflections on Process in Sound. 4, London. pp.80-87. Assessed (14/10/18)  https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24223/1/Reflections_on_Process4_2015.pdfG-u-i,  

S. G. (n.d.). (2018) Phyto-Sensor Toolkit | Citizen Sense.  Accessed ( 1/9/22) https://phyto-sensor-toolkit.citizensense.net/Trust,

V. a. P. B. G. (2021) Electroculture. The Gardens Trust. Accessed ( 1/9/22)  https://thegardenstrust.blog/2021/09/04/electroculture/

Paper D presented by Dr James Edward Armstrong, University for the Creative Arts and Dr Arran Calvert, independent

The Echoes of Perma-crisis through Deep Time

In considering the perma-crisis, we are exploring Horden, a former pit village in northeast England. In examining the role of deep time in the continuation of former mining communities, we are developing a podcast as a methodological approach to understanding the role of deep time in people’s connections to the local land. Formed over 305 million years ago as the result of a minor extinction event that saw vast swaths of carboniferous rainforest collapse, the Durham Coalfield formed from an ancient crisis that extended over several thousand years to later become the lifeblood of communities whose heritage is now rooted in that cataclysmic event. Examining deep time reminds us not only of the constant fluctuations of this planet but also that life finds a way and persists.Is ‘perma-crisis’ then a reflection of our own times as opposed to a constant way of being? We propose a paper that reflects on our findings in developing the podcast and question how we can further extend this approach in revealing the deep time connections that exist between community and land and how audio approaches can shine a light on those connections.

 Paper E presented by Phil Ramsey, Ulster University and Andrew White, King’s College London

The News Agents Podcast: From Public Service Media to Public Interest Media 

In February 2022 it was announced that the high-profile BBC journalists Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel had joined Global Radio. They would later be joined by Lewis Goodall, another BBC journalist. Their podcast, The News Agents (TNA) – now one of the UK’s most listened to – is discernibly crafted from the Public Service Media tradition, but with crucial differences. This paper argues that the editorial policy that TNA has pursued takes the broadcasters from a Public Service Media to a Public Interest Media framework: as such, while journalistic objectivity is still partly in operation, it is the freeing from the BBC’s impartiality guidelines that most marks TNA out from similar BBC podcasts. The analysis of this paper rests on a sample of ~240 episodes, which the author has listened to since its launch. A thematic analysis approach (Herzog et al., 2019) is then taken to a series of policy reports and the wider regulatory framework to analyse how TNA operates vis-à-vis how BBC podcasts operate – and to explain the challenge this offers to the Public Service Media model in place on BBC podcasts. In so doing, a critical policy studies analysis (Cairney, 2021) will emerge. 

References:Cairney P (2021) The Politics of Policy Analysis. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Herzog C, Handke C and Hitters E (2019) Thematic analysis of policy data. In: Van den Bulck H, Puppis M, Donders, K and Van Audenhove, L (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Methods for Media Policy Research. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 385–401

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the representation of ethnic minorities in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic in national l news outlets. Focusing on the issues highlighted by the ongoing COVID Inquiry, including high BAME death rates, infection rates, and low vaccine intake (Khunti et al., 2020), this research delves into the role of data journalism in shaping public discourse on these matters in national and regional news. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk, 2001), the study explores the development of news narratives about ethnic minorities communities. It analyses data presentation, language use, and the perspectives of journalists and ethnic minorities community members. It offers a new contribution to journalism by exploring Data journalism through the lens of race and ethnicity in both national and local news media.

The CDA involves a content analysis of news articles from four national news outlets, namely the BBC, Sky News, The Guardian and The Daily Mail, followed up with interviews with ethnic minority journalists and Data journalists and focus groups with ethnic minority participants.

The discourse analysis considers the three aspects of the research, the content analysis, the interviews and focus groups to answer the research questions on how the ethnic minority communities have been represented through data and language, how they perceive their representation and how ethnic minority journalists play a crucial role in giving a voice to marginalised communities. It investigates how COVID-19 affected ethnic minority communities and was a catalyst leading to further data journalism addressing other aspects of inequalities.

ABSTRACT. In the context of decolonisation processes in South Asia, crises of identity and citizenship have long sat at the heart of geopolitical shifts. Civic identification and participation have changed, often radically, in syncopated rhythms, often out of time with the temporalities of community belonging, generational succession, and the distended time-spaces of migratory flows. In this paper we trouble the notion of permacrisis and instead consider the disruptive potential of liminal and ‘unsettled’ identities to speak back to not only to established colonial narratives, but also more broadly to the tendency to de-historicise contemporary intersecting ruptures and frictions in social, political and cultural life. We use the lens of everyday memory to understand how the ruptures and instabilities caused by the 1947 Partition of India, the subsequent Liberation war of 1971 in Bangladesh, the East African expulsions of the 1970s, and the migrations to the UK which followed are actively managed through cultural remembering practices, holding national, civic, familial, regional, and cultural affiliations in a productive tension. These tensions create opportunities to reveal the contradictions and inequities of contemporary postcolonial social life in post-Brexit Britain and the potential to forge new community relations and forms of social action which actively refuse to idealise historical stabilities in which colonial inequities have been rooted. This analysis draws on six years of ethnographic fieldwork and co-created community activities conducted in the Midlands and East London, UK, conducted as part of the Migrant Memory and Postcolonial Imagination project (The Leverhulme Trust).

ABSTRACT. As Radio 4’s staple morning programme, Today fits into the working lives of listeners to provide the latest news for its three hour slot. Today has therefore – to its more dedicated listener - become a trusted and familiar programme. Chignell describes Todays influence by stating, “there can be little doubt that Today is a very important and influential provider of both news and comment, without transgressing the rules which forbid the BBC to appear to ‘editorialise’ as a newspaper might do” (2009, p.139). However, it could be argued that the BBC perpetuates dominant ideologies, particularly regarding non-human animals (NHAs). For most, our understanding and perceptions of non-humans begins and ends with the way in which different forms of media represent them. This is how we come to understand non-humans who we do not have regular contact with. There have been studies on the representations of NHAs in other forms of media, however, there has been none on their representation within radio. Speciesism is the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of NHA’s. Non-anthropocentric speciesism refers to the unequal way in which humans view and treat different species. This presentation will address how different non-humans are represented on Today and how the challenges certain non-humans face are mostly left out of the news agenda. This presentation will provide potential solutions to the issue of non-anthropocentric speciesism within journalism, and address how a potential speciesist news agenda may affect listeners perceptions on non-human’s and the wider implications of this.

ABSTRACT.  

Is there anybody there?, Chris Paul Daniels, 2023, 17:18mins 

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Daniels has sourced 70 different films from the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University that involve cultural traditions, procession and ceremony. Guided by the unseen presence of a disembodied voice, the artist’s fictional script is accompanied with an original musical score composed by Graham Massey (808 State, Massonix).

The films feature elaborate costumes of popular and imaginary figures, sporting activities, parades, and pride marches. Edited together to create a continuous flowing choreography, Is there anybody there? explores notions of individual and collective memory, examining how it is created, by whom, and whose stories, identities or cultures may be missing. The fantastical imagery highlights generational shifts of cultural phenomena, exploring what is collectively ‘performed’, and how powerful fictions can be distorted.

Fascinated by the slippages between what is real and what is not, the artist explores how historical events morph between legend, myth or folklore, and how endlessly performed rituals can become estranged out of time. The precarity of the narrative of history is exposed through fictions told by an unreliable narrator and proposes new stories to make sense of our lives for a parallel present or a projected future.

Originally exhibited as solo exhibition Chris Paul Daniels: Is there anybody there? at HOME, Sat 18 Feb – Sun 4 Jun 2023. https://homemcr.org/exhibition/chris-paul-daniels-is-there-anybody-there/ Curated by Clarissa Corfe. Commissioned by HOME. Supported by the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University

ABSTRACT. Award-winning filmmaker Catherine Gough-Brady and award-winner composer Gail Priest collaborate on a short film in which land is a holder of knowledge. They ask the sand dunes questions, and it answers.

Catherine Gough-Brady is rethinking the way she films the non-human. Instead of observing nature, Catherine is treating nature as a holder of knowledge. She is asking it questions, and filming the answers. Gail Priest is exploring how much stretching can the “figure” (of the voice, the field recording, the word even) take before it breaks and becomes abstract filaments. Her work approaches this duality as an exploration of areas of slippage.

ABSTRACT. A screening and discussion of a new film from Compound 13 Lab: www.compound13.org

Every day in the city of Mumbai, before dawn, a group of eight women, from 30’s to 60’s in age, leave their homes in Lallubhai Compound, Mankhurd and catch the first train southwest to Dharavi. Former residents of Dharavi's Navrang/Sanuallah Compound, which was forcibly demolished by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in a series of evictions in 2011, they work as a wastepicking collective, taking the same daily route through the lanes of Dharavi and sharing the profits from the sale of the plastic waste that they collect. This 20 minute film provides a glimpse into their working lives, experiences and struggles. It explores how collective self-organisation and everyday solidarity allows them to deal with the manifold threats, risks and challenges that they face: from predatory and unwanted harassment and abuse from the authorities, to the looming threat to their livelihoods of the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan. In the closing stages of the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations, a process from which the voices of frontlineworkers are largely missing or absent, the film draws public attention to the ‘green collar work’ undertaken by millions of waste workers around the world and the important role that such self-organised enterprise plays in enabling marginalised citizens to survive with dignity and independence.

This film has been made in collaboration with Compound 13 Lab’s community members and this will be its first screening.

ABSTRACT. Subcultures have been identified as spaces and scenes that emerge in response and resistance to societal conditions and crises. Often associated with ideas of “alternativeness” and “underground” activity, subcultures have been positioned as challenging a status quo. In other words, subcultures have been framed as a crisis in themselves. Still, as extensive media and cultural studies research has highlighted, subcultures can and do become “mainstream”. What’s old is new again. Focusing on analysis of recent iterations and imaginings of nu-metal across media, music, and fashion, this talk will consider key components of the soundtracks and stylings of a subculture in crisis. Addressing the racial, gender, (inter)national, and class politics of a scene known for blending the grammars and aesthetics of rap with metal, this session will tackle the old politics and contemporary mediation of nu-metal, while foregrounding the distinct role of Black cool, creativity, and culture in this.

ABSTRACT. Graham Murdock is Emeritus Professor of Culture and Economy at Loughborough University .He has published widely in the sociology and political economy of culture and communications. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Auckland, California at San Diego, Mexico City, Curtin, Bergen, the Free University of Brussels, and Stockholm and is currently Guest Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. His work has been translated into 21 languages. Recent books include; as co-editor, Money Talks: Media, Markets, Crisis (2015), New Media and Metropolitan Life: Connecting, Consuming, Creating (in Chinese) (2015) and Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Change (2017) His latest book News Corp : Empire of Influence ,is published by Routledge in August this year.

Speaking on the keynote, Graham Murdock said: In classical Greek theatre catastrophes occurred when underlying tensions and contradictions came to a head in the final act. We are currently confronting a catastrophe produced by three converging crises: a rapidly worsening climate and environmental emergency; the economic, social and moral havoc inflicted by market fundamentalist policies; and the destruction of deliberative politics, opening the way for reactionary populism and authoritarianism.

These crisis have deep roots in the organisation of capitalism but their intensification since the 1990s coincides in the West with the corporate capture of digital communication technologies , the unprecedented concentration of private ownership and control over their development , and the increasing reorganisation of production, administration, consumption, and sociality around their capacities.

The paper has two main aims. Firstly, taking the climate emergency as a particular focus I want to detail how digitalised capitalism is contributing to the current catastrophe with increasing calls on energy and scarce resources, installing the aggressive promotion of unsustainable levels of hyper consumption as the basis of the dominant platforms’ business models, hollowing out public space , and attenuating solidarities respectful of difference. Secondly, I want to ask if we have now reached the point no return or if it still possible to construct a public culture hospitable to diversity and principled disagreement, securely rooted in a recognition of shared fate and commitment to social justice, and underpinned by an ethos and care and custodianship of the natural world.

ABSTRACT. Feminist media and cultural studies suggests a kind of entrapment for girls engaging with Instagram, in which they must work hard to stage aspirational portrayals of beautified bodies and sparkling social lives. Drawing on the outcomes of an applied theatre workshop project taking place in Liverpool with white, working class girls aged 16-17, this research reconfigures how this entrapment plays out in daily life. My findings indicate that young women are gripped by ‘expressive stasis’: an inability to post for fear of not meeting the gendered and classed terms of ‘Instagrammability’. In turn, this causes young women to invest in individualised mental labour of staging a future perfect self, alienating them from the materiality of their perceived ‘imperfect’ bodies. Worryingly, this is set against a cultural backdrop where popular feminist resilience languages promote intensely individualised coping methods (Banet-Weiser, 2018; McRobbie, 2020). Through analysis of young women’s ‘re-worlding’ of Instagram through theatre, I detail the power of performance to enable participants to re-awaken corporeal perception, and to interrogate the terms of ‘perfection’ and the normalisation of expressive stasis. These findings suggest that bridging the gap between the fields of feminist media and cultural studies and applied theatre provides an in-depth understanding of how girls renegotiate pressures to stage performances of the self online. This feminist interdisciplinary framework allows for a critical illumination of the political power of embodied and collaborative knowledge production and how this can intervene with technologies of resilient individuality that undergird young women’s experiences of their mediated social worlds.

ABSTRACT. With the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health generally, and particularly on the mental health of young people, still being felt and indeed becoming apparent, this research proposes to examine historical media coverage of stress, depression and mental health challenges in in popular media forms of the late 20th century. This paper would examine mental-health related content drawn from the Femorabilia archive of twentieth-century girls’ and women’s magazines, held at Liverpool John Moores University, exploring the way that such issues are treated as medical, social and individual problems. Magazines such as Jackie and Just Seventeen from the Femorabilia collection demonstrate a range of ways to engage with these conditions, from problem page letters where a reader asks for help with their depression to features that ask ‘Are you mean and moody?’ where readers are asked to think about how their moods affect their interactions with others. The paper would evaluate both the gendered character of the advice given and also trace developments over time, from the 1970s to the Thatcherite era and beyond, in the way girls are encouraged to manage their feelings of sadness, depression and stress in these immensely popular media forms, in order to suppress girls’ anxieties becoming crises.

ABSTRACT. An array of sources discuss ‘misinformation' or 'disinformation’ of COVID-19 vaccines, suggesting that it amounts to a public health concern. For Black African women in particular, studies have revealed that a long-standing history of marginalisation and maternal mortality rates has resulted in increased susceptibility to vaccination. Studies have also found significantly low rates of COVID-19 vaccine knowledge among many Black people, especially in women. In addition, in the post-pandemic era, there is existent data that indicates that older adults, especially women are relying on a combination of different information sources i.e. interactive social media platforms or social circles etc in search of health-related information to guide their decisions. This study, underpinned by the 5C scale of vaccine hesitancy, explores how information sources guide the decision-making of this particular group of women relating to COVID-19 vaccines. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 participants aged 59 to 77 residing in England and Scotland to gain a richer understanding of their lived experiences. The assessment of the 5C scale and the intersections of culture and education in predicting COVID-19 vaccination behaviours among older Black African women in the UK is relevant as it reveals the potential prevalence of misinformation among the cohort, and the inability to use or discern information from digital apps or social media platforms, despite having at least one higher education degree. These findings also provide valuable insights for evidenced culture-sensitive, audience-focused information literacy initiatives and health policies that can bolster more participation among ethnic minority communities.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I examine the affective contagiousness of the discursive figure of ‘cancel culture’, as it slides across various contexts and political purposes, traveling from a grassroots activist calls for accountability to getting weaponized by right wing media – and how practices of cancelation seep back into marginalized communities as well as academic research. Focusing specifically on social media, the presentation explores ‘cancelation’ in three contexts: when weaponized in the name of freedom of speech; in calls to not cite problematic figures in academic research; and when members of trans and queer counterpublics on social media attack other members of the same community.

Through analyzing parallels and differences between these three contexts, I propose that such contagions of cancelation speak to an amalgamation of broader cultural-affective tendencies: a politics of vulnerability where claims to injury have paradoxically become a privileged place from which to speak; critical scholarly training in paranoid reading; and ‘platform drama’ where algorithmic favoring of heightened affect intertwines with peer and platform surveillance. Paradoxically, an online activist practice to call for justice may turn into a counterproductive permacrisis where 'cancelation' is a constant fear, and peer surveillance and paranoia are normalized and rewarded. As a potential antidote, I turn to José Esteban Muñoz’s (1999) vision of disidentificatory queer world-making, asking how to sustain an open, exploratory, messy orientation to the world and build academic and activist communities that resist any form of respectability politics or calls for purity.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, universities have been a topic of discussion in popular commentary for their “progressive cancel culture” and “free speech crisis”. Left-leaning students are seen as the drivers for censorship of various views, leaving those on the right feeling unsure if they hold acceptable opinions and resorting to frequent self-censorship. Empirical studies on student censorship focusing on the UK and US partially confirm these claims; left-leaning, but also right-leaning students, display levels of censorship for certain viewpoints, however, students on the right do self-censor frequently. Thus, there is perhaps a university “crisis”, with elements of speech stifling and lack of plurality of views. Outside of the western context, however, there is a lack of research looking at student censorship. This study aims to bridge that gap by investigating the levels of censorship and self-censorship displayed by students In Mexico. Statistical analyses of an online survey show that, different to the results found in the US and the UK: 1) left-leaning students display higher levels of censorship for various views, as opposed to those on the right, 2) right-leaning students do not stand out as self-censoring particularly frequently and do so at similar levels than those on the left. As hypothesised, student censorship would look different cross-culturally, particularly in a non-western, politically unique place as Mexico. A country’s culture influences how phenomena behaves, and when kept in mind, universal (sometimes synonymous with the West) claims are avoided. The solutions for the censorship “crisis” in the US, UK, and as appears to be, in Mexico, need to also be aware of the cultural. The implications of research on student censorship relate to broadly reflecting on universities crucial role in democracy, civic engagement, and intellectual diversity.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I explore the way that contemporary comedy has been framed within the context of “woke culture”. Cammaerts (2022), in his analysis of anti- woke discourse in the UK notes that much anti- woke discourse is predicated on the assumption that cancel culture is a restriction of views and that within anti- woke discourse freedom of speech is seen as a “divine freedom” regardless of whether that speech is discriminatory. I will explore how anti- woke discourse is circulated within comedy cultures in the UK.

Central to my analysis is the marketing and publicity around Comedy Unleashed which describes itself as hosting “free- thinking” comedians performing to “open- minded” audiences. I will explore the extent to which “anti- woke comedy” such as Comedy Unleashed can be understood as a deeply reactionary response to moves within comedy to become more inclusive and respond more robustly to discrimination.Furthermore, I argue that despite arguments that “anti- woke” comedy is about freedom of speech and a broad range of political views, it often reinforces conservative ideologies that fundamentally aim towards resisting any attempts at a more equitable society. This is particularly significant within the context of stand up comedy in the UK, and industry that has historically assumed a hegemonic white male comedian. Therefore, the work of anti- woke comedy is both about resisting change within society more broadly and within comedy in particular.

ABSTRACT. In the age of permanent crisis, drones have emerged as pivotal tools in collecting visual data, offering unparalleled perspectives and insights into areas previously inaccessible or dangerous for human reach. Our panel encapsulates the multifaceted role of drones in harnessing visual data. Their ability to capture visuals from unique aerial viewpoints has revolutionised the ways we understand the world. Drones have transcended their utilitarian applications, contributing to the arts and storytelling by offering new visual aesthetics that challenge traditional narratives and perspectives (Nick Jones and Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox). The adoption of recreational drones and DIY drone practices in recent military crises has radically altered how battlefield violence becomes aestheticised and consumed through social media (Hendrik Bender and Max Kanderske). Moreover, drones are pivotal in unveiling hidden realities, such as the immigration detention industry (David Taylor) and climate change (Richard Carter), serving as critical tools in activism and environmental research. This panel offers an interdisciplinary approach to studying drone technology and its impact on society and culture. By exploring the intersection of drone technology with human experiences, this panel aims to contribute to the discourse on visual literacy and the socio-cultural ramifications of emerging visual technologies in an era characterised by continual crises.

“Consumer drone warfare: How DIY drone practices transform recent military crises” by Hendrik Bender and Max Kanderske, Siegen University In the early stage of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Bayraktar drone emerged as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Though the Bayraktar became a pop culture icon that circulated through social media via videos, songs and memes, its actual use on the battlefield soon got overshadowed by another type of drone: the humble consumer drone provided by manufacturers like DJI and Autel. We argue that this shift towards off-the-shelf consumer drones is marked by new practices of wartime drone flight, new aesthetics of battlefield footage and, importantly, a notable shift in the drone discourse towards more ‘heroic’ narratives. Starting from the observation that the existing body of work on conventional drone warfare does not readily map onto what we call “consumer drone warfare”, the paper aims to shed light on how battlefield footage produced by consumer drones enters the online discourse and, consequently, our day-to-day lives. We posit that the intimate depictions of violence produced by consumer drones serve (at least) two functions: they allow a besieged state to perform (aerial) sovereignty while eliciting international support for the war effort through social-media campaigns and crowdfunding schemes.

“Threat Trajectories: Cinema, FPV Drones, and Pandemic Anxiety” by Nick Jones, University of York Many discourses on drone vision during the 2000s and 2010s focus on detached aerial views arising from the pervasive military use of drones for surveillance of hostile territory, both domestic and extraterritorial. However, a different kind of drone visuality is emerging, one fast-paced and kinaesthetic, which places the drone at street- and eye-level, sweeping through the spaces of everyday life in ways that make them strange and frenzied. Originating in footage of competitive first-person view (FPV) drone racing, this visuality has moved into commercial narrative filmmaking, where it creates heightened affective sensations of urban space. Using the case study of Ambulance (2022), a film shot during COVID-19 lockdowns in Los Angeles, this chapter explores this aesthetic and connects it to anxieties which are indebted to pandemic realities.

“Instruments of Ecopoetic Mapping” by Richard Carter, University of York Abstract This presentation documents the author’s latest explorations in combining sensory devices with generative media to produce speculative, ecopoetic mappings of different landscapes bearing the hallmarks of human impacts, historical and contemporary. The aim is to explore how digital systems can contribute, creatively and critically, to future imaginaries wherein they do not manifest as such an extractive force on Earthly ecologies—gesturing towards potential cultures of “permacomputing”. Gaining such understandings is of significance at a moment of technogenic transformation so extensive and irreversible that they are considered a key driver and symptom of a planet submerged under intractable poly-crises. This paper will showcase different possibilities using three distinct projects: Algorithmic Light, Lines of Flight, and Nephoscope. All are linked by their explicit incorporation of real-time environmental phenomena—wind, weather, light, and movement—within digital processes of ‘intelligent’ sensing and poetic inscription, staging a collaboration between human, technological, and material agencies that reflects their entangled status across the observable world.

“COMPLEX - A visual index of the Immigrant detention industry” by Professor David Taylor, University of Arizona School of Art

COMPLEX functions as a survey of the vast system of privately operated prisons which incarcerate migrants and refugees under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States. The project utilizes commercially available unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to compile 4K video and high-resolution images of detention centres across the southwestern United States. The project exists as an instalment in a decades long series of works that examine the systematic fortification of the U.S.- Mexico border, the criminalization of migration and the proliferation of mechanisms which extend border control far beyond the immediate geography of the international boundary. Within this framework, the UAS—conceived as a tool for military surveillance—facilitates an overview of the various components in the hidden but extensive landscape of the border security industrial complex, of which private prisons are now a part. The project makes visible the pervasiveness of this system in the American landscape and frames it as a physical expression of a collective national mindset. Media: Will be a video, or a Powerpoint, or similar.

“Drones: Speed and Permacrisis” by Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox University of Queensland Australia This short media presentation unfolds through a series of my paintings where I depict airborne drones or indications of their presence. Using paint, I visualise both the normally visible and normally invisible aspects of technology. In this series of paintings particular attention is paid to signals carried by electromagnetic frequencies that enable lightspeed connectivity, interconnectivity, operability, and interoperability of systems and devices, including drones. Here, speed - lightspeed - becomes the focus, a lens through which permacrisis can be understood as being driven by techno-speed. In a hyperconnected world, instantaneous communication and connectivity operate in dimensions beyond human speed and time. Devices, from drones or mobile phones, are nodes is an enveloping system where civilian and military capabilities share electromagnetic resources from Earth to orbiting satellites. I offer this short media presentation as a provocation to think about and visualise speed. Media: Will be a video, or a Powerpoint, or similar.

ABSTRACT. The proliferation and reach of extreme online content has led to concerns over the role of social media recommender systems in promoting extreme content to users. Given the rapid rise in popularity of manosphere influencers with a young male audience, questions have been raised over whether algorithms play a role in promoting such content to this demographic. Literature to date has primarily focused on the algorithmic promotion of extreme content through traditional social media platforms, such as YouTube or Twitter. The rapid growth in popularity of short-form video content platforms, such as TikTok and YouTube shorts, has however reemphasised focus on the recurrent ‘crisis’ of possible algorithmic amplification of extreme content by social media sites. This paper reports on a short-term experimental study in Ireland, tracking and analysing the algorithmic recommendations provided to 10 experimental fake male accounts on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. Using ‘sockpuppet’ accounts, the study explores the trajectory of recommendations suggested to young male users with different consumption patterns, e.g., manosphere curious vs generic male interest. The study found that all the experiment accounts were fed manosphere content, rapidly increasing when the accounts engaged with the content. While the study originally focused on manosphere content, many accounts were also recommended reactionary right-wing content. This effect was particularly pronounced on TikTok, which algorithmically determined that those interested in manosphere content may also be interested in right-wing content. The paper closes with recommendations for strategies to combat and intervene in these processes of possible algorithmic radicalisation.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the mainstreaming of far-right radicalisation on social media platforms and the ways online visuals help this type of extremism to spread, by studying a recent and popular online phenomenon: male self-help influencers. It expands knowledge on the concepts of toxic masculinity and manosphere, building on the phenomenon of self-help influencers, who are to this date understudied. The article first argues that the purported expertise, rhetoric, and technological affordances used by male self-help influencers serve to spread toxic masculinity, misogyny, and heteronormativity. These influencers brand themselves as entrepreneurial and authoritative experts embedded within the global neoliberal consumer landscape, consistent with burgeoning mainstream interest in ‘wellness’ and ‘male success’. Second, the paper’s findings showcase how seemingly “apolitical” and “neutral” media content (self-help videos) and their creators (self-help influencers), combined with references to global media cultures and manosphere memes, perpetuate a covert and “acceptable” form of far-right ideology. In participating in and creating this seemingly “apolitical” wellness culture, these influencers become fun and accessible symbols of a widespread far-right movement online, resting on and perpetuating stereotypical gender norms and an idealised performance of masculinity.

ABSTRACT. Following several decades where postfeminist ideologies were dominant, popular forms of feminism, and their counterpoint popular misogyny, have become central to Western social and political discourse (Banet-Weiser 2018). A rise in forms of misogyny, and crises of contemporary masculinity, are particularly noticeable in certain male-centric online forums, collectively known as the manosphere. Here we find vocal resistance to gender equality, alongside aggressive reassertions of heteronormativity and binary gender (Marwick and Caplan 2018).

Comedy, in its live and mediated forms, has been theorised as a method of cultural critique (Gilbert 2004, Bishop, 2013). As such several contemporary television comedies, especially those with women protagonists, have started to engage with some of the issues and ideologies the manosphere propagates. This paper will consider how gendered online hate (and real-world abuse facilitated by digital media) is reflected in contemporary narrative television comedy. How can behaviours such as trolling and revenge porn, driven by the toxic ideologies of the manosphere, be explored within comic texts in a way that both illuminates the impact this has on women, whilst remaining within a comic framework?

This paper will concern itself with three American television series produced for streaming services, She Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022, Disney+), Mythic Quest (2020-, AppleTV+), and Shrill (2019-2021, Hulu) to examine how misogynist behaviour, especially that arising from online spaces aligned with Involuntarily Celibate (Incel) and Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) cultures, has been represented and critiqued within comic narratives.

ABSTRACT. This article analyses the rise of “dark feminine” influencers on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, and their widespread media framing as being “Andrew Tate for girls”. This comparison is made because they replicate the manosphere’s logics of hyper-individualism, radical selfishness, and profound fatalism; they also mobilise similar “toxic” strategies of emotional manipulation for transactional gain in romance, work, and life more broadly. I present an analysis of advice videos from three prominent content creators who have been called the “female version” of Andrew Tate: Kanika Batra, TheWizardLiz, and SheraSeven. I first problematise the notion that they are straightforward equivalents of, or equal in “toxicity” to, anti-feminist and misogynistic manosphere figures, pointing to the contexts of resurgent misogyny, misogynoir, and gendered violence and inequality which render this direct comparison wrongheaded. Nevertheless, I argue that they are ultimately characterised by similar micro-fascist logics and nihilistic affects to those which animate the manosphere, and that they embody the cultural logics of anti-socialist neoliberalism more broadly – or what I term an “anti-hope structure of feeling” in response to the crisis of neoliberalism. I draw on Sarah Banet-Weiser's conceptualisation of the “funhouse mirror” dynamic between popular feminism and popular misogyny, suggesting that the imitative, “mirroring” architecture of contemporary internet cultures means that this reactionary, anti-hope iteration of popular feminism replicates and emboldens, rather than opposes or undoes, the heteropatriarchal, biologically essentialist, and micro-fascist impulses of the broader conjuncture.

ABSTRACT. This paper considers the ground-breaking work being pioneered by Sisters Grimm through their inclusion activities. It recounts journeys of discovery with young people, guided Sisters Grimm to develop outreach work, and shares stories of success where young people have found security and knowledge through working with the company. It considers how future avenues of co-creation, mentoring and education can bring opportunities to young people through opening up the professional creative and cultural sectors to provide knowledge and understanding for future success, and working to move beyond the crisis experienced by many young people following the pandemic, rise in social poverty, and loss of formal arts education.

Sisters Grimm, a dynamic & creative arts company co-founded by 2 mixed-heritage, multi-cultural females, Pietra Mello-Pittman and Ella Spira, began in 2011 with a vision to change the world through art and practice. In their 13 years, Sisters Grimm have created original productions, toured the world, and created collaboration opportunities with their audiences. At the heart of Sisters Grimm’s work is diversity and access, where their core values ensure all performance work includes parallel youth engagement programmes. This paper will consider how such work provides an important refuge and resources for young people experiencing crisis, or significant barriers to participation.

Sisters Grimm are joined by Dr Lyndsey Bakewell, Dr ‘Funmi Adewole, Sally Doughty, and Katie Whyley who come from a range of research backgrounds and are collaborating with Sisters Grimm to better understand and extend their social impact.

ABSTRACT. My PhD research project is a practice-based inquiry into how the practice and performance of Indian classical dance replicate socio-religious hierarchies within India and uses the idea of creative-critical practice as research and intersectional justice. As one of my methods, I propose that how dance has been written about in newspapers over the past hundred years has bound the dancing body to an upper-caste aesthetic of moving.

Indian classical dance as function of the upper-caste Hindu hegemonic state has found itself repeatedly disciplined by popular writing available on it. I incorporate textual practice (the writing on dance in newspapers in this case) into my dance, to demonstrate how it impacts bodily practice, and how dancing while alongside text from the newspaper archives creates a counter-hegemonic framework for Indian classical dance. I use newspaper articles which highlight discriminatory practices in dance as documented material, which provides ‘found’ words to denaturalize my dance practice. This performance as research paper forms a methodological intervention into the study of Indian classical dance, and how to counter the religious and caste-based supremacy it feeds.

ABSTRACT. In a 2019 article about children’s experiences of staying in hospital, many children struggled with communication, play, isolation and separation from family / friends (Clarke, 2019: 141). This project worked with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, including on their wards, their special educational school (Sandfield Park), Sunflower House and ACE (a school for children who cannot attend for prolonged periods of time due to health). The project used storytelling techniques, role play, and creative arts to help children better understand their identity during a turbulent and potential stressful time in their lives. This research aimed to use participatory research methods, including narrative stories to explore the identities of young children in long term / regular hospital care. The research will used life narrative methods alongside storytelling to create inter-disciplinary artworks such as self-portraits, illustrated autobiographical children’s stories and multi media performance.

ABSTRACT. Creatives know that accidents can fuel great work, but the perpetual crisis mode society finds itself in breeds anxiety. The film and television industry tends to play it safe at the best of times lacking risk-taking and innovation. Stoneman (2012) highlights the importance of chance and risk in filmmaking for radical work and with this permacrisis threatening to become the 'new normal,' we not only stifle innovation, but diversity.

For this paper, I will explore my findings as a filmmaker/researcher through the production process of a short fiction film About the Night (2023). I wanted to craft an engaging story that conveys life's complexity and engenders empathy. My primary aim was to portray events with minimal manipulation, so the challenge was to foster empathy without dictating audience emotions. Despite the seemingly restrained approach my intention was to creatively reconstruct a moment rather than merely document it by experimenting with filmic form. Although working in fiction I was influenced by radical filmmaker, Trinh, who acknowledges that, "[t]o create is to understand, and to understand is to re-create" (1991: 194). My approach was to construct an experiential window, emulating the effectual tone of the script and to interrogate key creative choices made along the way. I was mindful of not over emphasizing sound, picture, or musical elements to underscore how the audience should feel.

Stoneman's insight, when coupled with budget constraints, is substantial and presents a significant challenge for filmmakers, funders and policymakers who value innovation and diversity of output.

Bibliography Stoneman, Rod. 2012. ‘Chance and Change.’ In Film and Risk, edited by Mette Hjort. Wayne State University Press: 2012. Trinh T. Minh-ha. 1991. When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. New York and London: Routledge.

ABSTRACT. As the field of academic filmmaking grows, with an increasing number of platforms for their dissemination, there is an imperative need to nurture the community of peer reviewers. However, very often, editors face the challenge of identifying researchers who feel comfortable peer reviewing practice research, despite their specialist subject knowledge. This has resulted in avoidable delays in publication and inequal distribution of workload.

Acknowledging the strong grassroots-led dimension of practice research, this workshop seeks to contribute to the community with a how-to workshop on the practice of peer reviewing. This seeks to address the misinformation and limited training on this. The workshop will build on almost two decades of peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in Screenworks, and the section ‘Finding Coherence across Journals’, published in the ‘Introductory Guide to Video Essays’ in Learning on Screen, co-authored by one of the associate editors of Screenworks. Structured in two parts, it will first offer a toolkit with a series of guidelines and criteria to be considered when peer reviewing screen media practice research to be discussed by participants, to then apply it to selected clips. Finally, participants will be invited to compare and contrast their potential comments with the ones published by the anonymous peer reviewers in Screenworks.

Founded in 2006, Screenworks has been operating in an open blind review policy, where anonymous peer reviews are published alongside the research statement. This offers the first audiences to the screen media work, legitimising it as worthy of scholarly attention. It further offers a supportive and rigorous research environment for the academic community researching screen media through practice.

ABSTRACT. This specially curated screening is a unique opportunity to view then discuss a selection of the best international children’s media today, as presented at the world-leading Prix Jeunesse International Festival (Munich) in May 2024, under the conference theme 'Kids TV and sustainability'. Expect thought-provoking and controversial children's content drawn from diverse cultural contexts, which has been chosen to intersect with the MeCCSA theme of 'Permacrisis'. Note that this suitcase selection is exclusive for MeCCSA 2024 and draws on insights from workshop screenings with children in school settings, held in June 2024, to ensure that the voice of the child remains part of the critical evaluation of content aimed at children. The Prix Jeunesse Foundation is an international body promoting excellence in children’s televisual content, which hosts a world-leading biennial free festival with entrants and participants attending from all over the globe and with input from international children's juries. The festival's creative and challenging atmosphere is carried worldwide through its Prix Jeunesse Suitcase events, allowing those with an interest in children's media to discuss trends and challenges. Dr Lynn Whitaker (University of Glasgow) and PhD student Kun Fang, both attendees and jurors of the week-long 2024 festival, will curate the selection and lead the subsequent discussion. Discussion themes include the challenges of indigenous media production in a globalised media economy; evaluating 'quality and diversity' in children's media; and representations of children and childhood.

ABSTRACT. Film Production is a major contributor to global greenhouse emissions. ‘A Screen New Deal’, published by the BFI in 2020 outlines that; ‘Data analysis shows that one average tentpole film production – a film with a budget of over US$70m – generates 2,840 tones of CO2e, the equivalent amount absorbed by 3,709 acres of forest in a year. Within this, transport accounts for approximately 51% of carbon emissions, mains electricity and gas use accounts for around 34%, and diesel generators for the remaining 15%.’ (BFI, 2020) It is therefore vital that a key creative on a film project, the cinematographer, becomes part of the solution instead of continuing to be part of the problem. The Cinematography department is key to any production and one that is not spoken about within this context enough. Instead, the talk is about removing generators and changing fixtures to LED. Rather than discussing the cinematographer’s practice itself. At a time when the US industry seeks to promote natural light as evidenced by Nomadland's BAFTA and Oscar wins, but where major carbon emissions continue to be generated by cinematographic practices, my work seeks to develop replicable working methods that can substantially reduce the environmental harms of cinematography department and therefore act on the environmental permacrisis. In this paper I will ask how I, as a practicing cinematographer can introduce change through my own practice. With reference and case study to my practice in the feature films; Mind-Set (Murray, 2022) and How You Look At Me (Gonzalez, 2019).

BFI (2021) A screen new deal. A route map to sustainable film production. BFI Gonzalez, G. (dir.) (2019) How You Look At Me [film]. TTOU Ltd. Murray, M. (dir.) (2022) Mind-Set [film]. Middleman Productions Zhao, C. (dir) (2020) Nomadland [film]. Searchlight Pictures

ABSTRACT. A key moment in putting the climate crisis up the political and public agenda was the release of Al Gore's documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' in 2006. Its success made Gore a target for climate change sceptics and deniers, and he has remained a key target for counter climate change positions ever since. In the years following Gore's film, the apparent success of a documentary film in shaping public agendas on the topic, saw those opposed to the anthropogenic climate change position producing a number of counter documentaries in response. Counter documentaries are those structured as direct ripostes to assertions made in other documentaries, and An Inconvenient Truth has generated several counter documentaries. Whilst some of the counter documentaries produced in the wake of An Inconvenient Truth have been studied individually, they have not been explored as a group, and attention has tended to focus on the questions of their rhetorical strategies and scientific accuracy rather than as documentary texts. The visual and narrative approaches used by such films has not been subjected to close analysis, and this paper will examine the visual and narrative framing of climate change within these counter documentaries. Exploring such films can enhance our understanding of how climate change issues, as represented in documentary, remain areas of tension and struggle over representation.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we examine what we can learn from the complicated interplay of national identity and affective dis/connections through a reading of THE BELL RINGS (dir. Katalin Halász and Andreas Landeck), an essay film shot at the 2023 Tusványos Festival. This yearly gathering has been organized by the Hungarian government in an area of Romania where a large population of ethnic Hungarian minorities live. Since he came to power in 2010, Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary has used the Tusványos Festival to canvass his ethnonationalist politics. At the time when the idea of nation is being questioned and shared stories, histories and cultural narratives are threatened by ethnopopulism and mainstreamed far right ideologies, THE BELL RINGS explores the boundaries of national belonging delineated and transmitted by the Hungarian government. The film asks the potentials of resilient acts of everyday living and gestures towards a rethinking of our collective and individual accountabilities via a rediscovering of our emotional and political energies that emerge when we take on the task of reshaping political, social, and cultural relationships.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines how the documentary A FATHER A SON AND SANKARA (dir. Andreas Landeck, 2023) may encourage its audience to practicing a politics of love (hooks, 2000; James, 2022). It suggests the film as an invitation of doing transnational love politics (Nash, 2011) against settler colonialist violence and racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983), and as a way of living in feminist communal households as an alternative to the patriarchal family (sLewis, 2022). A FATHER A SON AND SANKARA centres on the evolving relationship of two fathers, a journalist active from the 60ies liberation movements in Algeria, and a filmmaker born in Germany a decade later. Shot over ten years in France, Algeria, Niger, and Germany, and using archival footage of the Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist Thomas Sankara, the film blends the personal and political lives of three men confronting systematic oppressions of capitalism, colonialism and racism, and traces how structures of power infiltrates and thwarts our intimate lives. Offering a visual analysis of society, culture, and political relationships, the film asks the ultimate revolutionary question of the conditions that need exist to imagine and remake the world open to a radically different future resisting racial capitalism (Bhattacharyya, 2024; Danewid, 2024) and attendant forms of oppressions it depends on. The paper proposes that the film envisions practicing a love ethic as a way of embracing difference and being political in the everyday.

ABSTRACT. The bell rings is a sweeping, untold story of bodies and emotions surfacing and submerging in a crowd gathered at the 2023 Tusványos Festival, organized yearly by the Hungarian government in an area of Romania where a large population of ethnic Hungarian minorities live. Un/Consciously, the festival goers absorb the ethno-nationalist politics of Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary. Since he came to power in 2010, he has used the Tusványos Festival to canvass his ideologies.  At the time when the idea of nation is being questioned and shared stories, histories and cultural narratives are threatened by ethnopopulism and mainstreamed far right ideologies, The bell rings explores the boundaries of national belonging delineated and transmitted by the Hungarian government. The essay film asks the potentials of resilient acts of everyday living and gestures towards a rethinking of our collective and individual accountabilities via a rediscovering of our emotional and political energies that emerge when we take on the task of reshaping political, social, and cultural relationships.

ABSTRACT. A FATHER A SON AND SANKARA is a transnational and intergenerational manifesto on connection, care and community as sites of struggle against capitalism and attendant forms of oppression it depends upon.

The documentary blends the personal and political lives of three men confronting systematic oppressions of capitalism, colonialism and racism, and traces how structures of power infiltrates and thwarts our intimate lives. Shot over ten years in Algeria, Niger, France and Germany, and using archival footage of the Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist Thomas Sankara, the film inspires utopian revolutionary thinking on transnational anti-capitalism and unconventional communal households as an alternative to the patriarchal family.  The film centres on the evolving relationship of Bouzid and Andreas, a relationship of a father and a son. Both fathers of young sons themselves, they meet at a school gate in Berlin. Connecting through fatherhood, they develop a deep conversation, a process of translation over their thirty years age gap and over those domains in our lives that remain subject to capitalist colonial and racial logic. Andreas films their exchanges for ten years, which unfold through a revisiting of the violence Bouzid’s family encountered during colonial rule in Algeria and the liberation movements Bouzid was involved in as a journalist alongside Thomas Sankara and Che Guevara. The political and the intimate is reinvented in the relationship of Bouzid and Andreas based on a home they shared with Andreas’s two sons. The film examines the determining mechanisms through which global capitalism configures our public and private existence including that of the nuclear family. Andreas is compelled to reflect on his own personal history growing up as a child of divorced parents in a white bourgeoise family in Germany, a country haunted by its past.

Offering a visual analysis of society, culture, and political relationships, Andreas uses his filmmaker’s gaze via the camera and the edited image to ask the ultimate revolutionary question of the conditions that need exist to transcend the permacrisis and imagine the world open to a radically different future.

ABSTRACT. The MeCCSA Policy Network aims to exchange ideas and research findings and join in civil society in debates. To meet this strategic objective, the network will run a panel at MeCCSA 2024 with an explicit focus on the global nature of media policy research. Media policy research is a broad field, encompassing multiple and developing forms of media, from PSM to new digital forms, and multiple forms of policy, from national legislation to understandings of governance as a form of policy. This breadth of scope should also include recognition of territories beyond the UK.

Therefore this roundtable will focus on "Recent developments in media policy: a global perspective" and will feature both officers from the Policy Network together with invited speakers from different territories/jurisdictions to address developments in their own space. This will allow for discussion on definitions of media, different methods and issues of convergence and collaboration in research.

The roundtable will involve officers from the Policy Network.

ABSTRACT. This roundtable responds to this year's MeCCSA conference theme from an explicitly feminist angle. Participants will discuss their work relating to, for example, feminist responses to #MeToo, crises of gendered representations on social media and in traditional media, the ‘culture wars’, and feminist (digital) activism. This roundtable is concerned with the ways in which a feminist perspective may offer solutions to ongoing crises or offer vital analytical angles that shine a new light on issues emerging in times of permacrisis, as well as providing ways by/through which individuals and collectives can offer resistance and – potentially – offer optimism and hope. The roundtable aims to prompt discussion of the gendered nature of current crises, and how feminist approaches may offer a response to contemporary political, social, and cultural challenges.

Confirmed speakers: Ellie Tomsett, Maryam Ishaq, Beth Johnson and Erin Pritchard

ABSTRACT. Digitisation is a key feature of contemporary urban development, yet many citizens still lack the devices, connectivity and skills to enjoy the benefits that being digitally included can offer – financial, but also social and cultural. According to the Good Things Foundation, 6.9 million people in the UK are digitally excluded and therefore unable to access services that are increasingly moving online – from booking a GP appointment to paying for parking. This is a problem that was brought to light in the Covid 19 pandemic and that continues to persist in the post-pandemic era of economic perma-crisis. At a time when some people need to make a choice between bread and data, how can digital cities become fully inclusive? How can we stop the digital divide from widening the inequality gap? And how can we measure the impact of any interventions? This roundtable discussion will examine the roles of educators, policy makers, non-profit organisations and technology companies in closing the digital gap, with a focus on examples of good practice and their impact.

Speakers Dr Evie Lucas, Manchester Metropolitan University Prof Simeon Yates, University of Liverpool Dave Carter, University of Manchester Zoe Gould, Manchester Digital Studio Director at Deloitte Digital Helen Milner OBE, Good Things Foundation Beena Puri, Greater Manchester Combined Authority

ABSTRACT. This panel draws together a series of reflections and case studies from academic researchers based at King’s College London connected through the Gender, Work and Creative Industries (GWCI) research network. Many of us centre our research around the lived experiences of workers and communities linked to various creative and cultural disciplines. In reference to the conference theme, our work connects with the permanent crisis linked to questions of access, sustainable employment, and value within the creative economy. The panel builds on the positionality of the ‘scholar-activist’ (Brook and Darlington, 2013) placed between problematic working cultures associated with creative labour markers and the extractive university (Burawoy et al., 2023). The presenters, all of whom are employed within the department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI), King’s College London (KCL) have independently conducted research into various aspects of inequality, precarious labour and identity across the global creative economy. Each paper offers situated reflections on how each of us respond to the conditions of injustice and inequality through our research practice. Whilst the scope and focus of each of the case studies is different, the papers are united by scholars committed to a feminist ethics of care in research conduct and with regards to how their research is disseminated beyond the academy.