[Discussion] Media in Transition

[Gonul]

 UPDATE: Media in Transition 3: television dates change to May
  2-4; CFP extended until Feb. 14

CFP: Media in Transition 3: television (new deadline 2/14/2003  new
conference
dates 5/2/2003-5/4/2003)

Media in Transition 3: television international conference
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

NEW CONFERENCE DATES: May 2-4, 2003

New Call for Papers submission deadline: February 14, 2003

Conference Web site: http://cms.mit.edu/mit3

The third Media in Transition conference centers on television's
political and
cultural role at the dawn of our new millennium. We aim to ask bold and
clear
questions, and to start to answer them in light of the medium's 75-year
history
as well as the emerging scholarship on this most powerful of
communications
systems.

What is the role of television in specific societies or regions today?
How is
this role changing? What part are digital technologies and new systems
of
communication playing in this transition? What are the likely outcomes
of
present trends? What are the darkest possibilities? What does the
history of
television in diverse countries and regions tell us about its possible
futures?

These and similar broad topics will be the focus of three plenary
"conversations" - lively but intellectually rigorous discussions between
a
panel of speakers and the audience, in the style of previous Media in
Transition conferences. Panelists will be leaders of government, the
corporate
world, TV's creative industry, and media scholarship. Like those
submitting
proposals for papers to be delivered in the many individual panels that
will
constitute the spine of the conference, these plenary speakers will be
expected
to speak across and beyond their own field to a general audience of
literate
fellow citizens.

Political and ideological perspectives will be important, of course, but

papers
on historical, anthropological and cultural matters will be especially
welcome.
So will proposals on specific genres, programs, or performers if
appropriately
grounded in useful facts and also aware of some larger implications of
the
material.

Topics of special interest include but are not limited to:

1. Convergence: economic, technological, aesthetic
2. Globalization and its discontents
3. New genres of global television
4. The telenovella: its history and cultural work
5. Genre theory for television stories
6. The broadcast era in the USA
7. Television and new media
8. Economic/political trends in national/global programming
9. Television and national and/or local communities
10. Television in the digital future
11. Television and sports
12. The politics of television in transition
13. Histories of national and trans-regional television
14. Trends in news reporting
15. The fate of the documentary
16. Games and television

Proposals or drafts of papers will be accepted on a rolling basis until
the
final deadline of February 14, 2003.
Proposals should be limited to a single page of double-spaced typing,
250-400
words. We will gladly accept drafts of full papers. For all submissions,
we
prefer a Word attachment.

Please include a brief (150 words) biographical statement with your
submission.

Send all proposals, drafts of papers and any questions no later than
February
14, 2003 to Brad Seawell at seawell@mit.edu, 617-253-3521.

Hard copies may be sent to:
Brad Seawell
14N-430
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02139