Postgraduate Conference: December 17: Questioning Transnationalism: Culture, Politics, and Media

QUESTIONING TRANSNATIONALISM: CULTURE, POLITICS & MEDIA
Date: 17 December 2010
Venue: Arts Building, Royal Holloway College, University of London
Sponsors: The Department of Media Arts and the Department of Politics and International Relations
Keynote Speakers: Prof. Thomas Diez (Political Science, University of Tübingen), Prof. David Chandler (Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster), Prof. Randall Halle (Department of German, University of Pittsburgh).
 
This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference focuses on transnationalism and securitisation, issues of increasing relevance in both Politics and International Relations, and Media and Film Studies. In both disciplines, there is currently a prevailing tendency to conceive of borders as ever increasingly permeable elements in a globalising world. New communication technologies have certainly reinforced the image that the world becomes a single place. However, a ‘borderless world’ proves to be illusionary as witnessed in the global rise of securitization practices after the September 11 terrorist attacks. ‘Transnationalism' thereby becomes a useful lens through which issues such as securitisation, borders, legitimacy, citizenship, memory and solidarity can be re-examined from a fresh theoretical perspective.
 
Within this framework, the major aims of this international conference are threefold: to question the extent and limitations of transnationalism; to analyse the cultural and political functions of transnational actors and the impact of new communication technologies such as the internet in the contemporary world; and finally to encourage interdisciplinary approaches and critical perspectives in the studies of transnationalism. 
 
All are welcome! For further details, including the final programme and abstracts, please see: http://royalhollowayconference.com

New Article: Britain's First Live Televised Party Leaders' Debate: From the News Cycle to the Political Information Cycle

Chadwick, A. (2011) "Britain's First Live Televised Party Leaders' Debate: From the News Cycle to the Political Information Cycle" Parliamentary Affairs 64 (1), pp. 1-21.

Abstract

Britain's first ever live, televised, party leaders' debate took place on 15 April 2010, during one of the most intriguing and closely fought general election campaigns in living memory. Arguably the most important single development in the media's treatment of politics since the arrival of television during the 1959 campaign, the leaders' debate and its aftermath provide a unique window on the political communication environment of contemporary Britain. This article focuses on the surrounding processes of mediation before, during and after the event, particularly the interactions between broadcasting, press and online media, including citizen opinion expressed and coordinated through online social network sites. A narrative reconstruction of journalists', political parties' and online activists' behaviour raises the question of whether traditional understandings of the "news cycle" should now be replaced by a broader concern with what I term "political information cycles": assemblages of personnel, practices, genres and temporalities in which supposedly "new" online media are increasingly integrated with supposedly "old" broadcast and press media.

Link.

For more of my publications, please see my personal website.

4/5 Dec: Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the London Bombings

Our colleagues at Nottingham University are holding an AHRC end of project symposium: ‘Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the London Bombings’ on the 4th and 5th of December (see project overview below). A few places are still available on both days. Refreshments and light lunch will be provided, so please let them know if you plan to attend for catering purposes (andrew.hoskins@nottingham.ac.uk). Please see the programme here, including a paper by the NPCU's Ben O'Loughlin.

Project Summary:
People routinely remember and use the past by interwining personal narratives with public events.  People remember where they were when dramatic events occurred.  These may be highly mediated memories, in film, on television, and in print, but they are still part of our very real personal and collective memories. Personal biography intersects with history in just this implicit way, locating the unfolding details of everyday life in terms of the events of the larger society - history in the making. This project traces the linkages between the media and our everyday remembering of past events through comparing the instant and archival capacities of television with people’s own retellings of events.

Very recently, there has been a massive increase in the availability and use of mobile phones equipped with cameras and videos in the UK which has led to images and film captured by bystanders being used to help create and shape breaking news stories. Our research investigates the impact of these personal media and individual accounts on television news coverage of traumatic events (the July 2005 London bombings) and also on how these events are later commemorated on television, and how they ultimately come to be remembered by the public. 

New journal article: “The Political Information Cycle in a Hybrid News System: The British Prime Minister and the ‘Bullygate’ Affair”

I have a new journal article out in the International Journal of Press-Politics. My take on the changing nature of news production.

Andrew Chadwick (2011) “The Political Information Cycle in a Hybrid News System: The British Prime Minister and the ‘Bullygate’ Affair” International Journal of Press/Politics 16 (1), pp. 1-27.

Abstract

During a weekend in February 2010, just a few weeks before the most closely fought general election campaign in living memory, British prime minister Gordon Brown became the subject of an extraordinary media spectacle. Quickly labeled “bullygate,” it centered on Brown’s alleged psychological and physical mistreatment of colleagues working inside his office in Number 10, Downing Street. These were potentially some of the most damaging allegations ever to be made about the personal conduct of a sitting British prime minister, and bullygate was a national and international news phenomenon. This study provides an analysis of the processes of mediation during the affair. It is based on close, real-time observation and logging of a wide range of press, broadcast, and online material, as the story broke, evolved, and faded, over a five-day period. The study reveals the increasingly hybridized nature of news systems and argues that traditional understandings of the “news cycle” should now be replaced by a broader concern with the “political information cycle.” Political information cycles are complex assemblages in which the personnel, practices, genres, technologies, and temporalities of supposedly “new” online media are hybridized with those of supposedly “old” broadcast and press media. This hybridization now decisively shapes power relations among news actors. The combination of news professionals’ dominance and the integration of nonelite actors in the construction and contestation of news at multiple points in a political information cycle’s life span are important characteristics of contemporary political communication.

Keywords

media hybridity, news cycle, political information cycle, broadcasting, television, newspapers, Internet, Twitter, blogs, assemblages, time, power.

Download PDF here.

Conference Announcement: A Pedagogy of Civic Engagement for Higher Education

[We'd like to bring this conference, organised by colleague Dr James Sloam, to your attention].

15 April 2011 at Royal Holloway, University of London (Arts Building, Lecture Theatre 1)

Conference Convenor: Dr James Sloam, Co-Director, Centre for European Politics (james.sloam@rhul.ac.uk), 01784 414987

Keynote Speaker: Professor Benjamin Barber

Sponsored by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)

In recent decades, there has been much discussion and debate over the value of higher education (HE) for society. In this regard, policy has focused on community outreach and widening participation. Yet these efforts to add social value to universities and colleges have so far been decoupled from teaching and learning. Significant research in the US has demonstrated that rooting teaching and learning in democracy (through activities like ‘service- learning’) not only benefits HE institutions and their surrounding communities, but also enriches the student experience – enhancing academic achievement, democratic competences and transferable skills. Given concerns about the lack of youth engagement in democracy and in the context of the new Government’s ‘big society’ agenda, this conference will look at how teaching and learning in HE can play a pivotal role in strengthening civic engagement. The principal objective of the conference is to stimulate debate and impact upon policy to strengthen the linkages between HE and democracy in the UK. In particular, the conference aims to bind teaching and learning in universities and colleges to civic (and even political) engagement. This aspect of the social role of HE has often been ignored in the UK. The conference is sponsored by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), which will provide a direct channel to public policy, and participants will include a diverse set of policy-makers and stakeholders in universities and colleges.

The conference will be a deliberative exercise for the participants. It will result in a special issue of a peer-reviewed academic journal, and a Hefce report/ guide for universities. The conference convenor (Dr James Sloam) will undertake research through the conference, presenting a voluntary pre- and post- conference survey to delegates, and conducting semi- structured interviews with selected delegates (wishing to participate). The findings from this research will be presented to Hefce, written up and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

The Conference Administrator is Ms. Isabelle Hertner (isabelle.hertner@rhul.ac.uk).
 
About Benjamin Barber
Benjamin R. Barber, the internationally renowned political theorist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Dēmos and President of CivWorld (at Dēmos), the international NGO that sponsors the Interdependence Movement. Barber was Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University for 32 years, and then Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society at The University of Maryland. Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the United States and around the world, and for five years served as an informal consultant to President Bill Clinton.


Benjamin Barber's 17 books include the classic Strong Democracy (1984), reissued in 2004 in a twentieth anniversary edition; the recent international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld (1995 with a post-9/11 edition in 2001, translated into twenty-seven languages) and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, published in 2007 by W.W. Norton in the United States and in seven foreign editions. The paperback edition of his controversial Clinton memoir The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House was published in May 2008.

Dr Barber's honors include a knighthood (Palmes Académiques/Chevalier) from the French Government (2001), the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin (2001) and the John Dewey Award (2003). He has also been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Fellowships, honorary doctorates from Grinnell College, Monmouth University and Connecticut College, and has held the chair of American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Dr Barber is a commentator for National Public Radio’s Marketplace and his blog can be found on The Huffington Post. He has written for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Nouvel Observateur, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, El País and many other scholarly and popular publications in America and abroad. He was a founding editor and for ten years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly Political Theory. He holds a certificate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. and Doctorate from Harvard University. 

BBC spy miniseries upsets China, but how real is it? Let’s play Spooks bingo!

The BBC has offended the Chinese government because its primetime show Spooks (Mi5 in North America) has depicted Chinese intelligence agents in an unflattering light, reported here and here in the last few days. The plot saw MI5 trying to prevent an ‘ethnic weapon’ falling into Chinese hands, with much chasing around London and a few sinister and, perhaps, stereotypically Chinese baddies (judge for yourself in the Guardian screenshot here). 

As somebody who has written about Spooks and the war on terror (Chapter 7 of this), only to meet gentle mockery from my students, colleagues and indeed co-author, I can only say thank you to the Chinese government for suggesting Spooks is significant; that representations of international politics make a difference to international politics; enough of a difference to kick up a diplomatic rumpus.

But how much do the threats represented in Spooks match the priorities and intelligence of British defence and security agencies? One way to find out is to look at the threats listed in Britain’s latest National Security Strategy, just out, and see what happens in the next series of Spooks in 2011. That’s right, its time to tick off the threats as they appear, and you can play along at home or on BBC i-player. Here are threats, ranked into three tiers:

National Security Strategy: Priority Risks

Tier One: The National Security Council considered the following groups of risks to be those of highest priority for UK national security looking ahead, taking account of both likelihood and impact.

• International terrorism affecting the UK or its interests, including a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack by terrorists; and/or a significant increase in the levels of terrorism relating to Northern Ireland.

• Hostile attacks upon UK cyber space by other states and large scale cyber crime. • A major accident or natural hazard which requires a national response, such as severe coastal flooding affecting three or more regions of the UK, or an influenza pandemic.

• An international military crisis between states, drawing in the UK, and its allies as well as other states and non-state actors.

Tier Two: The National Security Council considered the following groups of risks to be the next highest priority looking ahead, taking account of both likelihood and impact. (For example, a CBRN attack on the UK by a state was judged to be low likelihood, but high impact.)

• An attack on the UK or its Oversees Territories by another state or proxy using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.

• Risk of major instability, insurgency or civil war overseas which creates an environment that terrorists can exploit to threaten the UK.

• A significant increase in the level of organised crime affecting the UK.

• Severe disruption to information received, transmitted or collected by satellites, possibly as the result of a deliberate attack by another state.

Tier Three: The National Security Council considered the following groups of risks to be the next highest priority after taking account of both likelihood and impact.

• A large scale conventional military attack on the UK by another state (not involving the use of CBRN weapons) resulting in fatalities and damage to infrastructure within the UK.

• A significant increase in the level of terrorists, organised criminals, illegal immigrants and illicit goods trying to cross the UK border to enter the UK.

• Disruption to oil or gas supplies to the UK, or price instability, as a result of war, accident, major political upheaval or deliberate manipulation of supply by producers.

• A major release of radioactive material from a civil nuclear site within the UK which affects one or more regions.

• A conventional attack by a state on another NATO or EU member to which the UK would have to respond.

• An attack on a UK overseas territory as the result of a sovereignty dispute or a wider regional conflict.

• Short to medium term disruption to international supplies of resources (e.g. food, minerals) essential to the UK. (HM Government, 2010: 27)

2011-03-09: Dr Aeron Davis speaking

March 9, 2011: Dr Aeron Davis (Goldsmiths, University of London).

Time: 5.30pm.

Location: Founders FW101. All welcome.

Title: to be confirmed.

About Aeron Davis

Aeron Davis has worked in departments of politics, sociology and media and communication. His research and teaching merges elements of each of these disciplines, and includes: public relations, politics and political communication; promotional culture, media sociology and news production; markets and economic sociology; elites and power. He has investigated communication at Westminster, the London Stock Exchange, amongst the major political parties and across the trade union movement. Along the way he has interviewed close to 300 high-profile individuals employed in journalism, public relations, politics, business, finance, NGOs and the civil service. He has published on each of these topics in journals and edited collections and is the author of Public Relations Democracy (MUP, 2002), The Mediation of Politics (Routledge, 2007), and Political Communication and Social Theory (Routledge, 2010). He is currently working on a book for Polity Press on the rise of promotional culture. He is the Director of the Goldsmiths MA in Political Communication, an active member of the Centre for the Study of Global Media & Democracy and a participant in the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.

After Wikileaks; or, the next phase of Diffused War?

In Diffused War, Andrew Hoskins and I argued we’ve entered a new paradigm of warfare. The wikileaks stories seem to confirm much of this account. War is mediatized, we wrote, as the institutions of war and those affected by war take a form governed by continual media recording, display and archiving. This creates diffuse causal relations between action and effect, since mediatization can amplify or contain the cognitive and emotional response any action generates in ways not dependent on the initial action itself. Militaries, NGOs, insurgents, journalists – none can predict the outcomes of their actions or the display of their actions. US and UK military practitioners did not envisage their communications going public, but their institutions allowed those records to exist. Hence this leads to greater uncertainty for those conducting war. While who sees what, when, and where is usually largely controlled (most people still rely on mainstream media), the potential for surprises is permanent and unavoidable, such that the worst case must always be built into decision-making.

In contrast to the splutterings of military chiefs, for my students wikileaks is already the norm. So what should we expect to see next? Where might novelty lie? Let’s take a risk and look briefly at some ideas in contemporary art, which has long dealt with mediatization and how it reconfigures human relationships and our ideas of the image and representation. Nicolas Bourriaud recently wrote that, in our ‘control+S’ culture of instant archiving of all political and social life, ‘an insistence on the “here and now” of the artistic event and a refusal to record it are a challenge to the art world’.  What is notable now is what goes unrecorded or is not made public. He discusses Brian de Palma’s 2003 Iraq war film Redacted, which pieces together soldiers’ blogs, cameraphone footage and other media from the war to produce a style of ‘organized proliferation’ that is now common in TV and movies generally. Pushed to its limit, Bourriaud suggests, ‘the degree of spatial (and imaginary) clutter is such that the slightest gap in its chain produces a visual effect’. In other words, we now expect the depiction of war to amalgamate several media recording technologies, a chain of styles, textualities and episodes edited into any single news summary or Hollywood movie. And if a gap occurs, something is wrong. If no citizen-generated content emerges, that is surprising. If footage from the helicopter gunship’s point of view is absent from the news report, and we now know such a perspective is continually recorded, then at least a few members of the audience might begin to ask why.

We’d expect the next phase of military media management to employ the full range of textual styles to which audiences are now accustomed. But perhaps a truly pre-emptive PR agent would deliberately create a full, convincing range of leaks for wikileaks such that a controlled version of the worst is already admitted, and so it appears there are no surprising gaps. 

Martin Bell on 'The Twilight of News'

Our colleague Andrew Hoskins at the University of Nottingham is hosting the following event:

Department of Culture, Film & Media, School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Centres for Memory Studies and for the Study of Post-Conflict Cultures

 invite you to a Special Guest Lecture:

‘THE TWILIGHT OF NEWS’ by

MARTIN BELL OBE

UNICEF Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies

and former independent MP and war correspondent

 

Friday 3 December 2010 6.15pm 

Lecture Theatre B63

Law and Social Sciences Building, University Park Campus

R.S.V.P: 19th November: Please reply to Beverly Tribbick , e-mail: beverly.tribbick@nottingham.ac.uk

This lecture is supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project: ‘Conflicts of Memory: Mediating and Commemorating the London Bombings’ and the SAGE journal of Media, War & Conflict.