[Air-L] Updated CFP: At Home with Digital Media (2-3 Nov, QUT Brisbane)

Sun Jun 18 18:17:53 PDT 2017

Dear colleagues

A reminder that abstracts for the At Home with Digital Media symposium are due at the end of June – and also an update that we’ve secured three guest speakers: Larissa Hjorth (RMIT), Mark Deuze (University of Amsterdam), and Rebekah Willett (University of Wisconsin-Madison) – details at the below link.

https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/2017/05/31/cfp-at-home-with-digital-media/

At Home with Digital Media
A symposium hosted by QUT Digital Media Research Centre (@qutdmrc<http://twitter.com/qutdmrc>)
2-3 November 2017
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Overview
In Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974), Raymond Williams coined the term ‘mobile privatisation’ to describe the experience of the private home as an increasingly technologised space. Since the 1920s, he argued, new technological ‘gadgets’ that improved domestic efficiency, new options in private transport to take people to and from their homes, and new media, such as the radio, which brought news and entertainment into the home have fostered an ‘at-once mobile and home-centred way of living’. Throughout the late twentieth century, family television consumption practices and the domestication of new media technologies were regular topics for media, communication and cultural studies. In the early 21st century, the rise of smartphones and the turn to mobile media led to a focus on the convergence of intimate forms of communication with the presence of digital media in more public spaces, such as the city and the street.

There is a resurgence of interest in the home in digital media research, and for good reason: the digitally mediated home is the site of household politics including intergenerational conflict and anxiety; it is a key factor in the economics of digital inclusion; and it is at the centre of a significant intensification of digital media technologies in everyday life. Taking the concept of ‘home’ less literally, domestication–the process of bringing new technologies home, making sense of them, and finding new uses for them–is  a key part of the innovation and embedding process; it is also how new the cultural logics of new technologies become normalised and entangled with our work, our leisure, our intimate relationships, and our daily routines.

Mobile technologies create complex flows of social relationships, personal and public communication, across the boundaries of work and home, private and public space. At the same time, the particularities of material spaces within homes offer diverse geographies of media production, consumption, and entrepreneurship: teenage bedrooms, kitchens and garages are the sites of cultural innovation, from new forms of storytelling to games and software development. And intertwined with the metaphors of comfort and enclosure, are less pleasant realities – homes are not always safe; and digital media can be implicated in household conflict and domestic violence.

This symposium will feature a range of national and international scholarship on the changing relationships between digital media technologies and the home – as space, as place, and as a troubled metaphor for belonging.

Possible Themes

  *   Smart homes and digital living: assistive technologies; the internet of things (aka the internet of shit<https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en>); AIs and automation; pet wearables; contemporary and retro-futuristic representations of the digitally enabled home; new frontiers for direct marketing (e.g. Unruly and News Corp’s The Home<http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/campaign-tv-unruly-launches-2000-sq-ft-connected-home/1433520>)
  *   Digital inclusion: digital technologies in the household economy; digital ability, agency and control in the household; digital media use in rural and remote homes.
  *   Place, space and mobilities: the domestic and mobile geographies of media use and production; the mediatization of family spaces; digital media as a tool for regulating and governing household space and time
  *   Media consumption, production and audience practices: kids and the ‘screen time’ debate; connected and multi-screen family viewing; work-life balance; the internet of toys; ‘let’s play’ and unboxing videos; vernacular creativity and mundane media.
  *   Learning at home through digital media: early literacies and digital media; learning technologies; the home as a node in connected learning ecologies; social media entertainment, digital games and learning; maker culture

Please submit paper proposals to Michael Dezuanni <m.dezuanni at qut.edu.au<mailto:m.dezuanni at qut.edu.au>> by 30 June 2017.

Proposals should include an abstract of 250–400 words along with a brief bio of no more than 100 words.

Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 10 July 2017.

Draft papers (3000–4000 words) of accepted presentations are to be submitted by 13 October 2017 for sharing and discussion among symposium participants.

Please note that there will be no registration fees for this event, and daytime catering will be provided; however participants will be responsible for funding and arranging travel and accommodation if required.

Looking forward to seeing some of you in Brisbane in November!

Best
Jean

Professor Jean Burgess
http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/burgesje
Ph: +617 3138 8253 | Email: je.burgess at qut.edu.au<mailto:je.burgess at qut.edu.au> | Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeanburgess
Google Scholar Profile: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=dfpq_bkAAAAJ&hl=en