Conference Call for Papers RADIO RESEARCH 2013
Radio, the resilient medium.
11-13 September 2013, London, UK
The next conference of the Radio Research Section of ECREA will be held at the LONDON campus of the University of Sunderland, from 11-13 September 2013. The venue is a bright, modern building with excellent lecture theatres and seminar rooms for plenary and panel sessions. There, the Gateway provides a pleasant and relaxing yet stimulating conference ‘hub’ for registration, refreshment, networking and communication. The campus is located two minutes walk from the South Quay station on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which is just 15 minutes from Bank station and the rest of the London Underground network. There are a wide range of hotels, restaurants and bars within easy travelling distance to suit every budget, and South Quay is just seven minutes from the historical and cultural site of the former seagoing vessel Cutty Sark, now located in Greenwich beside the Royal Observatory and the River Thames.
Conference theme
Radio is a resilient medium. As in different countries around the world celebrations have already begun to mark the ninetieth anniversaries of the first regular domestic radio services, predictions of its demise have so far been proven wrong. Again, dire warnings have suggested that radio is an ‘old’ medium which cannot withstand the increased competition from ‘new’ media that advances in technology have brought. Radio transmission remains overwhelmingly analogue in a world where digital switchover of television preoccupies many governments and audiences alike.
Radio Research 2013 aims to explore the many ways in which the medium of radio is proving once again to be resilient in ways which could not have been predicted even a short time ago. In some markets, radio listening is being recorded at record levels, partly due to its relatively recent emergence on a wide variety of new and established platforms, such as social networking sites, mobile phones, tablets, the internet and television EPGs. Production practices are now firmly situated in the digital domain, and producers benefit from greater studio-quality access to a wider variety of contributors and locations. Economic and corporate pressures are disrupting old certainties about the provenance of programming, as local stations become quasi-national ones. New forms of user-generated content appear in traditional radio genres, while à la carte and diasporic listening brings remote and specialised radio stations to international audiences where once only medium and short wave transmissions significantly disrupted geographical, political and socio-economic boundaries to the dissemination of news and information and to human cultural interaction.
Out of change has emerged a new confidence, but also new uncertainties. What, now, is radio, and at what point might multi-platform radio content simply cease to be radio because listening is no longer dependant on Hertzian transmissions or the use of a radio receiver? Should we evolve into ‘audio researchers’? And what of ‘blindness’? At Radio Research 2013 there is much to be problematised.
Submissions
We welcome submissions which are broadly related to the central theme of the conference, the resilience of radio in an increasingly multi-platform digital age. Relevant topics might include: radio genres; radio audiences; radio technologies; production practices; radio journalism; distribution technologies; ownership, regulation and governance of radio; histories and historiographies of radio; radio and multi-platform delivery; radio and parallel visual and textual content; radio futures; redefining radio content on new platforms; radio pedagogies.
It is NOT necessary to be a member of the Radio Research Section of ECREA in order to participate in the conference, however ECREA members will be encouraged to join the section.
It is NOT necessary to be a member of ECREA in order to participate, although a substantial discount of the registration fee will apply to ECREA members.
Presentations should normally take the form of posters or 15-minute papers. For posters and individual papers, please submit a 250-word abstract, as well as a short biographical note of up to 100 words.
We also welcome proposals for workshops or panels. For panel and workshop proposals, please provide a brief outline of the session’s aims, together with abstracts and biographical notes for each speaker and for the proposed panel chair.
Please bear in mind that the main language of the conference is English, but that contributions should be easily understood by as wide an audience as possible. You might consider presenting in one language and showing text on a PowerPoint in another.
All proposals should be emailed as a Word document to the organisers at radioresearch2013@sunderland.ac.
by the deadline of Friday 8th March 2013 (18:00 hours Greenwich Mean Time).
All proposals will be acknowledged and then blind peer-reviewed by the conference scientific committee. Final decisions will be communicated to proposers personally no later than 29 March 2013.
Further information
For the latest information about keynote speakers, the programme and the venue please visit the conference website at :
http://radioresearch2013.sunderland.ac.uk/
We look forward to welcoming as many Radio Research Section members, other members of ECREA, and other scholars of radio as possible in LONDON in September.
Guy Starkey, Madalena Oliveira, Grazyna Stachyra
Chair and Vice Chairs, ECREA Radio Research Section
radioresearch2013@sunderland.ac.uk