27-28 January, University of Manchester

The event is organised by Adi Kuntsman, Mona Baker and Elena Barabantseva, and sponsored by the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies, the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies, the White Rose East Asia Centre, the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World and the British Inter-University China Centre.These five Centres are funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Academy as part of the Language-Based Area Studies initiative. 

The term ‘citizen media’, or ‘participatory media’, covers a wide range of activities undertaken by ordinary, non-professional citizens who lay a claim to an area of public life and politics and seek to transform it in some way. From videos circulated on YouTube to graffiti, street performance and other forms of street art, and from community radio to blogging, crowd sourcing, tweeting, flashmob protest and hacktivism, new forms of civic engagement continue to develop, expand and shape the relationship between the private and the public, the local and the global, mainstream and alternative media, corporations and clients, the state and civil society. The aim of the workshop is to bring together doctoral students and early career researchers who work on citizen media in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, China and East Asia, and the Arab world – areas where citizen media has been at the centre of political contestations, censorship and everyday struggles. The workshop will focus on methodological challenges of researching citizen media, whether these are conceptual, practical, ethical or political.

For further information please see CEELBAS

First published: 10 January 2014

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