Budapest workshop 2012

COMMUNICATION BEYOND MEDIATIZATION - Workshop on the changing nature of participation, political community and campaigning in the era of Life Politics

Co-organised by The Centre for Political Communications Research, Institute for Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Science (PKK), and the “Audience Interactivity and Participation” Working Group of the COST Action IS0906 Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies (COST TATS)

23-24 November 2012, Budapest, Hungary

Workshop Theme

More than a decade ago, Blumler and Kavanagh (in ‘The Third Age of Political Communication: Influences and Features Political Communication’, 1999) claimed that political communication was undergoing a substantial development: the overwhelmingly top-down and mass-oriented nature of political communication seemed to change radically. Apparently, there is a wide consensus in doubts about the relevance of the ‘old’ questions like who dominates the public sphere; whether media coverage is objective; how the mainstream media/political elites set the agenda for public debates or how they influence the voters’ opinions etc.

The meaning of the basic concepts of political communication (e.g. campaigning, political community, participation) are also more and more debated. We have to revise what campaigning, but also what institutionalised politics and the political mean today when web 2.0 with its real-time, direct and participatory logic seems to speed up the democratisation of all realms of society. And political communities need to be identified again when they are in flux rather than stable entities. The concept of participation also needs to be rethought again: for long we know that participation is much more than voting, now, its forms and status are multiplying even further.

In order to comprehend the contemporary political communication, we need to create new paradigms and rework old paradigms, so that we can leap beyond the current mass communication/media centred approaches. Addressing the challenge of searching for this paradigmatic renewal of political communication, the Centre for Political Communications Research, Institute for Political Science, Hungarian Academy of Science (PKK) and the Working Group 2 of the COST Action TATS invite the members of the Action to a workshop in Budapest on 23-24 of November 2012.

Workshop Objectives

Tentatively, the following key points and trends in the transformation of political communication and public participation will be addressed:

1. New horizons in political participation
a. What are the new forms of political participation and how can we research them?
b. What is the (new) role of communication in political participation?

2. Citizens beyond the concept of audience
a. How does the ‘prosumer’ or ‘Pro/Am’ culture influence citizenship?
b. To what extent do political communities of citizens apply the new communicative opportunities in shaping the political agenda?

3. Communication in the era of life politics
a. What does political campaigning 2.0 mean? How can we analyse it empirically and analytically?
b. How can political opinions/identities be performed in the era of life politics/emotional politics?

The overall aim of the workshop is to see what the new directions in studying political communication are and how the new research questions can be answered.

About PKK

The Centre for Political Communications Research (PKK) was established in the Institute for Political Science, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IPS HAS) in 2005. The Director of the Centre is Professor Balázs KISS. PKK has carried out research in the following fields: election campaign research (European Parliamentary elections: 2004, 2009; General elections: 2002, 2006, 2010); measuring the professionalization of political campaigning (2006); politics on the internet; politics and popular culture. The Centre has been publishing a series of election campaign studies since 2004, and the very first monograph in Hungarian about the relevance of the online political communications published in 2005 was also written by PKK. Researchers at the Centre have contributed to the work of ECPR and ECREA, we also have experiences in running FP7 projects. The activities of PKK are funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Funds. The Centre has recently joined the COST Action TATS; the MC member is Gabriella Szabó.

Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee includes the following colleagues: Birgit Stark, Peter Lunt, Miroljub Radojkovic, Manuel José Damásio, Balázs Kiss and Nico Carpentier.

Final programme in attachment to this webpage.