Post-socialist Audiences Workshop

Carpentier Reifova, I., Tereza Pavlíčková (2012). Post-socialist Audiences Workshop. Post-socialist Audiences Workshop.

Abstract: The project ‘Post-socialist media audiences’, a national partner of COST Action IS0906 ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’, would like to invite submissions of abstracts for papers to be presented at a day workshop on post-socialist audiences and audience research. Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, 25 May 2012 Web: http://www.post-socialist-audiences.eu/ Accommodation costs in Prague covered by the organizers! The past two decades of political and economic transformation in the region of Central and Eastern Europe have been reflected in media and communication studies mainly through research projects and questions focusing on the political and economic transformation of the media landscape and its functioning: issues of legislation, de-regulation, democratization, commercialization, the role of public service media, and importantly dealing with the history of media institutions of the region and propaganda. The transformation, however, is also cultural. It was not only the institutions and their mechanisms that have undergone a transformation, but also the everyday, and within that the use and consumption of media and the role that media play in people’s lives. This workshop is intended as a platform for researchers dealing with the audiences of the post-socialist region to meet their counterparts from other CEE countries, where the participants will share and discuss research findings from the field of audience research within the region and debate how the media and societal transformation is reflected in the use and consumption of media, and how are media and various (political as well as non-political) media contents incorporated into everyday life and used for making sense of it. How do the post-socialist audiences make sense of media and whether and how are they critical? Has the freedom of expression and speech, democratization and the liberalization of the political system created a space for people to ask more questions of the society they live in? How is the transformation of media consumption performed across the different countries across the region? What are the main questions that audience research of the post-socialist region need to deal with? The workshop will be continued by a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Mediální studia (Media studies), indexed by EBSCO.