Euricom Colloquium #33

Communication, Democracy And The Public Sphere In The Internet Age
Piran, Slovenia
31.05.18 - 02.06.18

The journal Javnost-The Public was established in 1994 as a platform for social scientists all over the world to address, promote, share, and discuss problems, issues and developments of publicness on international and interdisciplinary levels, to stimulate the development of theory and research in the field, and to help understand and bridge the differences between cultures.
To pursue these ideas, the 2018 colloquium focused on all aspects of publicness and looks at the relations between communication, democracy and the public sphere. Possible topics included:

• The role of (media) communication in fostering human freedom and social change
• New developments in journalism and their relation to democracy
• Communication and class relationships
• Public opinion, media and political representation
• Transformations in the public sphere(s) and the development of a European public sphere
• Mediated communication, populism and anti- populism
• The relations between discursive and material dimensions of communication and media power 
• Small-scale media, community media, and media activism
• Publicness and privateness in the Internet age ​

Organised by Euricom (European Institute for Communication and Culture), DESIRE (Research centre for the study of Democracy, Signification and Resistance) and Centre for Social Communication Research of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.
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Euricom has been organising the biannual Colloquia since 1987. Information on past events can be found on the Euricom website: http://euricom.si/colloquia/

Program

Day 1, Thursday May 31

9:30, Chair: Slavko Splichal

1. Klaus Bruhn Jensen: The Double Hermeneutics of Communication Research
2. Ed McLuskie: Fast Capitalist Veils from Communication Theory for “The Public” and Its “Discourse”
3. Sandra Ristovska: Expanding the Epistemological Horizon: Institutionalised Visual Knowledge and Human Rights
4. Risto Kunelius: Representation, Infrastructure, Effect. Media Research, Old Conceptualizations and New Conjunctures
5. Boris Mance: Researching Critical Research: The Legacy and Prospects

15:00, Chair: Klaus Bruhn Jensen

1. Jörg Becker: Money, Bribe and Journalism
2. Nick Jankowski: Researching Fake News: A Selective Examination of Empirical Studies
3. Benjamin De Cleen, Péter Csigo, Aurelien Mondon and Jason Glynos: The Performative Effects and Blind Spots of the Hype about Populism
4. Ilija T. Tomanić: Face(ing) of Hate Speech: Photography and (I)legibility in the Post-truth Era
5. Nico Carpentier: The Mirror Palace of Democracy: A Theory-Driven Intervention in the Respublika! Exhibition

Day 3, Saturday June 2

9:30, Chair: Nick Jankowski

1. Vaia Doudaki: News Sources as Agents of Legitimation and Authority Building
2. Horst Poettker: The Detached Observer: On a Necessary Change to the Self-Image of Journalists in the Digital World
3. Paško Bilić: Digital Intermediaries, Advertising Capture and Media Pluralism
4. Jeremy Swartz: Civic Media Repair: Participation, Collaboration, Cooperation

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Day 2, Friday June 1

9:30, Chair: Nico Carpentier

1. Slavko Splichal: Communication Scholars Have only Interpreted the Media in Various Ways. The Point However Is to Change Them.
2. Marko Grobelnik, Dunja Mladenić, Gregor Leban, Aljaž Košmerlj: EventRegistry - Understanding Global Events through Media Monitoring
3. Jernej Amon Prodnik, Sašo Slaček, Igor Vobič: News Imperialism Reconsidered: A Proposal for a Big Data Analysis
4. Adrienne Russell: The Public in the Era of Mass Data Collection and Black Box Algorithms
5. Peter Sekloča: Blockchain: Socialized Transactions in the Public Sphere of Production

15:00, Chair: Ed McLuskie

1. Terry Flew: Post-Globalization
2. Janet Wasko: Studying Political Economies of Communication in the 21st Century
3. Marko Ampuja: Innovation as Ideology
4. Andrew Calabrese: Food and the Class Politics of Pleasure