312
Representation, Agency and Identities in Media Arenas
Representation, Agency and Identities in Media Arenas
Tuesday, 12 July 2016: 09:00-10:30
Location: Hörsaal 4A KS (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
RC25 Language and Society (host committee) Language: English
Representations of different social classes, groups or individuals in the media are traditionally subject to institutional control exercised via e.g. journalists and editors. Today, the new media (Web 2.0) offers any Internet user the possibility to directly participate in the public discussion, making these fora less dependent on institutional control than traditional ones (e.g. broadcast or newspapers). Therefore, new media can be viewed as one current example for what Habermas calls the “public sphere”.
However, both traditional and new media are important sites of constructing and transforming social identities and they can be regarded as different kinds of arenas of struggle where classes, groups or individuals compete for control and representation.
This session invites talks that discuss the ways language functions as grounds for social action in media arenas for example by allowing or limiting people to represent themselves. That is, we are interested in papers that are concerned with language as a vehicle for action and social change in connection to people’s representation and their agency in media arenas.
We encourage talks about the functions language has in construing the fluidity of identity categories and the ways these may be related to people’s mediated social roles. Additionally we also seek papers that address the role language plays in multimodal means of semiotic representation if this role is discussed in relation to social processes of identity construction in the media.
Session Organizers: