XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

JS-16

Media Narratives and Contemporary Culture

RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)
RC13 Sociology of Leisure

Language: English

Among the huge communicational changes occurring in contemporary society (compared to the 20^thcentury) is the use of terms which are no more able to signify reality.  For example politics are mostly “mediated” and “virtual” (power coming “into scenes” as argued G. Balandier); “leisure culture” remains dominant at the same time that economic crisis augments almost everywhere. Many populations ought to affront war and dislocation. These reversals coexist with the “refugee problem” and therefore we believe that this problem (appearing as “European” given that people wishing to avoid war, search asylum in the neighboring European countries) is certainly “global” (it may be associated to the migration problem in the U.S.) and characterizes many contemporary general ideas (as for instance the meaning of “borders”, the definitions of identities and otherness, the notions of security and of “zones of danger”).  Our world seems mostly “divided” between “security zones” and “dangerous zones”. The analysis of the (world) media narratives on this problem would reveal social representations of the meaning of borders, as well as of the meaning of “tourism” and “travel mobility” -associated to refugee mobility. New challenges, new realities: it is time to redefine some existing social (and sociological) categorizations (important for media and knowledge) associated nowadays to the life-style culture.

This session, invites papers on media analysis dealing with this kind of emerging issues with the goal to describe, analyze and understand the social understanding of identities and borders which in fact “shape” our world (and our ways to understand it).