CFP: ICA Preconference: Going Global before Satellite and Internet
Going Global before Satellite and Internet
Electronic Media Production, Distribution, and Consumption, 1920s-1980s
Preconference sponsored by the Communication History and Global Communication and Social Change Divisions of the International Communication Association
Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology, Sydney Tuesday, 18 June 2024 8:00-17:00
Organizers
Joy Hayes, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, University of Iowa (primary) David Goodman, Professor, History, University of Melbourne
Bridget Griffen-Foley, Professor, Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature, Macquarie University
Susan Smulyan, Professor, American Studies, Brown University
Derek W. Vaillant, Professor, Communication & Media, University of Michigan
Description
This preconference explores the transnational circulation of broadcast and electronic media between the 1920s-1980s. Presentations investigate industrial infrastructures influencing media flows before satellite and Internet, as well as the formal and informal practices of distribution and consumption shaping audience experiences. Transnational media histories focusing on the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America) and Australasia are of particular interest.
We invite proposals that address topics such as:
- Transnational circulation and adaptation of radio program recordings, scripts and formats in the 1930s-1970s
- Formal and informal distribution of foreign television programs and their consumption in the 1960s-1980s
- Technological, cultural and industrial infrastructures and global media flows before satellite and Internet
- The role played by nation states, global institutions and NGOs in the transnational circulation of broadcast programming (for example, development programs)
- Studies of transnational media audiences undertaken by governmental and non- governmental agencies
- Insights from the pre-satellite and pre-Internet era for contemporary debates over media and globalization
Submission Process and Format
We seek traditional papers but also are interested in a range of non-traditional formats including (but not limited to) lightning talks, works in progress, and ideas for roundtable discussions. If you are interested in attending but won’t be in Australia, please be in touch with suggestions on joining. We plan an early morning session for Asia and the Americas and a late afternoon session for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Participants might also want to submit pre- recorded contributions.
Abstracts of 350 words (maximum) should be submitted to: goingglobal.precon@gmail.com no later than January 18, 2024. Please include author names, affiliations, contact information of the submitter, and a brief sentence on how the submission addresses the CFP. Please indicate if you would like to participate in person or remotely; also note the presentation format you would like to use. We welcome submissions from early career scholars and graduate students.
Timeline
Deadline for abstract submission: 18 January 2024 Acceptance notifications: 22 February 2024
Deadline for registration: 22 March 2024
Preconference: 18 June 2024
Please send questions to: **goingglobal.precon@gmail.com
Rationale
We seek research that brings new geographical, cultural, political, and theoretical perspectives to bear on the continuing “transnational turn” in broadcasting and electronic media history. Most early scholarship approached broadcasting narrowly as a tool of international politics and propaganda reifying “the national” and the “national system” in the process. Only in the last 10 years or so have scholars begun to move beyond the propaganda framework to examine transnational broadcasting within a broader industrial, organizational, and cultural framework.
Current research explores what Michele Hilmes (2012) identifies as the dialectic between the national and transnational impulses of broadcasting as a multi-locational, reflexive, cultural practice. Scholars have further investigated the soundscapes created by global broadcasting and electronic media, while paying particular attention to the cultural and political implications of transnational programming and listening practices. Current scholarship demonstrates the importance of taking an historical perspective on problems animating the field of global media studies – such as asymmetries of cultural production and circulation, the interaction of local and global frames of meaning, power, and questions surrounding the agency of transnational audiences/users and consumer publics.
Transnational, comparative, global, and de-Westernized histories of media and communication technologies, regimes, developers, and audiences offer fresh perspectives on scholarly and public conversations about media in everyday life, power, resistance, and processes and prospects for social and cultural change. The Going Global preconference seeks scholarship that explores historical approaches for global media studies and diversifies and decenters (largely U.S- and European-focused) debates with research and case studies from the Global South, Australasia and other contexts.
Selected Readings
Badenoch, Alexander, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke. Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War. Nomos, 2013.
Chalaby, Jean K. "The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry." European Journal of Communication 26, no. 4 (2011): 293-309.
Ehrick, Christine. Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930-1950. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Föllmer, Golo, and Alexander Badenoch. Transnationalizing radio research: New approaches to an old medium. transcript Verlag, 2018.
Goodman, David, and Susan Smulyan. "Portia Faces the World: Re-Writing and Re-Voicing American Radio for an International Market." In Radio's New Wave, 163-179. Routledge, 2013.
Herman, Edward S., and Robert McChesney. "The Rise of the Global Media." In Planet TV a Global Television Reader, edited by Lisa Parks and Shanti Kumar, 21-37. New York University Press, 2003.
Hilmes, Michele. Network nations: A transnational history of British and American broadcasting. Routledge, 2012.
Punathambekar, Aswin. From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry. New York University Press, 2013.
Straubhaar, Joseph D. "Beyond media imperialism: Assymetrical interdependence and cultural proximity." Critical Studies in media communication 8, no. 1 (1991): 39-59.
Vaillant, Derek. Across the Waves : How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio. University of Illinois Press, 2017.