Research Plan Proforma

Please find the research plan proforma attached:
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Research Seminar – Julia Knight (Oct 30th)

Title: DVD, Video and Reaching Audiences – Experiments in Moving Image Distribution.
Venue: Room 233, Media Centre
Time: 6pm Monday 30th October


Abstract
The advent of the internet (as a means of marketing and selling) and DVD (as a delivery medium) has revitalised interest in selling/delivering ‘alternative’ moving image work direct to the public. The potential these avenues offer for reaching wider audiences are proving particularly attractive in the light of the recent UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. However, similar initiatives were undertaken when VHS took off in the 1980s as a mass delivery medium. This paper examines some of the attempts to embrace the video sell-through market in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting artists’/independent moving image work to a wider public. However, these attempts met with mixed results. The reasons for this will be discussed, and the paper will suggest that while digital technology has in some ways made it easier to reach audiences, there are important lessons to be learned from its video precursor, if the potential of DVD and the internet is to be maximised.

Research Seminar – Dr Juan Perez-Gonzalez

Every Word Counts: The Media in Castro’s Cuba
Venue: Room 233, Media Centre
Time: 6pm – Monday 16th October


Abstract
Fidel Castro (remember him?) is 80. His country languishes in a state of perennial political emergency and economic catastrophe. But the Cuban media, factories of faith and sanitised optimism, keep running the legend of the revolution. The Communist Party’s absolute monopoly of the production of information and interpretations of the social reality is stronger than ever, and media are used intensively as means of political propaganda, ideological education and popular mobilisation.
Propaganda has increasingly usurped the space and time of information and entertainment. The country, however, is slowly moving to its uncertain future, and there are abundant signs that a dysfunctional, authoritarian, propaganda-oriented, politically paranoid media system cannot longer cope with the increased cultural and political mobility of Cuban society.
This presentation, based on my doctoral thesis and a few recent papers, aims to discuss whether the Cuban media system still has any feasible possibility of reform other than its dismantling and transformation into a free market of communication. I will describe the institutional structure of the system and the operations through which it transforms social reality into political dogma. Special attention will be dedicated to the changing professional ideologies of Cuban journalists. But I will not (definitely not) answer what will happen in Cuba after Castro dies, and neither (sorry!) will I offer cigars or rum to those kind enough to attend.

Dr Amir Saeed – Musical Jihad and More

Dr. Amir Saeed has had two articles published over the summer break. “Musical Jihad” is in Soundings Issue Number 33 (2006) and examines the issue of Islam and Hip-Hop. The second article looks at Western Propaganda and the War on Terrorism. This article is available online at www.publicresistance.org.

Three Trick Pony Poetry and Prose

Louise Bell would like to invite you all to a reading from Three Trick Pony an anthology of work by students on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. It will taking place on Tuesday 10th October at 7:30pm in room G11 of the Percy Building, University of Newcastle.
The anthology is a mixture of poetry, prose and script (samples can be found on www.threetrickpony.info) and a mixture of contributors will be reading at the event (including Louise). Copies of Three Trick Pony will be available at the reading for a mere £6.
Admission to the reading is free and there will be free wine and nibbles.

Call For Papers – Citizenship and Media (MCP)

Citizenship and Media
Special Commentary Section of Media and Cultural Politics
Issue 3.2
This is a call for short essays on the relationship between citizenship
and media for the commentary section of the International Journal of Media
and Cultural Politics (MCP). We invite essays that address any of the
following questions or others not covered here. Do the media in our
spectacle-laden, consumerist society trigger an ?evaporation of politics?,
or do they reinforce new forms of mediated citizenship? Can, and to what
extent, particular media forms encourage a sense of political or social
agency? Are we dealing with the inevitability of political atrophy (on a
mega-level), or are we faced in our post-9/11 era with a different
understanding of citizenship? Is this the way towards a global civil
society?
Essays should be no longer than 2.000 words.
MCP addresses cultural politics in their local, international and global
dimensions, and promotes critical, in-depth, engaged research on the
intersections of sociology, politics, cultural studies and media studies.
MCP aims to provide a forum for debate arising from findings as well as
theory and methodologies, so a range of research approaches and methods is
encouraged.
Deadline : 20 December 2006
For more information on the journal?s style guidelines please visit:
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/mcp
http://www.intellectbooks.com/journals/mcp/index.htm