The 10th annual MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference is taking place 2-3 July 2013 at the University of East Anglia. This interdisciplinary conference showcases work by postgraduate students across all areas of media, communications and cultural studies.

This year’s conference is designed to explore the ways in which postgraduates can proactively and positively address their professional development and career prospects. The conference is themed around innovation and development with a strong focus on training and methods of boosting employability. Training workshops are open to all attendees and will include sessions on teaching, careers and more. Plenary sessions and roundtable discussions on the themes of innovation and professional development will be led by Martin Barker (UEA), Iain Robert Smith (Roehampton), Sanna Inthorn (UEA), Wendy Russell (BFI) and Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths).

Registration is now open – to register please visit http://www.uea.ac.uk/film-television-media/news-and-events/meccsa-network (the registration deadline is Friday 7th June).

Einar Thorsen

By mid-March, David Cameron got tired of discussing media reform and decided to force a Parliamentary vote on the issue – seeking to impose a Royal Charter instead of Leveson’s recommendations. After some last minute wrangling the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour had reached an agreement. Confusion reigned as each of the three parties sought to champion their interpretation of the agreement, but they all confirmed that a Royal Charter would be the way forward.

The initial deadline for this issue of Three-D coincided with the Royal Charter agreement and as such many of the contributors generously revisited their articles to take account of these developments. Julian Petley provides an excellent overview of the Royal Charter and what it means, whilst Stuart Allan, Justin Schlosberg, Deborah Grayson, Granville Williams, Tim Gopsill and David Lee all provide different analysis of media reform and ways forward. Pat Holland meanwhile provides a healthy reminder for us not to forget the historical context.

Paul Lashmar and Steven Barnett’s have a lively exchange on Leveson and its implications for investigative journalism, reflecting different sides of the spectrum and MeCCSA’s diverse membership base.

We also feature James Curran’s keynote from the Derry conference in this issue, which, together with Karen Ross article, highlight issues and challenges for our subject areas.

Máire Messenger Davies reflects on the excellent MeCCSA Conference in Derry, whilst we also have the call for papers for our next conference in Bournemouth 2014.

Finally, we are also particularly pleased to be welcoming the recently established MeCCSA Social Movements Network to this issue!

If you would like to write for or advertise in the next edition of Three-D, please get in touch with me on ethorsen@bmth.ac.uk by September 2013. Suggestions for our website are also welcome.

Magee Campus, University of Ulster, 9-11 January, 2013
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/meccsa2013/index.php

Attendance

151 people registered via Eventbrite, most giving papers. 72 of these delegates also paid to attend the Gala dinner. A further 20 University of Ulster staff and students attended the conference who were helping with the conference. 6 UU people attended who were not helpers.

Programme

The programme and schedule with details and of all the speakers, times, locations and composition of panels is available online (http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/meccsa2013/). Because the hard copies of these had to be printed before Christmas there were several last minute changes which went up online after going to press, and which were printed out as Errata in the conference packs. Hopefully this was helpful.

We were pleased with the diversity of the topics, which did eventually come together in reasonably coherent subject panels, and we were also pleased with the international flavour of some of the contributions. The Space and Place theme was dealt with in a variety of imaginative ways, and there was a particularly strong series of panels about virtual space and online creativity, journalism and political activism.

Panels and plenaries

There were 7 panel strands (up from the originally planned 6 due to popular demand) and 5 panel timeslots throughout the three days. There were 7 plenary sessions, which included both single keynote speakers (John Hill, Bruce Brown) and plenary panels with more than one speaker. The keynotes also provided excellent diversity of content, we thought. At the organisations’ request, we fitted in special presentations from the BUFVC in the Research and Pedagogy plenary, and from the Carnegie Trust, prior to the Journalism plenary.

Events and screenings

Because the conference was part of the City of Culture programme, and received a great deal of practical and moral support from the Derry Visitor and Convention Bureau, we wanted to ensure that delegates had an opportunity to see some of the city. Hence we left time in the programme for people to sign up for tours of the walls, and visits to the museums. A majority of delegates did take advantage of this. A number of delegates wanted to show screenings of practice work – and we made sure that screening slots for material (which was of varied timings), were not scheduled against panels. We also provided options for multiple showings – the Nerve Centre arts complex in the city obligingly scheduled a number of screenings during the three days. For future reference, it would help conference planners if producers of practice work could provide advance flyers and/or posters for publicity purposes. Despite requests, we did not receive this, apart from one flyer from Brian Winston. We think we could have used the City of Culture publicity mechanisms to advertise screenings in the city and in the local media, with advance notice, but we did not have the information from producers to do this. So attendance at screenings was less than it could have been. This is a lesson for future organisers.

Venue, website and University support

The Venue, the Magee campus of the University, is not our own campus, and we want to place on record our appreciation of the support we got from the admin, catering, security and technical staff of this campus, and from the Provost Professor Deirdre Heenan. The University did not charge us for the use of the (very nice, we think) rooms in the Martha Magee building. We were also pleased that our Chancellor, James Nesbitt, was able to attend the reception at the Playhouse on the first night, and to participate in the discussion panel on regional film and TV. We had to pay to hire the Playhouse for the venue: the food and drink were paid for by the City Council.

Our conference website, http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/meccsa2013/ – designed by Adrian Hickey and Alan Hook, and managed by Rowan Morrey – was a major support in the successful administration and publicising of the conference – thanks to Einar Thorsen too, for backup on this. We owe considerable gratitude to Adrian and Rowan for their attendance throughout, and for their helpful and patient support of delegates through the three days. Adrian and Rowan also arranged to live-stream a number of the sessions and these can be seen at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/centre-for-media-research. The Facebook and Twitter pages facilitated the ‘buzz’ of interactivity that accompanied the event, and this continued for several following days. See http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/meccsa2013/tweets.php. Images and photographs can be seen at http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/meccsa2013/flickr.php

Our part-time freelance administrator, Zoe Reid, also gave valuable support. She was aided by a very patient and competent team of undergraduate and postgraduate students, who gave guidance to delegates and provided technical support in every room. We had a technical run through the day before the conference with these students and we would definitely recommend this dry run as a way of minimising headaches on the first day.

Derry City support

Finally, as mentioned, we had support from the Derry Visitor and Convention Bureau, especially Aoife Thomas, from the beginning of the planning process in summer 2011. They arranged for the City Council to host the reception in the Playhouse and helped with transport and hotel accommodation arrangements throughout. Our thanks to them too.

Registration

We used Eventbrite to handle all registrations and payments. This worked well, whilst also costing a percentage of the income in handling fees. Another slight challenge was the fact that the person paying for registration (e.g. School Administrators) was not always the same person who was giving a paper. Thus the record of names registered was not the same as the names who’d submitted abstracts. This required a fair bit of cross-checking to avoid inaccuracies in the programme schedule.

Máire Messenger Davies

When, in 2011, we at the University of Ulster’s School of Media, Film and Journalism, decided to bid for the annual MeCCSA conference to take place on the University of Ulster’s Derry/Londonderry campus in 2013, a big plus point was that it would coincide with the beginning of Derry’s UK City of Culture year, 2013.

Student and volunteer helpers outside the Martha Magee Building at the start of the conference

The bid to host the conference was submitted to the MeCCSA Executive in London in March 2011, along with six other bids, and it was discussed at length – people were a bit worried about the distance, the flights, the possible inconvenience, the likely weather.

But we convinced them: our bid was successful. So from that day on, we were planning to make our January 2013 conference, with the theme of ‘Spaces and Places of Culture’, not only a great academic meeting for scholars studying the media, but also a showcase for the city to many people who have never been here, and perhaps have only dimly heard of it as a place associated with trouble.

From L to R: Prof Máire Messenger Davies, conference organizer, University of Ulster: Dr. James Nesbitt, Chancellor University of Ulster; Prof Deirdre Heenan, Provost Magee Campus, University of Ulster; Prof Martin McLoone, conference organizer, University of Ulster

There were lots of pluses about this location for our conference – not least because of the help we got from the start from Aoife Thomas and her colleagues at the Derry Visitor and Convention Bureau and from City of Culture staff. Their hospitality and helpfulness in organizing a tour of the city for MeCCSA executive representatives in September 2011, with the support of the Irish Tourist Board, were tasters of all the helpfulness to come. As organisers, when we started to work out the practicalities, we were initially a little apprehensive about running such a big, complex event in a campus that wasn’t our own. (The School of Media, Film and Journalism is based on the Coleraine campus, 25 miles away.) In the event, we could not have been happier both with the beautiful environment of the Martha Magee building with its stunning views out across the Foyle, and with the excellent support we got from the Magee staff. They, too, were a credit to the city’s culture, and I’m sure enhanced the general impression of welcome, efficiency, warmth and vibrancy to our visitors. Our excellent student helpers completed the positive impression.

Visitor feedback

The email below, from one of our delegates at the ‘Spaces and Places of Culture’ conference is typical of most of the feedback we got from our visitors.

‘Just a brief note to say thank you very much for all the hospitality and warmth extended by you and your colleagues during the MeCCSA conference. I must say the conference was very well organised. I had a great conference and a lovely time in Derry.

Thanks again for everything.

Warmly, Saachi’

Seeing the city

Organisers streamed live video of the MeCCSA Conference to the internet. Pictured here are Alan Hook and Rowan Morrey.

Most conferences are busy affairs with very little time for delegates to get out and about to see the sights. Also, in January, on the North Coast of Ireland, there is no light by the end of the day, and from long experience, we were anxious about the weather – would it snow? Pour with rain? Be foggy and gloomy? Gale-swept? All of the above?

There’s never any way of knowing. So firstly we made sure, with the help of the University and the Provost of the Magee campus, Deirdre Heenan, that all the conference sessions would be in the same building, the newly-refurbished (with some funding help from the City) Martha Magee, so that people wouldn’t have to go outside unnecessarily; but we also made sure there was plenty of space in the programme for people to go on daytime tours in the city, organized with the help of the Derry Visitor and Convention Bureau. Thanks so much to them, and to the staff from the City of Culture team, particularly Claire McDermott who stood in for an ill Shona McCarthy at the last minute, at our opening Plenary session.

‘Derry is awesome’

Dr Beatriz Garcia, University of Liverpool delivers her presentation at the opening of the three day MeCCSA Conference.

The opening session dealt with the concept of ‘Cities of Culture’ and our keynote speaker, Beatriz Garcia from Liverpool University, spoke about her research on Liverpool’s year as European City of Culture in 2008. The city of culture idea inspired several comments among our delegates and some discussed a wish to pursue it in their own cities – for instance this from Dave Harte. First he tweeted:

‘Derry is awesome. #MeCCSA2013

He then wrote a blog about his hopes for Birmingham to follow in Derry’s footsteps:

‘Birmingham City of Culture 2017’, January 25, 2013

I was in Derry-Londonderry at the start of the year, the 2013 UK City of Culture. It was my first ever visit and I was immediately taken with the place. If you look at the words linked to Derry’s success then you’ll find nothing unexpected. They mention Creative Industries, ‘Digital’, they promised building/regeneration initiatives, they hinted at the potential for culture to “accelerate the pace of change and provide a new story for the city to tell to the world”.

That’s their way of saying “it’s complicated here but we’ll try.”

Has the discussion about whether Birmingham is planning to bid for UK City of Culture 2017 started yet? We should bid; I think we’d win.

Other delegates commented on the promotional video shown by Claire McDermott and her talk:

• notanna1AnnaNotaro@notanna1
  Liked the way that#Derry presented itself as an identity *threshold* in the promo video for the UK City of Culture competition #MeCCSA2013
• David McGillivray @dgmcgillivray
  interesting to see how #Derry is using its UK City of Culture status to reimagine its identity #MeCCSA2013. Promo video emphasises diversity

Touring the city

On the middle day of the conference, during a special two-hour lunch period, delegates, many of whom had never been to Derry before, were conducted round the walls by Martin McCrossan. An alternative ‘Herstory’ tour of the walls was also offered by our own Anne Crilly. Others chose to be shown round the museums by museum guides. Again, the messages below indicate how interesting and informative people found these tours. So, many thanks to all who helped with them. Here’s a few typical messages from delegates about the Derry venues:

• jonhickman @jonhickman
  Only barely made it back to #meccsa2013 in time to eat and speak. Really enjoyed the walking tour thanks to the organisers for putting it on
• Sarah Gilligan @idleponderings
  Thanks @cityhotelni, Derry Playhouse, Free Derry museum, Customs House & @ulsteruni for making us feel so welcome #Meccsa2013 @derry2013
• DerryPlayhouse @PlayhouseDerry
  Delighted! #MeCCSA2013 #CMR fb.me/2oiz4ZZ77

The conference organisers were very grateful to the Playhouse staff for hosting a highly successful event on the first night of the conference, at which the University Chancellor, James Nesbitt, was a guest speaker.

We were grateful, too, to the City of Derry council for hosting a reception in the Playhouse foyer before the panel took place, and to the Mayor for attending and welcoming our delegates.

Thanks, too, to the Nerve Centre for hosting several screenings of films produced by delegates, including the fascinating films of Derry in the 1960s and 70s produced by Terence McDonald. These are a unique archival treasure.

The staff of the City Hotel, where a large number of delegates stayed, were also extremely helpful from the earliest stages of planning. All hotels offered special conference rates, and the City even gave us a prize draw: a free weekend, bed and breakfast, to one of the ‘Early Bird’ delegates to encourage early booking, chosen by lot.

Delegates from the Meccsa Conference, Spaces and Places of Culture, at the Custom House gala dinner. Picture by Rowan Morrey

Our conference dinner on Thursday 10th January, at the Custom House restaurant, followed by our annual MeCCSA Media Quiz, offered delicious food and friendly, patient service to 91 hungry people, in its comfortable, elegant surroundings – much enjoyed by delegates, such as those below:

• notanna1AnnaNotaro @notanna1
  I’m at Custom House Restaurant in #Derry enjoying company of fellow #Meccsa2013 delegates, great way to end a day of intellectual stimulation
• Anna Feigenbaum @drfigtree
  Excellent social movement panel, fantastic talk on storyful, free derry museum tour, 2 hour bogside interview&pub quiz to come! #MeCCSA2013

Enjoying the buzz

It was a great three days, with, as many people said, a very positive ‘buzz’ – and the city itself, certainly contributed to the buzz. This even included the weather, which was bright and clear and cold. Many delegates took their own photographs and videos – here’s Claire Wardle’s:

• cward1e Claire Wardle
  Derry is pretty at night. #meccsa2013 pic.twitter.com/KWq8ZvEc
  
  

Some final comments from satisfied departing delegates:

• Sarah Gilligan @idleponderings
  #Meccsa2013 & @derry2013 has been engaging, interesting, thought provoking, inspiring & great fun. I look forward to returning to Derry.
• jonhickman @jonhickman
  Thank you Derry you were lovely. And #meccsa2013 went really well (@ City of Derry Airport (LDY)) 4sq.com/VXLft0
• notanna1AnnaNotaro @notanna1
  How could I have missed so far the existence of such a thing as *Guinness bread* ? #IrishBreakfast #MeCCSA2013

Dan Jackson & Einar Thorsen

Whilst it feels like we have barely emerged from the same winter that contained the MeCCSA 2013 conference held in Derry, we can report that preparations for the next Annual Conference are in full swing. The organising committee have been confirming keynotes, designing websites, negotiating hotel deals and finishing the call for papers.

Your correspondents have also been arduously hitting the bars and pubs of Bournemouth in order to bring you the most informed recommendations for watering holes during your stay in Bournemouth. It was a tough assignment, but we were prepared to take one on behalf of the team on this occasion….

Bournemouth past & present

Two hundred years ago Bournemouth was little more than a remote and barren heathland, used only by smugglers and revenue troops. Since then it has grown to a population of over 180,000.

Bournemouth’s history is rooted in tourism: situated on the south coast of England, it is known as a famous seaside resort. Whilst many British seaside resorts have faced decline since their late-Victorian heyday, Bournemouth still attracts an average of 4.7m visitors each year. It was this heritage in tourism that inspired the visual theme of the MeCCSA 2014 conference – which draws on vintage postcards and the famous National Rail tourism posters.

In March 2012 the world’s largest deckchair was erected at Bournemouth beach to mark the start of British Spring Time

Like the town itself, Bournemouth University is relatively young and is part of the post-92 group of universities. The university has historically been associated with outstanding teaching, practice and industry engagement, with the Media School at the forefront of this. However, the research profile of the Media School has increased considerably over the last decade. In this time we have seen the growth of a number of research centres such as the Centre for Journalism and Communication Research, the Centre for Media History, the Politics and Media group, Emerging Consumer Cultures Group, Public Relations Research Group, Advances in Media Management Group, an

d the Latin American Media Group. These days the School is positively buzzing with research activity, innovation and ambition, whilst retaining its strengths in media practice and education.

The School consists of four academic groups: Media Production, Journalism & Communication, Computer Animation, and Corporate & Marketing Communications. In addition, since 2004 the School has been home to the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP), the only such media centre funded by HEFCE in the UK.

Media and the margins

Vintage National Rail tourism posters inspired the visual theme of the conference

The theme of the MeCCSA 2014 conference is ‘media and the margins’, the engagement of marginalised and minority groups with the media. Examining power relationships amongst groups in society has long been a preoccupation of media, communication and cultural studies, and the conference will build upon this body of work. We also seek new ways of advancing thinking on for example: changes to representation of marginalised groups, participation and power relations, new and alternative media practices, the role of media policy, public service media, development communication and media for social change.

The conference organisers plan to publish an edited collection based on the conference theme, which we hope will be an incentive for high quality and topical papers.

Keynote speakers

MeCCSA2014 will have a number of themed keynote panels, featuring leading voices in media studies and practice. Whilst the keynote schedule is still being developed, we can announce some of the confirmed speakers and panels:

• “Where are we Now?” will critically debate the current state of media and cultural studies. It will feature Prof Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham), Prof Suzanne Franks (City University) and Prof Sonia Livingstone (LSE).
• “Media and the Margins” featuring Prof Daniela Berghahn (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Dr Darrell Newton (Salisbury University, Maryland, US).
• “Community and Alternative Media” featuring Zane Ibrahim (Bush Radio, South Africa), Dr Monica Metykova (University of Sussex) and Prof Clemencia Rodriguez (University of Oklahoma, US).
• “Where are we Going?” will offer a look forward to the future direction of media and cultural studies, featuring Prof Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Cardiff University), Dr Sarita Malik (Brunel University) and Prof Zizi Papacharissi (University of Illinois at Chicago, US).

Further details of keynotes and other planned events as part of the MeCCSA 2014 conference will be announced in due course. Keep an eye out in Three-D, on the conference website and the MeCCSA mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you in Bournemouth!

Matthew Freeman

Serving as a dynamic platform for the research of our community’s postgraduates and early career researchers, Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN is an e-journal published by the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network. The Network itself brings together approximately 400 postgraduate and early career researchers in the fields of media, communications, and cultural studies. Established in 2007, Networking Knowledge was designed as a means to develop coverage for the work of postgraduates working in these particular fields of media, communications, and cultural studies. Since then we have expanded our reach, broadening our content, whilst all the while retaining that core ethos of serving as an important platform for the work of postgraduates and early career researcher.

The journal regularly features issues based around the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network’s annual conferences, proving presenters with a useful opportunity to publish their papers in the form of journal articles, broadcasting their findings to a larger audience than those confined to the attendee lists of the conferences themselves. Both myself and the journal’s former editors have strived to continually improve the visibility of this outlet amongst our ever-broadening postgraduate community – developing Networking Knowledge as indeed a source of both appropriate research knowledge that lends itself to the wider academic community and as a source of suitable networkability, serving as a point where authors can connect to that all-important academic collective.

And so in offering a platform where the product of PGN events can be showcased, Networking Knowledge is an outlet run by postgraduates for postgraduates. As such, the journal typically runs on the services and contributions of postgraduate guest editors, each devising and facilitating their own special-themed edition of the journal in accordance with their own research interests and activities. Such editions can thus function as extensions of a researcher’s own work, offering the opportunity to both collate a publication around a particular research question or topic and to develop new networking opportunities with those currently working on similar areas.

Networking Knowledge is in fact currently seeking to appoint a series of such guest editors for its upcoming 2014 editions, and prospective postgraduates and early career researchers are encouraged to contact Matthew Freeman, the current Journal Editor, at aaxmaf@nottingham.ac.uk before May 1st 2013 to discuss possible topics and to submit proposals of approximately 500 words or less. The journal of course caters towards the broad and wide-ranging research interests of the MeCCSA members, and so we welcome proposals on any area of media, communications, and cultural studies.

We look forward to
hearing from you!

The University of East Anglia (UEA) is delighted to be hosting the forthcoming 2013 MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference on 2nd – 3rd July 2013. The event is organised by the school of Film, Television and Media Studies (FTM) in collaboration with other schools across UEA’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities, media@uea and the East Anglian Film Archive.

University of East Anglia

Future career prospects are a real concern for many postgraduate researchers today and this year’s conference is designed to explore the ways in which postgraduates can proactively and positively address this issue. The conference is themed around innovation and development with a strong focus on training and methods of boosting employability. Since the conference coincides with the 50th Anniversary of UEA, we also want to embrace the university’s founding principle of ‘Do Different’.  The training workshops and plenaries are therefore designed to introduce new and alternative ways of undertaking and presenting academic research. The aim is to help develop core skills postgraduate students can employ for their careers beyond the PhD.

The conference will open with a roundtable discussion on personal development and academic careers. The panel of academics for this session, Martin Barker (UEA), Iain Robert Smith (Roehampton) and Sanna Inthorn (UEA), are all at different stages in their careers and will discuss their own experiences of working within the sector. The evening plenary lecture by the BFI’s Nathalie Morris will take place at The Forum, Norwich’s landmark millennium library and media centre in collaboration with the East Anglian Film Archive.  The theme of this talk focuses on archival collections and access for researchers. The conference closes with a plenary session from Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths). Additional information on keynote talks and skills training sessions will be forthcoming shortly.

UEA Students

Delegate panels will be structured to incorporate a mix of both traditional and new formats such as short ‘lightning talk’ presentations, alongside more discursive and interactive ‘work in progress’ sessions. The opportunity to present academic work in these non-traditional formats provides an excellent way to develop ideas, presentation skills and to build potential networks. We encourage anyone who is interested in getting involved with these alternative presentation formats – but is unsure about how to do so – to get in touch with the conference committee. We also welcome any further suggestions or requests from the postgraduate community to help make this annual gathering a real success. We are committed to ensuring that the conference helps fulfill postgraduate training needs and aim to make the event useful and relevant for delegates.  Learning from each other will be a key focus and there will be ample opportunity for attendees to get together and discuss their work.  Social events including the conference dinner and pub quiz will enable friendships and potential academic networks and partnerships to form and grow.

We look forward to welcoming you to the conference in July and introducing you to the sights and sounds of UEA and Norwich!

Email: meccsapg2013@uea.ac.uk
Twitter: @MeCCSAPGN2013
Facebook: MeCCSA Postgrad Network Conference 2013

Heather Nunn

The WMSN recently collaborated with the MeCCSA Practice Network to support a one-day symposium on Female Authorship. The event was organised by Dr Sarah Neely, University of Stirling as part of the Glasgow Short Film Festival’s programme. Invited panelists to this stimulating event included filmmakers, academics, curators, artists and writers. A fuller report on the day is included in the Practice Network section of this Three-D.

Angeliki Antoniou directing award winning film Eduart (2008)

This event led to several enquiries from potential organisers of future WMSN symposia. As a result, we are pleased to be supporting a forthcoming roundtable discussion focusing on Women’s Cinema in Greece, within the wider contexts of Women’s Cinema in the Balkans and in Europe. The roundtable will be held during the Contemporary Greek Film Cultures 2013 conference (5-6 July 2013) hosted by the Hellenic Centre in London (www.helleniccentre.org) and co-organised by the Universities of Reading and Glasgow. This 2-day conference seeks to actively help expand the current scholarship in Greek Film Studies, and to help promote a more concerted study and theorisation of Contemporary Greek Cinema, reflecting on its multi-faceted contexts of production, distribution and research, in Greece and abroad. The roundtable’s aim is to firmly place the study of Women’s Cinema within the wider (conference) concerns of Greek Film Studies and Contemporary Greek Cinema. Greece is geographically and culturally linked to the Balkans, and many similarities of women’s roles in these countries are observed. However, ideologically and to a larger extent culturally, Greece is also in close proximity to Western Europe. The speakers will include internationally successful Greek filmmakers, Olga Malea and Angeliki Antoniou, who will be invited to share their experience and knowledge about the opportunities and/or obstacles for women filmmakers in Greece.  The discussion will draw upon their experience with distribution in the country as well as abroad.  In addition, the roundtable will explore issues of financing not only under the current harsh economic climate, but within a largely male-dominated field in Greece, the Balkan countries and arguably elsewhere. Alongside this practice-led viewpoint, Dr Lydia Papadimitriou of Liverpool John Moores University will explore the relationship between academic and production forces in Greece. The event is being organised by Mikela Fotiou, University of Glasgow who is researching the representation of women in the work of the Greek filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis. Her co-organisers are Tonia Kazakopoulou, University of Reading whose current research focuses on women’s comedy in contemporary Greek cinema: Olga Malea and Philip Phillis, University of Glasgow who is researching Greek transnational co-productions with a focus on representation of Albanian immigrants.

For more information on the roundtable contact the organisers on contemporarygreekfilm2013@gmail.com

GFF – Stuart Crawford

The Female Authorship Symposium was held on Friday the 8th of February at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow.  The event was hosted by the Glasgow Short Film Festival and received support from the MeCCSA Women’s Media Studies Network, MeCCSA Practice Network, the Stirling Centre for Scottish Studies and the Scottish Media and Communications Association.  The event proved to be one of the most popular at the festival and tickets sold out very quickly. Over 50 people took part in the event, with many travelling from outside Glasgow (and Scotland).  Participants included a mix of students, academics, artists, filmmakers and critics.

GFF – Stuart Crawford

The day opened with a keynote lecture from Professor Sue Thornham.  Professor Thornham then chaired the first panel looking at the role of feminism in terms of film education, curation and production.  Panelists included Professor Karen Boyle, Dr. Belen Vidal, Laura Hudson, Louise Crawford and Dr. Lucy Reynolds.  In the afternoon, Dr. Sarah Neely chaired a panel on women filmmakers in Scotland.  The panellists included Denise Mina (writer), Claire Mundell (producer), Andrea Gibb (screenwriter), Helen Fitzgerald (writer), and Eleanor Yule (screenwriter/director/PhD student).   The day concluded with a screening that revisited a number of filmmakers whose work was represented in the International Film Festival & Confrerence ‘Her Take’, held in Glasgow in 1990 as part of the Year of Culture.

Overall, the day stimulated a good deal of debate and discussion.  Although each session allocated a considerable amount of time for questions, there was a strong sense at the end of the day that the discussion was only really getting started and not just wrapping-up!

Please join the Practice Network on facebook for discussion, postings and event listings:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/124589234295839/

If you are interested in hosting an event please get in touch:
joanna.callaghan@beds.ac.uk

Update: The author of this article was originally published incorrectly as John Adams. We have now updated it with the correct byline of Sarah Neely.

Máire Messenger Davies

For most of 2012, continuing into 2013, and no doubt beyond, media policy debates and events have been dominated by questions raised by the Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press, whose report was published on 29th November 2012 – see http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0780/0780.asp. (For an executive summary see http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0779/0779.asp.) Policy Network members have been actively involved in the debates surrounding the Inquiry – giving evidence, meeting with civil society groups, writing, blogging, tweeting and conducting research. It was seen as important to include Leveson issues as a key strand in our recent 2013 conference, ‘Spaces and Places of Culture’ in Derry (see below) and these issues have also been dominant in other institutions’ seminars and conferences this year.

How is the Policy Network involved?

The Policy Network originally came together after a lively policy session about public service broadcasting, chaired by Voice of the Listener and Viewer President, Jocelyn Hay, at the Cardiff MeCCSA conference in 2008; the network was intended primarily as an online forum for academics to exchange views and research on different areas of media policy – broadcasting, journalism, new technology, audience studies, including children, regulation, censorship and international developments among them. Regular policy exchanges have taken place via the Policy Network list (MECCSA-POLICY@JISCMAIL.AC.UK) and there have been well-attended policy panels at subsequent MeCCSA conferences, including the 2013 conference in Derry.

Joining with civil society: breaking out of the ivory tower

The MeCCSA Policy network has a specific agenda to support engagement with civil society. Since the phone hacking scandal broke in 2011 and Leveson was set up in 2012, these academic debates have spilled over from the academy into the public domain and members such as Steve Barnett, Des Freedman, Natalie Fenton, Julian Petley, Ivor Gaber and James Curran, are becoming familiar media names. (See for example the letters to the Guardian on ‘illegality and cover up at News Corp’ and the letter urging support for the Leveson recommendations, in the Financial Times on November 1st 2012, signed by 26 senior academics, most of whom are members of the Policy Network – see Three-D Issue 19 and also the regular blogs at the LSE Media Policy Project, including a useful Leveson roundup).

Whatever individuals’ differing views about press freedom, and the rights and wrongs of press regulation, it is a tribute to the field that a senior media academic (and former journalist), Professor Brian Cathcart, of Kingston University, the sometimes-maligned leader of the Hacked Off campaign group, has been instrumental in the public debate on journalism ethics and regulation. This allegedly ‘self-appointed’ role has not made him popular with the press, nor with some other academics – this is a fate that media studies colleagues should expect when they venture into the public domain. For a robust riposte to the press’s dismissal of Media Studies and a call for his fellow academics to engage in the debate more publicly see James Curran’s paper from the Derry conference, ‘Mickey Mouse Squeaks Back, reprinted in this issue of Three-D.

Blogging and tweeting

Many media academics have taken to social media to advance policy agendas. A blog from the Media Reform Coalition – a group of academics, journalists and civil society organisations – pointed out some ironies in the press attacks on Hacked Off:

‘Take Andrew Gilligan fuming in the Telegraph about this “fundamental rewriting of Britain’s constitutional liberties”. First, he’s angry that Hacked Off got the same access to politicians as press companies had since January; he calls them a “self-appointed campaign group” (as opposed to state-appointed); “funded by rich celebrities” (unlike the rich owners of newspapers).’

Julian Petley also offers a corrective to press ‘fuming’ and a useful analysis of the recommendations in the cross-party proposed Royal Charter in this edition of Three-D: “The uproar and tumult which the charter has brought about in the press barons’ camp is the clearest possible proof that it has merit.”

Leveson in Derry

At this year’s MeCCSA conference in Derry, at one of our keynote sessions, ‘Journalism Futures’, Roy Greenslade, former tabloid editor, regular contributor to The Guardian, and Professor of Journalism at City University, emphasised the distinction between ‘the press’ and ‘journalism.’ He acknowledged the flaws of the former, and defended the importance of the latter, which in its print version, he argued, controversially, is on the way out. On a more hopeful note, his fellow speaker, Claire Wardle, of Storyful, illustrated some of the blossoming possibilities of online journalism in her presentation.

Roy Greenslade also pointed out, with special emphasis for the local audience, that popular newspapers (despite defending their own role in upholding press freedom) mainly have an eye on what makes money. During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Roy reminded us, coverage of the issues was poor because ‘Ulster doesn’t sell.’ In the panel strand, ‘Journalism and Policy’, several speakers addressed issues of media regulation and ownership, and the programme featured a panel directly addressing ‘Lessons from Leveson.’ In this panel, chaired by Maggie Swarbrick, director of the University of Ulster’s MA in Journalism, Des Freedman drew attention to what he argued is a central issue in the problems identified by Leveson – and one underplayed in the report, he argued: this is the problem of concentrated media ownership, both in the UK and internationally. Natalie Fenton questioned the equation of ‘freedom of the press’ with ‘cosmopolitan capitalism.’ Brian Cathcart, director of the campaign group Hacked Off, passionately defended his cause against some sceptical audience members. To a member of the audience who asked, ‘does the public really care about this?’ he pointed to opinion polls with majority support for the Leveson recommendations. But even without these, he said, he would continue the campaign because: ‘I care.’

MeCCSA’s responses

At the MeCCSA AGM in 2011 the following motion was passed in support in support of the Media Reform Coalition (formerly the Coordinating Committee for Media Reform) – a group of academics, including Network members, journalists and civil society organisations: “This AGM supports the initiative of the Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform in its submission to Leveson, and further public forums, as a proper and fruitful stimulus to well-informed debate.” This year, (2013), MeCCSA received a message from fellow media and cultural studies academic, and phone hacking victim, Professor John Tulloch, formerly of Brunel University: ‘I do hope that, as the most important communication association in the UK, you are able to offer official and public support to the media reform campaign.’ Although views on press regulation differ, inevitably, it’s good that the MeCCSA Policy Network continues to offer a forum for these views and that media academics’ research and advice are being taken seriously both by policy makers and – judging by the ‘uproar and tumult’ referred to by Julian Petley – in the press too.

Future events and useful contacts

We are keen to have Network events outside London. Volunteers to host these, please get in touch.

‘Strategies for Media Reform: An International Workshop’, an ICA (International Communication Association) Pre-conference meeting in London  on June 17, 2013.

The Media Reform group:
http://www.mediareform.org.uk/
Contact: info@mediareform.org.uk

Hacked Off website: hackinginquiry.org.
Contacts: Phone: + 44 (0) 20 7808 7275
Email: campaign@hackinginquiry.org

Leveson Inquiry:
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1213/hc07/0780/0780.asp

Máire Messenger Davies, March 2013, m.messenger-davies@ulster.ac.uk;
Twitter: @mairemd