CFP Extended: International #YouthMediaLife 2021 Conference

March 29 - April 1, 2021University of ViennaConfirmed keynote speakers:Susanne Baumgartner, Amsterdam University, The NetherlandsRodney Jones, University of Reading, UKAxel Krommer, University Erlangen-Nürnberg, GermanyDafna Lemish, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

In mediatised cultures, people are engaged in increasingly complex networks of digital and ana­logue media practices through which they construct, experience, and share their lifeworlds. In the interdisciplinary research platform #YouthMediaLife at the University of Vienna, scholars have been engaged with such mediatised lifeworlds, specifically of young people, since May 2018. #YouthMediaLife 2021 invites international experts from various fields to share their research and perspectives on young people's mediatised lifeworlds.The three-day conference at the University of Vienna has at its heart questions about young peo­ple's communicative and media practices in a variety of contexts. This brings questions such as the following to the fore: What are the roles which mediated narratives play in establishing and managing young people's social connections? How are identities (co-)constructed in and through social media? How can media practices contribute to the appropriation of knowledge and skills which are crucial for the formation of young people's lifeworlds? How are mediality and specific media practices perceived and evaluated, and how do such media ideologies feed back on media practices? How are media and narratives connected to and determined by technological, discur­sive and psychological factors and how do these factors in turn shape young people’s lifeworlds? How do technology and technological change shape story-telling practices? What are the ethical challenges and the socio-political and power aspects in these contexts?A better understanding of digital change in young people's lifeworlds requires a productive com­bination of disciplinary and interdisciplinary work that helps us all make sense of some of the de­velopments we observe. We invite abstracts for papers on any of the following topics:Communicative Action and Media Practices: 

• Communicative structures of media practices;
• Analogue and digital co-dependencies;
• Intergenerational issues in media use;
• Economising our needs via the media;
• Audience expectations towards (news) media;
• (De-)mediatisation strategies;
• Multilingualism and translanguaging;
• English as a global media language.

Individual and Community:

• Issues of identity formation;
• Migrant communities and media practices;
• Artificial intelligence and young people;
• The digital and the body;
• Media perception;
• Perception of the body in space;
• Forms of medial communitarisation.

Research Practices:

• New Methods for researching media practices;
• Field access and spatio-temporal structures of the field;
• Practical and legal questions surrounding social media research.

Politics, Ideologies, and Ethics:

• The ethics involved in media use;
• Perception of, and discourses about, mediality and specific media practices;
• Metrics and algorithms;
• Ethical considerations of technology shaping identity;
• Digital technologies and "the good life";
• The aesthetics of reception and production;
• Cultural pessimism, digital determinism and other perspectives of technology and culture;
• Power inequalities, hegemonies and democratisation processes.

Education and Personal Development:

• Multilingualism, multiliteracies. and multmodalities;
• "Englishisation" and (language) learning;
• Learning through gamification;
• Self-tracking and life-logging;
• The implications of media change for education and personality development.

We invite abstracts for the following presentation formats:

• Posters to be presented in dedicated poster sessions (200 words maximum);
• Individual papers (20 minute speaking time + 10 minutes for discussion, 350 words maximum);
• Organised panels/symposia of up to 90 minutes in total (350 words maximum for the frame abstract and 200 words maximum for each individual contribution; 3-5 contributions).

Deadline for abstracts: August 15, 2020You will be notified of acceptance/rejection by October 30, 2020.For submissions, please use this form.