International Research Workshop
Aarhus University, Media Studies
Thursday 29 – Friday 30 March 2012
Call for papers and participation

Ph.d course
Aarhus University, Media Studies
Wednesday 28 March 2012
Call for participation

We invite researchers who work with mobile communication as a cultural, spatial and social phenomenon to join us for this two-day round-table workshop hosted by the Media Studies Department at Aarhus University. We will emphasize the spatial aspects of mobile communication and mobile internet. The workshop aims to reflect and discuss general theoretical perspectives, empirical case studies and methodological implications of studying mobile internet and locative media in relation to mobility and place. We have invited an international panel of speakers in order to encourage and facilitate the development of an international research network on mobile communication.

Topics to be analyzed and discussed

• Theoretical, analytical and methodological aspects of mobile communication, mobile internet and locative media
• Travelling, mobility and mobile technologies
• Locative media and the production of place
• Mobile internet, mobile media devises and new media practices

Registration form

Guest speakers

Rich Ling, DK, Digital Gemeinschaft

Naomi Baron, US, Reading on the Run: What We Read on Mobile Devices and Why

Leopoldina Fortunati, Italy, Mobilities and Mobile Phones

Jonas Larsen, DK, Mobile Communication, Place and Mobile Methods

Other contributors

Iben Have, DK & Birgitte Stougaard, DK Audiobooks and Mobile Listening: New

Medium, New Users, New Literary Experiences?

Anja Bechmann, DK Communication to-go: Studying Mobile and Seamless Communication Practices

Jakob Linaa Jensen, DK Online Social Networks; Augmentation of Social Space

Martin Brynskov, DK Mobile Media and Smart Cities

Stine Lomborg, DK The internet in my pocket

Charles Ess, DK Mobile Communication, Culture, Convergence.

Anne Marit Waade, DK Locative Mobile Media, Place and Performativity

Practical information

• The roundtable workshop starts Thursday 29 March at 10.00am and ends Friday 30 March at 5.00pm
• The workshop takes place at Aarhus University, IT-campus, ADA Building, meeting room 333, Helsingforsgade 15, 8200 Aarhus N
• Workshop fee: participation in the workshop itself is free, but participants will be asked to cover meal expenses (400 DKr for lunch and coffee for two days, and – optional - 400 DKr. for dinner Thursday night). Accommodation and travel expenses are covered by each participant.

Submitting abstract for presentation

There will be a limited number of participants in the workshop. Deadline for submitting an abstract for presentation is 15. January 2012. The abstract should be no longer than 250 words. All participants will receive a response by 1 February. Please send your abstract to Sarah Schorr: imvsgs@hum.au.dk

Guidelines for the presentation

Prepare a presentation of ca. 10 minutes inclusive relevant questions to be posed for the workshop discussion. It might be based on a paper, an article or just a note or questions. Please send your contribution by 1 March to Sarah Schorr: imvsgs@hum.au.dk. Contributions will be distributed to participants prior to the workshop: participants will be asked to read each other’s papers in advance of the workshop.

Organizers

Charles Ess, Media Studies, Aarhus University

Anne Marit Waade, Media Studies, Aarhus University

Sarah Schorr, Ph.D. Fellow, Media Studies, Aarhus University

Related Ph.D-course

In connection to the workshop, we are organizing the Ph.D. course, Researching Mobile and Locative Media - Methods and Ethics. It takes place Wednesday, March 28, 2012. 11 am – 6 pm. In this course, we will emphasize the methodological approaches, as well as the ethical questions that surround the empirical study of mobile and locative media. For more information about the course, please contact Sarah Schorr, e-mail: imvsgs@hum.au.dk.

Contact person

Sarah Schorr, Ph.D. Fellow, Media Studies, Aarhus University, e-mail: imvsgs@hum.au.dk

Presentation of guest speakers and organizers

Rich Ling, PhD, University of Colorado in 1984. Rich has focused his work on the social consequences of mobile communication. He is a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and at works at Telenor near Oslo, Norway. He has also been the Pohs visiting professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and now holds an adjunct position in that department. He is the author of the book New Tech, New Ties (MIT 2008?).  He is also the author of a book on the social consequences of mobile telephony entitled The Mobile Connection (Morgan Kaufmann) and along with Jonathan Donner he has written the book Mobile Phones and Mobile Communication. He is a founding editor of the Sage journal Mobile Media and Communication; along with Scott Campbell he is the editor of The Mobile Communication Research Series and he is an associate editor for The Information Society.

Naomi S. Baron, American University, Washington D.C., US, Professor of Linguistics (Department of Language and Foreign Studies) and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching, Research and Learning. Professor Baron is interested in electronically-mediated communication, the relationship between spoken and writing language, and the effects of technology on individuals and on social relationships. A former Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Fellow, she has published seven books, including Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It’s Heading (2000) and Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (2008). Always On won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008. She taught at Brown University, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University, where she has served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs, Associate Dean for Curriculum and Faculty Development, Chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies, and Director of the TESOL Program. She was named University Honors Program Professor of the Year and received an American University Presidential Research Fellowship. 
Professor Baron’s current research compares reading onscreen versus reading in hard copy.

Leopoldina Fortunati, is Professor of Sociology of Communication at the Faculty of Education of the University of Udine, Italy. She has conducted several research projects in the field of gender studies, cultural processes and communication and information technologies. She is the author of many books and is the editor with J. Katz and R. Riccini of Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication and Fashion (2003), with P. Law and S. Yang of New Technologies in Global Societies (2006) and with Jane Vincent of Electronic Emotion: The Mediation of Emotion via Information and Communication Technologies (2009). She is very active at the European level, especially in COST networks and is the Italian representative in the COST Domain Committee (ISCH, Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health). She is associate editor of the journal The Information Society and serves as referee for many outstanding journals. She is the co-chair with Richard Ling of the International Association "The Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication" (SSSMC) which intends to facilitate the international advancement of cross-disciplinary mobile communication studies. Her works have been published in eleven languages: Bulgarian, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish.

Jonas Larsen is an Associate Professor in Geography at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is researching mobility, tourism and media. He has been conducting ethnographic studies, and has published on mobile methods and ethnographic studies of mobility. He has recently published The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (2011) together with John Urry. He is also the author of Performativity, Space, and Tourism (2011) as part of the Routledge Handbook of Tourism Geographies: New Perspectives on Space, Place and Tourism and Distance and Proximity (2012) as part of the forthcoming Handbook of Mobilities.

Charles Ess is Professor MSO at the Department of Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research works between two distinct but closely interrelated areas, namely media studies (including computer-mediated communication and digital media) and philosophy of information (including philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and ethics as applied to digital media and Internet research). He has published extensively, including as guest editor for special issues of The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Ethics and Information Technology, New Media and Society, and Philosophy and Technology. Recent books include: Digital Media Ethics (Polity Press, 2009); (with Mia Consalvo), The Blackwell Handbook of Internet Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), (with May Thorseth), Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2011) and, forthcoming (with Pauline Cheong, Peter Fischer-Nielsen, Stefan Gelfgren, Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures (Peter Lang, 2012).

Anne Marit Waade is Associate Professor at the Department of Information and Media Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research falls within the areas of media aesthetics, visual culture, mediated tourism and branding culture. She has recently published articles on crime fiction series, crime tourism and travel series, she has co-published the book Medier og turisme [Media and Tourism] with Jakob Linaa Jensen (2009), and co-edited the books Re-Investing Authenticity (2010), Den skandinaviske krimi – bestseller og blockbuster (2010) and the special issue of Northern Lights on Crime and Media (2011). Her book Wallanderland about locations in crime series and media induced tourism will be published in 2012.