Media Mutations 6

Segnalo l'appuntamento annuale con Media Mutations, conferenza organizzata dall'Università di Bologna (27/28 maggio 2014) dedicata ai modi di produzione e alle forme narrative della serialità televisiva contemporanea. 

Ecco il CFP:

Media Mutations 6. Modes of Production and Narrative Forms in the Contemporary TV Series.


Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti, May 27th-28th, 2014


Invited keynote speaker: Catherine Johnson (University of Nottingham)

Media Mutations, the international conference on audiovisual media studies, comes to its sixth annual edition. This year’s theme is the relationship between modes of production and narrative forms in contemporary scripted television series in the United States and in Europe. The industrial structures of television, from labor organization to economic models of monetization, all shape the types of content that is created: the stories that the medium tells and the ways in which it tells them. This year’s conference seeks to explore changes brought in the past decade by new models of business, new technologies and new forms of integration within the media, and the resulting changes to television narratives.
We invite submissions that cover the following topics, favoring proposals that are able to intersect across different areas:

•   Narrative models and industrial structures: the influence of extratextual factors (organizational structures, institutional policies, production patterns, economic models and types of distribution) on the form and language of TV series.

•   New forms of monetization: the relationships between television series, ancillary products and branded extensions in a context of digitization and cross-media storytelling. What effect is the trend towards gamification having on TV series? What elements in series are highlighted by broadcasters according to diverse cross-platform monetization strategies? How is this influenced by contexts of distribution?

•   Genres: the impact of changing economic considerations in re-shaping subgenre traditions (dramas, sitcoms) and in inventing new genres and hybrid forms. To what extent does the TV series format, and its various genres and subgenres, influence and regulate audience expectations?

•   From TV watching to user experiences: the effects of the transition of media broadcasters from content providers to designers of user-oriented experiences based on scripted series. In what ways is added value provided to television texts? What kinds of new cross-media skills are required from TV professionals in the context of expansion of, and integration with, digital media content?

•   Global content flows and local contexts: the discourse of television as a national medium in the shaping of production cultures. In what ways is this discourse influenced by economic, technological and cultural changes? What is the role of production and distribution routines (i.e. dubbing, acquisition, promotion) in the modification (forms and identities) of original series into different local contexts?

•   Theoretical definitions: the identification of effective models in the contemporary milieu, thirty years after the Second Golden Age. The evolution of aesthetic and product-related definitions such as quality TV, high-concept series and narrative complexity.

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian. There will be no conference fee. Proposals of no more than 250 words (for 20-minute talks), should be sent to Luca Barra (luca.barra@unicatt.it), Leora Hadas (lhadas.uni@gmail.com) and Paolo Noto (paolo.noto2@unibo.it) by January the 27th 2014. Please attach a brief biography (maximum 150 words) and an optional selected bibliography (up to three titles) relevant to the conference theme.