Media Growth: Global Trends, Social Impacts, Academic Concerns

 

In the last few years, an impressive growth in the size and public influence of private television channels and newspaper groups in Pakistan has gone hand in hand with innovative modes and rising levels of state repression. These seemingly contradictory trends have raised critical questions about the politics and economics of media development, the thorny issue of ‘media responsibility’ and censorship, the role of the media vis-à-vis the state, the corporate sector, and society, and finally, the relationship between the media and the academy.

 

Such questions can be best addressed by analyzing the different facets and effects of media development in Pakistan in the appropriate global and regional context, and by comparing the Pakistani experience with other countries. The proposed conference aims to organize sessions centered on four central themes: global politico-economic trends that bear on media development, case studies of media experiences from other countries of the North and the South, the specific predicaments and challenges facing the Pakistani media, and the future prospects for the relationship between the media and the academy, at the local and international levels.

 

We hope to bring together journalists and academics from diverse backgrounds and initiate an academically informed debate in which each side can benefit from the perspective and experience of the other. We would like to invite abstracts and panel proposals related to the following themes:

 

  • Globalization and media development
  • Corporate sector and the media: mutual benefits and constraints
  • Media versus the state: traitors or loyal opposition?
  • Media and the academy: connections and conflicts
  • Media personnel in local spaces: challenges and rewards
  • Foreign journalists in the global South
  • Media and the public discourse
  • Global Media and the ‘Global Culture’

 

For further information please contact Marta Bolognani (martabol@gmail.com) or Laila Bushra (laila@jhu.edu) and for abstracts and registrations contact ssconference08@lums.edu.pk .

 

The deadline for submission of abstracts is July 31, 2008, and the deadline for approved papers is October 22, 2008.