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The 6th International Conference on Media and Popular Culture

11th January 2020

The 6th International Conference on Media and Popular Culture, organised in partnership with Intellect attracted interesting contributions, mainly from studies on women in popular culture. The conference was held on 11th January in the Queens hotel, as part of annual conferencing held in January each year.

The papers presented debated the position of women in popular culture, predominantly in television series and also in the literature. In addition, we heard presentations on women’s film festival in Ireland and presentations on social media advertising.

The conference will result with a special number of the Journal of Popular Television published by Intellect on the topic of women and girls in television in the age of postfeminism. The issue is scheduled to be completed by 1st August and after the completion of peer review, the special issue is expected to be published late this year or early in 2021.

We already have papers from the conference participants who will submit for publication, such as on the representation of girls in the Game of Thrones, Police representation in BBC series and the Supergirl as a feminist heroine. However, a call will soon be released for other authors to engage with this important debate. The special issue will be co-edited by Dr Martina Topic (UK) and Dr Maria Joao Cunha (Portugal).

Due to the low representation of media and journalism scholars in the conference, the conference will cease to exist in the current form. Instead, we have partnered up with journal Femspec and Intellect again to host a conference on Women in Popular Culture and Sci-Fi in particular, which is planned for April 2021. The call will be announced soon.

Thank you for reading.

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5th International Conference on Media and Popular Culture

12th January 2019

Leeds, United Kingdom

Venue: Queens hotel Leeds

RATIONALE

It is an unobjectionable fact that media participate in formation of our daily lives by creating identities, images, and by generally influencing our views. This applies not only to politics (i.e. political campaigns), but also to the formation on how we see ourselves and others. Popular culture, on the other hand, also affects our daily lives by fostering images and ideologies, and by selling a way of life that is presented as acceptable or non-acceptable. Sociological theories presented five models of audiences (hypodermic needle model, normative model, model of satisfying needs, interpretative model, structural interpretative model), and scholars still debate usability of each model due to the influence of media and popular culture over current issues. In addition, the agenda setting theory of mass media influence postulates that media affect our views and influence what we think about even if media cannot influence how we think about issues. These and other issues were discussed at our conference.

A selection of photos is available on our social media profiles.