In the post 9/11 era, the extent to which the mainstream news media exacerbate or assuage (i.e. act as a buffer against) terrorist attacks and other catastrophic events is attracting significant attention (see Martín-Barbero 2002; Silverstone 2002; Hoskins and O’Loughlin 2007). However, much of this work has focused upon ‘traditional’ ‘mainstream’ media and particularly television news. 

The activities under the proposed theme will go further through interrogating the new fluidities of public (in)security discourses in our ‘new media ecology’ (Cottle, 2006) in which the availability and portability, and the supreme accessibility, transferability and circulation of digital content opens up conflicting and simultaneous opportunities for promoting and assuaging fears and threats, near and far, as more of everyday life matter is recorded, disseminated and debated on near-instantaneous and de-territorialised scales.

Objectives:

To establish a research theme of Digital Media and Security that will enable Warwick and external academics, practitioners, and stakeholders to debate and shape an interdisciplinary and international research agenda that will: 

• Interrogate the role and function of new media and their associated technologies in shaping the everyday experience of ‘mediatized’ insecurity and security;
• Illuminate and shape the paradigmatic shift required in the fields of media, sociology, politics, communication and journalism studies, etc. to provide an adequate framework for security research in the new media ecology;
• Initiate and lead the generation of externally-funded grants to enable (1) and (2) above.

The workshop will be held on 21-22 May 2009 in Social Studies Room S0.10. The programme is now available

Academics involved- Andrew Hoskins (Sociology), Robert Fine (Sociology), Maureen Freely (English)