The goals of the NECS Conference of 2013 are threefold: to re-evaluate the political character of media histories, texts, experiences, communities, and institutions; to illuminate the political underpinnings of media theories; and to shed light on the ways in which media might function as a political tool for hegemonistic, oppressive, illegal or unethical activities and critical or counter-cultural responses to them.

This year’s central focus on Media Politics and Political Media calls attention to an important dimension  of media culture: how to talk about politics and media in an age when media has become so ubiquitous that  its relationships to politics might become invisible. In the age of neo-liberal university politics, global financial crises and ecological disasters, media studies may have become more urgent than ever.

Film, Media and Cultural Studies have been struggling to respond to the increasing politicization of audiovisual media prompted by recent developments in globalization, conglomeration, digitization, copyright law, censorship, corruption, activism, and ecology. It is perhaps fitting then that the next NECS conference – focusing on “Media Politics ‒ Political Media” – takes place in the Czech capital of Prague, a city lying at the heart of a region characterized by countless regime changes and oft-redrawn borders.
In light of significant changes to the media landscape, it is imperative that, as media scholars and practitioners, we ask how we might best understand the full range of ways in which media operates politically, and how we may respond to what Toby Miller described as “the irrelevance of screen studies to both popular and policy-driven discussion of films”.

Location and date: Prague, June 20-22 2013

All information about the NECS conference can be found on the Website.