Section Head Election 2018 - Call for candidates and statements

Media Production Analysis Working Group

The Media Production Analysis working group of the IAMCR will hold elections during its business meeting at the IAMCR conference in Eugene, June 24.

The working group provides a venue for researchers of media production in different genres and across different media. It focuses on different media technologies, organisational contexts and genres to grasp the internal and external dynamics of media production processes.

Candidates for the post of chair or vice-chair can announce their candidacy by contacting the present chair Roel Puijk (roel.puijk (at) inn.no) who will send the information to the members of the group. Candidates may also be announced during the meeting.

You can find the election rules at: https://iamcr.org/governance/swg-rules

Candidates and statements

For Chair:

For Co-chair:

Candidate statements (alphabetical order)

Indrek Ibrus, Tallinn University, Estonia, Candidate for co-chair
Professor of media innovation, Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School (BFM), Head at MEDIT (Tallinn University Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture)

I express my interest contributing to the work of the section and being a candidate for the co-chair post.

My relationship with the IAMCR started already back in 2005 when I assisted Robin Mansell in her role as the IAMCR president. And since I have regularly attended its conferences and, as you know, been taking part also of the MPA sessions. I am in a way in-betweener - I have been also taking part of the life of the Communication policy & Technology section. But most of my own research is about the media production and this is increasingly how I identify myself  - I am a researcher of media production. And media innovation processes therein. My approach is generally critical and multidisciplinary.

I will be very busy with writing two books this year and relatedly I am also not planning to come to Eugene. But starting next year I should be more flexible and could contribute also to developing the section.

Regarding ideas I imagine that we could produce a regular newsletter on events, grants and new significant publications in our sub-field. Also perhaps more systematic work towards including people representing different approaches - critical production studies, media economics and management studies, ethnographic studies, etc. On this front - cooperation with other organisations as it happened in London would also important. Regarding IAMCR conferences perhaps also occasional use of different presentation formats in addition to traditional paper-based panels would be in place. Maybe also proactive work on inviting and putting together panels to discuss up-to-date issues, etc. Perhaps also shared sessions with other sections (Communication policy & Technology, Journalism Research, Law, History, etc.) section would be also interesting.

Willemien Sanders, Utrecht University, Netherlands, Candidate for chair/co-chair
Assistant Professor, Department of media and culture studies

The past four years, as a co-chair I have worked to increase the coherence of the working group and facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experiences by organizing the group outside of the conference itself. This has resulted, among others, in a Linked-In group, and a panel at the recent Media Industry Studies conference in London. As chair I plan to make the group more visible outside of the IAMCR conference by publishing joint papers or special issues and organising panels at other conferences. It is therefore my intention to both move the field forward by organising joint presentations and increase the visibility of the group.

Sayyed. F. Shah, Jacksonville State University, United States, Candidate for chair
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication

I would like to express my interest in running for chair of the Media Production Analysis Working Group. I have been involved in different capacities in the working of IAMCR for the last four years. My association with IAMCR for the previous four years has equipped me to run the affairs of the working group efficiently.

I am currently working as an assistant professor at the Department of Communication at Jacksonville State University, the U.S.  Before joining academics, I worked as a journalist for ten years, both in the U.S. and in Pakistan. My experience as a journalist both in the Western and non-Western context, helped me understand the intricacies of media structures across different cultural spaces.

My scholarly work links critical, theoretical, and professional aspects of media studies and has also been favorably received (I received Everett Rogers Best Researcher Award). I commit to social justice and social change through academic scholarship and activism. My scholarship promotes the cause of marginalized communities, and theorize how media can play its role in reducing disparities among different cultural groups.

My experience as a journalist and as an academic, both in Pakistan and the U.S., and my involvement in different professional organizations across the globe enabled me to understand the deal with researchers from various cultural and national backgrounds. I embrace diverse and heterogeneous methodological and theoretical perspectives. I firmly believe that the scholars whose research are on the fringes of academia need a platform to centralize their concerns to bring new ways of theorizing media structures. I am open to different theoretical, methodological, and paradigmatic perspectives, characteristics that are fundamental to manage a working group at IAMCR that has inclusivity and diversity as its two most cherished values.

If elected, I would focus on the following activities to make Media Production working group more vibrant:

  • Increase the membership of the working group.
  • Come up with innovative publicity ideas in collaboration with other members to increase the presence of the group.
  • Arrange, at the minimum, one preconference each year, in consultation with other group members.
  • Take measures to apply for the status of a section.
  • Increase collaboration with media organizations, NGO’s, universities across the globe, national government, and media representatives.
  • To publish edited books based on the presentations in the annual meetings of the working group.
  • By the end of my tenure, launch a research journal.

Line Hassall Thomsen, Aarhus University, Denmark, Candidate for co-chair
Journalist/Writer/External lecturer, School of Communication and Culture

I am a media anthropologist who has also been a journalist for ten years. I primarily use ethnographic methods for studying media communication. My specific focus is the everyday working routines at the TV newsrooms of BBC and ITV (in the UK), and DR and TV2 (in Denmark). I have a PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark and this is where work and lecture today.

I would like to offer myself as co-chair for the working group because I think it is a great and important meeting of researchers across different disciplines each with a unique production-perspective to media analysis today. If I were to be elected I would work towards creating more links and connections between members of the working group outside of the physical conferences. Ideas for how to do this could be a shared online group – on FB or elsewhere, and the setting up of a virtual paper room where we could read past papers from the Working Group.

Recent publications:

2018: Inside the TV Newsroom: Profession under Pressure. A Newsroom Ethnography of Public Service TV Journalism in the UK and Denmark (Intellect)
2019 forthcoming: A Handbook of TV News, edited by L. H. Thomsen (Routledge)

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