This year’s international Geomedia conference is held 20–22 September in Tampere, Finland, under the theme “Digital Geographies of Hope”. Eleven people from Karlstad University will take part in the conference, which is organised in collaboration with Tampere University.
André Jansson, Professor of Media and Communication Studies and Director of the Center for Geomedia Studies (Geomedia) at Karlstads University, tell us more about the theme “Digital Geographies of Hope”
- With that title, we wanted to invite contributions that try to identify hopeful lines of development in our digitalised world. The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for presentations and discussions at the intersection of geography, communication, media and cultural studies, as well as creating bridges to other fields of research, such as urban studies, rural studies, regional planning, tourism studies, media anthropology, critical data studies, STS, gender studies, and ethnicity research.
- In total, we are eleven people from Karlstad University who will attend the Geomedia conference 2023 in Tampere, says André Jansson.
Karlstad University’s participation at the conference includes presentations by:
Lena Grip
Socio-spatial relations in digital times: performance of ethnicity in immigrant entrepreneurship (Socio-spatiala relationer i digitala tider: etnicitetens betydelse för invandrares entreprenörskap).
Christian Ritter och Georgia Aitaki
Broadcasting tourist experiences: Travel videos in the global streaming economy (Sändning av turistupplevelser: Resevideor i den globala streamingekonomin).
Fredrik Hoppstadius, Lotta Braunerhielm, Lena Grip, Linda Ryan Bengtsson and Ulrika Åkerlund
Local, place-specific actors in crisis communication – the example of second home tourism crisis communication in Sweden (Lokala, platsspecifika aktörer i kriskommunikation - ett exempel på kriskommunikation kring second home-turism i Sverige).
Doris Posch
Collective ways of thinking, being and seeing: Imagining possible futures in the arts (Kollektiva sätt att tänka, vara och se: Föreställningar om möjliga framtider inom konsten).
Linda Ryan Bengtsson
Constructive resistance: The rural popular culture scene as a counteract to the rural norm (Konstruktivt motstånd: Den populärkulturella scenen på landsbygden som en motvikt till den rurala normen).
- Our current guest professor, Pablo Abend, will also be directly involved in several panels and events during the conference, says André Jansson. For example, the thematic panel “Futures of Geomedia”, which is organised by Geomedia. The panel is directly tied to an upcoming thematic issue, “Geomedia Futures”, in the journal “Media and Communication” and is based on participation by people who have contributed to the thematic issue. Editors of the thematic issue are Karin Fast, Cornelia Brantner and Pablo Abend.
The conference “Digital Geographies of Hope” also includes PhD students Henrik Bergius and Svetlana Chuikina who will be hosting a PhD workshop, “Media Geographies and Geomedia - Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on Media, Space and Locality”.
- We think that we have created a very exciting and interesting programme together with professor Kaarina Nikunen and her team and hope that this will be the starting point for further research in the subject as well as interdisciplinary and international collaborations, says André Jansson, who participates as centre director, organiser and moderator.
