Annette Hill

Keynote with Annette Hill 

Chair: Georgia Aitaki

Passions Run Deep; an infraordinary of rural communications infrastructures

The focus of this talk is on facets of passion found in rural communications infrastructures. I use an infraordinary perspective, a close up style of observation of felt spaces developed by the French scholar George Perec. The infraordinary enables a deep understanding of the taken for granted elements of infrastructures. The work roams the Silver Road, an older communications infrastructure of gravel roads winding along the Silver Creek in the forests and waterways of Ydre in Sweden. Abandoned infrastructures such as watermills spatially connected local rivers with regional forestry and agricultural work. Now, the remains are home to trees, moss, lichen and wildlife, another kind of organic infrastructure. In the same rural area new infrastructures, such as windfarms and data centres, are developed, driving engagement with streaming, gaming and AI in the political and ecological context of the green transition.

An infraordinary of infrastructures makes visible the small details that make up a bigger picture of exploitation of media and communications and the environment. Digital technologies and energy companies, backed by international investors and green tax breaks from state actors, have encroached on a rural area rich in natural resources but struggling in terms of population and economic growth. To roam the Silver Road highlights the felt experiences of local inhabitants living in a Swedish ‘rust belt’. Passions run deep in daily experiences of development and decay of infrastructures. Along the lines suggested by cultural scholar David Morley, to research the footprints of communications infrastructures suggests a means of regrounding media and communications research.

Annette Hill is Professor of Media and Communications at Jönköping University Sweden and is the 2025 Ander Visiting Professor in Geomedia Studies, Karlstad University. Her research focuses on media audiences, with interests in media engagement, everyday life, genres, production studies and cultures of viewing. She is the author of 11 books, and over 90 articles and book chapters in journals and edited collections. Her most recent book is The Routledge Companion to Media Audiences (with Peter Lunt, 2024) and her next book is Media Imaginaries (with Hermes and Dawes, Intellect 2026).

Chair:

Georgia Aitaki is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies and member of the Centre for Geomedia Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her current research focuses on representations of societal crises, mobilities, as well as on questions pertaining to ethics and compassion, in contemporary popular culture (incl. drama, reality TV, animation, and cultural journalism). Her work has appeared in journals such as International Journal of Communication, NECSUS, VIEW: Journal of European Television History & Culture, Media, Culture and Society, Social Semiotics, Screen, and in a number of international anthologies.

With the support of Anderstiftelsen