Welcome to a K3 seminar with Hugo Boothby, PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies.

The title of the seminar is The Politics of Listening. It will be Hugo’s 25 percent PhD seminar. Kristina Lindström, Senior Lecturer in Product Design, K3, will function as discussant.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Friday, March 12 at 10.15-12.00. Please note this seminar is on a Friday! Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/65532706969?pwd=WWpoTXNadDAyRHNPZkQ4M3k0M1FQdz09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar. If you would like to read the whole manuscript, please contact Hugo at hugo.boothby@mau.se.

This paper presents work towards a PhD in Media and Communication studies equivalent to 25% of a completed thesis. My research addresses the politics of listening with a specific focus on the significance of audio technologies and audio media in practices of listening. Within this work listening is defined as a “relations of attention” (Bickford, 1996, p. 24) within communication processes. I take my definition of politics from Hannah Arendt as the “the twofold process of decision and persuasion” (Arendt, 1965, p. 91 in Bickford, 1996, p. 73), following this definition my focus narrows further to a “micropolitics” of listening (Bassel, 2017; Farinati & Firth, 2017) that occurs in everyday sense making processes (Lacey, 2013). So far, this work has addressed three key sites of research, collaborative radio production with Konstkupan, a migrant focused community arts space in Malmö. Experimental collaborative music composition with Elefantöra an ensemble that includes disabled and non-disabled musicians, and experimental instrument building in Music for Universities (Boothby, 2019a, 2019b) a composition that performs a media archaeology (Parikka, 2012) with digital audio technologies. These sites of research and extracts of the audio work they have generated are presented in the Swollen Appendices of this paper. All three sites embrace action orientated arts-based research exploring its potential for producing knowledge both in the processes of making, and in exhibition and performance. Functioning as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989) the political potential of the listening instigated around this production and performance is understood to manifest in the possibility of convening small, diverse, but attentive “listening publics” (Lacey 2013b) among producers, participants, and niche audiences. In acknowledging the potential of listening publics I seek to emphasise the productive and participatory nature of listening and disrupt a persistent hierarchy within media and communication studies that privileges articulations of voice over practices of listening in expressions of political action (Bickford, 1996; Lacey, 2013).

References:

Arendt, H. (1965). On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books.

Bassel, L. (2017). The politics of listening: Possibilities ad challenges for democratic life: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bickford, S. (1996). The dissonance of democracy: listening, conflict, and citizenship. New York: Cornell University Press.

Boothby, H. (2019a). Music for Universities. Paper presented at the Algorithmic Music:  Value, Creativity and Artificial Intelligence, one-day symposium., Kings’ College, London, UK.

Boothby, H. (2019b). Transversal Media Practice as a Tool for Radio Research. Paper presented at the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA), University of Stirling, UK.

Farinati, L., & Firth, C. (2017). The Force of Listening. Berlin: Doormats6.

Lacey, K. (2013). Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity.

Parikka, J. (2012). What is media archaeology? Cambridge: Polity.

Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387–420.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Juliana Restrepo, PhD candidate in Interaction Design, K3.

The title of the seminar is Let’s Share Everyday Stories of Buen Vivir at Home! Co-Designing Seeds for Relational and Sustainable Homemaking. It will be Juliana’s 25 percent PhD seminar. Åsa Ståhl, Senior Lecturer in Design, Linnaeus University, will function as discussant.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, March 10 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68083826429.

Below is an abstract for the seminar. If you would like to read Juliana’s manuscript, please contact her at juliana.restrepo-giraldo@mau.se.

How can Stories of Everyday Life at Home be Unpacked and Re-contextualized as Opportunities to Imagine and Prototype Seeds for Sustainable Transitions and Transformations at Home?

Buen Vivir means living in harmony with all beings and nature through relationality and reciprocity. It is a philosophy rooted in the cosmovision (worldview) of indigenous communities in the Andean territory in South America, which understand humans as never owners of the earth and its resources, only stewards. In this research, I use Buen Vivir at Home to think about sustainable living at home through climate change. By looking at other worldviews and situated home stories, I bring forward the importance of challenging the current conversations about sustainability and sustainable living at home. To move beyond ‘sustainable’ guidelines and checklists and start identifying potential in ourselves, our homes, communities, ‘old’ and emergent practices within ‘our’ unique living environments. I use a programmatic design research approach where various design experiments are conducted to shape the programme and decide the steps forward. Data to grasp insights about different meanings of home and positions towards sustainable living has been collected using Participatory Design Methods such as survey, workshop, in-depth interviews and home-visits, in combination with Metadesign Tools, such as ‘Designing Miracles’ and ‘Languaging’. Collected data have been processed in quantitative and qualitative ways, leading to the emergence of companion concepts. I propose Buen Vivir at Home as a relational framework which intends to develop alternative understandings of sustainable living at home. A set of every day/fiction stories and recipes that can be unpacked, recontextualized and prototyped as design seeds for sustainable/relational transitions and transformations at home.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Dennis Augustsson, Lecturer in Visual Communication, K3.

The title of the seminar is Expansive design for teachers – An activity theoretical approach to design and work integrated learning.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, February 24 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68413093261.

Here is an abstract for the seminar:

My thesis explores how Participatory Design (PD) and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) can be combined and used as a theoretical framework and methodology in a professional development activity for teachers. A shift in the way we view teachers, from implementors to designers who actively construct, invent, and develop the practice of schooling also calls for changes in teacher education and professional development activities. The study presented here explores teachers’ work and learning during a professional development activity conducted as a participatory design project between two K-12 schools in Sweden and the USA, using media production to create an international collaboration on Ocean Literacy. The work draws on central notions and practices based on the Scandinavian School of Participatory Design and the Change Laboratory methodology (CL) based on the theoretical framework of expansive learning. The thesis is comprised of three articles answering research questions about what challenges and strategies that develop in a design process as a situated professional development approach and how we can understand learning as part of and expanding beyond a design process using activity theoretical tools.

The results point to how innovative educational design can have consequences for teachers’ work with conflicting needs, tensions, and contradictions at the systemic level of the activity. PD processes in educational settings require tools and concepts to capture this complexity and create sustainable solutions. In this study, activity theoretical models served as a collaborative tool for teachers to analyse and change their practice and to describe and explain work integrated learning in the design process. The work highlighted the need for teachers’ expertise in design as well as the important role of media literacy in the use of new technology. Their active and practical engagement in the materials, based upon the tradition of PD, must be understood as an important part of the development of agency and volition, and findings suggest that the combination of PD and CL methodologies can serve as a vehicle for expansive learning and new innovative learning designs in educational settings. This approach was conceptualized as expansive design.

The seminar will follow this disposition:

1.                       Short presentation of the results of the design process

2.                       Short discussion on design research in the field of educational science

3.                       Introduction and explanation of the activity theoretical framework

4.                       Connections between Participatory design and Activity theory (Change Laboratory)

5.                       Open discussions on all of the above.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Stefan Svallfors, Professor of Sociology, The Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm.

The title of the seminar is Politics for hire. The world and work of policy professionals.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, February 17 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/63273151777?pwd=YkluQ1c2SVZielcrVGdEYkpOVVNzUT0.

The seminar will be based on Stefan Svallfors’ recently published book with the same title as the seminar: Politics for hire. The world and work of policy professionals (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).

Here is short abstract for the seminar:

This ground-breaking book investigates the work of policy professionals. They consist of political actors who, although not elected to office, are nonetheless employed to affect policy and politics on a partisan basis. Through an analysis of the influence and power they wield, this book sheds light on how the growth of this group represents a major transformation of the organization of politics and policy-making in advanced democracies.

Stefan Svallfors is professor of Sociology and currently employed as Secretary General for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Swedish Research Council, and as Research Professor at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Maria Bendix Wittchen, visiting PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies, K3.

The title of the seminar is Different role, different ethics? Journalists’ role performance and their views on ethical challenges and dilemmas while covering a murder trial.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, February 10 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/63396017631?pwd=VzZGa2xPM001aXAwNHJRamkwcm9iQT09.

Here is an abstract for the seminar:

The trial against amateur submarine builder Peter Madsen for the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall was one of the most publicized trials in recent Danish history. This article presents the result of a study examining journalists’ press ethical views and attitudes when covering the high-profile murder trial. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 10 of the most prominent reporters covering the trial, I examine the various ethical dilemmas the journalists face on the court beat during this intense period in 2018. Though the Submarine Trial may be considered an extreme case, today’s trial journalists work in a media industry characterized by increasingly online reporting and live coverage of unfolding events. This includes covering the police’s ongoing crime investigations (Wittchen 2019) and live trial reporting from the courtroom (Knight 2017). At the same time we see a ‘featurization’ of hard news (Steensen 2011) which increasingly involves crime news (Lehrmann 2011, 2016b). All these changes bring a focus on new ethical challenges facing reporters covering live crime trials (Deuze and Yeshua 2001; Friend and Singer 2007). Previous research on press ethics in relation to crime and trial reporting have focused on the press council verdicts (Brurås 2009), court reporters understanding of codes of ethics (Ezhar et al. 2012), race and bias in television magazine trial coverage (Grabe 2000) and the elements of entertainment in court reporting (Chibnall 1981; Vinson and Ertter 2002; Whannel 2010).

This paper has a qualitative and empirical focus and I draw on the theoretical framework of role performance (Mellado 2015). Through role performance the study shows how the journalists can be divided into two main roles, the storyteller and the reporter. To some extent their role performance is different as well as their perception of the ethical dilemmas they are facing. The reporters are focusing on facts, objectivity, relevance and avoiding biased reporting. The storytellers are more concerned about telling the real story and paying regards to the readers (in relation to publishing too many details). By using a qualitative approach, the study shows that within the same beat – covering the same trial – journalists to some extent have a common understanding of the ethical pitfalls in the coverage but at the same time perceive the ethical dilemmas quite differently which relates to their role, media type and demand of content. The analysis also shows how one journalist can switch role and ethical perspective depending on the time of the trial (before or after the verdict).

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Annika Olsson, Head of K3 and Docent (Associate Professor) in Comparative Literature.

The title of the seminar is Representation. Voices. Democracy.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, February 3 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/65367307806?pwd=TzNxVlVBdWpkb3V3L3h2RTIzVzFQdz09.

Here is an abstract for the seminar:

Almost on the day (Jan 26^th) 100 years after the decision in the Swedish Parliament that women should have the right to vote in Sweden, I will talk about the research that I have done and the research I am doing and how it is connected to representation, voices and democracy. I will reflect upon the multiple functions of representation (symbolic, political, artistic) and how representation in different ways is related to democracy, voices and bodies as well as to everyday practices in arenas central to our contemporary democracies, not least the public sphere and Academia. I will return to the key question in my PhD-thesis (Att ge den andra sidan röst) – the huge difference between giving a voice and being a voice in the public sphere – and I will use examples from on-going research (article on the Swedish tidskrift Puss and a book on Public Intellectuals in Sweden) to say something about 1) representations that are viewed as problems in democracies and 2) representation as a challenge in and to democracies.

The seminar with Magnus Nilsson, scheduled for February 10, has been moved to April 7. The seminar with Maria Bendix, scheduled for April 7, has been moved to February 10.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Fredrik Strömberg, PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies, K3

The title of the seminar is Comics and the Middle East – Cultural appropriations and visual exchanges.

This will be Fredrik’s 90 percent PhD seminar. Margareta Wallin Wictorin, Docent (Associate Professor) in Art History and Visual Studies, Karlstad University, will function as discussant.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, January 27 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/62927830949?pwd=ODl6YlNuV3Y3T1E1OVFVNUllbC9kZz09

If you would like to get a copy of the draft of the cover article (“kappa”) for the forthcoming thesis, please mail Fredrik at sekventiellt@me.com.

Welcome to this term’s first K3 seminar. It will be held by David Cuartielles, Lecturer in Interaction Design.

The title of the seminar is Maker culture in Spain fighting covid-19 from home – How the commodification of the experience could save the day

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, January 20 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here:

https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66899052794?pwd=NmdjR1JDSXhxQkJ3b1M4U3pDUTQ5UT09

Below you will find an abstract.uct Design, K3

Abstract for the seminar with David Cuartielles:

For the Spanish DIY communities year 2020 was the one when their actions gained international recognition. Ten of thousands of DIY aficionados without a defined political or institutional affiliation found ways to collaborate in fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic using their 3D printers and other open source tools. Thanks to the immediacy of existing instant messaging platforms, so-called makers of all ages opened hundreds of discussion channels where to share designs, and join forces in the manufacturing and distribution of over a million face shields. This group became the Coronavirus Makers movement and expanded to other countries to exchange creations and expertise.

But why did such a movement emerge in Spain and nowhere else? Spain has a strong DIY tradition that can be studied by following different types of DIY spaces: hacklabs, hackerspaces, makerspaces, fab labs, and after school academies (sorted in chronological order). The Spanish technosocial fabric grew during a period of almost 30 years. As time went by one could witness a certain commodification of the experience of the original DIY cultures – the hacker culture. Commodificaiton should be understood as the commercialisation of the experience of being part of something, a DIY culture in this case. We observed how the more commodified a culture became, the more spaces emerged dedicated to that specific DIY subgroup.

In parallel, we observed a process that we have defined as commoditisation. It consists in the progessive elimination of the essential values of a movement reducing the friction of joining it. For example, hacklabs have a very strong leftist component that hackerspaces – arriving later in time – removed from their foundational charters.

It is this parallel process of commodification and commoditisation what seems to have helped the DIY culture expand in Spain and move from the shared spaces to the homes of the makers. Having thousands of 3D printers and personal electronic laboratories available at people’s homes allowed for the distributed response of the Coronavirus Maker movement to the pandemic. The question remains on whether this movement will survive or will simply vanish after some time.

This seminar will open with a presentation of two different papers co-authored by David Cuartielles with Cesar Garcia to later introduce the challenges faced by the Coronavirus Makers movement. It will hopefully serve as an opening to discuss the construction of civic ad-hoc responses to crisis situations, the importance of existing platforms and tools, the [non] governance of emergent systems, and the role that design researchers can take in fully immersive fieldwork.

Please note that the previously announced seminar with Hugo Boothby has been moved to March 12

The program for spring 2021 is now available. Just click on Seminar Series Spring 2021. As you can see, we will start with a seminar by David Cuartielles on January 20. The previously announced seminar with Hugo Boothby will be held later this term.