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Symposium: “After the terror”

March 3, 2014 @ 9:00 am - March 4, 2014 @ 12:30 pm

The Department of Communication Studies would like to invite you to three talks linked to a symposium titled “After the Terror: Negotiating Values and Identities” on March 3rd and March 4th in the Conference Room at the Charles E. Young Research Library. The talks are given by Simon Cottle (Professor at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies), Mark Turner (Professor at the Case Western Reserve University), and Henrik Syse (Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo). Please see abstracts below, and poster attached. A light lunch will be served. If you would like to attend either one of the talks, please send an e-mail to Rojan Ezzati, rojezz@prio.no. Abstracts”A History of Violence and Communication: Expanding the Human Circle?”By Simon Cottle (09:15 – 10:40 on Monday, March 3rd)This talk deliberately sets out to ‘bring history back in’ to the study of media and communications and violence. It offers some preliminary reflections on how different forms of media and communications have historically represented, performed and enacted violence in different historical contexts and in relation to deep historical forces of change culminating in the globalizing present. A non-teleological but nonetheless dynamic and developmental view of history is argued for, one where different forms of media communications become deeply inscribed within processes of violence and change (whether causatively, constitutively, as a contested terrain or communicatively). Recent images of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘violent symbolism’ post 9/11, for example, deliberately choreographed by military machines and terrorists, also serve to remind us of both the not-so-subtle and viscerally shocking enactments of violence in today’s image wars.  And finally we consider today’s fast changing media ecology and its possible contribution in the race to global consciousness (and the return of the globally repressed) in a world of crises and media witnessing. In these ways the lecture aims to invite a more historically grounded and engaged approach to how media and communications have entered into forms of conflict and violence across the centuries and how contemporary media and communications are no less conditioned by and contributing to a radically globalizing age in and through today’s globally expansive media ecology.“Shooter Stories”By Mark Turner (16:25 – 17:10 on Monday, March 3rd) Mass shootings of innocent victims by one or two individuals have become increasingly common in the US and worldwide. In their presentation of mass shootings, the various media make sense of the events according to a series of culturally specific stories. These stories express and embody certain cultural values and structure the events according to theories of human nature. In addition, the shooters themselves are typically motivated by their own stories, whether personal or social. There is often a sharp tension between the stories told by the shooters themselves, sometimes directly to the media, and the stories told by the media. In this talk we will present our own story of the unifying cognitive processes at work in the disparate modes of storytelling, and explore how modern mass media have recruited and morphed the ancient communicative techniques of storytelling into their own powerful instrument.”Norway after 22 July – Lessons and Critical Reflections”By Henrik Syse (11:20 – 12:30 on Tuesday, March 4th)On 22 July 2011, Norway was shaken by its worst terror attack in peacetime history: 77 people brutally killed, many of them youths coldly gunned down at a political summer camp. Seemingly, the act came out of the blue. No warning. No particular event to precipitate it. No societal situation to indicate that this should happen. And the perpetrator: A young Norwegian man, very much part of the society he wanted so harshly to rebuke. What are the key questions that Norwegian society has asked itself after the tragedy? And what does this post-terror debate say about Norway in particular and about modern, industrialized welfare societies in general? Syse will summarize parts of the post-terror debate, and formulate some theses about the debate and the road ahead. He will look at some of the criticisms and possible lessons that have been formulated in the wake of the terror attacks. These show us a Norway that wants to shake off complacency, lack of preparation, and naïveté, yet wants to remain a low-tension, low-security society. Once again, we see a peculiar meeting between the normal and the extreme, arguably typical of modern society.

Details

Start:
March 3, 2014 @ 9:00 am
End:
March 4, 2014 @ 12:30 pm

Details

Start:
March 3, 2014 @ 9:00 am
End:
March 4, 2014 @ 12:30 pm
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