Spotted at Thinking Digital 2011… I was wearing one of my Keep Calm t-shirts!

13 July 2011 – 15 July 2011

Trinity College Dublin, 19-21 April 2011

The 4th biennial Media History conference, ‘Perception, Reception and Deception’, jointly organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, the Centre For Media History, Aberystwyth University, and the journal Media History, will focus on the ways in which people have understood the social, cultural and political roles of the media over the past five centuries. The concept of ‘the media’ will be interpreted broadly, so as to include newspapers, magazines and one-off publications which included news and information, as well as manuscript, aural, visual, and broadcast and other electronic sources.

A great deal of work has been done by scholars on the institutional, political and cultural history of various forms of media. ‘Perception, Reception and Deception’ will build on this literature to explore the ways in which print, manuscript, visual representations and the broadcast media have been understood, conceptualised, and imaginatively represented in the societies in which they were produced. It will, in other words, focus not on media production but on the reception, depiction and perception of the media by individuals and groups of individuals in a variety of different contexts over time.

How have readers, consumers, and the industry itself framed arguments about the media as a force for good (or evil) at different points in time? Have contemporaries always seen the media as an agent of change, or is there a counter-history of the media to be written in terms of promoting conservatism, deference and order? How have people understood and represented the media in terms of concepts of personal and geographical space, time and changing belief systems?  Can we think ‘internationally’ about the similarities and differences between perceptions of the media in different states and nations over time, or is the media still best understood and examined in largely local or regional contexts?   How, in short, have men and women answered in different contexts the apparently simple questions, ‘what is the media, and what is it for?’

Abstracts, of no more than 200 words for papers of between 20 to 25 minutes duration, should be sent by close of business on 30 September 2010 to Mediahistory2011@gmail.com. We welcome proposals from a range of chronological, geographical and methodological backgrounds. Additional enquiries can be directed to one or more of the following: Dr. Jason McElligott jmcellig@tcd.ie , Dr Sian Nicholas shn@aber.ac.uk or Professor Tom O’Malley tpo@aber.ac.uk

I’m tempted to submit an abstract… with my interest here in Second World War Posters, and my current emphasis on new media!

Read more conference information.

The creation of a healthy society was, perhaps, the dominant concern of social reformers in the first half of the twentieth century and many historians have considered the legislative processes through which such a society was produced. What have, hitherto, been little studied, are the locations in which the ideolgies of a healthy society were produced, especially in the inter-war decades. It is the aim of this workshop, using London as a case study, to investigate how social reformers developed particular models, practices and environments of reform in order to re-make London’s population into a race of healthy, active and educated citizens between the end of the Great War in 1918 and the declaration of the Second World War in September 1939.

“The Centre provides a forum for research into the gendered nature of educational provision, practice and thought in order to provide a sound evidence base for policy and practice in respect of education for women and girls. The Centre takes a broad cultural definition of Education: one which transcends schooling to encompass learning and teaching (formal and informal) at any phase of the life-cycle, in any setting or historical period, including the recent past.”

I presented a short paper on ‘informal education’, the representation of men/women in VD posters.

“This is the first major international conference on the impact of the media on war. Enormous social and technological changes have radically changed our lives over the past 150 years. The aim of the conference is to analyse how these developments have altered the relationships between politicians, the military and the media in the shaping of policies that may lead to conflict and the manner. The complex relationship between propaganda and censorship and the effect of the media on the formation of public opinion together with journalistic ethics and motives are also probed.”

Associated Publication: Connelly, M., & Welch, D. (eds), War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda, I.B. Tauris, 2004

Presentations Included:

• ‘Statistical Images of Diseases in Health Exhibitions in Britain in the 1930s’
• ‘”No One Receiving?’ The Audience for Health Education Films, 1919-48′
• ‘Health Promotion and the Transformation of Chronic Diseases after the Second World War (1945-1955)’
• ‘The Cycle of Conflict, the Historic Development of the Public Health and Health Promotion Movements’

“The conference aims to bring together contemporary historians as well as researchersin related fields including cultural studies, sociology and social anthropology, to explore aspects of gender history which have been neglected in previous research.”