Panel

Kultur och medieteknologi / Culture and Media Technology / Kulttuuri ja mediateknologia

Chair: Susanna Paasonen
Panellists: Lisbeth Klastrup, Terje Rasmussen, Malin Sveningsson Elm

During the past decades, new labels and definitions such as Internet Research, Game Studies, Cyberculture Studies, studies of Digital Culture and New Media have challenged tradition disciplinary and departmental divisions within media and communication studies. These definitions have to do with research topics (from gaming to mobile communications or online networking), as well as with interdisciplinary identifications and networks. More than labels, studies focusing on the social and cultural meanings of new media technologies have posed methodological and conceptual challenges to the ways of understanding media production, distribution and use in cinema, media and communication studies.

The panel "Culture and Media Technology" addresses questions of disciplinary histories and boundaries, media specificity and the cultural meanings of media technology. The panellists, all engaged in studies of so-called new media themselves, address what they see as central challenges and directions for contemporary media and communication studies, and with a specific focus on the Nordic context.

Susanna Paasonen

Docent Susanna Paasonen works as researcher at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Her studies on feminist theory, Internet research and pornography have recently appeared in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory and The Velvet Light Trap. She is the author of Figures of Fantasy: Internet, Women and Cyberdiscourse (2005) and the co-editor of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (2002) and Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (forthcoming in 2007).

 

 

 

Lisbeth Klastrup

Lisbeth Klastrup is an Assistant Professor at the IT University  in Copenhagen, affliated with the Innovative Communication Research Group and the Center for Computer Games Research. She is currently on leave and working at the National Center for Design Research till august 2007. She has worked with digital media since 1996, and written numerous articles and bookchapters on gameworlds, interaction forms, blogs and other forms of online communication. She is co-editor of the Danish anthology "Digitale verdener - de nye mediers design og æstetik" (Engholm & Klastrup, Gyldendal 2004), and now co-editing the forthcoming "International Handbook of Internet Research" (Eds. Hunsinger, Allen & Klastrup, Springer Verlag 2008).

 

 

Terje Rasmussen

Professor II (part time) professor of media studies at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Bergen. Research interests: the use and transformation of digital personal media in social networks, the sociological controversies that influence the Internet as a social force, the digitization and selection of culture in archives and museums, Internet governance, online journalism, transformations of the European public sphere.

Head of the (since 1997) ongoing project The Social Transformation of The Internet, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project ends in July 2007 and addresses the social, cultural and political forces which influence the development and future of the Internet. Head of the Ph.d programme in Media studies at the University of Oslo Member of the Steering board of Competence and Media Convergence (CMC) - the strategic research initiative at the University of Oslo (2003-2007). Author and editor of several books on digital media, ethics and social theory (see publications).

Contributing editor to New Media and Society and active partner/initiator/contributor to various journals Educated (sociology) at University of Oslo, University of Bergen, University of California at Santa Cruz. Visiting Scholar at University of Wollongong, Australia 1999-2000. Former Head of Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo (1997-1999). Born (in 1957) and raised in Oslo. Lives in Oslo with wife and two children.

Malin Sveningsson Elm

Malin Sveningsson Elm is Assistant Professor at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Karlstad University. She received her Ph.D. in 2001 from the Department of Communication Studies, Linköping University. She is the author of 'Creating a Sense of Community. Experiences from a Swedish Web Chat' (Linköping Studies in Art and Science, 2001), and co-author of 'Digital Borderlands: Cultural Studies of Identity and Interactivity on the Internet' (Peter Lang, 2002), 'Att fånga Nätet: Kvalitativ metod för Internetforskning' (Studentlitteratur, 2003) and 'Cyberfeminism in Northern lights. Gender and digital media in a Nordic context' (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming). As a member of the Association of Internet Researchers' Ethics Working Group she has participated in developing ethical guidelines for Internet research (http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf). Her research interests include computer-mediated communication, internet culture, social interaction, youth culture, gender and identity.