September 30, 2022

Deadline: July 1, 2022

Online conference (Zoom)

Approval deadline: 2 September 2022 (Friday)

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Law and University of Bucharest (UB) Faculty of Law are pleased to announce a conference entitled "Audiovisual Media Regulation during the COVID-19 in Central and Eastern Europe", for which we invite applications for speakers.

The international pandemic situation, which has been going on for two years now, impacts our daily lives. However, this natural phenomenon does not leave the world of media world  untouched either. Moreover, in Central and Eastern Europe, these processes are often covert: as if governments are using the viral situation to achieve their unstated goals.

Freedom of expression as a fundamental human right can very quickly face severe restrictions in such cases, raising the problem of conflicting fundamental rights. In addition, legislation, the functioning of the media system and other media rights issues have been on the agenda in many Central and Eastern European countries. The exercise of exceptional powers has reached the region: extraordinary seems to become the norm.

The conference thus aims to bring together the historical and contemporary challenges of the press, the media and our mediatised world, i.e. to explore the issue from the perspectives of (legal) history and existing law, as well as social and political science, identifying the intersections where past experience can help to address the social and regulatory challenges of the present.

The main objective of the conference is to make the links visible to the broader audience between the pandemic situation and media legislation (negative and positive), its history, its social impact, its effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, and the experience, research findings and academic positions in Central and Eastern Europe on past and current regulatory issues. Therefore, the organisers of the conference will welcome contributions from the fields of law, political science, journalism, history and social science. The deadline for the application for the conference is 1 July 2022. Please, send a title with a short abstract (maximum 400 words) in English on the topic of the presentation to gosztonyi@ajk.elte.hu.

The conference will be held online via Zoom platform. If there are enough applicants, a separate Master and PhD session will be organised. In adddition, the organizers will provide publication opportunities for manuscripts based on the best presentations.