Multidisciplinary Approaches to Political Discourse (MAPD)

June 25-26, 2020

University of Liverpool

Deadline: December 15, 2019

Following on from previous “Political Discourse - Multidisciplinary Approaches” conferences in London (2016) and Edinburgh (2018), we are pleased to announce MAPD 2020 (Multidisciplinary Approaches to Political Discourse) will take place in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool on 25-26 June 2020.

The global political arena is changing at an unprecedented pace. We see the resurgence of authoritarianism, nativism/nationalism, sovereignism, populism and far-right movements driving major changes across societies against the backdrop of increasing global inequalities, left/right fragmentation, migration. In addition, we witness power plays between well-established and emerging global players resulting in re-militarization and ‘trade wars’. Obvious manifestations of these turbulent times include phenomena such as Brexit; the rise of political actors like Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Salvini and discursive articulations around hate speech, incivility, Islamophobia and Euroscepticism.

At the same time, we see an increase in the mediatisation and (re)articulation of political discourses (both top-down and bottom-up) through the use of technology and digital platforms. Along with traditional broadcasting and reporting of politicians’ speeches, party political broadcasts, campaign advertisements and government statements, we increasingly experience the political daily in new popular media forms such as Facebook feeds, promotional videos, tweets and online mash ups. These transformations require us to think critically about issues of saturation, manipulation, relations of power, political correctness, interference, influence, counter-discourses, subversion, information bubbles and fake news, to name a few.

The theme for this year’s conference reflects our aim to bring together scholars from a variety of discursive and political approaches to critically examine the challenges we face in such a volatile landscape and the theoretical and analytical responses we can provide. We encourage contributions which explore any aspect of the conference theme of “responding to new challenges”. These may include (but are not limited to):

• The role of social media and/or popular culture in the production, distribution and consumption of political discourses
• New theoretical and analytical challenges to the analysis of legitimation processes in discourse
• The (dis)advantages of present approaches to political discourse (e.g. cognitive, historical, corpus-driven, interpretive policy analysis, cultural political economy, argumentation-based approaches, etc.)
• Mediatization of discourses of authoritarianism, nativism/nationalism, sovereignism, populism and far-right movements
• The politics of the environment, the body, etc.
• (Multimodal) counter-discourses; including the use of social media platforms and new formats such as memes as sites and means of protest, resistance and subversion of hegemonic discourse
• Metadiscourse about the state of public/political discourse and issues surrounding access/voice
• Theoretical challenges: How to address issues of saturation, manipulation, relations of power, interference, influence, information bubbles, fake news, and incivility of political discourse
• Case studies of new social/ political phenomena, top-down/bottom-up political actors and their discursive articulations

Keynote speakers

• Prof Kay O’Halloran (University of Liverpool)
• Prof Michał Krzyżanowski (Örebro University, Sweden)

The conference language is English.

We encourage single papers and theme specific panels

Papers will be allocated 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and discussion

Abstracts of 250-300 words (excluding bibliography) of single papers should be sent by email as a Word document attachment to MAPD2020@liverpool.ac.uk

Please include name, affiliation, email address and paper title in the body of the email.

Abstracts of panels (500 word maximum) must be submitted by the panel organiser(s) and should include a maximum of six contributions. Each panel paper must follow the criteria of the single papers outlined above.

Abstracts will be subject to review by an international scientific committee.

Deadlines:

• 15th December 2019: Deadline for submission of panel proposals and individual abstracts
• 31st January 2020: Notification of panels/papers acceptance. Please note that if a panel is not accepted panel papers will be considered individually

Queries about the conference and abstracts should be sent to the conference organisers, Franco Zappettini and Lyndon Way at MAPD2020@liverpool.ac.uk.

Conference Fees (including lunches and refreshments, but excluding conference dinner):

• Full fee: £ 200 - early bird (before 15 April 2020): £ 160
• Post graduates: £ 100 – early bird (before 15 April 2020): £80
• Single day fee: £ 150 – Post graduate Single Day fee: £60
• Conference Dinner: £ 40 (to be booked separately)

There will be reasonably priced accommodation available on campus

Organising Committee

• Ekaterina Balabanova, University of Liverpool, UK
• Sam Bennett, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
• Massimiliano Demata, University of Turin, Italy
• John Richardson, Sunshine Coast University, Australia
• Laura Filardo Llamas, University of Valladolid, Spain
• Simona Guerra, University of Leicester, UK
• Christopher Hart, University of Lancaster, UK
• Darren Kelsey, University of Newcastle, UK
• Veronika Koller, University of Lancaster, UK
• Michael Kranert, University of Southampton, UK
• Marzia Maccaferri, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
• Douglas Ponton, University of Catania, Italy
• Melani Schroeter, University of Reading, UK