ECC Braga pre-conference

October 2 2020

Braga, Portugal

Deadline: May 17, 2020

Concept

Interest in visual forms of communication is rising, but researchers seldom get insight on how to go about one’s research. During the pre-conference ‘Visual Work in Progress’ we will explicitly focus on ways of working with visual materials, thinking together about the pros and cons of various methodological alternatives.

Visual cultures as an emerging field of research and also recently approved ECREA section are important sites of ongoing social transformations and spaces for negotiation of trust, power and intimacy: What is made visible how to whom with what effect? Who are the actors involved, which media, formats, genres, technologies, aesthetics, platforms are relevant? Visual media became crucial elements of interpersonal communication and are omnipresent in social media, but also remain important in classic contexts like journalism and advertising.

Working with visual data in media and communication research is a challenging endeavor: ontological, epistemological, ethical and practical questions accompany the research process. The abundance of visual material in social media and the intertwining sites of production and reception does not make it easier.

The pre-conference will focus on our “visual work in progress”, mainly the conceptualization of and methodological approach to visual data in ongoing research projects. We encourage participants to share some part of their research visual material, so that we can discuss together our ‘visual work in progress’.

The pre-conference will take place on October 2nd, and end right in time for the opening ceremony of the ECREA conference.

Workshop Mode

The workshop will be organised as ‘data sprint’. Data Sprints are inspired by hackathons organised by the open source community, and are workshops in which participants from diverse backgrounds meet physically and collaborate intensively on a pre-determined subject and dataset.

Potential participants can propose their topics and their data to the workshop organizers, and we will select about 4 to 6 projects, depending on how many submissions and participants we get. We will work with your concrete sets of visual data and/or text drafts in small groups in a workshop setting.

Of course it is possible to participate without your own data (registration will open in May).

Submission process

Please briefly describe (max 3000 characters)

• your project/topic/research question
• the visual data that you wish to discuss (you are welcome to include examples),
• where and how you obtained it (ethics/ consent?)
• your methods or methodological approach,
• questions and challenges you are currently dealing with and you would like to discuss at the preconference

Please submit your contribution to: visualwork_braga@sbg.ac.at until 17 May 2020

Timeline

• Submission until 17 May
• Registration open in May
• Program live June