Call for Papers:

Media Realities International Symposium 2026
April 29-30, 2026
HLK campus at Jönköping University
Jönköping, Sweden
https://ju.se/mediarealitiesinternationalsymposium2026

Organisers: Annette Hill (MKV, Jönköping University) and Hario Priambodho (Lund University)

Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 12, 2025

Media realities face multilevel challenges. Realities play off varieties of representations, technologies and experiences. Media realities are rooted in different professional traditions, e.g. film and television, radio and journalism, gaming, social and synthetic media. There are multiple routes for realities, including archives and records, representations and remixes, virtual and artificial intelligence. These roots and routes for media realities take place in intense, contested settings regarding trust, truth and treatment of the real.

In a post referential framework, traditional knowledge systems associated with media and public service institutions face intense scrutiny by audiences and publics, politicians, NGOs and policy and community leaders. For example, engagement with witnesses and accounts of real events, or experts and explanations of scientific knowledge struggle to maintain referential integrity. Is reality played out?

This symposium addresses the multiplicities of realities within empirical and theoretical research across media and communications, digital technologies, culture and society. The combination of panels and roundtable discussions foster critical perspectives and methodological reflections on the performative and distortive aspects of media past, present and future. Key questions for this international symposium include 1) what are the various understandings and practices of media realities across industries, technologies, culture and society? 2) How are representations of realities constituted and contested in public, popular and mediated spheres?

We invite researchers to explore, analyse and understand the theme of media realities across the following connected areas of enquiry:

• Professional practices for media and representations of realities;
• Creating realities in film and media, radio and music, virtual realities and AI, gaming and live events, arts and museums;
• Deep fakes and manipulation of realities in automated and artificial content:
• Media and realities within social movements, mobilisation and activism;
• Political realities in news, documentary, information, disinformation and polarization
• Popular realities in fiction, drama and entertainment:
• Varieties of engagement and experiences of media and realities;
• Communication of realities within organisations and media, film and cultural industries;
• Realities and mobility, transnational communication and transportation of goods and services, humans and non humans
• Global, local, transnational and decolonial media and realities

The programme for the symposium across two days includes keynote panels with invited speakers of senior and junior scholars, editors and publishers and open parallel panels. There will be a dedicated website, streaming podcasts of keynote speakers and selected papers from the symposium will be edited in international academic publications, in collaboration with Routledge and Intellect. The senior editors at Routledge and Intellect Press and open access peer reviewed academic journal Media Theory will be present, chairing a workshop on impact, quality research and academic publishing for scientific books and journals.

International invited speakers include Dr Simon Dawes (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France), Natalie Foster (Routledge), Professor Annette Hill (JU, Sweden), Julia Brockley (Intellect Press), Dr Hario Priambodho (Lund University, Sweden) and Dr Robert Willim (Lund University, Sweden).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words in English by deadline Friday 12 December 2025 to Hario Priambodho (hario.priambodho@iko.lu.se).

There is a registration fee of 2800 SEK [approx. 294 USD]. The fee covers lunches, beverages and snacks over two days, and an end of symposium meal.

For further information please consult our website:
https://ju.se/mediarealitiesinternationalsymposium2026