RMeS Workshop: Spatializing media / Mediatizing geography

Workshop organized by Dr Leonieke Bolderman (RUG), within the context of the RMeS PhD Workshop Grant

When? 3 March 2020
Where? University of Groningen Zernike Campus, Duisenberg building, room 5412.0028, Groningen
Time? 13:00 – 17:00
Coordinator? Dr Leonieke Bolderman (RUG)
ECTS? 1 EC
Open to? PhD’s and research master students, max 20 participants
Registration | NETHUR PhD Candidates can register by sending an email to rmes-fgw@uva.nl, don’t forget to mention your university.

Reality is – now more than ever – governed by media stories, technology and images. This prompts the question what role media play in worldbuilding and senses of belonging:  how do media interplay with the socio-cultural production of spaces and places? This is the central question that connects and transcends the communicative turn in geography (Adams, 2011) and the spatial turn in media studies (Falkheimer & Jansson, 2006). The fundamental role of media in organizing and giving meaning to processes and activities in space moves beyond technologies of locative media such as geotagging, mapping and GIS; how do people actually use media within the context of everyday life and everyday world building?

The convergence between the fields of media studies and geography is critically explored during this workshop by engaging with recent research that explores the complex dialectics of space, mobility and media in phenomena as diverse as urban exploring (Jansson, 2018), film and tv tourism (Reijnders, 2011), and music tourism (Bolderman, 2020). André Jansson, professor of media and communication studies at Karlstad University and director of the Geomedia Research Group, will present his most recent work, after which participants will be invited to join an academic speeddating session to discuss overlaps in research topics and questions related to media, geography and interdisciplinarity. This speeddating session will be lead by media ethnographer professor Stijn Reijnders of Erasmus University Rotterdam, who specializes in media tourism, and Dr. Leonieke Bolderman, assistant professor cultural geography and tourism geography and planning at University of Groningen. Moreover, the workshop is a dual workshop of RMeS, the Research School for Media Studies, and NETHUR, the Netherlands Graduate School of Urban and Regional Research, with the aim of bringing together the future researchers of both fields. The workshop is organized to celebrate the publication of the book Contemporary music tourism: a theory of musical topophilia, a monograph based on the RMeS PhD-thesis Dr. Bolderman defended in March 2018.

Speakers:

André Jansson is director of the Geomedia Research Group at Karlstad University, Sweden. His research is oriented towards questions of media use, identity and power from an interdisciplinary perspective. His work links various theoretical strands from social phenomenology, human geography and sociology of culture. A particular interest regards the relationship between mediatization processes and the production of social space. Jansson has studied this relationship in relation to a number of contemporary phenomena, such as the post-industrial city, tourism, expatriate lifestyles, surveillance culture and the urban-rural divide. Jansson currently leads the research project Measuring Mediatization, funded by the Ander Foundation (2016-2019).

Stijn Reijnders is Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on the intersection of media, culture and tourism. Currently he leads two large, international research projects, funded by the Dutch Science Foundation and the European Research Council, in which he aims to explore the cultural dimensions of media tourism. He has published several research papers and two monographs entitled Holland op de Helling (2006) – recipient of the national NeSCoR dissertation award – and Places of the Imagination. Media, Tourism, Culture (2011). In addition, Reijnders has co-edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Fan Cultures (2014), Film Tourism in Asia (2017) and Locating Imagination in Popular Culture: Belonging, Media, Tourism (in press).

Organizer:

Leonieke Bolderman is Assistant Professor Cultural Geography and Tourism Geography and Planning in the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at University of Groningen. Her research interests revolve around the role of music in processes of urban and regional development, with a special focus on music tourism. She is the author of the monograph Contemporary Music Tourism: A Theory of Musical Topophilia (published by Routledge in February 2020), as well as the co-edited volume Locating Imagination in Popular Culture: Belonging, Media, Tourism (Routledge, in press).

Programme

13:00 – 14:00  masterclass Prof. Dr. André Jansson

14:00 – 14:45  response to presentation by Prof. Dr. Stijn Reijnders, and questions from the audience Dr. Leonieke Bolderman

14:45 – 15:00  coffee/tea

15:00 – 16:00  academic speeddating: overlap and shared questions in media-geography research

16:00 – 16:15  gathering ideas and final thoughts

16:15 – 17:00 drinks

References

• Adams, P.C. (2011). A taxonomy for communication geography. Progress in Human Geography 35(1): 37-57.
• Bolderman, S.L. (2020). Contemporary Music Tourism: A Theory of Musical Topophilia. London: Routledge.
• Falkheimer, J., Jansson, A. (2006). Introduction. In Falkheimer, J., Jansson, A. (eds). Geographies of Communication. Goteborg: Nordicom.
• Jansson, A. (2018). Rethinking post-tourism in the age of social media. Annals of Tourism Research 69: 101-110.
• Reijnders, S.L. (2011). Places of the Imagination. Media, Tourism, Culture. Farnham: Ashgate.

Assignment for RMeS and NETHUR participants

The goal of the workshop is to critically reflect on the convergence of two research fields, and to distil what is useful for the research practice of the participants. To this purpose, each RMeS participant will be coupled with a NETHUR participant (depending on enrolment), with the assignment to develop an interdisciplinary research proposal based on their respective research projects. In this proposal the benefits and possible constraints to interdisciplinary cooperation need to be analysed in relation to the specific research idea, as well as possible methodological innovations.
Deadline: April 30, 2020

Readings

• Adams, P.C. (2011). A taxonomy for communication geography. Progress in Human Geography 35(1): 37-57.
• Falkheimer, J., Jansson, A. (2006). Introduction. In Falkheimer, J., Jansson, A. (eds). Geographies of Communication. Goteborg: Nordicom.
• Fast, K., Jansson, A., Lindell, J., Bengtsson, R.,Tesfahuney, M. (2018).  Introduction. In Fast, K., Jansson, A., Lindell, J., Bengtsson, R.,Tesfahuney, M (eds.) Geomedia Studies: Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized Worlds. London: Routledge.