This small international conference will explore the relationship between media practice and various definitions of belief.

Contemporary developments in media have made us aware of how interdependent media and cultures are in our world. The Internet has made media from other cultures and languages available to us with relative ease but also has broken down the traditional systems of authorisation of news and made rumours more powerful, global and faster. These rumours have powerful effects and depend on the gullibility or incredulity of media audiences. Events are increasingly organised in order to be reported, for their media exposure. In a type of inflation of the media event, they become more and more macabre and frightening perhaps in attempt to make themselves believable.

Media globalisation may have given way to international media regionalisation. Different parts of the world now look at different media and read each other’s media in different ways. The most striking example of this has been the rise of Arabic language satellite new networks which tell very different stories. Given the sudden perceived importance of media in the relations between the various civilisations, the question of belief and how and why people believe has become a central and important question for understanding the role of media in various societies.

The rise of reality television provides publics with a whole new ways of dealing with television cutting the barriers between the old genres of fiction, drama, documentary and game. The circulation of reality television formats is very important indeed. American idol has been followed by Arab idol; Big Brother by the French Loft Story. The way the real is being represented has radically changed not only in news but also in other programming.

Corporations increasingly spend larger and larger budgets on building brand identities around aesthetic choices abut also value systems. Branding is more and more a process of making believe in a possible world associated with the brand. Political parties in some countries have indulged in complex branding.

What then is happening to belief? Do audiences believe media in new ways? How does it differ according to religious or cultural background or national tradition? How does the decline of public broadcasting and the development of huge media corporations through mergers affect these questions? What are the permutations of media belief in contemporary Western society? What is the role of celebrity? How do pleasure, identity and belief mesh together?

March 4, 2005

  9h30 Opening Session

Celeste Schenck, Vice President for Academic and Grant Planning

Waddick Doyle, Chair, Department of International Communications

  9h45 Mediating Belief

Chair: Yudhishthir Raj Isar International Communications, The American University of Paris

John Downing Southern Illinois University

Altermondialisme or otherworldliness? Contemporary social justice movements and their Media

Waddick Doyle The American University of Paris

Naturalisation to Supernaturalisation: Believing in Media Worlds Across the World

Bernard Lamizet Institut d’Études Politiques de Lyon

Croyance et Médiation

  11h15 Arab Television

Chair: Justin McGuinness International Communications, The American University of Paris

Matt Carlson University of Pennsylvania

Transnational Journalism and Cultural Norms: How The New York Times talks about Al Jazeera

Marwan Kraidy American University, Washington, D.C.

‘Star Academy’ And the Dynamic of Contention. Arab Reality Television v/s Arab Reality

Ramez Maluf Lebanese American University

Who is Having to Adjust? Islam on Arab Television

  2h00 Alternative Realities

Chair: Eric Maigret Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle

Nick Couldry London School of Economics and Political Science

Media and the Ethics of ‘Reality’ Construction

Eric Macé Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle

Les médias, usines à mythes

Susan Ossman Rice University, TX

Believe it or Not: Does it make a Difference?

Johanna Sumiala-Seppänen University of Jyväskylä Finland – (Presenting)

& Matteo Stocchetti Arcadia International Research Institute, Arcadia Polytechnic Finland

The Father of the Nation or Arch-terrorist? The ambiguity of the sacred in the visual narrative of the Death of Yasser Arafat

  4h15 Rhetoric and Fiction in Circulation

Chair: Nilüfer Göle Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Dilip Gaonkar Northwestern University

Which Media? Whose Belief?: Notes on the Cultures of Circulation

Jayson Harsin The American University of Paris

Rhetoric and the Rumor Bomb: Media, Rhetoric, and Belief in current American conjuncture

François Jost Sorbonne Nouvelle, Directeur du CIESME

Abolir la croyance pour faire place au savoir…Les chaînes à l’heure de la télé-réalité

March 5, 2005

  10h00 Media and Religion

Chair: Adrienne Russell International Communications, The American University of Paris

Cora Bender J. W. Goethe University, Germany

Native American Media and Religion: Cultural Knowledge in Situations of Crises

Mary Griffiths (Presenting) & Ann Harding University of Waikato, NZ

Re-forming Christians Online: Models of Authority and Participation

Alexander Darius Ornella Graz University, Austria

The Rise of the Religious in Media Society

Yam Chi-Keung University of Edinburgh

Constructing a Public Perception of Christianity in a Chinese Society through Popular Media

  10h00 Theory

Chair: Jayson Harsin International Communications, The American University of Paris

Pascal Froissart Université de Paris 8 et Labo ‘Communication et Politique’ (CNRS)

For a critical theory of rumors

Brian Goss Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus

Media and Belief: Toward an Althusserian Approach

René-Jean Ravault Université de Québec

If We Cannot Trust the Expression of Our Own Mind…Whose Utterances Could Be Trusted on Earth

Oliver Zoellner Research Worldwide, Germany

Belief, media, reality

  1h15 Image, Belief and Nation

Chair: Susan Ossman Rice University TX

Paul Falzone University of Pennsylvania

Paid Killers, Volunteer Martyrs: Media, Belief and the Nontraditional Death Energy of the Nation

John Ferré University of Louisville, KY

Popular Books about Pet Heaven

Justin McGuinness The American University of Paris

Still Commanding Belief? Images of Royalty in Contemporary Morocco

Guy Marchessault Université Saint Paul Ottawa

Media and the Pope: in Struggle or in Connivance?

  1h15 Representations and Belief

Chair: Julie Thomas International Communications, The American University of Paris

Neil Bather University of Kaikato, NZ

Evil as celebrity: the representation of evil as spectacle in Hollywood cinema

Jin Qiu Hong Kong Baptist University

Being ‘Others’: Alienation and Distortion of Peasant in Chinese Mass Media

Colum Kenny Dublin City University

Visible Targets and Invisible People: A Case Study in Branding, Identity and Radio

  3h30 Reality TV

Chair: Nick Couldry Senior lecturer in Media and Communications, Director, MSc Culture and Society London School of Economics and Political Science

Lina Khatib Royal Holloway, University of London

Media and Belief in pan-Arab Nationalism in the Age of Reality TV

Nicolas Lavergne LAIOS/EHESS Lyon

L’événement -Loft Story- Sens de la méditation contemporaine, recompositions culturelles des mythes actuels, nouvelle politique du réel

Yves Laberge Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Rendre crédible la téléréalité : pour une éthique du citoyen-téléspectateur

  3h30 Asian Realities

Chair: Tanya Elder Assistant Professor of Communications The American University of Paris

Sheldon Harsel RMIT University, Melbourne & Yoshimi Matsuda Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

Political Belief and Media Use in Confucian and Judeo-Christian Cultures

Charu Uppal Penn State University

Missing and Mistrusted: Is there a link between the decline of positive representations of Muslims in Indian movies and the rise in violence against Muslims?

Xu Xiaoge Nanyang Technical University of Singapore

Media, cultures and beliefs in Asia: An explorative study

  5h30 Closing remarks