June 25-26, 2008

The American University of Paris

Grand Salon

31, avenue Bosquet

75007 Paris

An age of mediated global convergence presents new ethical problems which go beyond those of professional codes of ethics. Never have human beings been so much in contact with media from other cultures and other places. The media whether institutional, commercial or amateur now cross the borders of the world between nations but also between ideologies and religions. How do the media intersect with the ways people across the world live together, in their practice, in their representations and in their consumption? The boundaries between public and private, between national and non-national between self and other are shifting in ways that are unpredictable. Governments and regulatory bodies’ roles are changing and audience and publics also have new expectations.

This symposium seeks to bring together researchers from different disciplines to talk about how to deal with the ethics of this convergence, from representing the other to dealing with the other’s media. Many will argue that this otherness is constructed and artificial but the very question of this construction and how to deal with it will be one of our subjects of investigation.

How can scholars provide frameworks to think through answers to the associated ethical problems? Through a series of presentations and panels, the symposium will explore the following questions among others: which philosophical tradition (or hybrid of traditions) provides the most useful starting-point for framing ethical questions about media and communications? Do mass-communicated media and new interactive technologies generate new types of ethical and philosophical problems? How can international and national media provide effective hospitality to ‘others’ beyond those media’s constituencies? Can there be media ethics when we are no longer confident that we know what "the media" is?

This is intended as a specialist conference which will bring together media scholars and practitioners, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists from different countries who are committed to developing an ethical perspective on media practice that draws explicitly on dialogue between philosophical and ethical traditions.

Tim Crook, Goldsmiths, University of London

Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London

Daniel Dayan, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

John Downing, Southern Illinois University (SIU)

Waddick Doyle, The American University of Paris (AUP)

Jayson Harsin, The American University of Paris (AUP)

Mark Hayward, The American University of Paris (AUP)

Ben Kafka, New York University (NYU)

Eric Macé, Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle/EHESS

Ted Magder, New York University (NYU)

Susan Ossman, University of California, Riverside (UC)

Bernard Rieder, Université Paris 8

Adrienne Russell, University of Denver

Annabelle Sreberny, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS)

Barbie Zelizer, Annenberg School of Communication, UPENN (ASC)

Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths, University of London