Conference on gender, war and conflict reporting
Call for paper submissions to a conference sponsored by the Norwegian UNESCO commission on gender relations in the area of conflict reporting. The conference will be held at the Department of journalism and media studies at Oslo and Akershus University College on the 6-7 October 2015.
The idea behind the conference is to draw attention to gender relations in war, peace and conflict reporting. The conference is a follow up of the project «Journalism under Pressure: A mapping of editorial policies and practices for journalists covering conflicts». This was a survey among more than 100 experienced journalists and editors in the field of war- and conflict reporting. The background for the project is the paradox that journalists in conflict areas never have had a better formal legal protection; and at the same time have never so many journalists been targeted and threatened doing their job as reporters. We need more knowledge of gender relation in the field of war and conflict reporting. To mention only three aspects: How may gender perspectives of peace journalism and conflict sensitive reporting add some important insights to journalist practices? Women reporters experience some degree of stress due to impacts of harassment and sexual harassment. There are also indications from recent research that we lack gender perspectives in general when it comes to seeing how wars and conflicts are reported.
The conference will start with a plenary with the following key note speakers, all top experts in the field of gender, media and conflict:
Professor Wendy Hesford, The Ohio State University, Professor Toby Miller, University of Cardiff and Professor Linda Steiner, University of Maryland.
Paper proposals are encouraged on a wide range of topics including:
- – In what way can the gender of the reporter make a difference in the daily reporting from war and conflict zones?
- – Are there situations where gender of the reporter is important for which voices are heard or silenced?
- -What cultural differences in societies are important for how respectively male and women reporters are being met?
- – Are there situations where one gender can have an advantage compared to the other?
- – How are masculinities and femininities represented in the media’s war/conflict reportages?
- – What kinds of masculinity and femininity are brought to the forefront as icons of war heroes, villains and worthy victims in the media? How are these characters framed as gendered?
- – To what extent are gender perspectives evident in framing of indigenous peoples in conflict reporting?
Abstracts of maximum 250 words should be sent to Professor Rune Ottosen or Professor Berit von der Lippe before June 1, 2015. There is limited participation and maximum 20 papers will be accepted. The best papers will be represented in an edited book after the conference. There is no registration fee and lunch is included. The participants are expected to cover their own costs for travel and accommodation. A limited number of scholarships on up to 900 Euros are available for Ph.D. students and researchers from low-income countries. Please indicate in the proposal if you apply for a 50 percent or full scholarship.
Paper submission and questions about the conference should be sent to rune.ottosen@hioa.no orberit.v.d.lippe@bi.no.