Is TV as we know it dead? Does TV Studies have any relevance in a world of media convergence? Are we at risk of becoming gravediggers of an obsolete medium rather than innovators in a cross-medial regime? The conference will address some of the central frames through which TV has been analyzed to test their relevance in an age where digitalization and convergence is redrawing the boundaries of media and of disciplines. Rather than accept the narrative of obsolescence or the nostalgia of seclusion, the conference aims at seriously analyzing both the contemporary specificity of TV and the challenges thrown up by new developments in technology and theory. For example: What is the specificity of the TV image in an environment suffused with moving images? Has the spectator of TV changed in a media world that begs "interaction"? How does the relevance of ideology-critique and propaganda fare in the age of surveillance? Is the educational role of TV obsolete with the triumph of market logics?
Depending on how these and other questions are answered, TV Studies must rethink its own status as a discipline, beginning with its own position vis-à-vis Film Studies and New Media Studies. Do such separations still hold analytical purchase? What old concepts need reformulation, and what areas of study (e.g. cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, art history) can we both borrow from and enrich?
tvprogram