The last five years have seen a sea change in debates around regulation of digital platforms. There is a growing view that nation-state regulation is warranted to address public concerns about the market power, lack of accountability and lack of transparency of the leading tech giants. This symposium will bring together communications and media policy and industry researchers to consider critical issues around digital platform regulation.

University of East Anglia invites proposals for An International Symposium on Media and the Middle East. The symposium aims to bring together scholars, and filmmakers from around the world interested in exploring ideas of Resistance and Activism in the Middle East in relation to a range of media including film, television, radio, video, and digital media. Papers may be historical or contemporary in scope.

Media and Breakdown: International Symposium at Lund University, Sweden Department of Communication and Media, March 19th 2020 Organisers: Annette Hill and Hario Satrio Priambodho Break up, break down, and break away: variations on media and the breaking down of infrastructures, technicalities, texts, contexts and social relations are the basis of this international symposium Media and Breakdown.

Guest Editors: Matt Crofts and Layla Hendow, University of Hull. The post-apocalyptic wasteland holds a powerful symbolic status within the popular imagination. Ravaged by infection, invasion, the supernatural or environmental disaster, the imagery of a deserted and hostile landscape rose to prominence during the Cold War and has remained a fertile source of horror ever since. The wasteland is a nightmare;

In this series of blogs Andreas Halskov interrogates the work of Mary Harron.

In Ireland in recent weeks, national broadcaster, RTÉ, has not only been a news producer but a news item. The broadcaster, facing serious financial pressures, has indicated that it will aim to reduce its budget by selling off assets, reducing the pay of top earners and offering voluntary redundancies.

“You need to watch all the episodes,” stated Professor James Chapman during his keynote speech ‘The forgotten history of the television swashbuckler’ at Egham’s ‘Forgotten, Lost & Neglected TV Drama’ conference in April 2015. And he’s absolutely right. It’s one of the reasons that I enjoyed his Swashbucklers: The Costume Adventure Series volume [i] so much;

You may have read about or seen VH1’s reality show Cartel Crew , which began in January and is entering its second season. The Crew cast is formed of close relatives of dead or imprisoned narcos . These offspring may themselves have been in the joint, or benefited directly or indirectly from their parents’ illegal wealth, but now, they are putatively on the straight and etc.

Last Saturday I went to a day-long celebration of the official launch of colour TV on BBC1 and ITV, which happened 50 years ago on 15 November 1969.

Editors Amanda Howell and Stephanie Green (School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Science, Griffith University, Australia) seek contributors to an anthology whose collective analysis will be directed to the question: What can 21st century film and television tell us about the historical imagination of horror? Fredric Jameson observes pithily in The Political Unconscious (1982/2017) that ‘History is what hurts’ (88),

We are seeking proposals for chapters to complete an edited collection on morality and ethics on/through television. The essays will address TV dramas and comedies aired during the Golden Age of TV, continuing through peak and prestige TV. An editor at Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield, has expressed interest in this project.