About this event
MeCCSA 2026 Conference - From mainstream to margins: Capturing developing practices, publics and persuasion
The media have been operating against the backdrop of recent large-scale developments and within unsettled times. But with what consequence? In seeking to capture the moment, the conference will take stock of the present configuration of media developments and showcase our growing understanding of prevalent aspects of continuity and change found within the mainstream and margins of media systems.
It seeks to cast light on the changing situation of media institutions, practitioners and practices (deprofessionalisation/precarity of established media workers among them) and the assumed agile creativity and fluidity characterising modern media work. It proposes to explore the evolving ‘publics’ (or audiences) to which the media shape, speak and listen at these times, observing both changing relationships and evidence of substantive responses and challenges.
Recognised, likewise, is a need to re-examine our understandings of media persuasion, including the newfound forms these are assuming, from public messaging to disinformation and propaganda, and related concerns of cohesion, power and control. All of which, this suggests, must be situated in context of increasingly interconnected ‘hybrid’ media systems which as entities are evolving amid prevalent forms of both global and domestic politics, economics and policy at this time.
Early bird registration rates are available until 15 July 2026.
Keynote Speakers
Dr Andrea Medrado, Professor Anamik Saha, and Professor Helen Wood
Accommodation
Information on hotels and discounted rates is available on the conference website.