MeCCSA 2026

MeCCSA 2026 Conference: 2-4 September

University of Leicester

Theme: '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 (de-professionalisation/precarity of established media workers among them) and the assumed agile creativity and fluidity characterising modern media work.

This year MeCCSA 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.  

This conference invites research insights from the full range of the specialisms of MeCCSA colleagues. Themes for this conference include - but these will not be limited to:  

·       Media pasts, presents and futures

·       Media developments within, and outside, the nation

·       Technologies and evolving cultural practices/content

·       Cultural work, professional cultures and (the value of) human ‘creativity’

·       Media presence and evolution in the mainstream and margins

·       Publics / audiences and everyday interactions

·       Representations and issues, crises and conflicts

·       Media hybridity and the interconnectedness of media forms and flows

·       Cultural policy, regulation and change

·       Mediated interactions between institutions, groups and individuals

Submission

Papers – coming soon

Panels – coming soon

Media practice – coming soon

For any queries, please contact the organising committee: meccsa2026@le.ac.uk