The following title was also the topic of the panel debate, in which head of MEKK, Kristin Skare Orgeret, participated at the NordMedia conference of 2017. Member Anders Graver Knudsen also participated with a talk on lived experiences and conceptualisation of journalism among freelance journalists: “Walking a tightrope – Boundaries of journalism and precarious freelance journalists.” The conference took place at the University of Tampere, Finland, the 17th to the 19th of August.
The main theme of the conference was “Mediated Realities –Global challenges”, focusing on several global challenges specific for the Nordic welfare states: the aftermaths of the global financial crisis as well as economic crisis of Europe, the climate change and its consequences on nature, species, agriculture and nutrition, wars and violent conflicts causing human misery and forced mobility and migration of people, growing polarization between rich and poor strata in many countries, confrontation between the ‘Islamic’ and ‘Western’ worlds as well as rising nationalist sentiment in many European countries.
The NordMedia 2017 conference in Tampere took a critical approach to the mediated realities of contemporary social and cultural institutions, identities and everyday life, and tried to shed light on the debates over mediation and mediatization in relation to global challenges. The conference focused on these themes from multiple angles such as journalism, political communication, technology, democracy, gender, cultural studies, arts, philosophy and psychology. The goal was no more, no less, than to try to understand more profoundly the role of the media and communications in contemporary life-worlds, cultures and societies.
Arranging NordMedia 2017 was a process of two years. Planning the next conference of August 2019 has already started.