Mediapolis: an introduction

Rodgers, Scott and Barnett, C. and Cochrane, A. (2008) Mediapolis: an introduction. In: Mediapolis: Media Practices and the Political Spaces of Cities, 9-10 June 2008, Milton Keynes, UK.

Abstract

The organisation of this workshop has been prompted by concerns with the way media so often seem to get left out of writing on cities and urban politics (rather than vice-versa). We agree with Iveson’s (2007) argument that urban and media studies have much more in the way of shared concerns when it comes to politics than is conventionally thought to be the case. As a result, we are hoping this workshop will create an occasion for urban scholars to meet those studying media, to explore what difference it makes to explicitly consider the place of media practices in making a politics of cities, and conversely, to consider what is left out when such practices are relegated to the background. In certain ways, we are suggesting a contemporary return to something like Robert Park’s inclination in relation to cities and media. In his seminal essay on the natural history of the newspaper, for example (Park, 1925), Park exhibits a style which does not generally seem to distinguish between or oppose the urban and the media when studying politics and democracy. This surely has something to do with Park’s own intellectual period, and the absence of established disciplines in media or urban studies. Yet this is also precisely the point of the workshop: an opportunity for engagement and discussion through a similar sort of pre-disciplinary spirit.

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