With NordMedia25 approaching in August, the conference program is beginning to take shape. The keynote abstracts are now available, offering an early look at some of the themes and questions that will drive this year’s discussions in Odense.
Jill Walker Rettberg, Annette Markham, and Kim Christian Schrøder have been announced as the keynote speakers for NordMedia25 in Odense. “We’re thrilled to welcome this outstanding trio to the conference and look forward to their reflections on this year’s theme”, say conference co-chairs Susana Tosca and Lene Heiselberg.
Below is a first look at how the speakers will engage with the conference theme. The opening keynote will take the form of a dialogue between Jill Walker Rettberg and Annette Markham, offering a thoughtful exchange to kick off the conference. Kim Schrøder will deliver the closing keynote.
Building Livable Research Lives Through Hope-filled Experimentation
Jill Walker Rettberg, Univeristy of Bergen, Norway & Annette Markham, Utrecht University, Netherlands.
In these times of ever-more disruptive technological change, what is required of us – as researchers, as a community of researchers, as teachers, as citizens, or as change agents in society? How much has AI changed the game, and how can we respond? In this keynote, Jill Walker Rettberg and Annette Markham tackle these giant questions from the perspective of their longstanding practices of experimentation, playful engagement, and open ended exploration. Rather than adopting the common binary of utopian versus dystopian futures, we consider how AI-human intersections bring new challenges for how and why we do research in the first place. Drawing on their recent experiences as well as longer bodies of work, Markham and Rettberg discuss the value of experimenting with modalities and methods that transgress disciplinary norms or conventions, which foster hope-full and ethical mindsets for exploration, intervention, and finding truly different imaginaries for livable futures.
The Nordic Media Welfare State and the Challenge of Imagining Livable Futures
Kim Christian Schrøder, Roskilde University, Denmark
The scholarly debate about a Nordic media system received a major impetus with the publication of the Media Welfare State: Nordic Media in the Digital Age (2014) by Syvertsen, Enli, Mjøs and Moe. Ten years later discussions continued in the volume The Future of the Nordic Media Model: A Digital Media Welfare State? (2024) edited by Jakobsson, Lindell and Stiernstedt. A key concern across these debates has been whether and to what extent the media systems in the Nordic countries actually do form a common ‘Nordic media system’, and whether this media system is somehow better than other media systems at equipping Nordic citizens with democratic prerequisites. My presentation outlines the key positions in these debates about the continued role and relevance of the Nordic media welfare state, mainly in the area of news provision, based in part on recent research that explores this issue from an audience perspective (Schrøder, Blach-Ørsten and Eberholst 2020; 2024). The presentation tentatively explores how Nordic news media are presenting climate challenges and thereby equipping us as Nordic citizens for imagining livable futures.