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Nico Carpentier

Title of the presentation:
Identity, contingency and rigidity: The (counter-)hegemonic constructions of the identity of the media professional

Short abstract of the presentation:
This lecture starts with a discussion of key notions of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe in order to analyze the identity of the media professional. Within their post-structural framework, this identity is seen as over-determined, contingent and constructed but at the same time subjected to a hegemonic articulation, based on four nodal points: objectivity, autonomy, management of resources and employee–employer relations. Combined with a theoretical discussion on the (counter-)hegemonic articulations, this allows for the field of discursivity that surrounds the identity of the media professional to be (re)constructed, resulting in four dimensions that offer potential points of identification for media professionals. In the last part the workings of this field of discursivity is illustrated by two case studies: the phone-ins of an elite talk show TerZake and the reception of a participatory online platform.

Short biography:
Nico Carpentier (PhD) is a media sociologist working at the Communication Studies Departments of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the Catholic University of Brussels (KUB). His theoretical focus is on discourse theory, his research interests are situated in the relationship between media, journalism, politics and culture, especially towards social domains as war & conflict, ideology, participation and democracy. His recent publications include: Towards a Sustainable Information Society. Deconstructing WSIS (ed.)(2005); Reclaiming the media: communication rights and democratic media roles (ed.)(2006); Researching media, democracy and participation (ed.)(2006). He is co-director of the VUB research centre CEMESO and a board member of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA – formerly ECCR).