In November 2017, the Universities of Neuchâtel, Zurich and Bern in Switzerland will host the first international conference to focus specifically on visual communication in/about new media. In this regard, we invite the submission of abstracts for scholarly presentations in any of four overlapping thematic areas.
1. Social interaction
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the communicative uses of visual resources in the context of new media; for example: orthography and typography, graphematic design, the use of emojis (pictograms, emoticons, smilies), and/or the social-interactional uses of video, GIFs and non-moving images.
2. Meta-discourse
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on people’s talk or writing about visual practices; for example: journalistic commentary about visual practices in new media (the use of emojis, for instance) or communicators’ discussions about their own or others’ visual practices in new media spaces.
3. Visual ideologies
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on the visual depiction of new media in, for example, the context of commercial advertising, print or broadcast news, cinema and television narratives and/or public policy and educational settings.
4. Industrial design
Here, we envisage presentations that focus on perspectives related to, for example, the visual-material design of technologies and apps, as well as the look or layout of screen interfaces, especially insofar as they concern the communicative (as opposed to technical) affordances of new media.
Federica Diémoz
Professor of French Dialectology, University of Neuchâtel
Christa Dürscheid
Professor of German Linguistics, University of Zurich
Crispin Thurlow
Professor of Language and Communication, University of Bern
The conference is being organized by these SNF researchers:
Etienne Morel
Post-doctoral candidate, Language and Communication, University of Neuchâtel
Christina Siever
Post-doctoral candidate, German, University of Zurich
Vanessa Jaroski
Doctoral candidate, English, University of Bern