Key Questions
- How do scholars in media studies and urban studies differ in their uses and conceptualizations of core concepts such as space, place, cities, communication, 'the urban' and 'the media'? What different images of politics do these intellectual commitments enable, constrain and/or prioritize?
- Does thinking in terms of 'practices' (i.e. performed, or pragmatic activities) mark a distinctive approach to exploring the intersections of media, politics and cities?
- What are the particular methods, ontologies or visions entailed by media practices, and how do they enable or enact certain approaches to cities as political spaces?
- How are radical changes in media practices and technologies remaking the social and political life of cities? How are such changes haunted by historically longstanding practices and technologies of media communication and urban life?
- How do media respond to and amplify the political remit of significant events (such as violence, conflict, demonstrations, crises, etc) that become connected in some way to cities?
- How are claims of urban citizenship, belonging, identity and difference made through the practices of both media production and media audiences?
- How does the geographically- and historically-specific manifestation of media practices make for distinctive forms of politics in, and in relation to, cities in different parts of the world?
- What difference does it make when scholars explicitly reflect on the place of media practices in making a politics of cities? Conversely, what is left out when such practices are relegated to the background in studying and theorising urban politics?
