MEDIA MUTATIONS
RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
Media Mutations 06
Modes of Production and Narrative Forms in Contemporary TV Series
Bologna, Dipartimento delle Arti - Salone Marescotti, Via Barberia 4, May 27th-28th, 2014
Organized by Luca Barra, Leora Hadas, Veronica Innocenti, and Paolo Noto
This year’s theme is the relationship between modes of production and narrative forms in contemporary scripted television series in the United States and in Europe. The industrial structures of television, from labor organization to economic models of monetization, all shape the types of content that is created: the stories that the medium tells and the ways in which it tells them. This year’s conference seeks to explore changes brought in the past decade by new models of business, new technologies and new forms of integration within the media, and the resulting changes to television narratives.
PROGRAMME
May 27th
14.30 Introduction and greetings
15.00 Keynote address
Catherine Johnson (University of Nottingham), Beyond Transmedia Storytelling
16.00 Panel 1 – Transmedia Storytelling in Practice
Chair: Peppino Ortoleva (Università degli Studi di Torino)
Maria Engberg and Jay David Bolter (Georgia Tech), Weak Narrativity in Transmedia. Storytelling in The Walking Dead
Deborah Toschi and Federica Villa (Università di Pavia), The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Melanie Bourdaa (University of Bordeaux), Re-inventing the Space Opera as an Endless Universe. The Case of Battlestar Galactica
Marco Cucco (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Understanding Fiction by Looking at its Business. The Sky Italy Case Study
17.30 Panel 2 – Images of the Audience
Chair: Giovanni Boccia Artieri (Università degli Studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo”)
JP Kelly (Royal Holloway, London), From Searching to Sifting. Television Ratings in the Age of Social Media
Çiğdem Erdal and Orçin Uzun (Marmara University), What Do They Want? Turkish Television Audience and The Future of Television
Cecilia Penati and Anna Sfardini (Università Cattolica, Milan), Serial Visions. Models of Complex Storytelling and Italian Audiences’ Perceptions
May 28
9.45 Panel 3 – Industrial Conditions and Narrative
Chair: Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham)
Paola Brembilla (Università di Bologna), Straight-to-Series in Broadcast TV. Causes, Issues and Consequences
Amélie Chabrier and Yoann Hervey (University Paul Valery, Montpellier), Writing a Bottle Episode. “Fly”, from Breaking Bad
Basil Glynn (Middlesex University), The Tudors, the National Past and the Re-shaping of Generic Traditions in Contemporary TV Costume Drama
Leora Hadas (University of Nottingham) presents the project Industrial Approaches to Media
11.30 Keynote address
Derek Kompare (Southern Methodist University), Digital Distribution and the Erratic Expansion of Television
14.30 Panel 4 – European Fiction and Global Circulation
Chair: Francesco Casetti (Yale University)
Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham), A Case of Identity. Sherlock and Elementary,
Giancarlo Lombardi (College of Staten Island and Graduate Center/CUNY), Cultural Imperialism, Redefined. New Modes of Crossnational Television
Marco Cucco (Università della Svizzera Italiana), Understanding Fiction by Looking at its Business. The Sky Italy Case Study
Catherine O’Rawe (Bristol University), Romanzo criminale, la serie. Complex TV and Male Melodrama,
16.30 Panel 5 – The Wider Context of Narrative Production
Chair: Enrico Menduni (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Nikola Stepić (Concordia University), Looking Back on the News. Conceptualizing Television in HBO’s The Newsroom
James Hay (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign), Reality TV & Entrepreneurial Citizenship after the Financial Crisis
Sara Zanatta (Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino), Pawn History Worldwide. How Antiques Dealers Have ‘Restored’ Television Factual Series