Tagungen
Jahrestagung 2025
Populist Backlashes around the World:
The Role of Media and Communication
13 - 15 November, 2025 | University of Erfurt
Call for Papers (download below)
You will find updated conference details on the conference website.
Abstract
The world is witnessing a time of political backlashes and renewed power claims by illiberal populist forces. This crisis is noticeable both in the global North and South and pervades various political formations ranging from democracies to hybrid and autocratic political systems. Right-wing populism in such different places as the US, Europe, Brazil and India, polarization in electoral democracies during the Arab Spring, hard-authoritarian backlashes as in Russia, China or Myanmar and religious-ethnic fundamentalism as in Indonesia are different types of the same phenomenon of political backlashes. Populist backlashes in particular are obviously reflected in democratic rollbacks to authoritarianism, but they can also take the form of more subtle erosions of human rights, liberal values and challenges to dignity, decency and tolerance in free or partly free political systems.
Even if the media is based on the principle of free speech, as a societal subsystem it can become a co-party of populist backlashes if it is negligent to defend human rights or does not counter processes such as tabloidization, misinformation, misrepresentation or hate speech. Moreover, the representation function of legacy media becomes disregarded when minorities still lack access to fair public representation while illiberal forces with their conflict-driven populist news values tend to be overrepresented. In turn, the so-called “social media” has not fulfilled the euphoric promise of its compensatory function for minority groups as they lend themselves to hate speech and polarization all too easily and as they are limited by often untransparent platform logics.
There are also further dynamics, which enhance disruptive tendencies within societies: For example, social and political cleavages reflected in media discourses and effects, which can be manipulated by political elites and counter-elites for divide-and-rule political games, or communication cultures, which can be challenged by lacks of media literacy, deficits in societal participation or their own uncertainties in dealing with global, multi-/and transcultural realities, which can obviously be captured by populist politics.
The conference aims to reflect on the multifaceted role of media and communication in contemporary backlashes by considering and comparing examples and perspectives from around the world. Contributions can focus on the following thematic issues in an international or transcultural perspective:
- Populist media coverage (e.g. racist, sexist etc. stereotyping and misrepresentation)
- Populist political interventions into media
- The role of law, accountability and (co-)regulation frameworks
- The role of commercial and ownership structures in populist backlashes
- Media ethics and their role to counter populism
- Populist public spheres and counter public spheres, including legacy and new media
- Communication culture and populism, including mediated and non-mediated phenomena.
The conference includes an international keynote session and roundtable discussion as well as regular thematic panels. The panels will be organized in the form of a combination of paper presentations and subsequent dialogic and moderated roundtable formats, which will give enough time to deepen the academic conversation beyond mere requests.
To support early career scholars in the field of international comparative, cosmopolitan and/or transcultural media and communication research, the conference includes a PhD world café. Here, up to three PhD candidates each will be given the chance to get into an intense thematic f2f-discussion with two expert academics in their respective field.
The conference will start on Thursday evening with a get together, it will include a conference dinner on Friday evening and will end around Saturday lunchtime.
Organization
Prof. Dr. Kai Hafez
Chair for Comparative International Media and Communication Research
Dr. Anne Grüne
Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Media and Communication
Contact
Conference Email: project.backlashes@uni-erfurt.de
Dr. Anne Grüne
University of Erfurt
Department of Media and Communication Studies
C18.02.25
Alfred-Weber-Platz 4
99089 Erfurt
Liste vergangener Tagungen
Salzburg 2025 | Overcoming the Divides? Towards Global Inclusivity in Communication Studies in Times of Uncertainty
|
Berlin 2024 | This conference was organized by the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the DGPuK and the DFG-network Cosmopolitan Communication Studies, which engages in a “deep” internationalization of the discipline. Therefore, the conference included different formats: 1) panels with conference papers/presentations, 2) a PhD Workshop, and 3) a public panel debate. |
Berlin 2007 | Interkulturelle und internationale Kommunikation in Kultur, Medien, Politik, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, (Initialkonferenz) |
Zwischen Babel und ‚Earth City’ | |
Mannheim 2009 | Theorien der internationalen und interkulturellen Kommunikation |
Bremen 2010 | Doing global media studies: Comparative methods of transcultural and transnational research |
Erfurt 2011 | Beyond ‘Center’ and ‘Periphery’: (De-)Westernization in International and Intercultural Communication |
Dortmund 2012 | Networks of transnational and transcultural communication: Concepts in theory, methodology and research |
Wien/Bratislava 2013 | Transnational and Transcultural Communication Research in Central and Eastern Europe |
Bremen 2014 | Diversity in Transcultural and International Communication |
Dortmund 2015/16 | Entangled History medial gedacht, (gemeinsam mit der FG Kommunikationsgeschichte) |
Berlin 2016 | Observer, Agitator, Target – Media and Media Assistance in Fragile Contexts, (gemeinsam mit FoME) |
Erfurt 2017 | Lifeworld Communication and the “Global Wo/Man” – New Perspectives on the Globalization Debate |
| Journalism across Borders - The Production and 'Produsage' of News in the Era of Transnationalization, Destabilization and Algorithmization |
Dortmund 2019 | Inter/Transnational Media Policy and Regulation in Digital Environments. Debates, Strategies, Innovations, (gemeinsam mit dem Netzwerk Medienstrukturen) |
Magdeburg-Stendal 2020 | Medien und Ungleichheiten: (Trans-)nationale Perspektiven auf Geschlecht, Diversität und Identität |
TH Köln 2022 | Diversity in Media Societies |