Media Realities International Symposium 2026

Representations of the real and engagement with factual, reality and entertainment genres face multilevel challenges in media environments. According to John Corner (see Nash et al 2025), in recent work on documentary, reality and factuality can be understood in a post referential frame of reference. Post referentiality means that public engagement with witnesses and accounts of real events, or experts and explanations of scientific knowledge struggle to maintain referentiality in the real world (see Hill 2025). For example, the witness or expert are questioned with regard to their accounts of reality, generating an ambiguity regarding their roles as reliable witness, or expert testimony.

In a post referential framework, traditional knowledge systems associated with media and public service institutions face intense scrutiny by audiences and publics, politicians, NGOs and policy and community leaders. In current research in news and journalism, the issue of trust in facts as reported in traditional news is set against trust in information shared via social media and small scale discussion threads in mobile applications (Bengtsson and Johansson 2025). Traditional media systems that work in the public interest are questioned and alternative social media news feeds are accepted as more real to those publics engaging with such content.

Here, then, the issue of technological developments, such as AI and algorithms and deep fake content, is of pressing concern for both professionals in traditional knowledge systems and for publics who are searching and evaluating trustworthy content. Developments such as critical AI studies (Lindgren 2023) provide critical theories and digital methods for analysing algorithms, datafication and machine learning. Academic research in this area of factual realities in multiplatform environments highlights an uncertainty about normative notions of truth and realism. In work by Nash and Hight (2025), and Hight (2022), they analyse examples of synthetic content in documentary, or conspiracy content on streaming platforms that includes dramatization and populist rhetorics, devoid of facts. They argue that research on the production of realities, from professional and ethical practices in news and documentary, and research on engagement with factual genres, can enable a deeper understanding of the representation and distortion of realities.

Why are realities valuable to media industries, practitioners, audiences and publics? In the context of the precarity of reality as represented and engaged with in digital settings, these various structures and actors join forces to figure out what is real and how to feel about the challenges factuality and authenticity faces in different regions, cultures and media environments. For example, in the forthcoming edited collection Media Realities in Global Perspective, the editors (Heidingsfelder et al 2025) challenge Western portrayals of global politics, questioning who defines reality, or truth in news and journalism.

In classical work Playing and Realities, psychologist Winnicott provides a perspective of nurturing creativity and the self in daily life (Winnicott 2005). This idea of performing realities can be useful when considering gaming and social media environments, or digital platforms and user generated content for YouTube, for example. In this context realities are crafted, played with and remixed, with a focus on creative treatment of realities as a means to explore the imagination, or self identity and community identities. Researchers in gaming, for example, have explored performing realities in particular games that re-enforce gender stereotypes, from the production world of gaming to the gamers and fan communities (see Hill and Lunt 2024). Artistic research has explored the mundane realities as experienced through these digital environments, the everyday realities of new technologies and practices (Willim 2024).

The wider social significance of gaming and performing realities is explained in the recent work Playing with Reality, in which neuroscientist Clancy (2024) charts the history of game play in war, for example, to present day gaming, including game theory that has come to shape particular societies and how AI and social media are constructed. Thus, the notion of realities as performed becomes contested in academic research on technological developments such as virtual reality and synthetic media. Gamification of reality, for example in algorithmic decision making on platforms, or fans for synthetic celebrities on on YouTube, raise questions concerning playing and reality in the media (see Hill and Lunt 2024). In a current media environment of post referentiality, is reality played out? The symposium addresses this challenging question and asks what can professional producers, performers, publics and scientific scholars do to understand this phenomenon and signal the values in referentiality and realities, in truth claims and trust, in the media.

Bengtsson, S and Johansson, S. (2025) Navigating the News. Berlin: De Gruyter Press.

Clancy, K. (2024) Playing with Reality. London: Routledge.

Heidingsfelder, M., Bo, Y. and Brie, H. (eds.) (2025 forthcoming) Media Realities in Global Perspective, London: Routledge.

Hight, Craig (2022), ‘Deepfakes and documentary practice in an age of misinformation’, Continuum, 36:3, pp. 393–410.

Hill, A. and Lunt, P. (eds.) (2024) The Routledge Companion to Media Audiences. London: Routledge.

Hill, A. (2025) ‘Documentary Audience Enagement’. In Nash, K. et al (2025) The Handbook of Documentary, Bristol: Intellect.

Lindgren, S. (ed.) (2023) Handbook of Critical Studies in Artificial Intelligence. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Nash, K. et al (2025) The Handbook of Documentary, Bristol: Intellect.

Willim, R. (2024) Mundania. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Winnicott, D.W (2005) Playing and Reality. London: Routledge.

MEDIA REALITIES International Symposium

29-30 April 2026 | HLK, Jönköping University

Wednesday 29 April 2026

11:00 Registration

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Keynote Panel 1 – Experiencing Media Realities

Chair: Robert Willim

Annette Hill – Slow Reality: public service media and The Great Moose Migration

Hario Priambodho – Experiences of Email Spam

14:30 Coffee

15:00-17:00 Parallel Panels

17:00 Keynote Panel 2 – Mundane Surrealities

Chair: Annette Hill

Robert Willim - Scrolling Through-Mundane Surrealities of Small Gestures, Big Tech and Deep Time

18:00 Dinner (self-organized)

Thursday 30 April 2026

9.30-11:30 Parallel Panels

11:30 Coffee

12:00 Lunch

13:00-15:00 Parallel Panels

15:00 Coffee

15:30 Roundtable: Realities in Academic Publishing

Chair Annette Hill

Julia Brockley (Intellect Press), Simon Dawes (journal Media Theory) and Natalie Foster (Routledge)

16:30 Symposium ends

18:00 Symposium dinner

Slow Reality: public service media and The Great Moose Migration
This talk focuses on transnational audiences for the slow TV phenomenon of The Great Moose Migration made by SVT in Sweden. With over 9 million page impressions for the 2025 series, transnational audiences watched minute by minute for three weeks the forests, lakes and occasional moose on the move. This live event generates calm, green atmospherics, a slow burn reality that is affective, moving and strangely mesmerizing. The research draws on production interviews with the makers of the series and audience interviews to understand intensities of engagement with slow reality and the consequences of this for public service television, forestry and the environment. In a context of post referentiality, where the integrity of the real is unmoored from its factual and trust based settings, why is this series resonating with transnational audiences? And what role does slow reality play in re-producing referential integrity?

Professor Annette Hill (Jönköping University, Sweden)

Annette Hill is Professor of Media and Communications at Jönköping University. Her research focuses on media audiences, with interests in media engagement, citizens and sustainable democracy, everyday life, genres, production studies and cultures of viewing. She is the author of ten books and over 90 articles and book chapters. Her most recent book (with Peter Lunt) is The Routledge Companion to Media Audiences (2025).

Experiences of Email Spam

As our online worlds expand at an exponential speed, it is still worth considering technological features that already exists but are oftentimes hiding in plain sight. Spam emails are one of these features whose continued existence illustrate an online reality mired by potential hazards that can potentially have implications on the offline reality. Although spam emails are often recessed into the background or dismissed as digital noise, this presentation will argue they still contain untapped insights in how media audiences’ are able to engage emotionally with digital media and how it shapes their perception on online content. It grounds itself in the theory of technological capital (Bourdieu 1979; Romele 2024) but also the notions of felt experiences around technology (Bucher 2017; Ruckenstein 2023) to elucidate how an experiential study on audiences and digital spam can offer new insights into how digital content is felt, interpreted, and perhaps resisted. The presentation argues that by gaining knowledge on audiences’ perception on email spam, we may also get a glimpse into how media texts are able to generate an atmosphere of trust or distrust, which in turn may provide additional wisdom in countering practices of reality distortion such as dis/misinformation campaigns that have been rampant in contemporary society. It invites a discussion on how we might reframe digital spam not merely as a technical issue, but as a cultural and affective phenomenon embedded in everyday media practices.

Dr Hario Priambodho is a lecturer and researcher in media and communication studies at Lund University, Sweden. His primary research interest is in the burgeoning field of media atmospheres, seeking ways to re-contextualize media experiences through the conceptual lens of atmosphere. His PhD monograph addresses the nuances of cult film screenings and events in Sweden through a media audiences and industry perspective, utilizing the concept of atmosphere as key constitutive factor of the phenomenon. He also has an inherent interest in popular culture, media technologies, and video games.

Roundtable: Realities in Academic Publishing

Senior editors from renowned publishers Intellect (Julia Brockley) and Routledge (Natalie Foster) and founding editor of academic journal Media Theory (Simon Dawes) run a publishing roundtable designed to help scholars and postgraduates to navigate the world of scholarly publishing. Drawing from their expertise across journals and books, the editors and publishers will respond to questions from participants and provide insider perspectives on the publishing process. This will be an open discussion offering both early career scholars and more senior academics a chance to discuss industry trends, including, but not limited to: AI tech, open access, micropublications, growth in journal submissions, data-driven decision making, community engagement, accessibility, and UN SDGs.

Dr Simon Dawes (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France)

Simon Dawes is Senior Lecturer in Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. His research revolves around issues of media theory, history and regulation, as well as theoretical-methodological debates on citizenship, consumption, community/commons, neoliberalism, privacy, press freedom, public opinion and the public sphere, and discourse analysis. He is the founding editor of the journal Media Theory.

Natalie Foster (Routledge)

Natalie Foster is Senior Publisher for Communication and Media Arts at Routledge and has over twenty years’ experience commissioning media and cultural studies books. Her list encompasses all aspects of media and cultural studies, including digital and social media, media industries, film, television, and popular culture. She particularly welcomes proposals for accessible, student-friendly books that critically examine the social and political aspects of media and visual cultures.

Julia Brockley (Intellect Press)

With creativity, commercial judgement, and a flair for anticipating emerging disciplinary trends, Julia has held senior-level publisher/commissioning roles at a range of companies including small specialists like Berg, and large, international, organisations including SAGE and Palgrave. Her publishing experience, which spans over 25 years, includes all product types - books, journals, reference, and digital resources. Julia is currently Senior Commissioning Editor for Media and Communication Studies at Intellect and a Senior Associate with Maverick Publishing Specialists.

Scrolling Through-Mundane Surrealities of Small Gestures, Big Tech and Deep Time

This performance is an audiovisual evocation to imagine differently about everyday life in a world of big tech. It evokes uncertain futures and vague memories, and it uses fragments from realities permeated by incomprehensible technologies and a gradually shifting mundanity. The audiovisual performance is based on live electronics, poetic storytelling and voice manipulations, the engagement with objects, site-specific recordings, and the sound of electro-magnetic fields. It is combined with multi-layered video, and it is all part of Willim’s probing of Mundania.

Dr Robert Willim (Lund University)

Robert Willim is associate professor of Ethnology and senior lecturer in Digital Cultures at Lund University, Sweden. He also works as an artist. This positions his practice in the intersection between art and research, and in his work, he often experiments with hybrid forms of expression involving everything from electronic music performances and video essays to mixed media works. Lately, he has used the concept Mundania to examine the ways emerging technologies are entwined with people’s everyday life and how technological imaginaries unfold.