SeminarTuesday 18 June 2013
6:15pm – 7:30pm
Long Term Re-designing: Mass Media and Grassroots Activism After 3/11
Drinks reception: 7:30pm – 8:30pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle, London, NW1 4QP
Organised by The Daiwa-Anglo Japanese Foundation in association with Birkbeck College, Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practices
The 3/11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear incident not only revealed the malfunctions in Japan’s administrative system, but it also brought up doubts among the Japanese people about the highly developed Japanese mass media. At the same time, it was the first time that the impact of the social media was fully realised in Japan. After more than two years, people in Japan are still in the long process of re-designing their society and media. This poses challenges not only for researchers in social science and engineering fields who are studying the social impact of the disasters or about nuclear energy; but also for media studies practitioners who are reconsidering the ways in which people in Japan arEventse re-engaging with their society. It has gradually become clear that a more trans-disciplinary approach is necessary in reshaping and rebuilding the communities that collapsed during the disaster. Here, media studies has played a significant role.
In this talk, the speakers outlined the challenges of various research projects after 3/11, and considered the role and perspective of media and communication studies. With their networks of researchers and practitioners from diverse fields such as design, engineering, arts, media and education, they have been involved in rebuilding communities in the disaster area and illustrated the challenge facing trans-disciplinary projects such as dealing with community design, big data analysis and grass-roots media. In particular Mizukoshi and Toriumi have been focusing on storytelling workshops where people collaboratively express their everyday experiences through photos and narration. In this talk they elaborated on some of these projects. .
This event was organized in association with Birkbeck, University of London, Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practices.
The video of this talk can be viewed in two parts on YouTube:
About the contributors
Professor Shin Mizukoshi
Professor Shin Mizukoshi is a Professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo, and has been since 2009. He advocates socio-media studies based on historical and social perspectives, rather than focused on information technology. Before taking up his current role he was an Associate Professor at the same university between 2000 and 2009. His numerous publications include Media Biotope: Designing Media Ecology (2005), Communal Keitai: Reweaving Mobile Media Society (2007), Media Studies for the 21st Century (2011). He was a visiting scholar of the Centre for New Media at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York from 1996 to 1997. He is also an adjunct professor of the Open University of Japan, where he has been teaching Media Studies. He is a graduate of the College of Comparative Culture at Tsukuba University and his MA in Media Studies is from the Department of Sociology, University of Tokyo.
Dr Kiyoko Toriumi
Dr Kiyoko Toriumi is an exchange researcher from University of Tokyo and also a citizen media practitioner. She has published widely on Community Media from practical as well as historical perspectives including ‘The A-I-U-E-O Gabun Photo-and-Wordplay Workshop: A Participatory Study of Collaborative Storytelling in Local Communities,’ Jounal of Socio-Informatics (2010) Her PhD dissertation was entitled Citizens’ Media Design: Critical Media Practice on “Folk Art” in the Digital Age (2013).
Dr Shinji Oyama (Chair)
Dr Shinji Oyama (Chair) is Head of Japanese Studies, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck, University of London; Sasakawa Research and Teaching Associate in Japanese Creative Industries and Director, Birkbeck Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practices. His BA is from ICU, Tokyo, he gained his MA at Columbia University, New York and his PhD is from Goldsmiths, University of London.