Students bring global perspectives to conferences

It's been a busy few months for several Mundusians, who have been presenting their perspectives on media use at some of the leading communications conferences in Europe and South America.

Topics range from social media use in Rio de Janeiro's favelas to political influence on Kenya's media system; gender equality and media representation, to the phenomena of selfies and their role in political communications. 

Here's a summary of what they've been talking about:

Ann Mabel Sanyu (Uganda, Mundus 2010 - 2012) presented a paper at the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) conference in Lisbon in November. The paper was titled African Women’s Use of Media to Maintain Cultural Identity in Hamburg and is drawn from Ann’s MA thesis as well as her ongoing PHD investigations at Hamburg University.

De?bora Gastal (Brazil/Italy, Mundus 2011-2013) presented in September at Ørecomm conference, hosted at Roskilde University. The conference was themed "Voice and Matter" and dealt with communication for development. De?bora spoke about her MA thesis topic which explores citizen media from an audience perspective. Her paper was titled Citizen’s Media and Voice: A case study about Brazilian Favelas.

Madalina Paxaman (Romania) and Luis Manuel Gil (Colombia) (both Mundus 2013-2015) co-authored a paper titled “Media representation of Romanian female politicians - a comparative study of 2009 and 2014 EP elections”. Madalina presented this work at the New York University in Prague, during the conference "25 Years After: The Challenges of Building the Post-Communist Media and Communications Industries", organized by ECREA.

Both Mundusians also worked with classmate Scheila Silveira (Brazil, Mundus 2013-2015) to further develop the paper "Gender (in)equality in Media Treatment of Political Leaders: The Selfie Episode" - originally written for the Researching Journalism module in Aarhus. This work was presented at the NORA conference 2014 "Voices in Nordic Gender Research", hosted by the Centre for Gender, Power and Diversity, at Roskilde University on November 7th.

Michelle Khagoitsa Mulemi (Kenya, Mundus 2012-2014) presented at the 5th Deutsche Welle Media Dialogue on a portion of her MA thesis which is titled ‘Enemies within? Media politicization, controversial press laws and press freedom in Kenya’. Her presentation dealt with the history of media ownership in Kenya.

Olalla Tun?as Marti?nez (Spain, Mundus 2011-2013) presented a paper at the ECREA conference in Lisbon in November. The paper dealt with social movements and social media and is the result of her MA thesis research. It was titled Social Movements and Social Media: An Empirical Study on Social Media Use by the Spanish Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH) in the framework of the Indignados Movement.

Scheila Silveira also published a paper in Brazil over the summer on emerging prosumer culture, developed from her exam in the course Globalisation, Culture and the Roles of the Media. It looked at active audiences towards Haiti's 2010 earthquake and Brazil's 2013 protests. The final paper for the conference was reworked with a colleague from Scheila’s home university Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and was presented during the Brazilian Conference on Communication Sciences - one of the most important scientific events in the region.

Congratulations to all our students who have had their work published. 

Image: Madalina and Luis at NORA conference in Roskilde, Denmark.