Common Ground

March 27, 2020 — Virtual

2:15 p.m.

Keynote speaker: Professor Radhika Parameswaran

3 to 3:30 p.m.

Roundtable on Media in the Age of the Pandemic

Logan Brown, Brent Hale, Jared Meisinger, Lexi Newman

3:30 to 5 p.m.

Lightning round presentations (five-minute talks)

Friday, April 9

9:45-10 a.m.

Opening remarks by conference chair Narmeen Ijaz and Media School Graduate Association chair Xan Smith

10-11 a.m.

Keynote address: “Peaks and Freaks: Approaching Floods as Mass Media Events”

Stephanie C. Kane, professor, Department of International Studies, IU Bloomington

Moderated by: Khurram Nawaz Sheikh

11:10 a.m.-12:25 p.m.

Framing Ideologies through Media: Legitimacy and Reconfigurations 

Moderated by Jacob Eddy

• Lucia Cores Sarria, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “The joy of overload: Intensified (dis)Continuity in K-dramas”
• Cole Nelson, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Corresponding with the Revolution: 'Correspondence' and the Problematics of a Workers' Newspaper”
• Osman Mohamed Osman, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Media Framing of Westgate Mall Terror Attack: A Comparative Examination of News Frames Employed by U.S. and Kenyan Newspapers”

12:35 p.m.-1:35 p.m.

Keynote Address: “Communicating Health Risks in a Glocalized World”

Esi Thompson, assistant professor, The Media School, IU Bloomington

Moderated by Narmeen Ijaz 

2-3:15 p.m.


Transforming Cultures: Digital interfaces, Platformization and Community-building

Moderated by Cole Stratton

• Kimberley Bianca, Critical Media Practices, University of Colorado-Boulder: “circuitBoard: an Ecomedia Platform for Critical Making”
• Forrest Greenwood, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Platform Afterlife: The Nintendo DS and the Challenges of Videogame Preservation”
• Ken Rosenberg, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Talking about chatting: What our Overcooked 2 experiment can tell us about studying online video game play”

3:30-4:30 p.m.

Media Objects

Moderated by Narmeen Ijaz

• Sean Purcell, The Media School, IU Bloomington: Live-streamed demo of a video installation
• Caleb Allison, The Media School, IU Bloomington: short film
• Khurram Nawaz Sheikh, The Media School, IU Bloomington: experimental film

Saturday, April 10

10-11:15 a.m.

Politics of Representation: Experimental Cinema, Media Arts and Game Design

Moderated by Chih Ju (Carol) Lin

• Sean Purcell, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Remediating Medicine: Creative Historiographic Praxis and its Violence”
• Anthony Silvestri, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Onan in the Anger Archives: Exhibition, New American Cinema and the Japanese Avant-Garde, 1963-1969”
• Xan Smith, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Choose your gender: Exploring character creation and avatar choice for non-binary video game players”

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Keynote Address: “Mapping the Global Conjuncture: Nationalism and Covid-19”

Ishan Ashutosh, assistant professor, Department of Geography, IU Bloomington

Moderated by Mallika Khanna

1-2:15 p.m.

Reconfiguring Media Ecologies: Technology, Infrastructures and Globalization

Moderated by Hailey Pierce

• Caleb Allison, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Rediscovered, Restored, and Released: Milestone Film & Video’s Restorative Politics”
• Cole Stratton, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “The Political Ecology of iPhone 5c Polycarbonate”
• Bailey Troutman, Communication, University of Colorado-Boulder: “Cooling the Cloud: Water complexities of Internet sustainability”

2:30-4 p.m.

Globalization and South Asia: Perspectives towards Transnational Media Flows

Moderated by Professor Radhika Parameswaran

• Navdeep Sharma, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi: “The Development Film in Post-Independence India: an Analysis of the Film Sponsorship Practices of three Transnational Agencies”
• Christian M. James, Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, IU Bloomington: “Baṛā Mazā Aye: Co-present Performance and Cultural Flow in North Indian Feminist Song”
• Mallika Khanna, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Desi Diasporic Cultural Entrepreneurs: Trauma, Self-branding and Self-Empowerment in Social Media Spaces”
• Khurram Nawaz Sheikh, The Media School, IU Bloomington: “Entanglements of Local, Global and Regional Scales: Role of Film Talents Workshop for Cultural Diplomacy in Pakistan”


5-6:30 p.m.


Closing remarks 

Networking events: informal roundtable

Awards ceremony

Award winners

Four students won awards at the Common Ground Conference 2021. The winners were also awarded monetary prizes for their innovative research and media-based projects. Fellow presenters and attendees of the conference voted on the awards.

Best paper

First place: Lucia Cores Sarria, "The Joy of Overload: Intensified (dis)Continuity in K-dramas"
Second place: Khurram Nawaz Sheikh, "Entanglements of Local, Global and Regional Scales: Role of Film Talents Workshop for Cultural Diplomacy in Pakistan"
Third place: Xan Smith, "Choose your gender: Exploring character creation and avatar choice for non-binary video game players"

Best presentation

Khurram Nawaz Sheikh, "Entanglements of Local, Global and Regional Scales: Role of Film Talents Workshop for Cultural Diplomacy in Pakistan"
Best practice-based research
Sean Purcell, "Remediating Medicine: Creative Historiographic Praxis and its Violence"

Read an article about the conference

Saturday, April 1

9 a.m.

"Tuberscopia," an installation from Sean Purcell 

10 a.m.

Keynote address by Professor Lisa Lenoir 

11 a.m.

Media Infrastructures and Audiences
Chaired by Jimmy Ochieng 

• Anna Stamm: “Outward Projections and Interior Expressions: Local Television Identity from 1955 to 1975”
• Cole Nelson: “Abeng in Context: The Guerilla Intellectual Reads the Paper”
• Kristin Wells: “Olympic Podium to NFL Sideline: A Comparative Analysis of the Media Infrastructure of Two Protests”
• Shobha SV: "Precarious Labor and Feminist Solidarity: Notes from a Journalistic Field in India"

1:15 p.m.

Film screenings: Vlada Lodesk, Bruno Dariva, Ibrahim Odugbemi

2 p.m.


Roundtable on Global Film Cultures: Vlada Lodesk, Bruno Dariva, Ibrahim Odugbemi, Narmeen Ijaz, Khurram Sheikh 

3 p.m.

Master's Showcase
Chaired by Raquel S. Arias Labrador 

• Meredith Hemphill: "An Investigation of OB/GYN Healthcare in U.S. Prisons"
• Kate Stewart: "A Content Analysis of Puberty Depictions in Popular Coming-of-Age Movies"
• Daniella Carrera: "Complicating Latinidad and Sexuality in Reggaetón"

4 p.m.

Perspectives on Gaming and Sporst
Chaired by Xan Smith 

• Johnathan Anderson: “What's in the Game?: EA SPORTS' FIFA and the Growth of Soccer Fandom among Americans”
• Alex Brannan: “Artificial Intelligence: Human-Machine Imaginaries within the Professional Chess Community”
• Neil Ni: “Appetitive and Aversive Motivation in PACMAN Game”
• Kristin Wells: "The Little 500 Sit-in and the IU Ten: Sport and Activism in Indiana History"

5:15 p.m.

Media Representation and Effects
Chaired by Bevis Chen 

• Jimmy Ochieng: “Visual Representation of Presidential Candidates in Kenya”
• Kevin Mudavadi: “Social Media and Agenda-Setting in Kenya's Pre-2022 General Elections”
• Aditya Sahasrabudhe: “Content Priming: A Means to Enhance Viewers' Engagement and Emotional Arousal While Consuming Media Content”
• McCall Booth and Aditya Sahasrabudhe: "Music and Emotion: Audience Engagement and Experience with Emotional Music"
• Yuki (Yuxian) Lin: "In Control of Your Own Narrative: Exploring how Meaningfulness of Interactive Choices Affect Arousal in Interactive Video" 

Read an article about the conference

Friday, April 12

4 – 6 p.m.

Keynote speeches:

• IU Cinema director Alicia Kozma: “Industry Unrest: Hollywood’s Labor Landscape and Independent Exhibition”
• Assistant professor Ryan Comfort: Beyond reservation boundaries: Indigenous science stories, growth, mindsets and mediated perspective-taking”

Q&A moderated by: Anna Stamm

6 – 8 p.m.

Short film screenings:

• Abi Yates: “The Opening Scene”
• Ruby Berin: “Faded Memories”
• Brian Johnson: “Inner Voice”
• Xavier DeVany: “F*ck”
• Jack Bassett: “Soured Success”
• Bruno Dariva: “Flies”
• Caleb Allison: “Rough Cut”
• Ahmed Shams: “The Story of Akin Adeṣọkan”
• Ayturk Tashpolat: “The Face of Grief”

Saturday, April 13

9 – 9:15 a.m.

Opening remarks by Shobha S V. 

9:15 – 11:15 a.m.

Master’s Showcase

Moderated by: Cole Nelson

• Di Cui: "The Shift from News Production to News Reproduction"
• Raquel S. Arias Labrador: "LGBTQ+ Representation in Children's Cartoons: Explicitness, Homonormativity and Meaning"
• Gillian Paxton: "The State of Media Literacy Education in Indiana Schools"
• Kristin Wells: "The University of Wyoming's Black 14 and Mizzou's Concerned Student 1950: Sport Documentary, Historiography, and the Collegiate Athletic Protest"
• Trizah Ombewa: "Examining Public Perceptions of Investigative Journalism and its Influence: BBC Documentary on Child Trafficking in Kenya"

9:30 – 11:30 a.m.

Creative Projects Panel

Moderated by: Narmeen Ijaz

• Vlada Lodesk: “This is Home”
• Molly Radecki: “Work in Progress”

11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Interdisciplinarity and Critical Digital Studies

Moderated by: Logan Brown

• Drew Heiderscheidt, Eveline Gordon, and Timothy Clark: “Centennial Struggles: Producing a Critical Historical Gis of Colorado’s Front Range in the 20th Century”
• Grace Miller and Kate Rutherford: “On ‘Being’: Mediations on Being (The Digital Griot)”
• Chandler K Hawkins and Victoria Callais: “College Athlete or Social Media Influencer: An Exploratory Study of Student Athletes on TikTok in the Age of NIL"
• Kate Rutherford: “Why the Metaverse? Examining Facebook’s Quest for Control"

11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

The Cinema Perspective

Moderated by: Anna Stamm

• Sam Smucker: "Expatriate Cinema and Anti-Colonialism: Melvin Van Peebles in Algeria"
• Vlada Lodesk: “'Cinematic' Functions of Natural Language in Accented Nonfiction Cinema"
• Ahmed Tahsin Shams: "Neo-Baroque Visions and Dialogic Intermediality in Sorrentino's Cinematic Universe"
• Cole Nelson: "Anticolonial Historiography in the Films of the Victor Jara Collective"

1:45 – 3:15 p.m.

Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Media

Moderated by: Xan Smith

• Ines Yu, Neil Ni, and Dr. John Velez: "Diamonds are a Player's Best Friend"
• Haley Pierce, Jennifer Hwang, and Dr. Betsi Grabe: "Partisan Cues as a Key Determinant for Misinformation Processing: Measuring Psychophysiological Responses to Misinformation"
• Jennifer S. Trueblood: “Cognitive Psycho Educational Intervention Reduces Online Engagement with Distorted Content”
• Arijit Paladhi: "Predicting News Deserts Using Supervised Machine Learning"

1:45 – 3:15 p.m.

Local and Global Perspectives of Cinema and Television Landscape

Moderated by: Sohini Chakraborty

• I-Lin Liu: "Two Modernizations: Widescreen Cinema and the Authoritarian State in 1950's Taiwan"
• Carol Chih-Ju Lin: "Dreaming the World Differently: The Cultural Politics of the Silk Road International Film Festival in China"
• Anna Stamm: "Tarzian's Television: Broadcasting Geography and Industry in Bloomington, Indiana"

3:30 – 5 p.m.

Gender, Sexuality, and the Media

Moderated by: Raquel S. Arias Labrador

• Blake Overman: “’When You Play with Fire, You Get Burned:’ The Painful Pleasure of Homoerotic Desire in Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks”
• Sohini Chakraborty: "Tangled Pleasures: A Look into the Shifting Artistic Trajectory of Shibari"
• Xan Smith: "Studying Genderqueer Avatars"
• Narmeen Ijaz: "Beyond the Veil: Muslin Women Filmmakers Using Documentary to Make Visible the Invisible"

3:30 – 5 p.m.

Navigating the News and Information Landscape in Africa

Moderated by: Haley Pierce

• Jim Ochieng, Kevin Mudavadi, and Dr. Betsi Grabe: "Mitigating Information Insecurity: An African Perspective on Satisfaction with Democracy"
• Harriet Ayiku: "An Analysis of Social Media Discourse Regarding Bullying Dynamics on Big Brother Naija All-Stars Season"
• Caroline Obuya: "Media Representations and Framing of Single Use Plastic Bags Focusing on Kenya”