Media in a Scandalous Age
A BSA Sociology of Media Study Group Event
10 December 2025
Online
About the Event
A continuous process of ‘scandalisation’ is defining our modern times. This includes both an observed growth in media scandals alongside an argued reduction in these scandals’ overall potency and impacts (von Sikorski and Kubin 2022). Adapting, subsequently, are the factors that underpin the character and content of emerging scandals (Thompson 2000), including those of changing political norms and cultures (Hendrix and Haller 2023), changing media professional contexts and economics (Mancini 2018) and the recognised growth and use of media technologies (Zulli 2020). Some of these emerging scandals are developing beyond national borders (Tumber and Waisbord 2019), while others are reflecting particular national contexts and related cultural and historical complexities (Prusa 2024).
In recognising such developments, this event seeks to take stock of what we know about the functioning of the media in scandalous times. It aims to explore recent media scandals and observe the different forms they adopt, the media and its related affordances in which they appear, alongside the marked temporal process by which scandals develop. Analysed, also, will be the whistleblowers and interested actors that help to make visible various scandalous revelations. Acknowledged, in turn, will be the media practitioners - some traditional and some new - and their differentiated practices which define the process of producing media scandals from emerging revelations.
Finally, while recognising the activation events and scandal hype that appear in different media and across hybrid media systems, the event seeks to look at the impacts of mediated scandals, including their influence (or lack of) on the reputations of the people and institutions directly involved alongside the potential longer-term changes to relevant policy and governance.
Call for Papers
This FREE ONLINE event welcomes 20-minute papers that will explore the media in a scandalous age. Relevant themes will include, but will not be limited to, the following:
- New forms of media scandal and scandalisation
- Changing political contexts and media scandal
- Scandal and media instrumentalism
- Technologically-informed media scandals
- Whistleblowers, interested actors and media scandal
- Media practitioners, practices, and the process of scandal making
- Changing forms of media scandal content
- Scandal represented in hybrid media systems
- New activation events and scandal hype
- Scandal impacts (…on people, institutions, policy, and governance etc.,)
Abstract Submission
Please send 250 word abstracts, including name and institutional affiliation, for 20 minute papers to Julian Matthews. Submission deadline: 21 November 2025.
Registration
This event is free to attend but registration is required.