Barcelona in November

So it looks like I’ll be headed to Barcelona this November. My proposal for ECREA 2008 got accepted and now I will go shoulder-to-shoulder with communication “specialists studying the role of communications and media in society, with a special emphasis on European challenges.” C’est le w00t, bonhomme.

The proposal reads:

Despite existing skepticism towards pop culture as a venue for democratic intercourse, empirical data on online technologies show an engaged constituency. In particular, the appropriation of technology plays a vital role in establishing new forms of political participation. The present study interrogates the character of contemporary media technologies as an emergent locale for communicative exchange. It will argue that video games present a versatile communicative form for players to create and exchange meaning. Gamers enter into a dialogue through playing each other’s modifications (mods) of an original game’s software. By collaborating on these mods, players effectively exchange alternative, and competing, worldviews. The emergent process, tentatively labeled discursive game play, forms a central element of my current dissertation research at Columbia University. What follows is a preliminary account of my findings.

I’ll save you the rest. But what I’m really interested in (read: my primary motivation) is the prospect of chilling with mon frère, Le Bastian. A little waffling, some chillaxing and lots of, ehm, culturally relevant trips. C’est le w00t plus cool, mes gens.