RESEARCH AGENDA

Within the CeMeSo research agenda both production and reception analyses are included, focusing on and (again) placing more emphasis on the audiences and their participation in the mediated public sphere. At the same time the political economy of the production (and reception) of media products (and more broadly speaking: cultural products) is included, thus offering another layer of
contextualisation. CeMeSo has three research units, which all operate at the intersection of culture, political/politics and economy.

1. Media, Culture, Industries and Policies Unit (MCIP)

The research unit on Media, Culture, Industries and Policy focuses on the institutional organization and configuration of media, cultural industries and arts policies. Research topics include public and private financing, production and distribution of media, culture and arts today and in the past. The theoretical approach of these topics associates with political economy and the production of culture paradigm. Recent research projects of the unit deal with an analysis of and policy recommendations for the Flemish cultural industries (more specifically the live entertainment industry), the role of business sponsorship and private funding of the arts in Flanders, the financing and institutional history of Belgian orchestra’s related to their artistic programming, the historical role of the national public broadcasting institute in the construction of the Flemish cultural identity in the early days of radio, and with an analysis of subsidy and artists policy in Flanders.

2. Children, Media and Culture Unit (CMC)

The research unit on Children, Media and Culture focalizes on the cultural, social and political-economical aspects of children's engagements with media and culture. Defined in a broad sense, media and culture refer to various cultural objects, cultural practices, environments of symbolic interchange and spheres of cultural production related to children's life-world.
Past and present-day projects of the unit deal with the construction and representation of childhood in social discourses, childhood and health discourses, media literacy and education, internet and children, children's cultural industry, and children's reading cultures.

3. MeDeDis Unit

The research unit on Media, Democracy and Discourse deploys discursive and constructivist frameworks to the critical study of the political, the democratic, the ideological, and the cultural, within the field of mediated communication. Through a paradigm that is related to Cultural Studies, the construction and maintenance of power relationships within society are analyzed, providing support to the further democratization of democracy. Within the unit, the political and democratic are defined in a broad sense, as dimensions that pervade the social, reach beyond the realm of institutionalized politics and intersect with the ideological and the cultural. Past and present-day projects of the unit focus on journalistic identity, alternative and community media, ordinary people and participation, populism and the extreme-right, and health rights and euthanasia.