Call for Papers: The Point is to Change It: Media Democracy and Democratic Media in Action: UDC/Project Censored Conference in San Francisco November 1-3, 2013. We invite submissions for the Union for Democratic Communication and Project Censored conference November 1-3, 2013 at the University of San Francisco, where we have found affordable accommodations for your stay. Submission deadline is June 1, 2013. With increasingly precarious employment, accelerating ecological degradation, gulfs between the 1% and the 99%, as well as dramatic booms and busts, we need a global media responsive to the 99%. We need rigorous critique of corporate media’s commodification of social life. We need critique of all forms of censorship, systematic information exclusion, and propaganda. We need grounded ideas for democratizing media in all formats and genres. We need media justice. To revitalize and retool media democracy in today’s media landscape, the Union for Democratic Communications (UDC) and Project Censored are teaming up for our 2013 conference. UDC, which held its first conference in 1981, has worked to overcome concentrated political-economic power in order to contribute to a world based on economic justice, equality, and peace. Project Censored, founded in 1976, has made its mission to expose and counteract modern-day censorship. Together, UDC and Project Censored hope to contribute to a more democratic society and world by sharing our scholarly and activist projects. We invite research, activist & artistic proposals from critical perspectives interrogating media institutions and technologies, political/economic structures, media practices, cultural practices & audiences; we invite studies in critical pedagogy and research on media activism. Proposals that address pro-democratic media reform or outline efforts to expand citizen access to media are particularly welcome. We welcome the following proposals emailed to udcpc2013@gmail.com by June 1, 2013: 1. 500-word abstracts that describe the purpose and significance of your research and/or activist projects, especially those that address the issues outlined in the call. 2. Full papers (up to 25 pages including references) from graduate and undergraduate students. The top student paper will be considered for the Top Student Paper Award. Student papers should be indicated as such and also contain a 500-word abstract. 3. Presentations of Media Literacy projects, including films and multimedia related to the call. 4. Finally, we welcome proposals for pre-constituted panels. Please include 500-word abstracts for each participant (4-5 participants) and one panel rationale of 200-350 words that articulates the connections between the projects and the overall significance of the panel. For more information: http://www.democraticcommunications.net/conference/udc-2013 Best regards, Matthew Crain Ph.D. Candidate Institute of Communications Research University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign matthewcrain.info