Geomedia 2025 International Conference

Call for papers

Transforming Passions

6th International Geomedia Conference, ��ý, Sweden, 17–19 September 2025

Passion is a multifaceted concept that encompasses not only joy and intense emotional investment but also pain and suffering. Passion’s significance in the realm of media, visual cultures and artistic practices serves as a driving force behind the relationship people develop with technologies, platforms, content, and forms of creation, as well as with places, territories and other spatial formations. The rise of digital media has amplified a cultural turn to passion, as individuals and communities increasingly pursue activities they love, often translating personal interests into online expressions, creative projects, and even careers. Likewise, new media platforms serve to foster and channel various forms of spatial attachments and engagements, ranging from local entrepreneurship to geo-political battles.

(Geo)media technologies facilitate such multifaceted passionate engagement. In neoliberal markets, passion is also commodified through the concept of passionate labor, where individuals are encouraged to transform their zeal for specific subjects into monetizable content or professional endeavors. This creates a dialectic tension, as the passion-driven work promoted by social media platforms often blurs the borders between leisure and labor. It also challenges longstanding geographies of work and gives rise to new spaces and mobilities at the intersection of leisure and labor (e.g., digital nomadism).

Moreover, the debates surrounding passion in media and visual cultures are not unidirectional; they are countered by forms of resistance that challenge dominant narratives of media-driven enthusiasm. These counter-passions critique the pressure to constantly access, engage, create, evaluate, and consume content, or places, pointing to the negative consequences of excessive digital immersion. Media’s role in shaping affective structures around passion thus reveals both the empowering and detrimental effects of intense emotional engagement.

The 6th International Geomedia Conference Transforming Passions marks the 10th anniversary of the Geomedia conference series and explores, among other dimensions: refocusing emotional energy to imagine alternative futures and push for systemic changes; questioning the role of media in relation to individuals’ and groups’ emotional investments into space and place; reorienting personal affective experiences into collective action; reevaluating the risks associated with commodified or exploited passion in digital labor; and redefining current understandings of passion into new forms that are artistic, social, political, or technologically mediated.

We welcome contributions that address issues of, but do not have to be limited to:

spaces and places of mediated intimacy and (com)passion
affective dimensions of digital (media) labor
passion in representations of space and place
feelings and experiences of connection / disconnection
passion’s states of being and modes of becoming
passions and desires of the self and their surroundings
(geo)media and love of place and/or environment
geopolitics and the mediation of affect
passion, media and territorialization
temporalities and proximities of passion
affective dimensions of mobility and tourism
(social) media and performance of love, hate, and everything in-between
solid and unstable forms of passion, passion and privilege, passion and glitches, failures and uncertainties
passion and the public sphere
transformative potential of passion’s fragilities and vulnerabilities
passion and its boundaries or excessiveness
environmental and sustainable passions
mediating emotions in times of political and social turmoil
the democratic role of passion
passion as a form of agency
passion as a concept and/or method in research and activism
cocreating passion in and through artistic practice
transmedia and transdisciplinary perspectives of passion

The International Geomedia Conference 2025 welcomes proposals from film, media and cultural studies, game studies, communication studies, journalism, media anthropology, human and cultural geography, urban studies, design, cultural and artistic practices and the arts.

The theme Transforming Passions will be addressed through invited keynote sessions, plenary panels and workshops, audiovisual screenings and conversations. Participants are encouraged to submit proposals for individual papers, artistic contributions, audiovisual essays, workshops or paper sessions addressing the conference theme.

Keynote speakers:

Confirmed speakers include

Paul C. Adams (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Mark Deuze (University of Amsterdam, NL)
Annette Hill (Jönköping University, SE)
Jyoti Mistry (University of Gothenburg, SE)
Kaarina Nikunen (Tampere University, FI)
Erika Polson (University of Denver, USA)
Jenny Sundén (Södertörn University, SE)

Abstract submissions:

The Geomedia Conference 2025 invites proposals for individual papers, thematic panels, audiovisual essays, workshops or paper sessions in English through the conference submission system opening in February 2025.

Each proposal should include the following information:

Title
Abstract
Presentation format
Biographical note of max. 100 words
3-5 keywords

Individual Paper proposals, Artistic Contribution proposal, Audiovisual Essay proposal: The authors submit abstracts of 250-300 words. Accepted papers are grouped by the organizers into sessions of 3-4 papers each according to thematic fitting.

Thematic Panel proposals: The panel chair submits a single pdf document proposal consisting of 3-4 individual paper abstracts of 200-250 words along with a general panel presentation of 200-250 words.

Workshop proposals: The workshop chair submits a single pdf document proposal consisting of individual workshop contribution abstracts of 200-250 words each, if applicable, along with a general workshop presentation of 250-300 words.

Publication opportunities: Selected papers and contributions from the conference may be considered for publication in an edited volume and/or a special journal issue.

Conference timeline:

February 2025: Submission system opens for proposals for individual papers, thematic panels, audiovisual essays, workshops or paper sessions

14 April 2025: Submission system closes for proposals for individual papers, thematic panels, audiovisual essays, workshops or paper sessions

26 May 2025: Notes of acceptance are out and registration opens

More information, including conference fee and practical information, will be added to the conference website continuously.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us.

Mail

The conference is organized by the Centre for Geomedia Studies at ��ý, Sweden.
There will also be events taking place across the city of ��ý.

More about Centre for Geomedia Studies

For the organizers at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication,
��ý, Sweden:

Georgia Aitaki, Conference Director
Doris Posch, Conference Co-Director
André Jansson, Director of the Centre for Geomedia Studies
Richard Ek, Head of Scientific Committee

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