International Workshop · November 12–13, 2026
Who is "everyone"?
Analyzing media practices of (national) belonging
- Date
- November 12–13, 2026
Thu 9:00–18:00 · Fri 9:30–16:30 - Venue
- Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien
Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Vienna · Flux 2 - Convened by
- Birgit Haberpeuntner
Primarily English · two talks in German (★)
Modern mass media address everyone and each individual at once. Taking Brecht's question of who counts as "everyone" as its starting point, this workshop examines how media practices produce, negotiate, and delimit belonging. At its center stands nationhood, which continues to function as a powerful category of social organization and collective subjectivation, even though its disappearance in globalized media environments has been proclaimed for decades. At the same time, the workshop asks about emergent or alternative forms of collectivization beyond national framings. Scholars from media culture studies, communication studies, sociology, history, film studies, and musicology bring their methods into dialogue.
Day 1 — Thursday, November 12
"Who is 'everyone'?" – Questions, Concept, Aims
Panel 1 · Chaired by Sabina Mihelj
Everyday & Digital Practices of National Belonging
- (K)Einheit verhandeln? The (de)construction of German unity — Annika Werner
- "That's exactly how we do it, too": Digital-ethnographic approaches to the performance of community — Jana Stöxen
- Who Counts as "Us"? DeepSeek, AI Nationalism, and National Belonging in China — Dechun Zhang & Yuxi Huang
- Indian Elections in the gaze of Google — Vihang Jumle
Panel 2 · Chaired by Birgit Haberpeuntner
Archives, Infrastructures, Networks
- Paratactics Against "Methodological Nationalism" — Philip Widmann
- Internationality through Categorization: Media Practices of Belonging in Infermental (1982–1991) — András Keskeny ★
- From 'all' to 'us': Alternative News Agencies and the Shift in Global Narratives — Leonie Wolters
Panel 3 · Chaired by Stefan Benedik
Imaging Unity: Gender, Authoritarian Visual Orders, and Their Afterlives
- The Iconization of a 'We': National Public Sphere and the Female Body as an Image of Pseudo-Unity — Sahar Daryab ★
- Staged Belonging: Heimat, Gender, and National Community in Austrofascist Media Policy — Christina Wieder
- All'armi, siam fascisti – The Question of Community in Antifascist Italian Film — Naemi Haar
Method Café
Three small groups, mixed across panels, work through guiding questions. Brief summaries by the group hosts.
Day 1 Response
Sabina Mihelj and Michael Skey follow up on all three panels and the Method Café in a synthesizing response before the room opens up.
Guided Tour: House of Austrian History (hdgö)
By Stefan Benedik, Head of Public History and Deputy Director. Please register!
Day 2 — Friday, November 13
Panel 4 · Chaired by Elias Berner
Felt Belonging: Frontal Images, Pop Music, and Ancient Landscapes
- All in the Face: Frontality, Belonging and the Control Image — Sebastian Lederle
- Russia's Pop Music Propaganda Since the Beginning of the War in Ukraine — Johann Pibert
- Driving the ancient landscape: Encountering the homeland's roots in West Germany and the UK (1950–1975) — Hilbrand Wouters
Panel 5 · Chaired by Michael Skey
Nationhood in Emergent Media: Generated, Played, Lived
- Life in Platform Nations: Exploring Citizen Engagement with Digital Sovereignty — César Jiménez-Martínez (with Sabina Mihelj)
- Hallucinating the nation: A comparative multi-modal analysis of genAI's visual regimes of representation — Delia Dumitrica (with Maria Avraamidou)
- Gaming the Nation: Video Games as Possibility Spaces for National Identity Formation — Rachel van der Merwe
Blind Spot: Nation?
Sabina Mihelj, Michael Skey, Maja Figge & Leonie Kapfer in conversation. Short position statements on the role of "nation" as an analytic category, then open debate.
Who is 'everyone'? Revisited
Open closing discussion, informed by two days of case studies.
Wrap-Up, Publication Opportunity, Next Steps
★ Talk given in German; English slides and an English abstract are provided.
This workshop is part of the research project The Remediation of Nation and is funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) through its APART-GSK programme.