ICA 2025 Pre-conferences

Denver, US

Pop Culture Goes to War: Exploring the Role of Popular Culture in Contemporary Conflicts

Time: June 11, 2025, Denver, US

Division Affiliation: Popular Media & Culture, Public Diplomacy Interest Group

The voice of Luke Skywalker in air raid alerts in Ukraine, the Joker taking to the streets of Santiago de Chile, the characters of TV series ‘Line of Duty’ grilling former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. From wars to protests to political scandals, there is no doubt that popular culture has played a crucial role in recent national, international and transnational conflicts. States, diplomats, civil society groups and connected publics often invoke popular culture to rally support, shape public agendas, raise money to fund wars and legitimize state and non-state violence through superhero mythology. Pop culture refences are also used by protest movements around the globe as well as populist political movements.

This one-day ICA 2025 pre-conference – co-organized by the Popular Media and Culture Division and the Public Diplomacy Interest Group – seeks to bring together scholars from diverse fields to unearth when, how and to what effect popular culture is invoked in conflicts, be it war, protests, political crises or party clashes.

Eight decades ago, Disney characters and DC superheroes were depicted as fighting against the Nazis during WW2. This pre-conference aims to examine whether one can draw a straight line from those earlier articulations of popular culture and conflict to more contemporary ones, or, on the contrary, whether there are different expressions and forces at play today.

We invite papers dealing with the topic of popular culture in contemporary conflicts and politics. Papers can refer to some of the topics below, but are by no means limited to them:

  • ·        The use of popular culture characters – superheroes, movie villains, video game characters, etc. – in representations of contemporary conflicts.

  • ·         The role of memes in state and non-state digital communications

  • ·         Popular culture as a tool of legitimizing state, non-state, and/or political violence

  • ·         Theoretical reflections on how popular culture shapes or is shaped by crises and conflicts

  • ·         Uses of popular culture within repertoires of contention

  • ·         Links between popular culture, AI, conflict and disruption

  • ·         Use of humor or pop culture in national and/or transnational protest movements

  • ·         The potential negative impacts of merging pop culture with violent conflicts

  • ·         Any other topics related to the main theme of the pre-conference

 

Notably, the pre-conference will include two prizes:

·         A best paper award for a faculty paper

·         A best paper award for a student-authored paper

The two best papers will be considered for publication in the journal which is sponsoring the pre-conference.

The pre-conference will be hosted by the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies and the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denver. The conference organizers are Dr. Ilan Manor (Ben Gurion University) and Dr. César Jiménez-Martínez (London School of Economics and Political Science). Special thanks to Dr. Nadia Kaneva (University of Denver) for assisting with the logistics of hosting the event.

Abstracts of up to 800 words should be sent to Ilan Manor (manor.ilan@gmail.com) and César Jiménez-Martínez  (C.A.Jimenez@lse.ac.uk)  by  1st November 2024. Submitters are required to state whether their paper is student-authored or student-led. Abstracts should include theoretical contributions, methodologies employed and initial conclusions. Submissions should include the name, title, and affiliation of all contributing authors. Acceptance emails will be sent out in December 2024 (details to follow).