The international conference “Platforms and Uses: Cinema, Television, Video Games, and Digital Creation” will take place over three days, from November 2 to 4, at the Crossroads of Arts and Sciences at UdeM. It will feature 10 interdisciplinary panels bringing together 50 established researchers and PhD candidates.

Both in terms of reception and creation, it is clear that practices are being reconfigured by digital platforms. The logic of “coopetition” (Smyrnaios & Rebillard, 2019) at play between them, as well as their tendency, often abusive, to see themselves as neutral intermediaries (Poell, Nieborg, Duffy, 2019), are all indicators of a burgeoning research field. In this context, ethical, communicational, and semiotic questions arise. Conversational practices of imagery seem to be evolving toward a more collective future: content creators, consumers, and users express themselves in a polyphonic framework. The networking of these different voices is primarily facilitated by platforms, tasked with organizing and bringing together opinions, and communities of meaning and practices.

The symposium proposes three thematic axes that examine different types of uses and experiences:

Axis 1—Platforms and Traditional Media

The goal of this premier axis is to examine the links between the platforms and the traditional audiovisual media (television, cinema, video games), to reexamine their history, and to study platforms’ industrial dimension and their cultures of production.

Axis 2—Alternative Models and Activist Uses of Platforms

A small number of large groups own the platforms for broadcasting and exchanging cultural content, especially in the West. Their influence on usages leads to questioning the more or less restrictive framework they can impose on creators and users. More generally, this axis will aim to steer reflection toward marginal and committed uses of broadcast and communication platforms.

Axis 3—Spectatorial Practices in the Era of Platform Fandomization

Platforms act as a nexus of viewers’ activity; the talks will therefore focus on fan practices, as well as on the specificities of production encouraged by the formats and functionalities offered by the contemporary landscape.