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Shaping Democratic Spaces: Security and TV Series

Project description

Keeping societies safe, as seen on TV

Scholars of moral philosophy, film studies, digital media and cultural data, sociology, law and political science will come together to explore a corpus of TV security series. Their objective is to understand if and how TV series about democracies facing terrorist threats play a role in building the awareness necessary for the safety of individuals and societies. Can these series be used as new resources for the education of their audiences? Can they serve as a resource for public policies and democratic conversation? To answer these questions, the ERC-funded DEMOSERIES project will focus on the security TV series genre represented by 24 (Fox, 2001 2010; 2014), Homeland (Showtime, 2011-…), MI-5[Spooks] (BBC 1 & 3, 2002-2011) and Hatufim (Aroutz 2, 2010-2012).

Objective

In France, the UK, Germany, the US, and Israel, a growing number of films and television series are set ‘behind the scenes’ of democratic regimes faced with terrorist threats. These works reveal a moral state of the world. They may be analysed as ‘mirrors’ of society, or as ideological tools. But they can also be understood as new resources for the education, creativity, and perfectibility of their audiences; as the emergence of a form of ‘soft power’ that can serve as a resource for public policies and democratic conversation.
Because of their format (weekly/seasonal regularity, home viewing) and the participatory qualities of the Internet (tweeting, sharing, liking, chat forums), series allow for a new form of education by expressing complex issues through narrative and characters.
As a result, TV series are increasingly recognised in current research. However, their aesthetic potential for visualising ethical issues and their capacity at enabling a democratic empowerment of viewers has not yet been analysed ; nor their power for confronting cultural and social upheavals underway, and developing a collective inquiry into democratic values and human security.
DEMOSERIES brings together a team of scholars of moral philosophy, film studies, digital media and cultural data, sociology, law and political science, to explore a corpus of TV ‘security series’ from conception to reception. Doing so requires a particularist ethics based on attention to multi-faceted situations, paired with qualitative methods (interviews with security experts, showrunners, viewers; analyses of images, tropes, words; ethnography of reception) and quantitative methods (tweets and web analytics).
By elucidating how these series are conceived by their creators and audiences, DEMOSERIES thus aims to understand if and how they might play a crucial role in building the awareness necessary for the safety of individuals and societies, and in creating shared and shareable values in the EU and beyond.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2018-ADG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITE PARIS I PANTHEON-SORBONNE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 216 375,00
Address
Place du Pantheon 12
75231 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 216 375,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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