Last year in May, I attended ‘Holding Things in Common’ at Birkbeck College, University of London. It was a really thought provoking conference in which postgraduates and early career researchers discussed the compelling idea of 'things in common' - based around everyday things and objects which have special or associated meaning. Today longer versions of these papers were made available here http://dandelionjournal.org/index.php/dandelion/issue/view/12/showToc by Dandelion

Information is disseminated in extreme volumes through the media. Through the radio, for example, it is a common event to passively listen to voices emotively speak of war through rhetoric that conveys a representative truth buried in sensationalism. Computer screens, televisions screens – and even the tiny faces of mobile phone screens – stream footage, present still images, and offer ‘experience’ of the front line through the gaze of cameramen and news correspondents. In th