2007 ICA Convention May 24, 2007

The 57th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association:
Creating Communication: Content, Control, Critique
Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, CA
May 24-28, 2007

Throughout the five-day conference, an estimated 2,400 scholars will attend over 425 presentations representing the latest advances in the field of communication. The conference will be large, diverse, and high in quality across the board. The conference theme, “Creating Communication: Content, Control, Critique,” received a tremendous response. The conference will reflect both the transformations in mass mediated content and with the diversity of ways in which people participate in complex information and communication environments. To whet your appetite, here is an early look at just a few conference highlights:

• A special opening session on Thursday, Communication and Critique: Reflections On The Critical Role of Communication Scholarship will explore stimulating and diverse perspectives on the possibilities for critique in communication scholarship. An invited panel of speakers will ask, what constitutes critique in today's intellectual and political context? Are we all critical scholars, in one way or another, or is critique itself fading from our field? As societies become more complex, commercialised and globalised, and as traditional political divisions and familiar ethical values are uprooted or challenged, what critical standpoints, if any, would the panel make their priority for future research?

• What's So Significant About Social Networking? Web 2.0 and its Critical Potential, on Friday, is high on the public agenda right now. Indeed, from MySpace and YouTube to collective journalism and open-source software production, online social networks are transforming our lives. So, why is this significant about communication researchers? This panel will take a critical look at the changes under way, chaired by Fred Turner (author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture at Stanford U).

• Also on Friday, The Politics of Publishing: The Future Of Academic (Book) Publishing, focuses on the changing structures of the book publishing industry - its structures, institutions and powers. Its starting point is the irony that one of the only media industries in which academics have any direct involvement as active players is the publishing industry, and yet this is the one media industry about which academics know almost nothing.

• In News, Journalism And The Democratic Potential of Blogging: From
Antagonism To Synergy? on Sunday, four leading scholars will debate whether and how blogging, or citizen journalism, can develop into new informational and representational practices that advance our democracies. They’ll inquire into the democratic potential of the transformations of journalism(s) through a cross-fertilization of journalism with blogging. But the panel will also critically address the limitations and restrictions, the struggles and counter-strategies, which these democratic innovations face in taking on the more hegemonic articulations of journalist identities and the resulting practices.
Division-sponsored panels of particular interest include the Journalism Studies panel “Building core theories about the culture of journalism in an age of relentless change,” a Games Studies session exploring “Building core theories about the culture of journalism in an age of relentless change," and an Ethnicity and Race in Communication session “Connected Lives, Contested Identities: Delimiting Ethnic Communities through Global Media.” The division unit planners noted that their divisions’ Top Paper panels would be especially excellent this year.
An outstanding lineup of preconference workshops will address, “Methodologies of Comparative Media Research in a Global Sphere,” “Digital Storytelling,” “Making Communication Studies Matter,” “Mobile Communication: Bringing Us Together or Tearing Us Apart?,” “Setting the Agenda for Communication Research,” ‘Directions in Mediated Communication,” and “The Organizational Communication Division Doctoral Preconference.”

Other sessions of special interest to student members will include the annual Graduate Student Orientation and a Student Panel organized by ICA student Board members.
Our exhibit area will feature exhibit booths highlighting products, services and publishers important to communication research and action-packed with events including:

• Free Wireless Cyber Café (requires personal laptop)
• Plenary Interactive Paper Sessions with authors onsite.
• Message Board (available to all attendees throughout the exhibit hours)
• Book Signings

ICA’s local planning committee has arranged an amazing variety of activities to round out the conference experience. Our 2007 annual conference in San Francisco promises to be one of ICA’s best ever. Don’t miss it! The complete conference program will be posted on the ICA website in early March.

Official Website: http://www.icahdq.org