The 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association May 21, 2008

Throughout the five-day conference, an estimated 2,200 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, "Communicating for Social Impact," received a tremendous response. The conference will reflect both the attention to the development and publicizing of communication research that assists different nations, NGOs, community organizations, and other in identifying and combating social problems, and addresses challenges to the meaningfulness of our work and its translation into venues where the people who need this research can access it. Rather than one or two major plenary sessions, this year’s conference will highlight three or four special sessions in each plenary time slot. Among those will be panels by ICA Fellows featuring the work of recently selected fellows.

Division-sponsored panels of particular interest include the ERIC’s panel "Changing Networks: New Methodologies in Media and Cultural Diversity Research" addressing the growing complexity in diasporic and migrant connections that are related to different appropriations and forms of engagement with space, political and geographical boundaries and technology, brings with it new methodological challenges.; and one of ICA’s newest special interest groups, Communication History’s panel "Communication and the Postwar Experience Abstract" exploring history as an enduring theme in communication research and will demonstrate that ‘history’ can mean many things in the study of communication.

An outstanding lineup of preconference workshops will address, "The Long History of New Media," "Mediating Global Citizenship," "What is an Organization? Materiality, Agency, and Discourse," "The Global and Globalizing Dimensions of Mobile Communication, "Remapping Public Media," "Communication and Social Change," "Analyzing Media Industries and Media Production," and "Bridging Scholar/Activist Divides in the Field of Communication."

Official Website: http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/2008/2008confinfo.asp