IAMCR - International Association for Media and Communication Research

The International Communication Section of the IAMCR invites submissions of abstracts for papers and panel proposals for the next annual IAMCR conference to be held from July 15-19, 2012 at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa.

The deadline for submissions is February 14, 2012. We request you to read this CFP in full, and note all details and requirements regarding submissions.

This year’s conference theme, South-North Conversations, prompts us to foreground unique communication opportunities, learn from creativity in the face of severe constraints, and celebrate achievements of the global South. It seeks to promote a South-North dialogue to enable innovative comparative approaches to media and communication systems, policies, technologies, cultures, networks, practices, and flows. Researchers, practitioners and scholars of development are invited to share their research, experiences and recommendations for negotiations between standardized approaches to communication and change typically attributed to the North, and the need for more contextualized approaches raised through encounters with the South.

The Section especially encourages papers involving players in the South; for example, research on and from:

• Advanced developing economies such as South Africa, Brazil, India and sub-Saharan power centres in East and West Africa,
• Continental Africa and South America, and Southeast Asia,
• Small Island Developing States (SIDS) ranging from Mauritius to Comoros in the Indian Ocean region, to Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti in the Caribbean region,
• Political units as yet under foreign rule, such as Reunion, Martinique or Guadeloupe, and
• Developing nations in the South Pacific region

The Section welcomes submissions on all areas of interest to the broad designator of international communication, and is especially interested in research on the following topics:

• Communication and humanitarian emergency relief,
• Media and communication in relation to internally displaced persons and refugees,
• Communication and conflict negotiation,
• Conflict and peace journalism,
• Fighting back: empowerment of the local, the regional and sustainable integration into the global,
• Mobile technology applications for development,
• Non-governmental and civil society organizations for communication and development,
• Local languages – a growth area in media in the north and south,
• Social media, advocacy and mobilization for popular uprisings, and
• Media, development, democracy

Preparation and submission of paper and panel abstracts

Please ensure that your abstract contains the following:

For individual papers

1. Title of the paper.
2. Author information: The name(s) of author(s) and title (professor, postdoctoral fellow, graduate student, etc.), institutional affiliation, e-mail address, postal, phone and fax information should be provided.
3. Length of abstract: 300 - 500 words.
4. Content: The section values diversity in perspectives and methods. For full-fledged studies, reviewers will look for a clear idea of the following: what is the topic and why is it important to know about the research (significance of the study), the main question or research problem addressed, some form of conceptual framework or theory that inspires the paper, methods used to answer the main questions posed, anticipated analysis, and expected outcomes. For literature reviews assessing the state of the art, and syntheses, some idea of framework, questions, methods and sources have to be addressed in the abstract, to help evaluate the submission.

For panel submissions

The panel chair must provide the following information in a single document for the OCS: (a) panel title (b) panel participants, titles, institutional affiliation (c) overarching panel rationale of about 300 words, (d) an abstract of about 300 words for each paper to be presented within the panel.

Mode of submission

All Abstracts should be submitted only via the central Open Conference System (OCS).

Number of submissions for the Section

Only one submission per author or co-author or panel chair or panel participant will be considered for review in the International Communication Section. Please note that in submitting the same or very similar abstract to more than one section or working group, the author risks being removed from the conference program. Duplicate or very similar abstracts submitted to other sections or working groups will not be considered for review by the International Communication Section.

Languages

Although IAMCR accepts presentations in its official languages of Spanish, English, and French, we encourage abstract submissions in English to facilitate timely completion of the reviews and selections for the conference.

Deadlines

The deadline for submission of abstracts is February 14, 2012.

All submissions must be uploaded to the OCS system. The Online Conference System opened on December 1, 2011, and will close on February 14, 2012.

Decisions on acceptance of abstracts will be communicated to individual applicants by their Section or Working Group Head no later than March 12, 2012

On the same day, March 12, 2012, conference registration will open for bookings by participants.

For those whose abstracts are accepted, full conference papers are to be submitted via the IAMCR OCS by June 10, 2011.

Information

For further information, please contact the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) or consult the Conference Organizers via the website at:

http://www.iamcr2012.ukzn.ac.za/

or by email at:

IAMCR2012 [at] ukzn.ac.za

Section contacts