IAMCR - International Association for Media and Communication Research

IAMCR is offering 6 travel grants worth US$2,000 each to offset the cost of participating in the 2010 conference in Braga, Portugal.

The grants are available to current IAMCR members residing in low income countries (see IAMCR's definition of low income countries) who have an abstract accepted for the conference (announcement of acceptances will be made by March 15). Three of the grants are reserved for members from Latin America.

In October 2009, IAMCR was invited to participate in a broad-based survey on the impact of the global crises on civil society organizations. The results of the survey are now available online.

The evaluation of the responses to the survey shows that although some civil society organization (CSOs) have seen increased funding, overall the survey finds a worsening financial situation for CSOs in the period 2008-2009.

The Executive Board and International Council of IAMCR have enthusiastically endorsed Istanbul as the site for IAMCR's conference in July 2011. The local organising committee is headed by Deniz Beyrakdar of Kadir Has University, Istanbul, and includes representatives from a number of Turkish universities.

The conference theme will be "Cities, Connectivity and Creativity". The Turkish organising committee will make a presentation about the university venue, Istanbul and the conference theme at our conference in Braga, Portugal 18-22 July 2010.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), IAMCR joins UNESCO and other international and regional media organizations to launch the annual Women Make the News (WMN) initiative.

Under the theme, “Towards Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media: Best practices for gender perspective in media and in media content”, WMN 2010 is intended to initiate a global exchange on the importance and the need for gender sensitive indicators for media organizations.

IAMCR is pleased to announce that UNESCO has agreed to provide US$12,500 to support the participation of researchers from Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States at IAMCR's 2010 conference in Braga, Portugal.

UNESCO's support will provide for up to five travel grants of $2,500 for scholars residing in low-income countries who prepare a paper for one of the sections or working groups listed below.

Preparations continue for IAMCR's 2010 Conference to be held in Braga, Portugal, from 18-22 July 2010.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has passed. Two thousand abstracts were submitted and the review process is now taking place. Announcement of acceptances will be made on March 15 and full papers are due on April 30.

Registration is now open on the conference website. Please note, there are three registration phases. Register before 30 April to qualify for a €150 discount or before 25 June to qualify for a discount of €50.

Engaging with Social and Cultural Diversity
L. Lagerwerf, H. Boer & H. Wasserman (eds.)

New book by IAMCR members

This book presents studies on health communication, in particular HIV/AIDS communication, in southern Africa, from a variety of scientific perspectives. It brings together approaches from usually divergent areas such as psychology, the analysis of social networks, studies of mass communication and the analysis of interpersonal communication, language and document design.

Tim Dwyer

Rapid changes in technology and the media industries have led to new modes of distributing and consuming information and entertainment across platforms and devices. It is now possible for newspapers to deliver breaking news by email alerts or RSS feeds, and for audiovisual content to be read, listened to or watched at a convenient time, often while on the move.

There is growing interest in the international and global governance of media and communication amongst scholars and policy makers, as well as civil society organizations and trans-national issue networks. At the same time Global Media Policy (GMP) as a field of research is under-theorized, not well defined in its boundaries and open to controversial interpretations regarding the main processes and actors involved.

In order to address such challenges, the Global Media Policy working group has been developing a collaborative project aimed at understanding the landscape of global media policy and governance processes. This project is conceived as a first step in the identification, investigation and critical reflection on the major trends and challenges that characterize contemporary media and communication governance processes in the global context.

Western Media in China, India, and Japan
Ulrike Rohn

What media content attracts audiences across cultures and what does not? What does the cross-cultural audience demand depend on? The author takes a new approach to understanding cultural barriers to the success of foreign media content by analyzing the entry strategies of Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, and Bertelsmann with regard to China, India, and Japan in terms of their respective localization efforts.