Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication, and Transformation
The 2026 central theme addresses the complexities of contemporary media systems in a polarised and interconnected world. By interrogating the tensions between centrality and marginality—whether geographical, cultural, political, or conceptual—this theme aligns with IAMCR’s commitment to fostering critical and inclusive dialogues across diverse perspectives. Hosting the conference in Galway, a city renowned for its cultural hybridity, creative legacy, and postcolonial identity, underscores the unique positioning of Ireland as a site of intersecting narratives.
Participants are encouraged to explore how marginality and global interconnection shape media and communication systems. The theme seeks to generate dialogue on the ways media navigate and challenge boundaries, both geographical and conceptual, in an era of rapid global transformation.
By emphasising intersections between the global and the local, IAMCR 2026 will provide a platform for reimagining media’s role in addressing critical challenges such as climate change, migration, representation, and digital inequalities. Building on the University’s role as an Ambassador for the Sustainable Development Goals, IAMCR 2026 will explicitly address the crucial role of media in fostering sustainable development.
The inequalities and imbalances shaping global media landscapes require urgent attention. Peripheries, conceptualised as geographic, economic, cultural, or political margins, are often sites of resistance, creativity, and innovation. Drawing on foundational theories of marginality and hybridity (e.g., Appadurai, Tufekci, Mouffe, Kraidy, Nederveen Pieterse), this theme particularly invites insights from decolonial, feminist, and Global South scholars. These perspectives reveal how marginalised spaces function as crucibles of innovation and resistance, challenging dominant global media narratives and advancing alternative frameworks for power, identity, and community.
However, not all groups at the margins seek to resist the centre; some actively pursue alignment with established centres of power, often in efforts to secure their own inclusion. This ambivalence can generate friction and tension, as different actors navigate between adaptation and opposition in pursuit of legitimacy and recognition.
Equally, what was once peripheral can become central—and we may be witnessing such global realignments today, with profound implications for how both media and resistance might evolve in the near future. There is an inherent uncertainty, then, in what constitutes the periphery and how these terrains can shift, sometimes rapidly and dramatically.
IAMCR 2026 will continue the Association’s tradition of fostering dialogue across borders, disciplines, and perspectives to advance critical understanding of media and communication in our changing world.
