Dear colleaguue,
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in 2018 and to invite you to renew your membership now for 2019.
IAMCR and its members can be proud of our achievements over the past year.
Reimagining Sustainability: Communication and Media Research in a Changing World was the very timely theme of our conference in Eugene, Oregon. Attended by more than 900 scholars from 68 countries, it was an intense five days of panels, presentations and plenaries interspersed with good food and lively social events.
In 2018 IAMCR offered various grants and awards to encourage scholarship in the field and to support diversity at our conferences. These included the IAMCR Prize in Memory of Stuart Hall, the New Directions for Climate Communication Research Fellowship and the Urban Communication Research Grant as well as best paper awards for some of our sections and working groups. We were especially pleased to be able to offer seventeen travel grants to support the participation of young scholars from lower-income countries. Travel grants are primarily funded with members' contributions – 15% of your annual fees go to the travel grant fund. This year, the generous contributions of two anonymous donors allowed us to offer two special travel grants for young South Asian scholars. Please consider making a contribution to the travel grants or memorial grants when you renew. If every IAMCR member were to donate just $10, we would be able to offer an additional 14 grants.
The year was also active for our Clearinghouse for Public Statements, which intervened on IAMCR's behalf on a number of cases involving academic freedom and freedom of expression. Chaired by Prof. Robin Mansell (LSE, UK) the Clearinghouse issued statements about digital disinformation, or "fake news", in support of faculty members of the University of Colorado Boulder in their protest in support of independent media, underlining the importance of academic freedom, freedom of expression and media diversity in Venezuela, and condemning the Hungarian government's move to deny accreditation to Gender Studies programmes.
Our ongoing Palgrave/IAMCR series, saw the publication of “Networks, Movements and Technopolitics in Latin America: Critical Analysis and Current Challenges”, edited by Francisco Sierra and Tommaso Gravante, and Sandra Ristovska and Monroe Price’s, “Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice” was release in December. IAMCR members are eligible for a 35% discount on all books in the series. Go to the series website and use the code IAMCR35PM at checkout.
Some IAMCR sections and working groups are also involved in peer reviewed open access e-journals in their fields of interest. The Political Economy Section has the Political Economy of Communication and the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section is associated with the Journal of Alternative and Community Media. Other publication projects currently underway include a book being prepared for the Global Alliance for Media and Gender, and initiatives by the Visual Communication Working Group, the Media Education Research Section, the Communication Policy and Technology Section, the Comic Art Working Group.
IAMCR has also been active as head of the research agenda of the Global Alliance for Media and Gender (GAMAG) and we are founding members of a new Global Alliance for Social and Behaviour Change Communication. Our new Rural Communication Working Group has been established, bringing greater emphasis to an important but too often overlooked thematic area.
Of course the highlight for 2019 will be the conference in Madrid, Spain from 7-11 July. The conference theme is Communication, Technology and Human Dignity: Disputed Rights, Contested Truths. The calls for proposals have been circulated and details are posted on the conference website.
We have lots of other plans for the year but I want to remind you that all of these activities are only possible because of the support we receive from you and other IAMCR members. Membership fees provide us with the majority of our operating income and your ongoing support is vital to the continuing health of the organization.
I am writing to thank you for your support and to ask you to renew your membership now for 2018. To do so, just send a message to membership@iamcr.org and ask for a renewal link. That link will take you to your profile page where you can securely renew your membership and update your profile.
Thank you again for your continuing support of IAMCR -the leading worldwide professional organisation in the field of media and communication research. Your commitment is at the heart of everything we do.
Sincerely,
Janet Wasko
President, IAMCR