Communication Policy and Technology Section
The IAMCR Communication Policy and Technology Section will run elections during its business meeting at IAMCR 2019 in Madrid (Tues at 14.00, venue TBC).
Our chair is stepping down and the current vice-chairs Francesca and Julia are running for the position of co-chairs.
We are also looking for two vice-chairs to support the work of the chairs.
The Section seeks applications for the positions of two vice-chairs. Nominations are also welcome for the co-chair positions. In the interest of creating a wider representation in the section leadership, we encourage candidates based outside of Europe to apply. In addition, the section strongly encourages members from the Global South to apply for the position.
Any IAMCR member who would like to serve as a vice-chair must submit their name and institutional position, a statement of no more than 500 words (e.g. a bio and motivation statement), to the current officers (see contact details below) with a copy to IAMCR General Secretary Gerard Goggin gerard.goggin@sydney.edu.au and to the IAMCR secretariat membership@iamcr.org, by 14 June 2019.
Please note these statements will be published on the IAMCR website. The election itself will take place in person at the business meeting in Madrid. The presence of all candidates running for chair or vice-chair at this meeting is not mandatory.
Section officers must be current IAMCR members, either directly or through an IAMCR institutional member who has listed them among its IAMCR representatives, and they must be members of the CPT Section.
Feel free to contact the chairs informally to discuss the roles.
Aphra Kerr – (Aphra.kerr@mu.ie)
Francesca Musiani – (francesca.musiani@cnrs.fr)
Julia Pohle – (julia.pohle@wzb.eu)
Candidates and statements
For Co-Chair:
- Francesca Musiani (Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research)
- Julia Pohle (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
For Vice-Chair:
- Jeremy Shtern (Ryerson University, Canada)
- Weiyu Zhang (National University of Singapore)
Statements of candidates for Co-Chair
Francesca Musiani (Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research)
Julia Pohle (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
Our names are Francesca Musiani and Julia Pohle. We are, respectively, an associate research professor at the Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a senior researcher within the research group "The Politics of Digitalization" at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
We take the liberty of submitting a joint statement given that we would like to put forward a joint candidacy for the positions as Co-Chairs for the Communication Policy and Technology Section. Over the past three years, we have served as Co-Vice-Chairs for this section and would like to continue this engagement and our collaboration as Co-Chairs, ideally with the support of two new Vice-Chairs. Both of us are IAMCR regulars and have a history of contributing to the organization of the association’s annual conferences. Francesca has rarely missed a conference since Mexico 2009, which took place at the end of her first year of PhD thesis; Julia decided to start a PhD after having organized an IAMCR meeting in 2007 as part of her previous job at UNESCO and has attended most annual conferences ever since. For many years now, we have been presenting papers, reviewing abstracts, and chairing and discussing panels, with a particular focus on Internet governance and policy. We have been recipients of the CPT Best Paper Award in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Francesca has also been Co-Chair of ESN from 2012 to 2016. In addition, during our term as CPT Vice-Chairs we – together with our current chair Aphra Kerr - not only took charge of the section’s scientific programme for the annual conferences but also organized and supported a number of activities in between conferences, such as regional conferences and seminars, and co-published a special issue featuring papers of the 2018 conference. As a result of these experiences, we are well acquainted with the organization’s inner workings, its strengths and its challenges.
Despite the fact that we have never worked at the same institution, we are frequent collaborators as well as friends, with relatively similar backgrounds. We are both multi-lingual, interdisciplinary Internet governance and communication policy scholars, Francesca with a specific focus on STS approaches and the role of technical architecture as a tool of governance, and Julia with a focus on policy-making processes, in particular regarding the role and evolution of discourses, actors and institutions. Francesca holds an MA in International Law from the UN University for Peace and a PhD in Socio-Economics of Innovation from MINES ParisTech. Julia holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Computer Science from Humboldt Universität Berlin and a PhD in Communication Studies from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Our research is frequently published in international peer-reviewed journal, and we are both actively involved in Internet policy debates at both the national and the international level.
If elected, we look forward to collaborating with the Vice-Chairs in order to continue the work of the previous CPT chairs, which has made CPT one of the most lively and diverse sections of IAMCR. We also look forward to shaping the ongoing discussions about the section’s perimeter and evolutions, as its theories and objects of reference evolve around it, and to fine-tune our appreciation of the work done by colleagues around the world. In 2020, we would like to organize a special session on the history of communication policy research at the occasion of the CPT section’s anniversary.
Thank you for considering our candidacy.
Statements of candidates for Vice-Chair
Jeremy Shtern (Ryerson University, Canada)
My name is Jeremy Shtern, and I am associate professor in the School of Creative Industries and the graduate program director of the York/Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture at Ryerson University, in Toronto Canada. I have been an IAMCR member and CP & T contributor since 2005 and have served in various leadership/administrative capacities within IAMCR, including: The President’s Committee on Conference Fees, the Elections Committee and others. I previously served on the executive board of the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) and on review juries for SSHRC, FRQSC, the Open Society Foundation and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and have peer-reviewed for leading journals and publishers.
My research and teaching focuses on transformations in the structure and governance of communication industries and creative work as they reorganize around globalization and digital technologies. I hold an MA in New Media, Information and Society from The London School of Economics and Political Science and a PhD in Communication from Université de Montréal. I am grateful to the immense contributions that Aphra, Francesca and Julia have made to CP & T and look forward to continuing this work and supporting their vision to maintain CP & T as one of the most lively and diverse sections in IAMCR.
Weiyu Zhang (National University of Singapore)
Weiyu Zhang is Associate Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on civic engagement and ICTs, with an emphasis on Asia. She is the author of the book “The Internet and New Social Formation in China: Fandom Publics in the Making” (Routledge, 2016). Her published articles have appeared in Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, Communication Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Information, Communication, & Society, International Communication Gazette, Computers & Education, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and many others. Her current project is to develop and examine an online platform for citizen deliberation.
Weiyu has been actively involved in various service roles in the international communication scholar community. She is currently Associate Editor of Annals of the International Communication Association and International Communication Gazette. She is also an editorial board member for Media Asia, Journal of Public Deliberation, and the Journal of Information Society (published in Chinese language). She has been the key organizer of Chinese Internet Research Conference 2019, and a few pre- or post-conferences for International Communication Association. She has served as a secretary to the Popular Communication Division of International Communication Association during 2017-2019.
Weiyu has been participating in IAMCR conferences since 2011. One of the highlights of her IAMCR experience was to organize a panel on youth activism, which includes first-hand ethnographic works from four Southern countries, namely, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Weiyu is committed to follow IAMCR’s motto of promoting global inclusiveness and further enhance the visibility of the communication scholarship and phenomena from the global South. Her long term research interest in communication technology allows her to fit into the section’s missions.