This message from IAMCR president, Janet Wasko, was recently sent to all IAMCR individual and institutional members. It highlights IAMCR's activities in 2017, presents plans for 2018, thanks members for their continuing support and invites them to renew their membership for 2018.
Dear IAMCR member,
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research and to invite you to renew your membership for 2018.
IAMCR and its members can be proud of our achievements over the past year.
Our conference in Cartagena attracted more than 1,400 scholars from more than 70 countries. It was an intense five days of panels, presentations and plenaries interspersed with lunches, social events and the opportunity to learn about the historic Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias.
The Cartagena conference also featured a number of pre-conferences, reflecting on topics ranging from communication and indigenous peoples, participatory advertising, foreign aid and media systems, and political communication in times of failed democratic expectations.
Once again, we offered various grants and awards to encourage scholarship in the field and to support diversity at our conferences. These included twenty travel grants, the Dallas Smythe Award, the New Directions for Climate Communication Research Fellowship and the Urban Communication Research Grant.
IAMCR has also been active as head of the research agenda of UNESCO’s Global Alliance for Media and Gender (GAMAG) and co-sponsored academic events in the USA, Norway, and Denmark.
We were also involved in several publishing ventures, including the ongoing Palgrave/IAMCR series, which saw the publication of two books: Health Communication in the Changing Media Landscape and Media Convergence and Deconvergence. Another title, Networks, Movements and Technopolitics in Latin America, is scheduled for publication in January 2018. 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. Ways of expanding the Association’s publishing portfolio are currently under active discussion.
In addition, sections and working groups edit 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 sections are currently planning a range of new publication initiatives.
Of course the highlight for 2018 will be the conference in Eugene, Oregon from 20-24 June. The conference theme is Reimagining Sustainability: Communication and Media Research in a Changing World. It will be IAMCR’s first conference in the United States and it has been noted that it may seem an unusual choice of venue, given recent developments. While the site was selected before Trump’s unexpected victory, our hosts at the University of Oregon are more convinced than ever of the urgent need to reimagine sustainability and the fundamental role that communication will play in securing that outcome. They point to Oregon’s history of commitment to sustainability and the environment and remind us that when the current US administration announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 195 other countries, Oregon, along with 23 US states and territories representing more than half of the country’s population, broke with the federal government and committed to supporting the agreement. The conference organisers are working with researchers, activists and grassroots organisations to showcase local efforts to reimagine sustainability and to promote dialogue and exchange with global media and communication scholars.
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.
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