Porto Alegre: Drafts Minutes General Assembly

Porto Alegre, July 30, 2004

The president opened the General Assembly at 9:15 am and noted that the assembly was not quoral. The agenda was approved

 

1.

Minutes of the General Assembly, Barcelona, July 26, 2003

The minutes were approved..

 

2.

Business arising from the minutes

The General Assembly approved the decision by the International Council to use postal voting for the seats in the International Council this time but also approved the proposal from Maarek that the postal voting system should be reconsidered for future elections.

 

3.

Reports

The reports from the president, the secretary general, the deputy secretary general and the vice presidents were all taken as read and conferred to the Executive Board and the International Council for considerations.
The treasurer, in her report, presented the unaudited interim financial statements as at May 31, 2004 showing an excess of expenditures ( $ 47,883)over revenues on $ 4,318 leaving an accumulated surplus on $ 90,309.

The treasurer, underlining that this was her last report before leaving office, suggested that IAMCR should develop a 10 year planning to becoming a sustainable multicultural organisation, and that a budget committee should be implemented amongst others to look into investing the surplus in the most profitable and secure way.

The report was approved, which was also her proposal that the coming budget should be solely one line describing an expected income on $ 47,000 annually for the Executive Board to break down. Finally the treasurer conveyed her gratitude to UNESCO for supporting the Porto Alegre conference with $ 10,000 and for the extraordinary contribution to the Schiller´s Fund from University of Texas at Austin.
With background in the tellers committees counting of the votes, and the endorsement of the General Assembly of electing César Bolano as treasurer, the result was as following:

    Executive Board :
    President: Robin Mansell
    Secretary General: Ole Prehn
    Treasurer: César Bolano
    Vice president: Divina Fau-Meigs
    Vice president: Annabelle Sreberny

    Elected members of the International Council :
    Andrew Calabrese
    Dipak De
    Marjan de Bruin
    John Downing
    Sophia Kaitazi-Whitlock
    Viginia Nightingale
    Kaarle Nordenstreng
    Claudia Padovani
    Marc Raboy
    John Sinclair
    Daya Thussu
    Thomas Tufte
    Elena Vartonova
    Georgette Wang
    Jürgen Wilke

The Election Committee (Janet Wasko, Cees Hamelink, and Alina Bernstein) recommended that
1 ) There shall be no preferential voting in the future;
2 ) election procedures shall be printed and circulated in the newsletter, and
3 ) there shall be clear guidelines on membership eligibility.
Maarek moved that the General Assembly mandates the International Council to review the election procedures and submit a report before the next election takes place. This was approved.

 

4.

Approval of election of Section Heads

The elections were approved.

 

5.

Approval of new sections

The proposal of the Junior Scholars Network becoming a section was withdrawn and the previous arrangement making the network function as a quasi section was prolonged for the next two years.

 

6.

Proposed amendments to the statutes

Cees Hamelink and Kaarle Nordenstreng proposed that the statutes were amended in the following way:

    1) Article 1 (s1.1.) should be changed from “seeks to improve” into: “shall promote throughout the world media and communication research.”
    2) Article 2 should be changed in order: 2.1.1. to be present 2.1.4; 2.1.4. to be present 2.1.5; 2.1.5 to be present 2.1.1. and combining (a) and (b).

The proposal was approved.

 

7.

Proposed amendments to By-Laws /Standing Orders

The proposals forwarded by Philippe J. Maarek on behalf of the Legal Committee and proposals from the International Council´s meeting on July 25 were all approved.

 

8.

Approval of new members

The new members (including 21 applications submitted during the present conference) were approved.

 

9.

Report of the Porto Alegre conference

Jacques Wainberg briefly presented the report mentioning that 531 from 40 countries had participated, which was absolutely satisfying. Generally the conference had run smoothly although a few technical and administrative problems had emerged but had all been solved.
John Downing emphasised that it had been an embarrassing experience to observe that even section chairs had left sessions when not conducted in English. It was agreed to underline the fact that IAMCR has three equally official languages, which should be taken into account when approving papers and planning the sessions.

 

10.

Confirmation of forthcoming conferences

It was (formally) approved to have the 2005 conference in Taipei -originally scheduled for 2003 by postponed due to the SARS epidemic.
As there were two preliminary bids for the 2006 conference (St. Louis, USA and Cairo, Egypt), it was agreed that the two potential hosts should submit an elaborate proposal for the Executive Board to assess, whereafter a proposal should be sent to the International Council before the end of January.
The 2007 conference should, due to the 50th anniversary of the IAMCR be considered held in France, preferably in Paris.

 

11.

Motions from the floor

The following motion from Cees Hamelink and Marc Raboy was approved:

    In view of the active involvement of the IAMCR in the ongoing WSIS process, the General Assembly resolves to retain a task force on the WSIS, with the membership to be decided by the International Council. In the spirit of critical independent scholarship, the task force is to have the following mandate:

  • To contribute to the sharing of relevant information and documentation about the WSIS process with the broader academic community,
  • To facilitate the synthesizing of existing research on information society issues and feed this into the ongoing WSIS process,
  • To assist in the clarification of crucial concepts (such as information society, communication, knowledge society etc),
  • To assist in the development of effective and relevant alliances, and
  • To ensure effective representation of IAMCR in the WSIS process.

 

12.

Presentation of the Schiller Award

The award will not be offered in 2005. Annie Méar moved that the General Assembly thanked University of Texas for its donation to the fund.
The motion was approved.

 

13.

Recognition of honorary members and past president

Past presidents Manuel Parés I Maicas and Frank Morgan were appointed honorary members of the IAMCR.

 

14.

Before closing the General Assembly, Frank Morgan handed over the presidency to Robin Mansell.

 

The assembly closed at 12 am.