POL Newsletter May 2022

Dear Members of the Political Communication Section of the IAMCR. 

We hope this newsletter finds you well. 

About the newsletter

This newsletter is the group's first and our goal is to send out information that is relevant to our group regularly in the future. This letter coupled with our FB group (Political Communication, IAMCR) will be our primary source of information ahead.

Dr. Anwesha Chakraborty will be responsible for the newsletter in consultation with the section's chairs. We would like to warmly welcome her as the editor of our newsletter, and we thank her for accepting this assignment to work with this important communication channel between the section and our members. 

During this spring and early summer, we will primarily share relevant information for the online conference this summer. But other relevant material will also be shared here. To have as interesting newsletters as possible, we need the help of our community: Please send us interesting calls for papers or chapters, job positions, information on upcoming conferences, or your recent publications (peer-reviewed papers and books of established publication houses).

Online conference information 

We begin with some information about the abstracts that have been received and some statistics. The Political Communication section received 95 abstracts for the 2022 Beijing Conference. These abstracts have then been reviewed by 2 or more senior reviewers from different universities and countries around the world.  Of these, 66 were accepted and we have contributions from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. We are happy to have you as presenters at this year's conference!

For the 2022 conference, we encourage all our members, particularly emerging scholars, to serve as panel chairs. IAMCR Political Communication Research Section also offers certificates for chairs. Please do not hesitate to contact us and write one of our section chairs an e-mail (see contact details below).

Procedure information

Dear participants,

Congratulations for been accepted to present your paper in our Section. For you to maximize your experience, we would like to remind you of the following procedures:

1. We will organize live interactive forums where participants can present their works and discuss them with peers around the world. This is an optional activity that we think will make the most out of your participation in the Conference. The specific platform used for that and its active features are chosen by the IAMCR Central Committee, which will send instructions in due time.

We are also open for you to express interest in volunteering for a chair position on a panel (either for live interactive forums or asynchronous OCP papers, see below). Please do not hesitate to contact us and write one of our section chairs an e-mail.

2. Your full papers should be uploaded at https://iamcr.org/beijing2022/register-submit by 7 June, 2022. This is intended so the rest of your peers can read them and be prepared for better discussion.

3. The OCP format is meant to be an asynchronous mode of comment and constructive critique of peers' work. As a rule of thumb, if you have submitted at least one paper, you should reciprocate by commenting on one paper from another colleague. The Chair of each OCP panel will send you a suggested schedule for this task when the panels are final.

4. Early on the week of the conference, the Section will organize a business meeting, where we will present you an agenda of activities for the community, invite you to join some initiatives, and get your feedback and ideas. We will also allocate time for social interaction and networking via a special application. This activity will be scheduled in the coming weeks.

In the next newsletter, you will get more detailed information about the conference program as well as an introduction to our prestigious keynote speaker.

We look forward to seeing you at the Conference!

POL Section Head
Marie Grusell (marie.grusell@jmg.gu.se)
André Haller (andre.haller@fh-kufstein.ac.at)
Martín Echeverría (echevemartin@yahoo.com.mx)
Sara Garcia Santamaria (santamas@uji.es)