Preconferences Focus on New Media, Mobile Communication, Asia, and Political Communication Online

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In each Newsletter leading up to the conference, we will highlight a few of the exciting preconferences that have been planned for Phoenix. This month, learn more about "New Media and Internet Communication and Communities in China";  "Mobile Communication, Community, and Locative Media Practices: From the Everyday to the Revolutionary ";  "New Media and Citizenship in Asia: Social Media, Politics, and Community-Building"; and "Political Communication in the Online World: Innovation in Theory and Research Designs."

New Media and Internet Communication and Communities in China

Time: Wednesday, 23 May 9:00 – 17:00
Location: Phoenix Sheraton Downtown Hotel
Limit: 100
Cost: $80.00 USD (Includes am and pm refreshment breaks, lunch, dinner)

Thirty years has passed since China started the reform and opening-up policy in 1978. As the largest developing country, China has made great achievements in economics, with the nominal GDP ranking the second largest in the world. Yet the political system reform and social management still face many problems. The growth of new communication technologies, especially the boom of internet, has made unprecedented changes to China’s traditional communication ecology, and consequentially caused changes in politics, economics, society, and culture etc. On the one hand, new media and internet accelerate the exposure of contradiction and conflicts in all sides. On the other hand, new technologies provide opportunities and practicability to solve these problems.

A crucial question is "How to study, comprehend and utilize the rules of new media and internet to maximize their positive roles and eradicate drawbacks?" Researchers in communication have the responsibility to find the answer and this is also a good chance to show talents. Against the background of globalization, China and the world can not be separated from each other. Therefore, the preconference opens a platform for researchers interested in New Media and Internet Communication and Communities in China. We cordially invite people from all over the world to share their findings, exchange insights, and make efforts to promote communication research.

Relevant information is provided below:

Registration fee: USD80 or RMB500 per person. It covers the costs for meeting rooms, forum materials, snacks and beverage, lunch and dinner.

Preconference Schedule (Wednesday, May 23, 2012)

Opening ceremony: 8:30-8:40
Keynote speeches: 8:40-10:10
Morning Tea break: 10:10-10:30
Parallel sessions A/B: 10:30-12:00
Lunch: 12:00-13:00
Parallel sessions C/D: 13:00-14:30
Afternoon Tea break: 14:30-15:00
Parallel sessions E/F: 15:00-16:30
Closing: 16:30-17:00
Dinner: 18:00-20:00

(An optional post-preconference tour of Grand Canyon will be organized on 24 May 2012. Interested attendees must register with ICA because they are making arrangements and calculating expenses. Others can explore the city themselves.)

Contact Information:
Contact person: Ms. Peng Yaya
Email: 2012gcforum@gmail.com
Phone: (86) 21-3420 5808
Fax: (86) 21-3420 5809
Address: School of Media and Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Rd., Shanghai 200240, P. R. China

Keynote Speech Information:

Title: Crafting a Research Agenda on New Media and Internet Communication and Communities in China

Speakers: Patrice M. Buzzanell (Purdue U, USA) and Pearl Wang (Shanghai Jiao Tong U, China)

Title: The Evolution of Mass Communication Theories in the Era of Web 2.0
Speaker: Wei Ran (U of South Carolina, USA)

Title: Digital Media Innovation: Implications for China
Speaker: John Pavlik (Rutgers U, USA)

Title: The Semi-Sovereign Netizen: The Politics of the Fifth Estate in China
Speaker: William Dutton (Oxford U, UK)

Title: The (Business) Case for Sustainability: the Communication Challenge
Speaker: Dorte Salskov-Iversen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)

Title: Reflection on How the Rise of New Media Influences Chinese Communication Studies
|Speaker: Zhang Guoliang (Shanghai Jiao Tong U, China)

Mobile Communication, Community, and Locative Media Practices: From the Everyday to the Revolutionary

Time: Wednesday, 23 May 13:00 – 18:30 and Thursday, 24 May 8:30 – 17:15
Location: Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State U located at 555 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix AZ 85004, less than one block from the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel
Limit: 75 persons
Cost: $75.00USD (Includes refreshment breaks, and lunch) http://sociomobile.org/mobile2012/program.html  

Mobile and location-based networked interactions permeate our world. We no longer enter the Internet--we carry it with us. We experience it while moving through physical spaces. Smart phones, GPS receivers, and RFID tags are only a few examples of location-aware mobile technologies that mediate our interaction with networked spaces and the people in them. Increasingly, our physical location determines the types of information with which we interact, and the people and things we find around us. These new kinds of networked interactions manifest in everyday social practices that are supported by the use of mobile technologies, such as participation in location-based mobile games and social networks, engagement with location-based services, development of mobile annotation projects, and social mapping, just to name a few. The engagement with these practices has important implications for identity construction, our sense of privacy, our notions of place and space, civic and political participation, building community, policy making, as well as cultural production and consumption in everyday life.

This preconference will provide a venue for innovative scholars from around the world who are doing research in exploring how we experience our locally-rooted mobile networked interactions and mobile communication’s impact on community. It will give them a chance to gather and discuss the challenges that this shift in the use of both mobile phones and the Internet poses not only for the users but for those doing research on mobile communication. We welcome abstracts that will focus on the following areas:

• Mobile communication and location awareness in everyday life practices;
• New urban spatialities developed with mobile gaming and locative social media; definitions of “community” in a mobile mediated context
• Privacy and surveillance issues as they relate to location-based social networks;
• Identity and spatial construction through locative media art / performance design and its impact on communities;
• Civic engagement and political participation through mobile social media, new mapping practices and location-aware technologies;
• Learning and education potentials of mobile and location-based media.

Organizing Committee:

• Adriana de Souza e Silva, conference chair (Associate Professor of Communication, NC State U)
• Jason Farman (Assistant Professor of American Studies, U of Maryland)
• Kathleen M. Cumiskey, Associate Professor of Psychology, College of Staten Island/CUNY)
• Lee Humphreys (Assistant Professor of Communication, Cornell U)
• Richard Ling (Professor of Mobile Communication, IT U of Copenhagen)
• Scott Campbell (Associate Professor of Communication, U of Michigan)
• Yi-Fan Chen (Assistant Professor of Communication, Old Dominion U)

Schedule: 23-24 May 2012, Phoenix, AZ, USA

DAY 1: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

1:00 – 1:30pm
On-Site Registration

1:30 – 1:45pm
Welcoming Remarks
Adriana de Souza e Silva
NC State U

1:45 – 3:15 pm
Panel #1: Place and location
Panel #2: Mobile Games, Augmented Reality, and Locative Media

3:15 – 3:45 pm
BREAK

3:45 – 5:15 pm
Panel # 3: Youth Culture
Panel # 4: Mobile Content
MID-POINT REMARKS: Katie Cumiskey (College of Staten Island CUNY, USA)

5:15 – 6:30 pm
Cocktail reception

DAY 2: Thursday, May 24, 2012

8:30 - 9:00 am
Coffee will be available

9:00 – 10:30 am
Panel # 5: Mobile Internet
Panel # 6: The Social Life of Mobile Interfaces

10:30 - 11:00 am
BREAK

11:00 – 12:15
Keynote Speaker: MIMI SHELLER

12:15 – 1:15 pm
LUNCH

1:15 – 2:45 pm
Panel # 7: Surveillance and Privacy
Panel # 8: Everyday Life and Social Relationships

2:45 – 3:15 pm
BREAK

3:15 – 4:45 pm
Panel # 9: Mobile Spatialities
Panel # 10: Civic Engagement

4:50 – 5:15 pm
CLOSING REMARKS

New Media and Citizenship in Asia: Social Media, Politics, and Community-Building

Time: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm, 24 May 2012
Location: Cronkite 440, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University (walking distance from conference hotels)
Limit: 50 participants
Cost: $50 USD (includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch)

This preconference aims to showcase innovative scholarly work examining various subjects concerning the role of social media, mobile phones, and other new communication technologies in the formation of democratic citizenship-writ large--in Asia. Studies presented at the preconference will help illuminate the role of new communication technologies in recent elections and other social/political changes in Asian countries and comparative contexts. Topics to be addressed include: use of social media, mobile phones, and other new communication technologies in elections; influence of new media on citizen choices, participation, and knowledge; political elites' use of new media; use of social media by civic and grassroots groups; political talk and social media; patterns of new media use.

The preconference will feature a total of 18 studies, which are organized around three research panels, entitled "Newly Emerging forms of Citizenship: Opportunities and Challenges in the Era of New Media," "Social media, Elections, and Political Participation," and "New Media, Civic Networks, and Citizen Mobilization." In addition, a methodology workshop, titled "Computational Social Science Approaches to Studying Political Communication," will be presented.

Program

8:30 – 9:00 Registration

9:00 – 10:30 Research Panel 1: Newly Emerging Forms of Citizenship: Opportunities and Challenges in the Era of New Media

• Minorities and Online Political Mobilization in Developing Asia: Reconfiguring Citizenship? Cheryll Soriano (National U of Singapore, Singapore)
• From Active Consumers to Active Citizens: Social Media and Political Consumerism in China. Mihye Seo (U of Albany, SUNY, USA); Shaojin Sun (Fudan U, China)
• Online Public Opinion as an Agenda-Builder in the Issue Development of China. Yunjuan Lou (Texas Tech U, USA)
• The Empire Strikes Back: Internet Content Regulation and a Crisis of Participatory Democracy in South Korea. Siho Nam (U of North Florida, USA)
• What’s Mine is Yours: An Exploratory Study of Attitudes and Conceptions about Online Personal Privacy in Vietnam. Patrick Sharbough (RMIT International U, Vietnam)

10:50 – 12:30 Research Panel 2: Social media, Elections, and Political Participation

• Campaigning with Weibo: Independent Candidates' Use of Social Media in Local Level People’s Congress Elections in China. Fei Shen (City U of Hong Kong, China)
• Social Media and General Elections in Authoritarian Democracies: The Cases of Malaysia and Singapore. Weiyu Zhang (National U of Singapore, Singapore), Joanne Lim Bee Yin (U of Nottingham, Malaysia)
• Keyboard Action End up Political Party: Citizenship, Digital-Media Based Movement, and the Paradoxes in Indonesia. Desideria Cempaka Wijaya Murti (U of Atma Jaya Yogyakata, Indonesia)
• Blogs and the Rhetorical Publics in Singapore. Natalie Pang Goh (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore); Debbie Goh (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore)
• Mobile Phone Rumors as "Weapons of the Weak": Mobile Communication and Contentious Politics in Contemporary China. Jun Liu (U of Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Social Media and Political Learning in Korea. Nojin Kwak (U of Michigan, USA), Scott Campbell (U of Michigan, USA), and Dam Hee Kim (U of Michigan, USA)

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch

1:30 – 2:40 Methodology Workshop: Computational Social Science Approaches to Studying Political Communication
Speakers: Jonathan Zhu (City U of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China), Han Woo Park (YeungNam U, South Korea) and Marko M. Skoric (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore).

3:00 – 4:40 Research Panel 3: New Media, Civic Networks, and Citizen Mobilization

• Old Cemeteries and Railways, New Media and New Politics: Heritage and Green Politics goes Digital in Singapore. Kai Khium Liew (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore); Natalie Pang (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore); Brenda Chan (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore); Reggy Capacio Figer (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore)
• Distant Democracy: Mobile Phone and Political Discussion Among Migrant Laborers in Singapore. Rajiv George Aricat (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore)
• Commenting on Consensus and Corruption: Democratic Collective Action and the 'India Against Corruption' Movement. Rajan Prashant (Purdue U, USA); Sastry Shaunak (Purdue U, USA)
• Virtual Queer Futures in Asia Gay Ski and Swim Groups in South Korea’s Daum Portal. John (Song Pae) Cho (Center for Korean Studies UC Berkeley, USA)
• Shared Identity and Collective Actions of a Twitter-Based Community for a Political Goal in South Korea. Sujin Choi (U of Texas at Austin, USA), Han Woo Park (Yeongnam U, Korea)
• Implications of Self-Report Error for Mobile Communication Research: Comparative Study of Japan and the U.S. Tetsuro Kobayashi (National Institute of Informatics, Japan), Jeffrey Boase (Rutgers U, USA), Takahisa Suzuki (The Graduate U for Advanced Studies, Japan)

4:40 -5:00 Wrap-Up Session

Organizers: Nojin Kwak (U of Michigan, USA), Marko Skoric (Nanyang Technological U, Singapore), Scott Campbell (U of Michigan, USA), and Junho Choi (Yonsei U, Korea)

Sponsors: Nam Center for Korean Studies, University of Michigan, USA; Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Academy of Korean Studies, Korea; Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, USA; Political Communication Division, ICA.

Political Communication in the Online World: Innovation in Theory and Research Designs

Time: Thursday, 24 May 8:30 – 17:00
Location: Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel
Limit: 60 persons
Cost: $100.00 USD (includes morning and afternoon coffee/tea breaks, lunch on your own)

Organized by: Marco Dohle (U of Duesseldorf, Germany), Patrick Rössler (U of Erfurt, Germany), Gerhard Vowe (U of Duesseldorf, Germany)

Sponsored by the Political Communication and Mass Communication Divisions

The preconference addresses substantial changes in political communication that have come about as a result of an increasing relevance of online media for campaigns, decision-making, and mobilization. By including the perspectives of mass communication and Internet research, it brings together scholars from different fields to discuss several key areas of interest.

The preconference aims to achieve two main objectives:

1. It is the intention of the preconference to answer the question of how far the change in media – especially the growing importance of Web 2.0 media – makes a substantial difference for political communication, and may thus actually lead to political change. Five workshops will address this basic question with regard to more specific issues from a specific analytical and theoretical perspective: How is the political communication of public, semi-public, and non-public nature extended by the potentials of online media and online technology? How are online media applied in the communication routines between the three political actor groups: citizens, politicians as well as political organizations, and media organizations? What politically relevant consequences can be expected and/or observed from an individual, organizational, or societal point of view?
2. Moreover, the diffusion of online media has implications for empirical research in itself. To name but a few questions: What are the consequences for analyses of political online content if the research topic, such as video portals or social network sites, is constantly changing and unpredictable because of continuous technological and user-driven developments? How can we conceptualize and assess the formation of public opinion within a public sphere and audience that has become fragmented as a result of online exposure? The presentations will discuss the methodological challenges for political communication research with a focus on online media, and suggest ideas for how to deal with them. The preconference is structured into five workshops of 75 minutes each and a final round of closing remarks. The workshops give the opportunity for detailed feedback and extensive discussion. Moreover, the preconference brings together researchers from different countries and political cultures. Thus, the preconference provides a fresh update on the latest developments within a highly dynamic area of research.

Program and Participants:

Workshop 1 (8:30-9:45)

Political Communication on Video Platforms
Social online portals like YouTube indicate a new quality of agenda-setting processes. Given that the media agenda serves as an indicator for social relevance in both "old" and "new" media outlets, we ask how the different concepts of relevance as well as the gatekeeping processes relate to the observable YouTube-Clip agenda and the traditional TV news agenda. In a broader perspective, YouTube is one representative of user-generated online video (UGOV) diffusion that has increasingly become an alternative media source for citizens. UGOV crystallize both formal and informal content in political communication, opening up new opportunities for the electorate, as well as for political organizations. The workshop will suggest theoretical frameworks to explain the role of YouTube and other UGOV for political participation.

David Tewksbury (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Online news video in the high-choice environment: Choosing our way into political oblivion?

Hans-Bernd Brosius & Till Keyling (LMU Munich, Germany)
YouTube as an intermediary. The emergence and uses of political agendas on YouTube

Patrick Rössler (U of Erfurt, Germany)
Video hosting services as agents of political mobilization: Uses, perception, and functions of user-generated online videos on the Internet

Paul Haridakis (Kent State U, USA)
Political communication on video platforms: Perspectives for future research

Workshop 2 (10:00-11:15)

Effects of Online Communication on Political Knowledge and Political Attitudes
The changing media environment provides citizens with more options to communicate and participate in the political process, and thus offers opportunities to strengthen their (previously quite weak) position in the political arena. This raises questions about how political online communication affects their knowledge of and attitudes about politics, political actors and the political process in general. The proposed workshop aims to identify the main challenges, and discuss theory and methodology in order to extend our knowledge in this field.

Hajo G. Boomgaarden (U of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Politics on the web and political cognition, attitudes, behaviour: A state of the art overview

Marcus Maurer, Corinna Oschatz & Jörg Haßler (FSU Jena, Germany)
Digital knowledge gaps? A model for measuring effects of offline and online media on political knowledge

Martin Emmer (FU Berlin, Germany)
Changing habits, changing attitudes? On the interdependence of what people think about politics and what they do about it

Jan Kleinnijenhuis (VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Effects of online communication on political knowledge and political attitudes: Perspectives for future research

Workshop 3 (11:30-12:45)

Political Organizations and Network Structure in the Online World
The workshop takes the consequences of the structural transformation of political communication for the intermediate system into account: To what extent and in what forms do political or government organizations use online media for their internal and external communication? Which functions do online media have for their communication? What are the implications for their organizational structure and behavior? The workshop will also investigate the impact of the media change on the network structures between political actors and media actors. One specific aim is to discuss online media relations from an organizational and network analytical perspective.

Andrew Chadwick (Royal Holloway U of London, Great Britain)
Political organizing in the hybrid media system

Patrick Donges, Paula Nitschke & Henriette Schade (U of Greifswald, Germany)
Political organizations in the online world: The case of health organizations

Juliana Raupp & Christin Schink (FU Berlin, Germany)
Media relations online

Katerina Tsetsura (U of Oklahoma, USA)
The age of (non)transparency: Reconsidering the limits of political communication online through reconfiguring networks of political actors and publics

Workshop 4 (13:45-15:00)

Online Users’ Perceptions of Public Opinion and Media’s Political Influence
This workshop focuses on online-users’ perceptions of political communication and related effects. It will assess the impact of online media use on the perception of public opinion and further consequences for discursive participation. It draws on the spiral of silence theory and other approaches on projections of public opinion. The workshop will also investigate the degree of political influence attributed to different online media by different types of actors, and analyze the reasons for this association, as well as the related consequences for political attitudes and behavior. By doing this, the workshop focuses on theoretical approaches such as the influence of presumed influence approach and the third-person effect, and analyzes notable characteristics of online media with respect to presumed political influences and their consequences.

Jonathan Cohen (U of Haifa, Israel)
Online users’ perceptions of public opinion and media’s political influence: State of the art

Uli Bernhard, Marco Dohle & Gerhard Vowe (U of Düsseldorf, Germany)
The perception of online media’s political influence and its consequences on attitudes and behavior

Christiane Eilders & Pablo Porten-Cheé (U of Düsseldorf, Germany)
The sense of the imaginary others. Theoretical and conceptual considerations on online users’s perception of public opinion

Magdalena Wojcieszak (IE U, Spain) & Hernando Rojas (U of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Online users’ perceptions of public opinion and media’s political influence: Perspectives for future research

Workshop 5 (15:15-16:30)

Political Online Communication and the Public Sphere: Methodological Challenges
The workshop deals with different issues and developments concerning the political public sphere. The rise of online communication provides new avenues of access to public debates, particularly for so-called challengers who until now had less access not only to the institutionalized political process, but also to public political debates in traditional mass media. The analysis of the quality and deliberativeness of online communication, and the way it interacts with traditional mass media, brings about methodological challenges. For this reason, the workshop will discuss tools for how to measure communication in both online and offline debates.

Bruce Bimber (U of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Political online communication and the public sphere: State of the art

Christoph Neuberger (LMU Munich, Germany) & Frank Marcinkowski (U of Münster, Germany)
Measuring deliberativeness in online communication

Silke Adam, Thomas Häussler, Peter Miltner, Barbara Pfetsch, Hannah Schmid & Annie Waldherr (U of Bern, Switzerland / FU Berlin, Germany)
Online-offline dynamics – methodological challenges and innovations

Michael A. Xenos (U of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Political online communication and the public sphere: Perspectives for future research

Closing Keynote (16:30-17:00)
Dietram Scheufele (U of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Political communication in the online world: Conclusions and outlooks