The ICA Virtual Conference will feature keynote addresses by three eminent global communication scholars: Lance Bennett, Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication and Professor of Political Science at the U of Washington; Hans Henrik Holm, Jean Monnet Professor and Professor in World Politics at the Danish School of Media and Journalism; and Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. Each month we will feature one of the keynotes in the Newsletter.

Professor Lance Bennett's virtual keynote "The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Organization of Protest Politics" is based on his forthcoming book of the same title, co-authored by Alexandra Segerberg (Stockholm U), and soon to be published by Cambridge University Press.

From the Arab Spring and los indignados in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street (and beyond), large-scale, sustained protests have used digital media in ways that go well beyond sending and receiving messages. Densely layered digital networks built atop face-to-face assemblies have put communication technologies and code at the center of social and political organization. Bennett's keynote address outlines a model of connective action that contrasts with earlier models of collective action based on assumptions about hierarchical brick and mortar organizations and their resources, leadership, and collective action framing. In place of the often-fractious processes of policing, brokering, and bridging collective identity borders, the more inclusive ethos of many digital networks (particularly on the left) invites more easily personalized identity frames such as "the 99%." What are the political capabilities of connective action networks? What sorts of shifts can we detect among networks of more conventional issue organizations that are borrowing the personalized, digitally mediated models of relatively more self-organizing networks? More generally, how do we understand communication as an organizational process?

The full address will be available on ICA's Virtual Conference from 14 May 2012- 8 June 2012. ICA extends a special thanks to Wiley Blackwell for sponsoring the 2012 Virtual Conference. Occupy this lecture! Phoenix attendees automatically receive free access to the Virtual Conference with registration. For those who are unable to attend in Phoenix, register for the Virtual Conference online at http://www.icahdq.org/conf/confreg.asp.  

Pictured Above: Virtual Confernce Keynote Speaker Lance Bennett, U of Washington.