Division & Interest Group News
Dear CHIG member,
This update comes with best wishes for the New Year to you all. As usual, there is a number of topics to mention.
As you will know by now, the ICA received the highest number of submissions for any conference for London 2013, and CHIG followed this trend with just under 90 papers and 10 panels being offered. Thank you very much to everyone who put in a paper: the range and quality of submissions was remarkable, and in planning our programme I've tried to reflect this.
We have 10 sessions being timetabled this year. You should have heard by now if you have been successful, but please contact me if not. And at this point, I'd like to say a special thank-you to everyone who acted as a reviewer for CHIG this time round. Planning the programme would be impossible without your diligence and professionalism, and I am really very grateful to you for your help.
In addition to our 10 programmed sessions, of course, we will also have our business meeting at which our Top Paper and Top Student Paper awards will be presented. Many congratulations go to our winners, Carlos Solari for Media Evolution: Emergence, Dominance, Survival and Extinction in the Media Ecology and Annie Rudd for The Unobserved Observer: Humphrey Spender's Hidden Camera and the Politics of Visibility in Inter-War Britain.
As has become customary in recent years, our reception will be shared with a number of other divisions: details of the date and venue are being finalized. An innovation this year will be our CHIG Family Breakfast, held at a venue just a few steps from the Conference hotel and welcoming all CHIG members and any of their family members who may be in London with them: details of how to sign up for this will be circulated soon. I hope very much to see you at all - or at least some- of these events in June.
I'm pleased to say that our preconference, New Histories of Communication Study, also attracted many excellent submissions, and will now be running on Sunday 16th and Monday 17th June at London Metropolitan University's Tower Building in Holloway Road. Dave Park and Pete Simonson are doing excellent work in organizing what will be a land-mark event for the discipline and for CHIG. Don't miss it!
I am delighted to be able to confirm that CHIG has now had the required number of members for the necessary period of time to qualify for the status of a full Division of the ICA. A motion to enact this will be considered at the Association's Board meeting in June, and there is every reason to be confident of its success.
Thank you all very much for signing up for CHIG: obviously, we wouldn't have been able to make such progress without your support. And of course, special thanks are due to Dave Park and Jeff Pooley for their excellent work in getting CHIG up and running, and establishing our Interest Group within the ICA: this recognition of Communication History is a vindication of their vision and hard work.
I attended the ICA mid-year meeting in Seattle from 18-20 January, at which a wide range of topics was discussed. It was immensely encouraging to see that the Association is in good health and good heart, and we debated a range of matters from possible venues for future conferences to the awards offered by Divisions and Interest Groups. As a result, I will have a number of proposals to put to our business meeting at the London Conference.
The following message has been sent for the attention of CHIG members:
The George Gerbner Conference on Communication, Conflict, and Aggression
June 14-15, 2013 in Budapest, Hungary
Inspired by the life and work of Budapest native and renowned Communication and Media scholar Dr. George Gerbner (1919-2005), the Budapest College of Communication, Business and Arts invites scholars, researchers, practitioners, students, and other interested parties to submit paper and panel proposals for presentation at the George Gerbner Conference on Communication, Conflict, and Aggression. This conference will take place from Friday, June 14 to Saturday, June 15, 2013 in Budapest, Hungary. The goal of the conference is to bring together individuals with a common interest in aggressive communication and conflict so as to foster international relationships that lead to research collaboration and knowledge exchange. The inaugural Gerbner Conference, held in May 2010, and the second conference, held in June 2012, featured presentations by scholars from eight countries covering three continents.
This international conference will focus on aggressive communication and behavior, conflict, and other types of antisocial communication and behavior across contexts. Specific topics include, but are not limited to: media violence, media coverage of crime and violence, violence in advertising, political violence, workplace violence and aggression, aggression in instructional settings, war rhetoric, peace and conflict communication, verbal aggression, crime, oppression, injustice, incivility, assertiveness, argumentativeness, disagreement, bullying, indirect aggression, psychological abuse, anger, frustration, hostility, deception, child abuse, spousal abuse, domestic violence, youth violence, school violence, gang violence, sexual violence, discrimination, conflict styles, conflict resolution, the origins, causes, and predictors of aggression, and the management and prevention of aggression.
Interested individuals are invited to submit an abstract (in English) of 200 to 500 words describing their individual presentation or panel idea to Rebecca.Chory@mail.wvu.edu by March 01, 2013. Decisions regarding the acceptance of papers and panels for presentation at the conference will be made by March 18, 2013. Completed papers should be sent to Rebecca.Chory@mail.wvu.edu by May 13, 2013. With the authors’ permission, top papers will be published in the journal Kommunikáció, Média, Gazdaság (Communication, Media, Economics), which is published by the Budapest College of Communication, Business and Arts or in an edited book. One scholar will also be honored with the Gerbner Award. The conference registration fee is expected to be approximately 50 Euros.
Co-organizers of the conference are Dr. Jolán Róka, Vice Rector for Research and International Relations at the Budapest College of Communication, Business and Arts, and Dr. Rebecca M. Chory, Professor of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and 2009 Fulbright Scholar at the Budapest College of Communication, Business and Arts. For more information, please contact Jolán Róka at jroka@bkf.hu; +36-20-366-5023 (tel); Budapest College of Communication, Business and Arts; Nagy Lajos király útja 1-9; 1148, Budapest, Hungary; or Rebecca M. Chory at Rebecca.Chory@mail.wvu.edu; 304-293-3905 (tel); P.O. Box 6293, 108 Armstrong Hall; West Virginia University; Morgantown, WV, 26506; USA.
All best wishes for now,
Philip Lodge
Chair, CHIG
Like other divisions and interest groups the Environmental Communication Interest Group saw a spike in the number of submissions this year. Also because our group has more than doubled since last year (we are currently at about 190 members!), we received almost double the number of sessions. The group has 9 sessions this year, 1 for the business meeting, 2 for the extended session, and 6 for papers. We also have 2 slots for the poster session.
Reviewers
We had 57 people volunteer to review papers so everyone had from 2 to 4 papers to review. Thanks again to our reviewers; this is not possible without you!
Submissions and Acceptance
This year we had 69 papers from 20 countries and 8 panels submitted. We accepted 26 papers from 10 countries and just one panel, an extended panel. This gave us a 35% acceptance rate, nearly the rate suggested by ICA. The panel acceptance was low because nearly all of them didn't follow the guidelines for panel submissions. It may be worth highlighting the submission guidelines in our future call for papers so folks submit stronger panels. There were no submissions for a pre-conference this year.
Awards and Funding
We will be giving awards for the top faculty and student papers, and some small travel awards and registration waivers for students from distant and tier 2 countries. The details should be sorted by the next newsletter.
Reception
The Visual Communication Division suggested a joint reception with Environmental Communication in London and in the spirit of collaboration, we accepted. The details are being worked out at the moment, and we are looking at an off-site location with a sustainability/local food and drink focus.
Leadership
As you know our elections brought in Merav Katz-Kimchi as Vice Chair and Janel Schuh as Secretary to help organize and run things for the ECIG. This is good news because it frees the chair up from conference planning to work on other projects. Still, we can always use volunteers to help run the group. Look for opportunities to help in next month's newsletter.
Sincerely,
Richard Doherty
Chair, ICA Environmental Communication Interest Group
The Organizational Communication Division has an exciting set of programs planned for the London conference. This conference promises to be our biggest and best yet, so make plans to attend!
The Division will repeat our “Research Escalator” session, in which authors of papers-in-progress are paired with experienced mentors to develop the papers toward publication. Also, we will again award the best interactive display presentation a $500 prize sponsored by Waveland Press. And we will sponsor or co-sponsor two exciting preconferences.
Our main preconference is the Doctoral Consortium, which is focused this year on “Expanding Your Scholarly Comfort Zone.” The event will be Monday, 17 June from 8:30 – 17:00 at the Hilton Metropole London Hotel. The cost is $40.00 USD and travel assistance may be available to help some students attend. This preconference is open to all doctoral students, but targeted toward advanced students nearing completion. The number of spaces is limited, so interested students are encouraged to register early. This full-day event brings together doctoral students and faculty to examine contemporary issues related to the development of our next generation of scholars. This year, we’ll be discussing various ways to expand our scholarly comfort zone amid a variety of changes in our world. Contact conference coordinator Craig R. Scott, Rutgers U, for more information (crscott@rutgers.edu) or see the full description at https://www.icahdq.org/conf/2013/confdescriptions.asp.
Along with the PR Division, we will co-sponsor an innovative two-part, two-location preconference that focuses on the role communication plays in the way in which “governance” is constructed and enacted by government and business organizations. Entitled “Governance through Communication: Stakeholder Engagement, Dialogue, and Corporate Social Responsibility”, the preconference will focus on three themes — stakeholder engagement, dialogue, and corporate social responsibility. The first part of the preconference (“Dialogue and Stakeholder Engagement”) will be held Saturday, 15 June, 9:30 – 16:30, at the Centre for Dialogue, Queen Margaret U, Edinburgh, UK. The second part (“CSR and Communication: Extending the Agenda”) will be held Monday, 17 June; 9:00 – 17:00 at Cass Business School, London. Participation may be in either or both parts of the conference. For more information, see the full description and call for papers: https://www.icahdq.org/conf/2013/confdescriptions.asp.
NOTE THAT EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT PRESENTING AT THE MAIN ICA CONFERENCE, IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO SUBMIT TO THE PRECONFERENCE.
Finally, we remind you that the submission deadline (Monday, 11 February , 2013) for the 2013 W. Charles Redding Dissertation Award is quickly approaching. This annual competition includes a cash award for the winner and a certificate for the winner and his/her advisor. The award will be presented at the annual ICA convention in London, UK. Any dissertation project related to organizational communication is eligible for submission. The winning dissertation will be theoretically driven, methodologically rigorous, and make a significant contribution to our field. In the spirit of W. Charles Redding, the dissertation should present ideas that advance our understanding of organizing and communicating, and that make a difference in the lives of organizational members. For more information, see: http://org.icahdq.org/ohana/website/?p=22188010