Spotlight on Extended Sessions

New to the ICA Conference this year is the Extended Session - a conference slot of 2.5 hours that gives each Division and Interest Group the opportunity to go beyond the typical four- or five-paper presentation and respondent format. The goal of the extended session is to enable more dialogue and intellectual debate, more time for creative presentations, greater possibilities for members to exchange ideas and expertise in a less constrained manner, and more opportunities to engage the larger community.

In each Newsletter leading up to the conference, we will highlight several extended sessions. Stay tuned to see what each Division and Interest Group is planning!

Mass Communication Extended Session: Theory and Research in Memory for Media Content: Cultivation and Beyond

A fundamental effect posited for media content is the creation of audience memory for social facts. Memory traces can affect audience perceptions of self and others, can mold social norms, and can drive political beliefs and attitudes. A number of different models have been suggested to account for these effects. Cultivation is perhaps the most enduring of these, but it is not the only one. More than 40 years after the introduction of Cultivation theory, scholars continue to suggest theory and method that can elucidate how media exposure leaves memory in its wake. This extended session is devoted to charting the current history of cultivation research and its cousins. The goal is the development of road maps for ongoing research in media-influenced memory; a series of research presentations and commentary by leading scholars are the means by which we hope to achieve this.

Organizational Communication Extended Session: The Research Escalator

In this extended session, contributing authors have been matched up with mentors--experienced organizational scholars--to discuss how their papers can be "escalated" to prepare for publication or conference submission. This session is open to ICA members who are interested in observing the process by which papers are elaborated, edited, and prepared for publication.

Political Communication Extended Session: What Do We (Really) Know About Online Political Participation?

Online political participation is one of the most important current topics in political communication research. This extended session brings together eight competitively selected papers on this topic in an attempt to take stock of our current knowledge. The session will be opened by Professor Michael Xenos who will also moderate the session. There will be ample time for reflection and discussion.

Popular Communication Extended Session: Popular Communication Workshop

Popular Communication's extended session examines, through a workshop/discussion-format, the state of research into popular culture and media. What pressing concerns face the field? What innovative solutions and methods are emerging? What will tomorrow's research look like? And what should it look like?

This extended session is meant to capture some of the interactive energy that is usually generated in pre-conference conversations - only this time it will be within the main conference sessions. The session will highlight current debates across Popular Communication in order to establish a space for many different scholars at all career levels to participate. After preliminary comments, the session will divide into three groups - Publics, Production, and Methods - each tasked with looking at a different area and theme. Several scholars on each group will offer some guiding and initial thoughts, and then open discussion to all present. At the end of the session, all three groups will reunite to share insights and highlights from the discussions. Please join us and bring your ideas: This is an experiment for all involved, but one that we're all very excited by.

Public Relations Extended Session: Global Issues and Opportunities: International and Cross-Cultural Research in Public Relations

One of the repetitive claims of every generation is that society is changing - and more rapidly than ever. We have discussed for many years in communications that technology can be one driver (McLuhan, 1964), but it's not the only one. Currently in society we are seeing transformations across the sociopolitical landscape which are affecting how, when, with whom and possibly why we engage in communicative dialogue with stakeholders. In this extended session, an expert panel of public relations scholars from around the globe will discuss the central challenges and opportunities facing public relations, leading edge global and cross-cultural research and pose some key questions they see public relations facing. This will provide the starting point for participants to engage in a world café to explore questions and opportunities to stimulate our thinking, engage in research and educate future practitioners back in our home universities.

Visual Communication Studies Extended Session: Young Scholars Research Workshop

In addition to the usual difficulties of conceptualizing and designing communication research, studies in visual communication present specific challenges related to the analysis of analogic visual fields, cultural iconography, questions of design and multimodal media forms. This Visual Communication Studies Division session uses the extended 2.5-hour session to foster interaction and mentoring among senior visual communication studies scholars, young faculty, and graduate students at various stages of visual studies project development.

The goals include providing guidance, feedback and professional socialization to newly minted visual communication studies faculty, and graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels, introducing young scholars to ICA, inviting them to take part in the specific academic discourse that characterizes the Visual Communication Studies Division of ICA, and cultivating a network of young visual communication scholars through ICA. To achieve these goals, the extended session will bring together a panel of senior scholars, all of whom are current or former officers of the Visual Communication Studies Division who have had extensive experience reviewing research papers and planning conference programs, and a select group of young faculty and graduate students working on visual communication studies projects.

The session will provide young scholars with an opportunity to present and discuss their projects in a constructive atmosphere with free-flowing back-and-forth feedback and advice concerning issues raised by research paradigms, the operationalizing of research questions and the particular challenges of different methods.

Participants will break-out in work groups for questions, feedback, and give-and-take during the first portions of the session, and then all will reconvene together to share observations and address the common challenges of visual communication research. Participants will be encouraged not to think of these overviews as formal conference presentations, although they count as submissions accepted for the ICA conference; rather, they should be brief introductions of research questions, issues and challenges that invite immediate feedback and discussion designed to escalate the research and/or prepare the work for publication or further conference submission. Free-flowing roundtable discussions of the individual presentations will follow, with general observations on common issues and challenges and suggestions and encouragement for going forward.