"Communication and Community:" Understanding 2012 Conference Theme
The ICA submission site is up and running and I am pleased to say we already have had dozens of submissions. Division and Interest Group planners have created exciting new opportunities for involvement in the Phoenix conference, including innovative programming and new types of submission criteria for the extended sessions (check out the various calls for papers, several sessions will appeal to members of multiple Divisions!)
In this update I want to call your attention to the goals and submission criteria surrounding the conference theme, "Communication and Community." Conference Theme chair Patricia Moy and I hope this will provide useful information beyond what you will find in the call for papers. But please, be sure also to read the official call on our website for all details regarding submission procedures.
Our theme for Phoenix, "Communication and Community," speaks to concerns relevant to all Divisions and Interest Groups. As communication scholars, we study communities that are physical and virtual, goal-oriented and social, formal and informal. But our contexts of study, levels of analysis, and methods all differ. Scholars studying communities can look at psychological, interpersonal, and boundary processes at play within a particular group of people, whether they be tweeters or tweeners, elected representatives or the general population of a specific country. They can take a mesolevel approach and look at how communities interact with each other, how they are shaped or how they themselves shape policy. And certainly, social, political, economic, organizational, and technological changes provide great fodder for examining macrolevel concerns. Conceptualizations and configurations of our personal, social, organizational, professional, and political communities are undergoing enormous change.
Needless to say, the possibilities for communication researchers are endless. In the call for papers we note that communication may inspire inclusion and/or exclusion, support and/or discourage interaction, enhance and/or constrain civil and uncivil discourse, and promote and/or devalue individual and collective rights. Community has both positive and negative dimensions just as the meanings of community are being contested. If you have a paper or panel proposal that focuses explicitly on some aspect of community or has implications for a particular community, we encourage you to submit it to the most appropriate Division.
What if your paper or panel doesn't fit a specific Division or just one Division, you ask? In that case, consider submitting the paper/panel as a theme submission. Each year, ICA has a number of theme-based panels derived from papers and session proposals. The success of a theme paper or session proposal lies in the breadth of focus. We are looking for proposals and papers that relate to multiple Divisions and Interest Groups. If you are working on a project that falls squarely between two domains of inquiry, or if you and others are working on various aspects of the same issue - for example, looking at technological-, psychological-, and policy-oriented perspectives - consider submitting to a theme session! We would like to see proposals that deal with communication and community writ large, and welcome creative ways to think about both.
As in previous years, we will be publishing an edited volume based on theme-oriented papers. These papers may come from the individual Divisions or Interest Groups or they may have been presented at a theme session. Working with Division and Interest Group conference planners we will also be recognizing the top papers in each section that address the theme at the conference regardless of where they are presented on the program. Some may be chosen for live streaming on the internet as part of our virtual conference offerings.
Our overall goal this year is to create a conference that provides a stimulating environment for intellectual debate and dialogue about our larger community, while simultaneously sustaining, enriching, and connecting our international community of scholars. We look forward to seeing you in Phoenix.