I happen to be moving my office as I write this, and unearthing my files, conference presentations, research notes, and publications is becoming an interesting vehicle for reflecting on the projects, collaborations, and classes with which I've been involved over the years. ICA has been a significant part of my intellectual growth and direction, and file after file fills in some part of bigger story that found early life in a conference presentation, in a meeting of like-minded people in a session, or in conversation at a division reception. As my professional home, ICA has always offered definitions of the field and its horizons. Those definitions have changed over the years and doubtless will continue to change.
ICA has been transformed over the 20-plus years during which I have been involved with it. I have been Vice Chair and Division Chair of both the Mass Communication and Communication Law and Policy divisions, served on various ICA ad hoc committees over the years, and also have contributed to the Global Communication and Social Change, the Communication Technologies divisions, and the Mobile Preconference group that has met for the last several years in advance of the annual conference. Over these years the organization grew its publishing efforts, in so doing establishing new standards and the agendas of the field, expanding the field's definitions; its internationalization efforts have grown, diversified, and become successful, and it continues to explore novel ways of fostering academic sharing and debate through different conference formats. This past year the conference sponsored over 20 preconferences on a large range of theoretical, critical and practical subjects, perhaps a signal of members' desire for sustained conversations on subjects about which we are enthusiastic and for venues that can incorporate more playfulness and creativity. These efforts strengthen the organization and expand its presence, and they should continue.
But we can go further. As communication technologies, industries and experiences transform our lives, ICA should function as a resource for addressing many of the questions and problems outside of the academy as well as for reaching more deeply into the academic environments in which most members work. Specifically, ICA can (1) mobilize for greater public impact, (2) create new global liaisons by focusing on civil society partnerships and mentoring, (3) and establish itself as a resource for the changing university educational environment.
Public Impact: We see daily headlines dominated by controversies around revolutionary social change taking root in young democracies, the deepening role of social media in our lives and especially the lives of children, privacy and surveillance, sexting, racial profiling and an almost perennial "educational crisis" that some propose to remedy through online education. ICA members have weighed in on some of these issues, but the expertise represented within the collective ICA community is not well mobilized on contemporary topics of public importance. We have a lot to offer in these debates, and ICA can foster important dialogues for social impact.
I was fortunate to be invited to Washington, D.C. in 2010 to work on one of President Obama's stimulus-funded initiatives for developing rural broadband infrastructure. That experience gave me new perspectives on how academics can contribute to national level policy, where a network of colleagues and opportunities for "face time" to explain findings can make an impact. Speaking with people outside of the academy and making an effort to translate results, illustrating how our work does matter to solving some pressing issue and connects to civil society, can be a more prominent component of our efforts, and ICA can catalyze such opportunities. We can capitalize on our Washington, D.C. presence and the international community there in order to initiate talks in high profile venues or agenda-setting meetings, and concomitantly take advantage of our strong international relationships for similar efforts. My work in South Korea suggests that it would serve as an eager host for these sorts of efforts, for example. ICA should bring attention to our contributions on important contemporary issues by creating public dialogues that target media and the policy community.
New Global Liaisons and mentoring: Under the auspices of a large 5-year grant I directed in Portugal, our team created an annual summer International School for Digital Transformation and an ongoing media festival-workshop called Future Places to convene international scholars and students from all over the world. These efforts demonstrated the potential of a model that brings people together around topics about which they are passionate in a peer to peer setting. Global Voices, an international grass roots communication effort that grew out of a blogging conference, is another novel international endeavor that might offer lessons for ICA. In all these cases, people wanted to develop and share public conversations around important subjects, and they used network and collaborative tools to do so. Building on its regional conference experience, ICA can develop "schools" or international workshops similar to these efforts in different parts of the world and target regional civil society organizations for partnerships to help to maintain these conversations. Such workshops can be an especially good vehicle for bringing ICA to developing countries and an opportunity to mentor young scholars, using Internet tools for continued collaboration. These workshops also may test how a range of new technologies might service members' needs in non-First World contexts. I believe these endeavors can attract grant funding, and this is an opportune time to reach out to new regions of the world with meaningful programs.
Serving academic environments: Higher education systems are navigating the same unruly waves flooding over most communication and information endeavors. Internet-based forms of dialogue and scholarship raise questions about how the university should incorporate such contributions into educational value systems. Online courses are exciting teaching tools that could enhance global exchanges, but also frightening in their potential for misuse. Growing emphasis on open data and open culture can fly in the face of educational structures that prioritize authorship and ownership, even while data privacy worries escalate. Our members are uniquely equipped to weigh in on many of these problems since they fall within our range of study; as well, several of our scholars are actively incorporating new tools into their pedagogy. ICA is well positioned to serve the academic community by investigating "best practices" regarding the evolving standards associated with new forms of scholarship within academia, and the organization can become a touchstone for the broader educational community when it comes to evaluating the quality and efficacy of online forums. ICA should initiate a series of forums both in and outside of the annual conference venue that can use our membership to explore these professional questions.
About me: I am the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where I chaired the Radio-TV-Film department for seven years, and now lead the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute. My research and teaching interests focus on communication policy and regulation as well as the broader domain of technology and culture. My publications have been shared with numerous national and international panels and commissions, including the FCC, Congressional committees, the Benton Foundation, The Rural Policy Research Institute, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Rural Strategies, The Appalachian Regional Commission, and the National Research Council, among others. Federal agencies, the EU, the government of Portugal as well as foundations and private companies have supported my research. I've also worked informally and formally with groups such as Public Knowledge, the New America Foundation, the Center for Rural Strategies and the Rural Policy Research Institute. Much of my work examines ways that communication technologies can help to resolve inequities that occur in rural and inner cities environments and within low income communities.
Professional service has been important to me, and I've held positions as Departmental Graduate Advisor, on the University's Gender Equity Task Force, chaired the university's Faculty Grievance Committee, and served on our University governance council for a total of six years, among many other committee assignments. I've collaborated with diverse units on campus to organize workshops or series, including Women's and Gender Studies, the School of Information, the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and American Studies. I served as advisor for 32 Ph.D. students and 30 MA students, and have been a member of many additional student committees, receiving the University of Texas' Graduate Teaching Award along the way. I have served on external review committees for several academic departments in the US, Asia and in Europe, and have worked extensively with universities in Portugal to launch research and education programs.
The prospect of helping to lead ICA as it shapes some portion of the future of communications is exciting, especially as it has the potential to grapple in meaningful ways with some of the challenges facing both the academy and society. I would be pleased to use my administrative skills, intellectual energies, and commitment to collaboration to help the organization achieve its potential.
