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ICA's principal areas of concern are represented
by its Divisions and Interest Groups:
Division 1: Information Systems (no web site link)
Information Systems is concerned with information, language and cognitive
systems.
Its central goal is promoting the development of general theories of
complex systems and quantitative methodologies for communication research
in a variety of domains. This focus brings together people with a wide
range of interests and specialties. Member interests include: studies
of information flows, the human interface with communication technology,
and life in an information society: cognition, including information
processing of direct and mediated communication and the construction
of cognitive models; artificial intelligence applications in language,
logic, and reasoning; modeling and study of interaction systems.
Members have pioneered analytical techniques in areas of network analysis,
information theory, structural modeling, interaction analysis, content
analysis and linguistic data processing systems. Issues in the philosophy
of science, cybernetic epistemology, theory and ethics are regular concerns
as well. The division sponsors Behavioral Science and publishes Systemsletter
for members to keep in touch with this diverse domain.
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Division 2: Interpersonal
Communication (click to access web site)
Interpersonal Communication is primarily concerned with the study of
communication processes in a variety of settings, including friendship
formation, relationship development, small group processes, family relations
and the like.
Areas of research and theory development are wide-ranging and include,
for example, mutual influence, intergroup relations, communication rules
and structure, form and function of conversation, effects of message
variation and communicative competence.
The division's central goal is to encourage theory construction, research
and methodological advancements in the study of interpersonal communication.
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Division 3: Mass Communication (no web site link)
Mass Communication is primarily concerned with the differential impact
of messages transmitted by various mass media, including international
exchanges through mass media.
The division members promote systematic study of communication presented
through the electronic, cinematic and print media. Members participate
in developing theory, examination of the processes and effects of mass
communication and development and evaluation of policy relevant to mass
communication.
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Division 4: Organizational Communication (click to access web site)
Organizational Communication members seek to expand our understanding of the processes, prospects, and
challenges of communicating and organizing in a global society. Our scholarship articulates
concepts and theories
to better understand these processes, develop the tools needed to investigate them, and helps to implement the social
practices to improve them.
We examine how communication shapes and is shaped by organizing across a
range of contexts, including health care, community cooperatives, government
and non-government agencies, global corporations, profit and not-for-profit
organizations, and virtual and geographically co-located work.
We study a variety of multi-level phenomena including: discourse and
discursive practices, communication of emotions, leader-follower
communication, democratic communicative practices, negotiation and
bargaining, group processes and decision making, socialization, power and
influence, organizational culture, organizational language and symbolism,
communication and conflict, identity and identification, adoption and
appropriation of communication technologies, emergence of organizational and
inter-organizational networks, and new organizational forms.
We explore these processes from a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives
including structuration, feminism, interpretation, performance, cultural
theory, postmodernism, post positivism, complexity and self-organizing
systems. We utilize eclectic methods including ethnography, discourse
analysis, survey methods, network analysis, computational modeling,
experiments, content analysis, rhetorical and feminist methods.
We honor Division members' achievements through a variety of awards designed
to recognize achievements such as: top paper, top student paper,
dissertation, outstanding member, and best interactive display awards. We
advance scholarship in our division through doctoral consortia,
preconferences focused on specific issues, and spotlight panels on scholars.
We advance scholar-practitioner dialogue through panels sponsored by our
Academic-Industry Task Force.
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Division 5: Intercultural
and Development Communication (no web site)
Intercultural and Development Communication is primarily concerned
with theory and practice of communication between and among different
cultures of the world; with comparisons of different communication systems
in different cultural, national or ethnic groups; with other aspects
of international communication, and with the relationship between communication
and national development.
One definite goal of the division is to promote exchange of knowledge
among scholars studying communication across cultures, between or among
nations, or its role in national development processes. Other goals
include stimulating research on cultural variables, theory building,
training and education, and diffusion of what is learned.
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Division 6: Political
Communication (click to access web site)
Political Communication is concerned with the interplay of communication
and politics, including the transactions that occur among citizens,
between citizens and their governments, and among officials within governments.
The plurality of this substantive focus is similarly reflected in the
rich variance of theoretical perspectives and methodological orientations
of Division members. These research interests are pursued, moreover,
within individual political communities and across communities comparatively.
The Division regularly publishes the Political Communication Review
and the Political
Communication Newsletter.
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Division 7:Instructional and Developmental
Communication
(no web site)
Instructional and Developmental Communication is concerned with both
communication related to any learning environment and communication
which transpires across the life span.
The division has the dual goals of promoting the study of communication
variables and theory in the instructional process (such as teacher-student
interaction, instructional technology, optimal methods of information
dissemination) and to promote the study of communication as a developmental
phenomenon across the complete life span.
Division members actively research everything from the influence of
television upon children and the development of communication in childhood
to relational predictors of elderly life-satisfaction and grandparent-grandchildren
relationships.
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Division 8: Health Communication
Health Communication is primarily concerned with the role of communication
theory, research and practice in health promotion and health care.
Areas of research include provider-patient interaction, social support
networks, health information systems, medical ethics, health policy
and health promotion. The Division's goals are to encourage theory development,
research and effective practice of health communication.
In addition to programming at ICA's annual meeting, the Division publishes
a newsletter and sponsors mid- year and summer conferences.
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Division 9: Philosophy of Communication (no web site link)
Philosophy of Communication is broadly concerned with theoretical,
analytical and political issues that cut across the various boundaries
that are often taken for granted within the study of communication.
Its primary goal is to provide a forum in which scholars can explore
the relations and intersections between the study of communication and
the range of contemporary philosophical concerns, arguments and positions.
It also is committed to providing a space for those emergent interests
which challenge the common sense assumptions of the discipline.
The Division seeks exchange, education and debate, and it encourages
differences. Its members come from many divisions. The philosophical
questions they raise vary greatly: from the nature of language, subjectivity
or experience, to the epistemology of science and interpretation, to
the politics of knowledge and communicative relations. And they bring
many different philosophical orientations to bear upon them, including
phenomenology and hermeneutics, Marxism, feminism, structuralism, post-
modernism, analytic philosophy, pragmatism, etc.
The result is that the Division offers a lively forum for contemporary
ideas, from cultural studies and postmodernism, to semiotics and the
philosophy of language, to phenomenological and interpretive study of
communication events.
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Division 10:
Communication
and Technology (click to access web site)
Communication and Technology is concerned with existing and emerging
forms of technologically mediated communication among people and/or
between people and interactive information resources.
The division investigates, develops and shares ideas and resources related
to: design and forecasting methodologies, implementation strategies,
user needs assessment, policy implications, ongoing system evaluation,
effects and implications for business, the home and society including
productivity measurement and quality of life, and technology diffusion.
The division seeks theorists, survey and experimental researchers and
practitioners.
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Division 11: Popular
Communication (click to access web site)
Popular Communication is concerned with providing a forum for scholarly
investigation, analysis, and dialogue among communication researchers
interested in a wide variety of communication symbols, forms, phenomena
and strategic systems of symbols within the context of contemporary
popular culture.
Interest group members encourage and employ a variety of empirical and
critical methodologies with application to diverse human communication
acts, processes, products and artifacts which have informational, entertainment,
or suasory potential or effect among mass audiences.
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Division 12: Public
Relations (click to access web site)
Public Relations is concerned with the theory and practice of communication
between organizations and specified publics.
Members are concerned with developing a greater understanding of the
theoretic basis for effective communication through both laboratory
and practice of communication between organizations and specified publics.
Members have research interests in such issues as target group analysis,
internal/external communication integration, systems analysis and channel
effectiveness. At the same time the Division is concerned with the application
of theoretic advances for the solution of pragmatic public relations
problems.
Members share communication techniques developed to accomplish specific
Public Relations goals of consultant clients, or corporate employers.
The Division goals include the development of a consulting network,
a long range research program and investigation into the issues of public
relations education accreditation and curriculum development.
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Division 13: Feminist Scholarship
(click to access web site)
Feminist Scholarship is interested in exploring the relationship of
gender and communication, both mediated and non-mediated, within a context
of feminist theories, methodologies, and practices.
The Division explores issues such as feminist teaching; international
commonalities and differences by race, class and gender; women's alternative
media; and feminist cultural studies. Members support and encourage
feminist scholarship in other divisions, and work with the Committee
on the Status of Women to link scholarship to issues concerning women
professionals.
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Division 14: Communication
Law and Policy (click to access web site)
The Communication Law and Policy Division is interested in research and analysis of law,
regulation, and policy that deals with information, communication, and culture.
Defining policy broadly, the division includes within its purview: principles that should or do
underlie law and regulation, proposals for new law and regulation, and the programs and institutions
through which policy is implemented.
Every step of the legal process is of interest: policy implications of the results of research
on information, communication, and culture; development of policy proposals; the nature of policy-making
and policy implementation processes; evaluation; effects; and critique.
The division's scope is global, presenting work that focuses on individual nation-states,
localities, or regions; comparative studies; and international and global law. The Division welcomes
work dealing with policy for the medium (the architecture and technologies of the global information infrastructure)
as well as the message -- and the interactions between the two. Since so much decision-making with structural
effect now takes place outside of formal legal structures, the Division is also interested in private sector
policy-making. No theoretical or methodological constraints.
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Division 15: Language
and Social Interaction (click to access web site)
Language and Social Interaction is concerned with exploring details
of human discourse and human interaction. The Division sponsors research
in language theory, linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, sociolinguistics,
ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis and related approaches
to human social interaction. The primary focus is in interpersonal and
group settings, face-to-face or mediated by telephone and computer.
The Division sponsors a developing focus in interaction in work contexts,
including medical and therapy settings. Micro-analytic, textual, and
cultural approaches are welcome, as are both qualitative and quantitative
methods. The Division is interested in developing archives of audio,
video, and written records of naturally-occurring communication events.
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Division 16: Visual Studies (no web site link)
Visual Studies seeks to enhance the understanding of the visual
in all its forms -- moving and still images and displays in television,
video and film, art and design, and print and digital media. The Division
sponsors research in creation, processing, function, meaning, and critical
consequences of visual representation. Visual Studies research
touches on all other communication fields, investigating such areas
as the interaction of the visual with public policy and law, mass communication
processes, corporate image and organization, technology and human interaction,
elite and popular culture, philosophy of communication, education and
the social sphere. The Division reaches beyond content to assure visual
analyses are grounded solidly in visual theory and methodology. The
Visual Studies Division publishes a biannual newsletter to keep members abreast of the
field and its various scholarly societies.
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Special Interest Group 17: Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies (no web site)
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Studies is concerned with the analysis and
critique of sexual systems, discourses and representations, particularly
those which animate, inform and impinge upon the lives of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people. Such systems and discourses occur in
institutional, community, domestic and intimate contexts, are closely
connected to other social and cultural practices (such as nationalism,
education or popular entertainment), and play a critical role in the
formation and communication of individual and group identity. Members
also work with the ICA leadership to represent the concerns of lesbian,
gay, bisexual and transgender scholars in the Association.
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Special
Interest Group 18: Intergroup
Communication (click to access web site)
Intergroup social contexts shape, and are shaped by, communication.
By understanding the ways in which this reciprocal process is played out,
we can have much to say about a great number of social phenomena. Some
relevant topics would include prejudice and discrimination, social identity
processes, language survival and death, social influence, leadership,
communicative shifts and concomitant effects on relationships, computer
mediated communication, linguistic biases, power, terrorism, and genocide.
Intergroup communication informs many areas of communication, but this is
perhaps mostly so for interactions in the workplace, between cultures, genders,
generations, for mass media phenomena, and political communication. The Intergroup
Communication Interest Group welcomes qualitative and quantitative approaches
including experimental, discursive and social constructionist approaches, and
interdisciplinary approaches such as sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology,
and political science.
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Special Interest Group 19:
Journalism Studies
(click to access web site)
The Journalism Studies Interest Group of the International Communication
Association is concerned with journalism theory, journalism research,
and professional education in journalism. The Interest Group invites a
wide array of theoretical, epistemological and methodological
approaches, all of which are united around an interest in journalism and
share the aim of enhancing existing understandings of how journalism
works, across temporal and geographic contexts. The Interest Group is
intended to facilitate empirical research and to bring more coherence to
research paradigms, and in so doing, to further support the
professionalization of journalism studies and journalism education. With
journalism as its focus, the Interest Group will create a setting in
which scholars employing different kinds of academic approaches can
engage in dialogue. It would be a clearinghouse for the wide range of
scholarship on journalism.
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Special Interest Group 20:
Ethnicity and Race in Communication
(Click to access web site)
The Ethnicity and Race in Communication Interest Group is concerned
with methodological approaches and research that apply, extend or develop
communication theory and analysis through an examination of race and
ethnicity within local, international and transnational contexts.
The interest group also works to advocate for the improved status,
representation and opportunities for underrepresented scholars in
communication.
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Special Interest Group 21: Game Studies
(no web site)
The study of games and the game experience offers
opportunities
for the study of human communication that involve multidisciplinary
approaches that merge the disciplines of conventional communication
studies and research, arts and visual design, cognitive studies,
computer sciences, cultural studies, engineering social sciences, health
sciences, and information design.
Although the common ground for the Interest Group is digital and video games, the group
encompasses a broad range of inquiry topics and methods. It serves as fertile
meeting ground for the exchange of ideas among a very broad spectrum of disciplines.
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