Speakers for the major plenary panels and sessions for the upcoming conference in San Francisco have all been invited and have accepted. I'm delighted with the line-up of great speakers and discussion topics, as these really bring to life the conference theme of Creating Communication: Content, Control, and Critique. In this column, I'd like to publicise the plenaries, update everyone on conference preparations, and end with some heartfelt thanks to all who’ve contributed to planning the conference.

Opening Plenary

Communication and Critique: Reflections On The Critical Role of Communication Scholarship

Thursday, May 24th, 6pm - 7:15 pm

This opening plenary panel will explore stimulating and diverse perspectives on the possibilities for critique in communication scholarship. An invited panel of speakers will ask, what constitutes critique in today's intellectual and political context? Are we all critical scholars, in one way or another, or is critique itself fading from our field? As societies become more complex, commercialised and globalised, and as traditional political divisions and familiar ethical values are uprooted or challenged, what critical standpoints, if any, would the panel make their priority for future research?

Chaired by Susan Douglas, expert on issues of culture, gender, and broadcasting history at the U of Michigan, speakers include Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths College, U of London and author most recently of The Uses of Cultural Studies and currently writing Gender Culture and Social Change), Robin Mansell (London School of Economics, currently editing the Oxford Handbook on ICTs and recent author of Trust and Crime in Information Societies), Bella Mody (U of Colorado, Boulder, author of International and Development Communication: A 21st Century Perspective), and Ellen Seiter (U of Southern California, author of The Internet Playground: Children's Access, Entertainment and Mis-education).

This plenary will be followed by the Welcome Reception in the Hilton, to which all delegates are warmly invited. Come and meet your colleagues and friends in a convivial atmosphere with some food and drink provided.

Plenary

What's So Significant About Social Networking? Web 2.0 and its Critical Potential

Friday, May 25th, 12 - 1:15pm

Web 2.0 is high on the public agenda right now. Indeed, from MySpace and YouTube to collective journalism and open-source software production, online social networks are transforming our lives. This panel will take a critical look at the changes under way and their implications for communication researchers, chaired by Fred Turner (author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture at Stanford U).

Speakers are leading researchers Howard Rheingold (author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs, participatory media activist and Instructor at the U of California, Berkeley), Beth Noveck (pioneer of The Do Tank and the State of Play Academy at New York Law School), Henry Jenkins (author of Convergence Culture and Textual Poachers, among other books, at MIT), and Tiziana Terranova (author of Network Culture and Bodies in the Net, U of Essex). Together, they will map the social and technological forces driving the rise of these networks, as well as the debates surrounding them. The aim is to assess how digital social networks interact with offline cultural and political institutions and to identify the roles that scholars might play in shaping that relationship.

Half-Plenary

The Politics of Publishing: The Future Of Academic (Book) Publishing

Friday, May 25th, 4:30pm - 5:45pm

Many of us publish academic books, but what do we know of the politics of publishing? This panel focuses on the changing structures of the book publishing industry - its structures, institutions and powers. Its starting point is the irony that one of the only media industries in which academics have any direct involvement as active players is the publishing industry, and yet this is the one media industry about which academics know almost nothing.

Chaired by Michael Schudson, expert in the sociology of news at U of California, San Diego, the keynote presentation at this plenary will be given by John B. Thompson (author of Books in the Digital Age and Professor of Sociology at Cambridge U). His arguments will be complemented by the reactions of two respondents who are each active leaders in current developments in book and journal publishing: John Willinsky (U of British Columbia’s Public Knowledge Project, and author of The Access Principle) and Steve Smith (Vice President and Editorial Director of Academic Books at Blackwell Publishing).

Later on Friday, from 7pm - 9 pm, we’ve arranged a Special Reception at the Asian Art Museum. I look forward to meeting many of you there. You can buy tickets for this when you register for the conference.

Plenary

Presidential Address: "Unusual Routines: Organizational NonSensemaking"

Saturday, May 26th, 4:30pm – 6pm

ICA President Ron Rice (Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication and Co-Director, Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media) will make his address to the conference. Giving us an advance insight into the argument from his new book, and with topical examples promised from the world of academia, Rice will argue that unusual routines involve contradictory and frustrating subprocesses that inherently generate negative outcomes for some organizations, system users, organizational representatives, and their customers and clients, while generating completely sensible and even effective outcomes for others. 

The presidential address is traditionally combined with the Annual Members' Meeting and Awards Presentation, making for an action-packed session. I would like to urge all ICA members to attend this meeting, not only because these meetings have sometimes been poorly attended but, more importantly, because this is an opportunity to hear about the latest developments and plans within the Association, and to offer comments and suggestions. So, do put this in your conference diary.

Plenary Interactive Paper Session

Sunday, May 27th, 12 – 1:15pm

Papers from all the Divisions and Interest Groups will be displayed in this main plenary event, so everyone should find something relevant to their work here. Presenters will be standing by their papers, ready to discuss their research with interested participants.

The Top 10 Plenary Papers will receive a certificate, and the Top 3 will receive cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100, to be awarded during the event itself. Coffee and water will also be provided, and sandwiches, rolls and fruit will be on sale, so this is another good opportunity to mingle and meet like-minded researchers.

Half-Plenary

News, Journalism And The Democratic Potential of Blogging: From
Antagonism To Synergy?

Sunday, May 27th, 4:30pm – 5:45pm

There’s a lot of popular speculation about blogging and its potential challenge to established journalism, but what’s really going on? Chaired by Nico Carpentier (editor of Reclaiming the media: Communication rights and democratic media roles), Vrije U Brussel & Catholic U of Brussels), four leading scholars will debate whether and how blogging, or citizen journalism, can develop into new informational and representational practices that advance our democracies. They’ll inquire into the democratic potential of the transformations of journalism(s) through a cross-fertilization of journalism with blogging. But the panel will also critically address the limitations and restrictions, the struggles and counter-strategies, which these democratic innovations face in taking on the more hegemonic articulations of journalist identities and the resulting practices.

The speakers will be Jay Rosen (leading figure in the public journalism reform movement, and author of What are Journalists For?, at New York U), Geert Lovink (U of Amsterdam and Hogeschool van Amsterdam, author of Dark Fiber - essays on Internet culture, and Uncanny Networks), Fausto Colombo (Author of Digitising TV at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), and Gaye Tuchman (U of Connecticut, author of Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality).

That's the plenaries! Any more, and there wouldn't be time for regular sessions.

Registration

Registration for the conference is now open, and lots of information is already available on the ICA website – for example, the conference programme, application form for travel grants, etc., and we’ll be adding more information in the coming months. You’ll also see information on the pre-conferences and the theme events, so make your choices early. Register online at http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/2007/confregistration.asp.

Everyone who submitted a paper should have heard by now whether their submission has been accepted. Congratulations to those who've received good news. As I wrote in the last issue of the Newsletter, submissions were up by 30% this year, so it has been tough for programme planners and reviewers in making the selections, and tough also on those who didn’t get selected – still, I hope that everyone who can come, will, if at all possible.

Thanks

Every year, the conference chair learns this process from scratch! So let me end with some heartfelt thanks to everyone who has worked so hard in preparing the conference programme. First, I’m hugely grateful to Michael Haley and his great team at the ICA office – Sam Luna, Deandra Tolson, Tina Zeigler, and Mike West.

I’d also like to thank all the unit planners, who've worked so hard, often over weekends, getting everything reviewed, planned, and fitted into the sessions allocated. So, many thanks to Paul Bolls, Pam Kalbfleish, Robin Nabi, Cynthia Stohl, Min-Sun Kim, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Kevin Barnhurst, Amy Nathanson, Dave Buller, Ingrid Volkmer, Jan Van Dijk, Lynn Clark, Betteke Van Ruler, Vicki Mayer, Sharon Strover, Steve McDowell, Mark Aakhus, Marion Mueller, James Neuliep, John Newhagen, David Phillips, Bernadette Watson, Kumarini Silva, John Sherry and Nico Carpentier.

It’s been great working with Nico Carpentier as Theme Chair, who with Benjamin De Cleen has put together the theme events listed above as well as arranging the theme sessions. (Visit the theme session website at http://www.vub.ac.be/icatheme07/.) I’m grateful also to Fred Turner for organising the 'social networking' plenary, to Heather Hudson of the local host committee and to Seeta Peña Gangadharan for local student support. Thanks, last, to Ron Rice, for handing on lots of helpful information about conference planning, and to the Executive Committee for guiding me when needed.

Next month: Theme Sessions, Theme Events, and Exhibitions!