A good many ICA members have expressed a desire, especially in recent years, for more international research collaboration. Many of us, through our universities, are also increasingly involved in cross-national teaching collaborations. And in our various roles in editing books and journals, organising conferences, and applying for funding, the prospects for collaboration of one kind or another - both international and national - are important. Yet finding an appropriate collaborator in your specific field, in another country, is genuinely difficult - though it is ironic, perhaps, that this should remain the case in these days of online social networking. However, as social networking research in our field is beginning to show, the best contacts and the strongest ties often exist among people who already know each other, and who also continue to communicate offline. Indeed, there are even some hints that the very informality of much social networking can act to reinforce, rather than overcome, existing hierarchies, prejudices, and forms of exclusion. So, it's making new and distant contacts, for the purposes of a significant working relationship on which the collaborators are dependent for successful project delivery, that is really tricky.

We have probably all observed that, when asked to suggest possible people to be invited - to join an editorial board, a working group, a conference programme, a research project - the people that come to mind most readily are either from your own country, or, perhaps, the same few people from another country. This is unsurprising, no doubt, but serendipity is a poor basis for collaboration, and this approach hardly encourages a level playing field. Indeed, those hasty conversations designed to canvass for names of people to invite, often treated rather informally - in the corridor or over lunch, perhaps - can act as a positive barrier against the inclusion of new people in collaborative activities. These arguments were familiar in the early days of the feminist movement, when informal processes of collaboration and collegiality frequently served to exclude women. Today, similar processes can exclude scholars from other countries than one's own, especially if those countries have a few prominent 'names' that get put forward again and again, or if a country's own research culture is strongly hierarchical, so that snowballing from initial contacts merely produces 'the usual suspects.' These processes can also make it difficult for new or junior scholars entering the field.

So, how can ICA help? At the ICA Board Meeting last January, ICA's mission statement, which hadn't been changed for 10 years, was updated, in part to reflect the growing move towards greater internationalisation. It now reads:

The International Communication Association aims to advance the scholarly study of human communication by encouraging and facilitating excellence in academic research worldwide. The purposes of the Association are (1) to provide an international forum to enable the development, conduct, and critical evaluation of communication research; (2) to sustain a program of high-quality scholarly publication and knowledge exchange; (3) to facilitate inclusiveness and debate among scholars from diverse national and cultural backgrounds and from multidisciplinary perspectives on communication-related issues; and (4) to promote a wider public interest in, and visibility of, the theories, methods, findings, and applications generated by research in communication and allied fields.

There are, of course, many ways in which this ambition for an international forum for communication research - based on principles of quality, inclusiveness, openness, and diversity - can be, and is being, advanced. One concrete initiative, now being taken forward by the Internationalisation Committee chaired by Sherry Ferguson, is the construction of a Directory of Communication Associations. You'll see on the ICA website (under 'Membership: affiliate organisations') the beginnings of a listing of communication associations worldwide. We hope to include as many associations as possible by the end of 2008. Please e-mail Sam Luna the title, URL, and contact details of your national or regional association - if all members did this, we could very quickly complete this task. Then any researcher who needs information about, or plans to visit, or is seeking contacts in another country has a straightforward place to start looking.

Another initiative is to provide more online information about ICA members, in a form readily useful for a variety of searches. Since we are all paying our dues for 2007-8 - hopefully you have already done this - you'll have noticed that the profile information held about each member has been greatly enhanced. Until last year, the 'find a colleague' facility produced only an address, unit membership, and - for the minority who actually used this - the option of locating people according to selected keywords. Now, influenced by the rapid spread of peer networking via social networking sites, and with many of us increasingly used to presenting our personal or professional identity as an online profile, ICA has greatly increased the amount of information available. I should stress that this information is available only to members and, for the most part, is only the information that each member chooses to provide. And it can only result in requests to join things (we now ask - are you willing to review conference/journal papers or collaborate in new projects?) - and you can still say no! So please do take this opportunity to post more information about yourself - you can amend this at any time. And you never know what fascinating invitations may result!

Further social networking opportunities are also being implemented - see the Section Forums now up and running for the divisions and interest groups you belong to, and see Sam Luna's piece in this newsletter for guidance on 'how to post'. Do let us know if you have other ideas. But, as with all such activities, these are only as effective and lively as we collectively make them. In other words, now is a great time to get networking with your fellow members in ICA!