The purpose of ICA 2007 Preconference #3 is to establish a dialogue about dialogue - across field and research-practice divides, between those who focus on conducting and applying studies of users/audiences of media, library, information, and communication systems. The preconference is designed as a working symposium. All participants will be involved in brainstorming how we can bridge gaps between the cacophonies of perspectives being brought to bear on understanding and serving users/audiences.

Among numerous challenges the communication field has faced in the emerging electronic mediated world is the fact that communication has become everybody's business. There is no arena in which this is more obvious than in research focusing on users/audiences. Virtually every field has jumped on the bandwagon.

The outcome has been an explosion of research amid cacophonies of discourses founded on differing assumptions, vocabularies, and methods. There is little sharing across fields and research-practice divides. A great deal of research is being implemented in the name of "communication" with little knowledge of the offerings of communication scholars. Likewise, communication scholars are implementing "user" studies too often with little knowledge of those in other fields highly involved in addressing identical questions.

Simultaneously, there has been a series of systematic attacks on the value of the social sciences. These attacks have taken on a variety of forms, but bottom line the charges -- from far too many practitioners, policy makers, and sometimes political observers -- are that the social sciences are irrelevant to policy, design, and practice.

When we intersect these two phenomena what emerges most tellingly is that something is very amiss in the communicating about our understanding of communication that emerges from user/audience studies. There is, in short, a dialogic rift that is not being bridged with usual scholarly communication practices.

It is these phenomena that served as the impetus of this preconference. The symposium is an outgrowth of a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services that focused in part on the problems of dialogue between the three fields most involved in user/audience studies (communication, library and information science, and human computer interaction) and between researchers and practitioners (e.g., designers, administrators, front-line practitioners). To date, interviews have been completed with 114 experts in the fields, asking for assessments of user/audience research and of attempts to collaborate across research and practice divides. An additional 47 faculty and graduate students wrote impressionistic essays after reading the interview database. These sources will serve as fodder for the speakers on the symposium roster.

This working symposium will be held all day Thursday, May 24. In the morning, a diverse group of presenters with anchors across the three fields will give their impressions, from their different perspectives, of what they see as gaps across field and research-practice divides and what they see as potential procedural and structural changes to facilitate dialogue. These speakers include: Sandra Braman (U of Wisconsin-Milawaukee); Donald Case (U of Kentucky); Cees Hamelink (U of Amsterdam); Youichi Ito (Keio U); Robert Jacobson (Bluefire Consulting, Santa Monica); Ed McLuskie (Boise State); Michael Menou (consultant, information & knowledge management, London); John Nerone (U of Illinois); Kaarle Nordenstreng (U of Tampere); Marshall Pool (U of Illinois); John Richardson (UCLA); David Snowden (Cognitive Edge, Cardiff); Angharad Valdivia (U of Illinois).

The afternoon working groups will start with brief presentations by 4-5 participants per group, focusing on what they have learned about communicating across divides from their projects in other contexts. The remainder of the time will focus on canvassing all participant viewpoints and brainstorming next steps including a possible global conference and possible recommendations for innovating alternative communication procedures and structures that will better serve user/audience studies.