On Wednesday, May 23, and the morning of Thursday, May 24, eight preconferences have been scheduled at various points in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of them will take place within the facilities of the Hilton San Francisco in Union Square, but three will be held at the campuses of the sponsoring institutions in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto.

The preconferences are scheduled as follows:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23

8:15 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.: "Methodologies of Comparative Media Research in a Global Sphere." Union Square 14, Hilton San Francisco (Continues Thursday, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.).

Media and communication studies are in the process of transformation. Global or international communication delivered through satellite and Internet redefine conventional concepts of ‘media,’ of the ‘mass’ audience, of ‘gatekeeping’ and ‘agenda setting,’ of ‘power’ and of ‘communication’ itself. It is timely to address issues of research in this increasingly worldwide context. Given the relevance and impact of comparative research, it is crucial to debate and critically reflect methodologies. This preconference will provide a broad platform for the discussion of new emerging paradigms and approaches relevant to today’s globalized research context.

9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.: "Issues in Contemporary Communication Law and Policy." Communication Department, University of San Francisco.

Communication policy is shaped by numerous actors and institutional arrangements in a variety of settings throughout the world. Scholars, activists, communication technology and service providers, trade associations, private research firms, and government agencies all undertake research and analysis, and disseminate findings and arguments that contribute to the policymaking process. How can we understand the overall role of policy research and analysis in communication policy formation? How is it changing in light of globalization? In light of the Internet and digital media more generally? What ideas and information arising from policy research have shaped outcomes, whether in legislation, regulatory decisions, or international agreements? What institutional and logistical barriers limit the impact of policy research? What lessons can be drawn about the strategies that are most useful to enhance the importance and impact of policy research? To explore these questions, this pre-conference will examine two general domains of communication policy: community broadband and copyright.

1:30 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.: "Mobile Communication: Bringing Us Together or Tearing Us Apart?" Union Square 12, Hilton San Francisco (Continues Thursday, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Union Square 13).

There has been much attention paid to the state of social cohesion during the past decade. Robert Putnam has helped us to focus on social capital and its status, analysis in Europe has looked into the interaction between ICTs (usually the Internet) and the state of socialization, and now McPherson have delivered an analysis on social isolation in the US. While it is possible to comment on the studies, the general message seems to be that we are growing apart rather than closer together. Or are we?

THURSDAY, MAY 24

8:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.: "Making Communication Studies Matter: Field Relevance/Irrelevance to Media, Library, Electronic, Communication System, Designs, Policies, Practices." Continental Ballroom 1, Hilton San Francisco.

This full-day working symposium is open as space is available. It is part of a continuing project focusing on problems of interperspectivity/ interdisciplinarity in applying findings from research relevant to audiences/ users to designs, policies, and practices of systems. The project consists of a series of dialogic surrounds each intended to tease out deeper understandings. To date, a database has been developed with 114 in-depth interviews with top level academic and practitioner experts in three fields -- communication studies (COMM), library and information science (LIS), and human computer interaction (HCI); and 48 impressionistic essays interpreting these interviews by COMM, LIS, and HCI researchers and practitioners. Panels/symposia similar to this one have also been planned for the academic organizations of both LIS and HCI.

The ICA symposium will start with a panel of speakers drawing on their diverse perspectives to interpret convergences/ divergences they see in the dialogue database and to address two questions: 1) Beyond surface stereotypes, what differences stand between fields and perspectives in how they address users/ audiences, and how they conceptualize and execute the challenges of designs, policies, and practices of systems to meet human needs? 2) Beyond impractical idealisms, what procedural and structural interventions might improve our capacities to communicate across our divides? Afternoon working groups start with brief reports of diverse examples of uses of dialogic procedures. Groups will brainstorm symposium questions and conclude with group reports and discussion. Speakers and participants are asked to attend the entire day.

8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.: "Organizational Communication Division Doctoral Preconference: Researching Difference in Organizational Communication Studies." Continental Ballroom 2, Hilton San Francisco.

This doctoral consortium is a daylong pre-conference workshop on professional and research issues for doctoral students in organizational communication. Students who are nearing completion of their coursework, or who have completed coursework and are writing their dissertations, are eligible to participate. This year's consortium theme, "Researching Difference in Organizational Communication Studies," will address the challenges and opportunities of engaging in scholarship that explores intersections of difference-class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, disability, religion, regionalism, and so forth-with organizing processes. Students from various conceptual and methodological perspectives-including post-positivist, critical, poststructuralist, feminist, postcolonial, etc.-are encouraged to attend.

8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.: "Directions in Mediated Communication, New Technologies, and Language and Social Interaction Research." Union Square 19 & 20, Hilton San Francisco.

Mass media, mediated communication, and new communication technologies are increasingly part of many peoples’ social and communicative lives. Yet are they having an influence upon and potentially changing the way we socially interact and use language? If so, how? Are these media and technologies having an effect upon how we interact and use language face-to-face, while communicating via them, or both? Further, do our current methodological and theoretical apparatuses enable us to ask such questions, conceptualize, investigate, and theorize about them? If not, what new theories and methodologies are necessary to move Language and Social Interaction research toward this new direction? This preconference will attempt to answer and work through these questions, offering potential answers, directions for research, and hopefully new insights. The preconference will feature a mix of talks on directions for Language and Social Interaction research in this emerging area, old and new methods and theories for such work, as well as data-based examples of research being conducted in this area.

8:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: "Setting the Agenda for Communication Research: The Next Five Years Preconference at Stanford University in Palo Alto." Bechtel Conference Center, Stanford University.

A series of panels in which prominent scholars identify key substantive problems and new ways of thinking about them. Panelists will be drawn both from Stanford and the discipline at large. There will be 6 panels, 2 in political communication (IA and IB), 2 on the impact of new technology on journalism and mass communications (IIA and IIB) and 2 on human computer interaction (IIIA and IIIB).

9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.: "Digital Storytelling: Critical Accounts of a Californian Export." Tolman Hall, University of California - Berkeley.

Digital Storytelling is evolving as a participatory media practice around the globe. Individuals in a variety of institutional settings tell short, self-representational stories with standard digital equipment. These personal narratives are usually made with self-sourced images and told with the own voice. Although there are many forms of digital storytelling, this preconference takes as its point of departure the approach that was developed at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley from the early 1990s (www.storycenter.org). Their ideas of Digital Storytelling have spread throughout the world. Why has this Californian export become so popular? Which further developing forms of digital storytelling should be observed? What are the broader meanings, the textual characteristics, it’s democratic and participatory potential, and future developments of digital storytelling? How could digital storytelling be understood as mediation practices and to which extent could it contribute to media literacy? Such questions deserve critical and constructive scholarly interest. The preconference will trace the roots and the take-up of the Digital Storytelling movement, and raise research questions from three different corners of the world: from the ICA host state of California, from Europe and from Australia. The pre-conference is a joint effort by The Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley; The international research project ‘Mediatized Stories: Mediation perspectives on digital storytelling among youth’ www.intermedia.uio.no/mediatized/ based at the U of Oslo; The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation, Queensland University of Technology. Australia www.cci.edu.au; and the two sponsoring ICA divisions.