It is an honor and a humbling experience to be President of the largest international communication association and to follow recent Presidents such as Sonia Livingstone, Ron Rice, Wolfgang Donsbach, and Jon Nussbaum. Joined by Barbie Zelizer as President-Elect, our Executive Committee holds within it the collective expertise and wisdom to grapple with emerging issues of concern to ICA and to seek opinions from our Board, committees, task forces, and general membership.
As each of our Presidents have taken their own specific angle but have continued forward the agendas of others, I too have particular initiatives in which I am invested. I outlined these in my position statement prior to election. However, in the year I have served as President-Elect, 2008 Montreal program planner, President of the Council of Communication Associations, and spokesperson for ICA at international conferences, I my views on these issues have taken different, more nuanced and integrated, and more urgent slants.
First, still of greatest concern to me is the accessibility of our research and its perceived importance, quality, and connection to real world issues and development of knowledge. We are involved in interorganizational networks and ongoing discussions with our publisher, task force members, and other organizations to develop more effective ways of enhancing accessibility while changing and preserving the strengths of our financial profile. With the release of National Research Council (NRC) data approaching rapidly and steady progress toward incorporating more journals in the ISI listings, we are positioned well. We intend to work toward collaborating with international associations on alternative quality measures, develop greater connections with funding agencies, review our publicity and awards processes, and continue related work initiated by our past Presidents.
Second, we have made amazing inroads in internationalization efforts. It hasn’t been that long since we voted to have and have recruited Regional Board members. Over the last few years, our efforts and success in internationalization have been remarkable. As always, however, there is much more that can be done. Re-examining all of our procedures, language usage, and organizing logics is one charge on which we’ll work this year. Also, we’ll be examining how to put into place the many suggestions that came out of panels and committee or task force meetings at our Montreal conference and over the upcoming year. One suggestion was offer members of our international affiliates access to our journals for a lower fee and, when possible, link to associational websites for mutual translation of publication abstracts. We already post abstracts in English, Korean, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese. But we might foster greater exchange and partnering in projects by pursuing these and related efforts.
Third, a personal interest is to create mentoring, collaborative exchange formats and career development strategy exchange on all levels using our social networking capabilities, newsletters, and different conference possibilities. We’ve already had discussions with our student Board representatives but will request ideas and implementation strategies during online best practices discussions among divisional and interest group representatives.
Finally, there are a number of other initiatives in the works that I and others will report on over the next year. I look forward to serving ICA and hearing about your compliments and concerns. Many thanks to Sonia Livingstone for her incredible work on behalf of ICA and her initiation of so many venues on which I can develop my own contributions!
