IAMCR 2014: Working Group Digital Divide - CfP - Deadline 10 February

The Working Group on Digital Divide of the International Association for Media and Communication Research invites submissions for the IAMCR Conference that will be held from July 15-19, 2014 at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India. The deadline for submissions is February 10, 2014.

The conference will be held under the general theme “Region as Frame: Politics, Presence, Practice”.

The breaking down of some the world’s walls has created an uncertainty about the geographies and substantive nature of the regions they had once defined. This includes physical boundaries such as the Berlin wall, ideological ones such as those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, economic ones such as those that had once separated India and other socialist economies from the capitalist West, and cultural ones such as those that had hidden the lives of people in the Middle Eastern and Soviet bloc.

Mobility, migration and disembodied interactions by cyberspace further complicate the notion of region as a conceptual and experiential category. New regional hierarchies, such as the economic power of emerging economies (BRICS) are taking shape, serving to decentre traditional loci of power, while different forms of identity politics are creating fissures in the modern nation state. Corporations have acquired the power to dictate politics through their ownership of forms and channels of expression, and this has created a new urgency to re-think old political economy arguments around media control and dispersal in a regional rather than global framework.

The conference theme seeks to explore the dynamics of media systems, communication patterns and organizational relationships within this new “framing” of region as a physical and conceptual category.

The WG on DD welcomes papers and panels related to the conference theme, including such topics as:

• Digital Divide at the Regional and Subregional Level(s)

• Cyberspace = Sub-regional, Regional and Global Dimensions

• Social Media as a Manifest of the Regional/ Sub-regional

  New Media Creating Regions  with Fluid Boundaries

• Access to New Media, Regions and Social Capital

  Features of Regional Gender, Ethnic and Generation Identity and Digital Divide

• Digital Competencies, Media Literacy and Regions

• The Digital in the Newsrooms: Regional and Sub-regional Frames

Individual papers and panels are possible, but all proposals must be submitted through the online Open Conference System at http://iamcr-ocs.org from 1 December 2013 – 10 February 2014. Early submission is strongly encouraged. There are to be no email submissions of abstracts addressed to any Section or Working Group Head.

It is expected that for the most part, only one (1) abstract will be submitted per person for consideration by the Conference. However, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same applicant either individually or as part of any group of authors. Please note also that the same abstract or another version with minor variations in title or content must not be submitted to other Sections or Working Groups of the Association for consideration, after an initial submission. Such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be automatically rejected by the Open Conference System, by the relevant Head or by the Conference Programme Reviewer. Such applicants risk being removed entirely from the conference programme.
Upon submission of an abstract, you will be asked to confirm that your submission is original and that it has not been previously published in the form presented. You will also be given an opportunity to declare if your submission is currently before another conference for consideration.

Presenters are expected to bring fully developed work to the conference. Prior to the conference, it is expected that a completed paper will be submitted to Section, Working Group, Session Chairs, and/or Discussants.

Other important deadlines to keep in mind for now are:

Digital Divide Working Group

Head:
Olga Smirnova
smirnovaorama[at]gmail.com

Vice Heads:
Zarqa Ali
zsha016[at]aucklanduni.ac.nz

Liangwen Kuo
lwkuo[at]mail.nctu.edu.tw