Durban 2012 - News

The programme and abstracts from IAMCR's 2012 conference in Durban, South Africa are available for download.

Yellow fever is an infectious disease caused by a virus carried by the Aëdes aegypti mosquito. South Africa does not have yellow fever but to avoid its introduction international health regulations require all travellers arriving from a yellow fever risk country to show proof that they have been vaccinated. This includes anyone whose flight included a stopover in a yellow fever risk country, even if they did not get off the plane. If you are travelling from or have passed through a yellow fever risk country in the six days before your arrival in South Africa, you must have a valid Yellow Fever Certificate.

Now is the time to register for IAMCR's 2012 conference in Durban, South Africa. Click here to register online or here to visit the home page of the IAMCR 2012 website. Registration for the conference will only take a few minutes and involves a six-step process.

IAMCR has awarded 10 travel grants of US$1,500 to offset the costs for ten members from low-income who will be attending and presenting papers at the 2012 Conference in Durban, South Africa, 15-20 July 2012.

Additionally, four grants covering conference registration fees were awarded to IAMCR members from low income-countries who support IAMCR as section or working group officers or active members of committees, and three to African students.

If you haven't yet registered for IAMCR 2012 in Durban, the local organisers are going to give you ten good reasons to do so. The first was a panel on Freedom of the Media.

The second is a plenary session on Nollywood and African Satellite Channels.

One of the most notable features of the African media landscape is the runaway success of the Nigerian film industry, dubbed Nollywood. In twenty years of its existence, Nollywood has placed Nigerian filmmaking footprints indelibly on the global filmmaking canvas. Nollywood has become centred in film discourse around the globe.

If you haven't yet registered for IAMCR 2012 in Durban, the local organisers are going to give you ten good reasons to do so. The reasons will be published on their website over the next few weeks. The first one is:

An outstanding panel on ‘Freedom of the Media’.

At a time when media is under fire for saying too little, saying it badly or not saying it at all, it is worth considering some of the constraints placed on journalists, broadcasters and newspapers, bloggers and aggregators, and the ways in which we as the informed public, expect our policy-makers and information providers to deal with them.  We have assembled a powerful panel of some of South Africa's most influential policy-makers, public protectors and journalists to speak on this theme.

IAMCR is making a number of grants available to members in good standing from low-income countries who will be participating in our upcoming conference in Durban, South Africa.

Nine grants will cover the cost of registration and ten grants will include cash awards to help offset travel costs.

IAMCR's 31 Sections and Working Groups have reviewed the abstracts submitted and announced their decisions.

If you have submitted an abstract and have not received a response, you can verify the decision by logging into www.iamcr-ocs.org with the same username and password you used when you submitted your work. Select MY IAMCR-OCS from the main menu at the top of this page to login and go to your personal page.

Dear Fellow Members of IAMCR

You will be pleased to know that a new opportunity has been created for you to attend IAMCR's 2012 conference in Durban, South Africa from July 15 to 19. This opportunity, for those who have not yet submitted, is in the form of an extension of the deadline for submission of abstracts to February 28, 2012 via the IAMCR Open Conference System.

We recognize that all over the world, these are hard times. Europe is in the throes of a financial crisis, and the rest of the world reels. Money is tight, and university grants are thin. So, it is important to use the money we do have wisely and to good effect. Those of us in the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) really believe that if you are able to attend only one conference this year, it should be IAMCR in Durban.

The deadline for submissions of abstracts of papers and panel proposals for the IAMCR Durban 2012 Conference has been extended to February 28, 2012. This will permit applicants from all continents who could not make the earlier deadline to now submit their abstracts or panels for consideration for Durban.

The conference is to be held from July 15-19, 2012 at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa.

The 2012 IAMCR conference will be held under the general theme, 'South-North Conversations'. The theme calls for balanced and empowering narratives between communications thinkers in developing countries, sometimes referred to as the 'global south' and those of the developed countries in the 'north'. It seeks to expose the interactive linkage of ideas and research initiatives within and across development and cultural regions.

The deadline for submission of abstracts of papers and panel proposals for the IAMCR Durban 2012 Conference has been extended to February 28, 2012. See the amended Call for Proposals.

The International Association for Media and Communication Research invites submissions of abstracts for papers and panel proposals for the 2012 IAMCR conference to be held from July 15-19, 2012 at the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa.

The conference will be held under the general theme, 'South-North Conversations'. The theme reflects the asymmetry of global communication flows, but without implying the negatives that usually accompany discussions of the 'digital divide'. The theme also calls for balanced and empowering narratives that do not regard those in ‘the South’ as victims primarily in need of handouts from the more affluent.

All roads lead to Durban in South Africa from July 15 to 19 when academic experts, researchers and emerging scholars from all continents will assemble for five rigorous days of discourse and analysis at the 2012 edition of the IAMCR Annual Conference series.

Up to a thousand delegates, from Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Australasia, will descend on the Howard College Campus of the University of KwaZulu Natal in the coastal city of Durban, marking the first time that the Association will be hosting one of its conferences in sub-Saharan Africa.

IAMCR President, Annabelle Sreberny, writes about the theme of IAMCR 2012: South-North Conversations

Names are political. Calling your child Ronald, Osama or Facebook is meaningful. City streets are often renamed after political upheavals or to memorialise significant events.  There is also a long history of discursive struggle about how to refer to the planet that we inhabit, especially in the post-World War Two context.

The “Third World” was coined in the 1950s. It was adopted politically to signify a plague on both the hegemonies – Western and sovietised!  It became connected to the Non-Aligned Movement,  triggering the naming of the other two worlds. When the Berlin Wall fell, so did the tripartite ‘worlds’ and a new period of American hegemony seemed to be ushered in on the wings of globalization.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and the South African Communication Association (SACOMM) will host the July 2012 IAMCR Conference in Durban, South Africa.

The theme for the 2012 conference will be 'South-North Conversations'.