The Audience Section (AUD) of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites the submission of proposals for papers and panels for IAMCR 2024, which will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, from 30 June to 4 July 2024.
The deadline for submission is 7 February 2024, at 23h59 UTC.
See the CfPs of all sections and working groups
Theme
IAMCR conferences address many diverse topics defined by our 33 thematic sections and working groups. We also propose a single central theme to be explored throughout the conference with the aim of generating and exploring multiple perspectives. This is accomplished through plenary and special sessions, as well as in some of the sessions of the sections and working groups.
The central theme for 2024 focuses on "Whiria te tāngata / Weaving people together: Communicative projects of decolonising, engaging, and listening" - which draws upon a Maori proverb about the strength that comes through common purpose.
Consult a detailed description of the main theme
The IAMCR Audience section invites papers that reflect on the above theme. Our section aims to encourage interest in understanding audiences for a range of media technologies, in diverse settings, rethinking the role of media in identity, everyday life and broader social, cultural, and political engagement reflecting the interplay between audiences and publics. Considering the constant changing and dynamic media contexts, questions of decolonizing engagement practices, inclusiveness, respect, and reciprocity remain pertinent for audiences and their identities linked to media that cross and blur boundaries between cultures. Such blurring experience, however, provides new opportunities for diversity of identity and forms of expression.
Audiences have gone through significant changes due to the proliferation and reconfiguration of mediatized settings in the past years. We invite our section members to recognize the consequences of these processes for the audiences, their engagements, and responses in the context of dynamic worldwide developments. On the one hand, we have been witnessing a trend of over-dependence on the proliferation of new technologies to stay connected in mediatized environments; on the other hand, we have observed that such over-dependence creates anxieties and deepens existing divides. Similarly, the small world effect of networked audiences and publics continue to be mediated by the global media industry and the algorithmic order. We particularly invite papers that deepen on these sub-themes of the conference.
We encourage reflection on the changing nature of audiences, innovations in ways of studying audiences across a range of media and contexts to address the challenge of an increasingly complex convergent media environment that not only address theoretical and methodological underpinnings of audience research, but also more practical issues of audience measurement.
In addition to the call for papers that reflect the general conference theme, we would like to invite proposals for papers and panels that address the following themes, although we are also open to innovative and critical research on audiences from the full range of disciplinary and theoretical positions:
Authentic and inauthentic audiences. During the past years the media landscape has been plagued by the concept of post-truth, thus reconfiguring audiences and reception of the content and information. Audiences are reconfigured in the context of the regimes of truth, post-truth; information and mis-disinformation. These contexts include not only authentic actors but also algorithmic, bot-based behaviors. What are the dynamics between authentic and inauthentic actors are perceived or interacted with?
Global, local, subcultural and minority audiences. Audiences are not monolithic structures but fragmented and unique in their practices. Those practices can be based on subculture, minority practices, local and global tendencies. Such diversified audiences and fans are reflected through an increasing range of audio-visual content available to consumers, fans and publics, including translations, subtitling and fan subbing of fiction and non-fiction television and social media. Doing such audience research calls for multi-faceted approaches to varieties of audience experiences grounded in social and cultural contexts. We welcome papers that explore such facets of audiences, distribution contexts, geo-cultural approaches to audiences, and the significance of place and time, to researching audiences, users and publics.
Generational Audiences: Young people’s relationship with media has been the subject of both the celebration of the potential for new forms of creative expression and anxiety regarding the impact of powerful media on vulnerable audiences and especially marked by digital technologies. In relation to new media forms, young people are frequently seen to be in the vanguard of new audience trends and emerging practices of consumption and engagement. We welcome papers that explore audience experience from the adolescent perspective, and that examine opportunities, risks, and challenges faced by children and young people in the current media environment. Additionally, this generational perspective appeals to those works focused on not-so-young people that have witnessed the constant and long transformation of media audiences: media experiences across lifetimes are also key to explore our multifaceted landscape.
Audiences in Context: There is a growing acknowledgement that the audience is not only to be found in front of the television in the domestic space of the living room. Studies of fans and other dispersed audiences have encouraged an ethnographic turn in audience studies and the decentering of the contexts and practices of being an audience. We welcome submissions that follow audiences into different contexts and engage with the ways that media are dispersed through the practices of everyday life. Complementing this is a rethinking of the spaces of media consumption, including the home, which integrates a range of media technologies in everyday practice.
Audience Experience: There are a variety of ways in which audience experience(s) are being rethought in media and communication. For example, as participants in social media, audiences contribute to the media environment through their online practices and join themselves to a variety of groups and movements. There has been a growing recognition of the importance of belonging and affect in media engagements suggesting new ways of thinking of the visceral aspects of audience engagement that afford new forms of connectivity. These shifts are both welcomed as creating inclusive spaces of engagement and feared because of the strength of feeling associated with populism. The section welcomes presentations that engage these new ways of thinking about audience experiences, such as audience experience mediated by AI recommendations and customization.
Audiences and industries. Academic audience research no longer ‘owns’ the concept of ‘the audience’, as media industries, governments, regulators and NGOs are increasingly interested in audience research, and many times through technologies. We welcome papers that address the varied ways in which audiences are conceptualized, measured, and addressed by media industries, governments, NGOs and online groups and participants. How is the audience configured in these different contexts, for different reasons and using different methods?
Measuring Audiences: A variety of methods are developing to quantify audience practices in a variety of ways. Broadcasters gather data on audience responses through a variety of means that are displacing traditional audience surveys and panels. Social media feeds provide resources for big data analysis of connected audiences and their sentiments. Submissions reflecting on new media audience research tools and applications are welcomed.
Theorizing and Rethinking Audience Research: Innovations in theory and method are essential if audience researchers are to keep pace with a rapidly changing media environment where audience(ing) takes multiple forms and resists easy categorization or investigation. We welcome proposals for papers that address new conceptual and practical approaches to studying audiences in the complex convergence of digital and linear media across a range of platforms and that reflect on the emerging agenda for audience studies in a radically transformed media ecology. In doing so, we are also inviting to pursue theoretical contributions that deepen our understanding of the foundational concepts of audience research and its continuous redefinition.
Guidelines for abstracts
Abstracts are requested for papers to be presented in person at the conference in Christchurch. Abstracts submitted to the Audience Section should have between 300 and 500 words and must be submitted online here. Abstracts submitted by email will not be accepted.
The deadline to submit abstracts is 7 February 2024, at 23.59 UTC.
It is expected that each person will submit only one (1) abstract. However, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same author, either individually or as part of any group of authors. The same abstract, or a version with minor variations in title or content, must not be submitted to more than one section or working group. Such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be rejected by the abstract submission system, by the Head of the section or working group or by the Conference Programme Reviewer. Authors submitting the same work to multiple Sections or Working Groups risk being removed entirely from the conference programme.
Proposals are accepted for both single papers and for panels with several papers (in which you propose multiple papers that address a single theme). Please note that there are special procedures for submitting panel proposals.
See important dates and deadlines to keep in mind
Languages
Abstracts in English, French or Spanish are welcome. Presentations are also welcome in any of the three languages, but we recommend researchers to prepare their slides in English to facilitate comprehension and discussion.
See resources for IAMCR conference preparation and participation
For further information about the Audience Section, its themes, submissions, and panels please contact the Head of the section:
Co-chairs:
Asta Zelenkauskaite az358@drexel.edu
Miguel Vicente Mariño miguel.vicente@uva.es
Co-vice chairs:
Maite Soto Sanfiel
Rafal Zaborowski
Nissim Katz