Communication Policy and Technology Section
The IAMCR Communication Policy and Technology (CP&T) Section will be holding elections during the business meeting at the upcoming conference in Leicester (UK). The date and time of the business meeting will be included in the final programme of IAMCR 2016. One chair position and two vice-chair positions are open. The terms run for four years.
Responsibilities include all phases of conference programming for the section as well as participation in association-wide decision-making, both during face to face meetings before and sometimes after the annual conference and, between conferences, online. Within that remit, there is room for a great deal of creativity in conceptualizing, organizing, and populating sessions; engaging in substantive and programmatic collaborations with other sections; stimulating collaborative research; working with emerging scholars; and so on.
The current officers of the section are Jo Pierson, Bart Cammaerts and Aphra Kerr. The positions of one chair and two vice-chairs are up for election:
- Jo Pierson is stepping down as chair, following a 4 + 4 year mandate
- Bart Cammaerts is stepping down as vice-chair, following a 4 + 4 year mandate
- Aphra Kerr is stepping down as vice-chair, following a 4 year mandate. She will be candidate for the position of chair.
Any IAMCR member who would like to serve as an officer of the Communication Policy and Technology (CP&T) Section must submit his/her name and institutional position to the current officers (see contact info below), with a copy to IAMCR General Secretary Maria Michalis <M.Michalis[at]westminster.ac.uk> and to the IAMCR secretariat <membership[at]iamc.org>, by 13 July 2016. In addition the CP&T Section also needs to receive a statement of no more than 400 words (with e.g. bio, motivation for being candidate).
Jo Pierson (Chair): jo.pierson[at]vub.ac.be
Bart Cammaerts (Vice-Chair): b.cammaerts[at]lse.ac.uk
Aphra Kerr (Vice-Chair): aphra.kerr[at]nuim.ie
Candidates and statements
For Chair:
- Aphra Kerr, Maynooth University, Ireland
For Co-Vice Chairs:
- Dr. Francesca Musiani, Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
- Dr. Julia Pohle, Internet Policy group of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), Germany
Statements
Dr. Aphra Kerr, Maynooth University, Ireland
I have been a member of IAMCR since the Glasgow conference in 1998 and I was elected vice-chair of the Communication Policy and Technology section in 2012. I assisted in the organisation of the IAMCR Dublin conference in 2013 including organising a special session in CPT with the Irish Data Protection commissioner who has responsibility for many multinational internet companies who have their European headquarters in Ireland. Over the past four years I have worked closely with our chair and co-chair in conference abstract reviewing, conference programming and selecting the best paper. I have also supported the work of the emerging scholars network and worked to improve the online conference system.
My own research focuses on understanding the production, use and regulation of networked digital media in different contexts and the promotion of activities that support online diversity and inclusion. I am currently director of the MA in Sociology (Internet and Society) at Maynooth University in Ireland and am on the expert advisory panel for the Pan European Game Information System (PEGI). I am working on two funded research projects: a European Cost network on the ‘Dynamics of Virtual Work’ and a Canadian funded project on ‘Refiguring Innovation in Digital Games’ which has a focus on diversity and inclusion. I have previously consulted for national, European and international media policy organisations.
My publications include The Business and Culture of Digital Games: gamework/gameplay, Sage, 2006 and I was associate editor of The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. I have just completed a monograph on Global Games: Production, Circulation and Policy in the Networked Age which is in press with Routledge.
I would like to continue to support the development of this section and I will strongly promote transnational comparative research, work that explores the links between internet, broadcast and other areas of policy, and the analysis of multi-stakeholder forms of governance. I would also like to further encourage a critical focus on forms of inequality that are bound up with information and communication policy and technology.
My goals as chair will be to work with my co-chairs and colleagues to promote greater accessibility and internationalisation of the section, especially in countries and regions from which we have poor representation. I would like to strengthen our links with other sections and working groups, and I would also like to expand the internal and external communications capacity of our section. Finally, I would like to work on supporting activities outside of the annual conferences and to promote mentoring of younger scholars.
See https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/aphra-kerr#3 and profiles on LinkedIn and ResearchGate. You can also follow me on twitter @aphrak
Dr. Francesca Musiani, Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France
Dr. Julia Pohle, Internet Policy group of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), Germany
Our names are Francesca Musiani and Julia Pohle. We are, respectively, an assistant research professor at the Institute for Communication Sciences of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a senior researcher at the Internet Policy group of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
We are candidates for the positions of Co-Vice-Chairs for the Communication Policy and Technology Section. We take the liberty of submitting a joint statement given that we have often discussed the possibility of our joint candidacy in the past couple of years, and despite the fact that we have never worked at the same institution, we are frequent collaborators and colleagues as well as friends, with relatively similar backgrounds.
We are both multi-lingual, interdisciplinary Internet governance and communication policy scholars, Francesca with a specific focus on STS approaches and the role of technical architecture as a tool of governance, and Julia with a focus on policy-making processes, in particular regarding the role and evolution of discourses, actors and institutions. Francesca holds an MA in International Law from the UN University for Peace and a PhD in Socio-Economics of Innovation from MINES ParisTech. Julia holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Computer Science from Humboldt Universität Berlin and a PhD in Communication Studies from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Both of us are IAMCR regulars and have a history of contributing to the organization of the association’s annual conferences. Francesca has never missed a conference since Mexico 2009, which took place at the end of her first year of PhD thesis; Julia decided to start a PhD after having organized an IAMCR meeting in 2007 as part of her previous job at UNESCO and has attended most annual conferences ever since. Francesca is currently ending a four-year mandate as Co-Chair of the Emerging Scholars Network Section of IAMCR, having been its communications officer for two years before that; Julia has filled that role for the past few years. In addition, she officially replaced the Co-Chairs of CPT during the 2014 conference when none of them were able to travel to Hyderabad. Hence, we are well acquainted with the organization’s inner workings, its strengths and its challenges; as ESN chair, Francesca has also been on the IC Task Force reflecting on conference models and fees for the past two years.
Our involvement in ESN has always paralleled that in CPT, where we have been presenting papers, reviewing abstracts, and chairing and discussing panels, with a particular focus on Internet governance and policy. We have been recipients of the CPT Best Paper Award in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
If elected to the leadership of CPT, we look forward to collaborate with the Chair in order to continue Jo Pierson, Bart Cammaerts and Aphra Kerr’s excellent work of the past eight years, which has made CPT one of the most lively and diverse sections of IAMCR. We also look forward to co-shape the ongoing discussions about the section’s perimeter and evolutions, as its theories and objects of reference evolve around it, and to fine-tune our appreciation of the work done by colleagues around the world. Our previous and current involvement with ESN puts us in a particularly strong position to act as a bridge with emerging scholars and closely incorporate them in the section’s activities.
Thank you for considering our candidacy.