 Letter from the President
Janet Wasko, President, IAMCR
Dear Colleagues,
With almost 2,000 proposals submitted from 89 different countries worldwide, IAMCR’s 2016 conference promises to be another truly global gathering of media scholars.
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 News from Leicester
A record number of pre-conferences
IAMCR 2016 will feature eleven pre-conferences covering a variety of themes including anti-austerity and media activism, the "Brexit" campaign to influence the referendum about Britain's membership in the European Union, and media and governance in Latin America. Sticking to the overall theme for 2016, one pre-conference will look back at the Spanish civil war to examine the influence of the memories 80 years later while another will look at 50 years of memories from the Centre for Mass Communication Research, established at the University of Leicester in 1966 as the first specialist research centre of its kind in the UK.
Half of the pre-conferences will take place in Leicester. Most of the others will be at other universities in the UK but one will be in Valencia, Spain. A complete list of the pre-conferences, with links to pages where you can get more information, is at http://iamcr.org/leicester2016/preconf
Registration is open
We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for IAMCR 2016. Early-bird fees, offering discounts of £60 to £80, are available until 20 May. IAMCR members pay member only fees, which are significantly lower. If you haven't renewed your membership for 2016, remember that you will have to do so before you register for the conference. Register at: http://iamcr.org/leicester2016/register
If you have questions about your membership status or need to renew you membership, contact membership@iamcr.org.
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 Recent IAMCR Activities
Conference on news literacy
An IAMCR conference on news literacy, organized by the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Surendranath College for Women, Kolkata, India was held on January 18, 2016. An initiative of Dr. Uma Shankar Pandey, IAMCR's ambassador in India, the conference was attended by more than 150 participants from all parts of India.
A report on the conference, with photos and links to some of the presentations on YouTube is at http://iamcr.org/news/report-news-literacy. You can also watch a two-minute audio visual presentation introducing the theme, prepared for the conference by the students of Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Surendranath College for Women in Kolkata.
Ibrahim Saleh named IAMCR's ambassador in Egypt
Ibrahim Saleh, chair of the Journalism Research and Education Section, recently moved back to his home country, Egypt, after a number of years in South Africa. After barely enough time to unpack his suitcases, he agreed to take on an additional role as IAMCR's ambassador to Egypt. Even before completing his draft three-year plan for developing IAMCR in Egypt, Ibrahim has already signed up two new institutional members.
Ibrahim joins IAMCR new and expanding ambassadors network. For information on the network, including how to become an ambassador, visit http://iamcr.org/ambassadors.
Support for Turkish academics
2016 began as a difficult year for Turkish academics, and it hasn't gotten much easier. In early January, Academicians for Peace, a group bringing together national and international academics, launched a petition calling on the government to bring an end to curfews and military operations that have resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians in the Kurdish region of Turkey. A few days later President Erdogan made a speech in which he compared the signatories to terrorists.
Shortly afterwards, a number of academics who had signed the petition were arrested, while others received death threats on social media.
IAMCR's Committee for the Improvement of Academic Life issued a statement articulating IAMCR's view "that we find such actions, no matter where they happen in the world, to be unacceptable, and that academic freedom should be upheld by the Turkish government and by the Turkish higher education structures."
The harassment of academics, accompanied by flagrant violations of rights to freedom of expression and of the media, continues in Turkey. The Committee for the Improvement of Academic Life continues to monitor the situation.
This statement was approved by IAMCR's Clearinghouse for Public Statements.
Statement to the UN Commission on the Status of Women
The 60th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) took place at UN Headquarters in New York from 14 to 24 March 2016. IAMCR participated as a non-governmental organisation formally recognised by the UN system. On Friday March 18, IAMCR made an oral statement to the meeting.
The statement called on the UN to focus global attention on the role of communication industries and ICTs in eliminating violence against women and girls, asserting that this attention is "crucial to promoting discussion and to enhancing public visibility and awareness." The statement also called for "a global comparative report on media and gender-based violence, with a cross-national and cross-regional perspective, emphasising advances and challenges" and recommended that the UN encourage "member States to introduce or strengthen regulation and policy aimed at preventing the spread of gender-based violence through the media and ICTs."
IAMCR vice-president, Aimée Vega, said that the statement was "the result of the coordinated work of the IAMCR Task Force GAMAG (Global Alliance on Media and Gender). It was approved by the CSW, after a lengthy review process. With this -among other actions, including our active participation in GAMAG- IAMCR is contributing to the global discussion on gender equality and women's and girl's human rights."
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 Olesya Venger, 2015 IAMCR/UCF Award winner
“Spatiality of sexual marketing in Las Vegas. Fun, surveillance, and illusion of 'sin' on the Strip”, is the title of a research project by Olesya Venger, an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for which she was awarded the 2015 annual Urban Communication Research Grant by the International Association for Media and Communication Research and the Urban Communication Foundation.
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Keynote presentation: 2015 IAMCR/UCF Award winner
Olesya Venger, winner of the 2015 Urban Communication Research Grant, will present the results of her research during a special session at IAMCR 2016, with Teela Sanders, Professor at the School of Sociology & Social Policy of the University of Leeds as respondent. Read more >
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 IAMCR Elections 2016
In 2016 IAMCR is holding elections for its International Council and Executive Board.
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 Still time to nominate for the Climate Communication Award
The deadline for most of IAMCR's annual awards and grants was on 15 April, but you have until 6 May to nominate someone for the Climate Change Communication Research in Action Award.
For details, visit http://iamcr.org/awards/climate2016
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 News from the Regions
ANZCA News
Those of ANZCA's (Australia and New Zealand Communication Association) members who can't make it to Leicester for IAMCR's conference wish our colleagues a successful event. Read more >>
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Co-sponsored events
Events co-sponsored by IAMCR
What is Media? - Portland, Oregon, USA, 14-16 April, 2016 - Organised by the University of Oregon, this conference sought to address questions such as: What is media today? How is media studies defined? How have media technologies transformed media theory and practice? What are the futures of media and how are they evolving? http://iamcr.org/events/what-is-media
Comparing media systems in BRICS countries: A review of conventional paradigms - Moscow, 25-26 April, 2016 - Organised by the Department of Media of the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) the main focus of the conference will concern the similarities and differences among the media systems of the BRICS countries (Brazil, India, China and South Africa). http://iamcr.org/events/brics-media
Knowledge is key: the contribution of research to securing the safety of journalism - Helsinki, Finland, 3-4 May, 2016 - A UNESCO Research Conference on Safety of Journalists. Organised by UNESCO and the UNESCO Chair at University of Gothenburg in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, the University of Helsinki and the University of Tampere. http://iamcr.org/events/safety-of-journalists
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