NEWS FROM THE IAMCR Participatory Communication Research Section (PCR)
April 2019 PCR Section newsletter
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1/ REMINDER TO REGISTER EARLY FOR THE IAMCR CONFERENCE: Don't miss the conference because you're late.
2/ PCR SECTION CALL FOR LANGUAGE FACILITATORS: We need your bi-lingual skills.
3/ PCR SECTION IAMCR 2019 REVIEW REPORT
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1/ REMINDER TO REGISTER EARLY FOR THE IAMCR CONFERENCE.
If you have been accepted to present your work at the IAMCR 2019 conference: Congratulations!
We now kindly ask you to register as soon as possible. The early-bird registration period runs until 7 May, after which the registration also becomes more expensive. The second reason to register quickly is that a record number of papers were submitted and accepted. In order to guarantee the quality of the conference, the local organisers and the IAMCR executive board have decided on a maximum number of people that will be allowed to register. Once that number has been reached, no further registrations will be allowed. We cannot predict when (and if) that maximum number will be reached.
We, as the Section management, want to make sure that as many as possible presenters, that have submitted their abstract to the PCR section, will be able to register, and will gain access to the conference.
For more details about the registration fees, see https://iamcr.org/madrid2019/r
If you are for any reason unable to attend the IAMCR conference in Madrid, please inform the PCR section immediately, at pcr.secretariat@fsv.cuni.cz.
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2/ PCR SECTION CALL FOR LANGUAGE FACILITATORS: We need your bi-lingual skills.
The PCR section also requests motivated individuals to volunteer as Language Facilitators for the PCR Section’s panels during the Madrid conference. As we are finalizing the panel creation — this year we will have 19 conference panels (10 panels in English and 9 panels that are mixed language panels - English & Spanish) are being built on the basis of their thematic affinity, with the aim of bringing together academics and researchers working on the same issues, irrespective of the language of their presentation.
To achieve this goal and as a courtesy to the audience, we would appreciate bi-lingual speakers in English and Spanish to help us with language facilitation during the conference. As a language facilitator, you would be involved in summarising key points of papers after the presentation and facilitating the discussions between English and Spanish speakers during the interactive parts of the panel. This would be a great opportunity to help your colleagues and stimulate a trans-regional and trans-linguistic dialogue. It would also give you an insight into the work of the PCR Section. In case you are interested in volunteering as a Language Facilitator for the PCR section at the IAMCR 2019, please write an email of interest to Ana Duarte Melo, vice-chair of the PCR Section, at anamelo@ics.uminho.pt, indicating your availability.
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3/ PCR SECTION IAMCR 2019 REVIEW REPORT
At the end of March, the Participatory Communication Research (PCR) Section finalized its reviewing process for the annual conference of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) to be held from 7th to 11th July 2019 in Madrid, Spain. In response to its open call for proposals exploring the theory and practice of participatory communication, the PCR Section received 141 proposals for presentations during IAMCR 2019, in the form of individual paper proposals (137) and four joint panel proposals, totaling 156 proposed paper abstracts. The PCR section has selected (through a peer review) in total of 92 proposals that have been invited to be present their work at the conference. The 92 selected proposals consist of 89 individual papers and 3 joint panel proposals.
The PCR section used a double peer-reviewing process to evaluate the proposals –where each proposal was thus reviewed twice– once by one of our section officials and the second review by one of the external reviewers. While finding a match between reviewer expertise and the proposal content is always a difficult process, we were ably supported by 24 academic experts leading the field of participatory media and communication studies, who were our external reviewers during the process. The proposals were evaluated using a combined quantitative and qualitative method on the following criteria – 1/ The proposed paper's use of or contribution to theory, 2/ The quality of the proposed research methods, 3/ The quality of writing, 4/ The quality and extensiveness of the literature review, 5/ The relevance of the proposal to the work of the section and 6/ The originality and significance of the research.
Based on their evaluation, each of the two reviewers suggested a decision for acceptance or refusal. The external and internal reviews of each proposal were then discussed by the PCR Section management group to arrive at a final decision. The review process was swiftly conducted by the reviewers, without any serious delays, and the final decisions to all the authors were communicated on 22nd March 2019.