The Participatory Communication Research (PCR) Section is pleased to announce that it has 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, totalling 156 proposed paper abstracts. The PCR section has selected (through a peer review) in total 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 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.