Political Communication Research Section, IAMCR
Newsletter: October 2024
Greetings to all the members of the Political Communication Section of IAMCR. We are back with our second newsletter of this year!
The current newsletter has the following sections:
Takeaways from Christchurch 2024: presenting an overview of the papers received in our section and the winners who were awarded for their brilliant research outputs at the conference.
New publication alert: highlighting the publications of our members as a means of recognizing their achievements and providing valuable resources for others in our community.
New conference alert: notifying our members about a new conference that will be of great interest to many in our field.
Job postings: sharing job opportunities within our network to facilitate career advancements and new opportunities for our members.
Calls for papers: notifying our members about upcoming calls for papers in relevant conferences or journals in our field.
Happy reading!
Takeaways from Christchurch
- IAMCR 2024 Christchurch was a successful one. The PolComm section featured 58 high-quality paper presentations across 11 sessions and two panels. Due to venue limitations, PolComm section acceptance rate for 2024 Christchurch was 36% (58 out of 160 submissions). We hope to be able to increase the acceptance rate next year.
- The PolComm section has newly launched two paper awards: Political Communication Research Section Outstanding Early Career Paper Award and Political Communication Research Section Inclusivity Award. All members accepted to present at IAMCR 2024 Christchurch were invited to apply for both awards. The winner for Early Career Paper Award is Zhong Yuan (Fudan University and Singapore Technology University). Her paper ‘Platform Matters: the Impact of Social Media Affordances on Polarization’ innovatively proposes a deliberative affordances model to investigate how different social media platforms contribute differently to polarization in Chinese context.
- A special mention goes to our shortlisted author, Henri Mütschele (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), for the paper “When is radical too radical? The media portrayal of Fridays for Future and The Last Generation in Germany during the protest winter 2022/23”.
The Inclusivity Award was vacant this year.
New Publication Alert
State-sponsored Disinformation around the Globe: How Politicians Deceive their Citizens (Routledge 2024), edited by Martin Echeverria, Sara García Santamaría and Daniel Hallin.
The book presents 14 case studies from across the globe, covering North America (United States), South America (Brazil, Argentina, Cuba), Western Europe (Spain, Greece), Eastern Europe (Russia, Hungary, Turkey), Africa (Nigeria, Kenya), and Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia). Four introductory chapters pinpoint the significance of the state as the main disinformer, provide a comprehensive discussion of the concept of disinformation, and offer an overview of international countermeasures, epistemic tools such as statistics, and the particular dynamics of the issue in the Global South.
The cases are grouped by political regime types—liberal democracies (South Korea), electoral democracies (Brazil), electoral autocracies (Turkey), and closed autocracies (Iran). This approach fosters inter-regional dialogue, especially highlighting countries from the Global South, which are often sidelined in scholarly debates.
The book centers on three key narratives: the role of governments, disinformation tactics, and historical overviews. Cases explore government-sponsored disinformation, such as Kenya’s election industry, Brazil’s electoral system delegitimization, and Taiwan’s efforts to counter Chinese propaganda, highlighting the impact on democratic stability. Another group examines disinformation tactics used by states, often in collaboration with elites and social media, revealing both successful and failed operations. Lastly, the historical trajectory of disinformation is traced through scandals in Greece, censorship in Cuba, and Nigeria’s shift to a post-truth era, emphasizing the need for continued analysis and countermeasures.
Available now in full Open Access.
New conference alert
The Political Communication Section of the IAMCR is pleased to announce its first Latin American Congress, which will be held from May 20 to 22, 2025.
To achieve a global impact, IAMCR's annual congress has been held in headquarters such as England, France or New Zealand, culturally rich but remote destinations that are difficult to access for many Latin American colleagues due to our economic constraints.
However, the academic community in the region fully shares the values of IAMCR: a rigorous, critical and inclusive academia, particularly focused on the Global South, but also in other areas of knowledge generation and application, such as activism and the arts. Since its founding in 1957, and throughout its community of 3,000 members in 90 countries, Latin America has played a significant role within the association.
This congress is designed to encourage discussion and maturation of submitted work, with paused times for exhibition and debate, in an environment of critical, constructive and cordial dialogue that characterizes this community.
You are cordially invited to participate.
ROLL CALL: https://bit.ly/4cSQXJv
Job Posting
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer - Communication Studies, University of Otago
The University of Otago is seeking to appoint an outstanding Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies for the Media, Film and Communication programme at the University of Otago, which is located in Dunedin in the stunning South Island of New Zealand.
The role is a full-time, permanent position. The successful candidate will contribute to teaching and curriculum development at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, be involved in postgraduate supervision, and carry out a programme of independent research.
In this role the selected candidate will be expected to develop and teach courses in the taught MA, Honours, and Undergraduate programmes.
You should have a research profile and experience teaching any of the following areas:
• Indigenous and/or intersectional approaches to communication
• Communication for social change
• Cultural policy studies
• Political economy of the media
• Environmental communication
• Public spheres.
More on this job here.
Calls for Papers
Political Studies Association Annual International Conference – Media and Politics themed panels at main conference
14 – 16 April 2025, University of Birmingham and Aston University, #PSA25
In-person only conference
Deadline for abstracts: Friday, 18 October, 2024
The PSA Media and Politics Group invites members to submit paper abstracts for our specialist stream at the PSA Annual International Conference 2025. This call is for the main annual PSA conference in April and is not to be confused with our own MPG conference, which is also taking place in Birmingham in January 2025.
Conference theme: WHAT NEXT?
The world has faced a series of ongoing economic, environmental, health and (geo)political crises over the past two decades. In 2025, the year after the ‘year of elections’, we will know the latest electoral and ideological responses to such crises, and whether any new ones have been provoked. It
is in this context that we ask, ‘What Next?’ (with whichever intonation you prefer).
While the main theme of this conference is on what follows the ‘year of elections’, the Media and Politics Group operates an open and inclusive policy, and papers dealing with any aspect of media and politics are welcomed. This may include areas of political communication and journalism but also includes a broader view of the political within online media, television, gaming, cinema, and media arts, both factual and fictional.
Potential topics could include (but are not limited to):
• The rise of alternative political media and changing public attitudes towards mainstream media
• The power of political satire, cartoons, and memes
• Online harassment and abuse
• The role of affect, emotion, and authenticity within political communication
• Disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and threats to democratic health
• The opportunities and challenges of digital campaigning
• Datafication and challenges to democracy
• Activism, social movements, and the media
• Media, communication, and inequality
• Media and human rights
• The methodological challenges of researching media and politics
• Decolonising/diversifying political communication research
Please note that this year the conference is open for in-person attendance only.
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words using the Ex Ordo system by Friday, 18 October using this link.
Please note that you will find out about the status of your abstract in November.
Submit a paper to one of the open panels iv IPSA Political Communication Section!
The 28th IPSA World Congress of Political Science will be held from 12th to 16th July in Seoul, South Korea. The different Open Panels include some that could be of interest to our PolComm community. You can find the details here. The deadline for abstract submission is 5 November, 2024.
Do you have something you want us to share?
Please email us a paragraph (and links, images and other details you would like to share) about new calls for papers, job positions, information on upcoming conferences, or your recent publications (peer-reviewed papers and books of established publication houses) by 31st October, 2024 for our next newsletter. The email addresses are anweshachakrabortyunibo@gmail.com, martin.echeverria@correo.buap.mx and y.zeng@leeds.ac.uk
Best wishes,
Anwesha, Martin, Yuan, Amélia and Sara