IAMCR 2013 - Journalism Research & Education Section - Call for Papers

altThe Journalism Research & Education Section invites submissions for its open sessions at the IAMCR annual conference that will be held from June 25-29 at the Dublin City University in Ireland. The theme of the conference is "Crises, 'Creative Destruction' and the Global Power and Communication Orders."

Wars, terrorism, threats to stability and natural disasters have also lead to greater security and surveillance measures worldwide. Many sceptics perceive the current era as the 'arc of instability,' where the rate of destruction of journalism is far outpacing the ability of creative minds of journalists and educators, particularly in its civic functions.

Secular and cyclical economic forces have combined to dismantle the professional and educational models that have for decades supported independent, public-minded journalism for large general audiences.  Newspapers are closing locally, nationally and internationally. Journalists are heading for dole queues. Other media platforms are transforming, leaving many old trains behind.

Journalism itself isn't in crisis, but the business of journalism definitely is. It is only through an open and empathetic style of communication that engenders the public’s trust is the most effective. Public suspicions of both journalism during crisis remains very high and alarming increasing for a variety of reasons, including access to more sources of conflicting information, a reduction in the use of scientific reasoning in decision making, and political infighting (Reynolds & Quinn, 2012).

Optimists think of it as a time for creativity, experimentation and innovation. Technology is spreading rapidly around the world and news media need to take advantage of it. In this historical moment, crisis could help redefine our capabilities.

It's time to take on a new challenge: to help journalism and its education stay vibrant in this digital environment, where crisis has set new terms though different technological and economic changes that have put close to unsustainable pressure on staffing levels, and threaten further instability and uncertainty of the journalism education field.

The Journalism Research & Education Section is opened for panel proposals, workshop sessions and research papers proposals to address the issues related to crisis and how we can be creative about through the lens of the five JRE themes:

  1. International Collaborative Research in Journalism Research: New Challenges and Emergent Perspectives
  2. Innovations in Journalism
  3. The Professional Journalism
  4. Methods for Quantifying Professional Journalism
  5. Generic Studies of Journalism

Journalism Research and Education Section attempts to deconstruct the nature of current crises and analyze some of the emerging problems in the era of 'arc of instability.' It also aims to sketch the challenges for journalism research and education by attempting to go beyond 'coups, conflicts and contraband.'

Abstracts should range between 300 and 500 words in length including the research objectives, theoretical framework and methodology. Each proposal must include title, name(s), affiliation, institutional address and email addresses of the author(s). All abstract submissions must be made centrally via the IAMCR Open Conference System (OCS) available for abstract submission at http://iamcr-ocs.org.

It is expected that for the most part, only one (1) abstract will be accepted per person in the research paper proposals in the JRE section Program. But the author could also submit a panel proposal. The JRE section encourages its members to take part in their moderation and chairing sessions so please let us know, if you are interested.

Individual paper abstracts and panel proposals are possible, but all abstracts and proposals must be submitted through the online Open Conference System (OCS) at http://iamcr-ocs.org from 15 November 2012 – 28 January 2013.

Early submission is strongly encouraged. Individuals may submit 1 abstract (paper) per Section or Working Group as lead author, and a maximum of 2 abstracts (papers) to a single IAMCR conference in general.

Decisions on acceptance of abstracts will be communicated to individual applicants by JRE section chair by no later than 28 February 2013. Final conference programme is due on 15 April 2013,

Presenters are expected to bring fully developed work to the conference. Prior to the conference, it is expected that a completed paper will be submitted to JRE Section chair via the IAMCR OCS by 28 May 2013.

JRE Publications: JRE has its two official journals: Journal of Applied journalism and Media Studies (editors [at]jams.se), published by Intellect (ISSN 2001-0818) and JRE Online Journals, published by Temple University (English susanj[at]temple.edu & Portuguese(claudia.lago07[at]gmail.com) published by Temple University.

JRE Partners: Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies, International Journal of West Asian Studies & Global Media Journal, African Edition.

IAMCR accepts presentations in English, French and Spanish. However, it is requested that abstracts, if at all possible, be submitted in English.

Further information about IAMCR and this conference is available on the respective websites:

IAMCR: http://iamcr.org

Dublin 2013 Conference: http://iamcr2013dublin.com

Please refer to the Journalism Research and Education Section website at  http://jre.uct.ac.za/index.php for guidelines

Section Head
Ibrahim Saleh
IAMCR Journalism Research & Education Section, Chair
jre09is [at] gmail.com

JRE Blog: jre09.blogspot.com
JRE Website: http://jre.uct.ac.za/index.php