Letter from the President

In this letter to the members, IAMCR president, Nico Carpentier, reflects on IAMCR's past conferences held online, and shares next year's plans and activities.

This year was the third in a row in which we learned to grow together as a community, despite the distance. Our 2022 conference, hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing, had almost 1,200 papers, 200 videos and 20,000 visits from 138 different countries and territories. Like in 2020 and 2021 participants included long-time IAMCR members but also lots of new members – students, early-career and senior scholars – who haven’t been able to physically join us at previous conferences. 

For 2023 we are thrilled to announce that we are going back to our traditional face to face conference, meeting in Lyon, France from 9 to 13 July, but we’re also keeping the Online Conference Papers component -OCP23- as a space for all IAMCR members, whether or not they can travel to Lyon, and we will be offering 30 travel grants to early-career scholars from low and middle income countries who have been members of IAMCR for 2 years (i.e. 2022 and 2023). 

The conference theme will be “Inhabiting the planet: Challenges for media, communication and beyond” and we’ll be receiving submissions from 1 December 2022 through to 9 February 2023. Get more information and the call for papers on the conference website.

The annual conference is important, but far from the only thing we’ll do in 2023. Others include:  

• Grants and awards, such as the 2023 Prize in Memory of Dallas W. Smythe and the Urban Communication Research Grant, among others.
• In cooperation with UNESCO we are organising a conference in February on "Governing the Internet for Democracy: Lessons from Research Embracing a Multicentred World"
• IAMCR webinars, which aim to keeping IAMCR members connected and engaged with regular dialogue outside of the annual conference. Nine IAMCR webinars have been held since the series began, and others are planned for the coming months. Webinars are open and free of charge to all IAMCR members. You can watch past webinars on our website.
• The new Presidential PhD Research Webinars that provide a forum for critical dialogue for PhD students in the field. The next one, on the topic "Media Literacy" will be held on 9 January 2023 and the call for presenters is open until 25 November 2022.
• In cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) our Rural Communication Working Group is offereing 4 cash awards to facilitate the presentation of research on rural communication services at our conference in Lyon.
• Several of our 33 sections and working groups organise meetings and webinars throughout the year, involve their members in publishing projects, and have newsletters and social media presence that can help you expand your network.
• Our Clearinghouse for Public Statements will continue to intervene on IAMCR's behalf in cases involving academic freedom and freedom of expression. The Clearinghouse is IAMCR's public voice on issues affecting academic freedom and media and communication issues in areas in which we have expertise.
• Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research, a collaboration of IAMCR and Palgrave, is a book series that offers publishing opportunities for IAMCR members. Eighteen titles have been published so far and a newly appointed editorial team invites IAMCR members to propose books for the series. As an IAMCR member you are also entitled to a 35% discount on all titles in the series.
• The Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series, co-published with Wiley-Blackwell, is also open for proposals from IAMCR members. With six volumes published, the series is designed to highlight the best critical scholarship in key areas of communication and media research.
• Some of our sections and working groups are also involved in publishing projects in their fields of interest. The Community Communication and Alternative Media Section is associated with the Journal of Alternative and Community Media, the International Communication Section is affiliated with Global Media and China, the Diaspora and Media Working Group collaborates with the Journal of Global Diaspora and Media, and the Political Economy Section recently published Volume 9, Number 2 of the Political Economy of Communication journal and also established a collaboration with China Media Report.

I would like to thank you for your continuing support of IAMCR -a leading worldwide professional organisation in the field of media and communication research. Your commitment is at the heart of everything we do.

Sincerely,

Nico Carpentier
President, IAMCR