From the President's desk
IAMCR Newsletter | December 2014
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On to Montreal! The call for abstracts for papers and panel proposals has been announced for the 2015 IAMCR conference to be held July 12 -16 in Montreal, Canada. In addition to plenaries, panels and special sessions, plans are underway for a memorable musical event and other exciting activities.
The overall theme of the conference is Hegemony or Resistance? The Ambiguous Power of Communication, which is detailed on the conference website. This is an important and timely question, which should inspire a wide range of conference papers and panels. Much of our work deals with the ambiguous power of communication, which remains a key issue even as newer media technologies are introduced and the nature of communication is redefined.
The Local Organizing Committee has posed some key questions: How do modern forms of communication, considered as much apparatuses for manipulation as for freedom, interact with the ideal of democracy? How do media represent hegemonic processes and acts of resistance? In what ways does media and communication research constitute in itself a site of hegemonic domination and/or resistance?
These queries bring to mind the oft-cited quote of Antonio Gramsci: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” While this quote has been variously translated (and actually, attributed by Gramsci to novelist Romain Rolland), the optimism/pessimism debate is at the heart of our conference theme. While we celebrate the potential of media in its various forms to enhance and promote democratic inclinations, we also critique and bemoan the use of old and new media to wield power in profoundly undemocratic ways.
Our Montreal gathering presents opportunities to explore this quandary and I hope you are planning to participate. More details about the conference will be shared during the coming months. But remember for now: the deadline to submit abstracts for the conference is February 9th, 2015.
Global Alliance for Media and Gender. I was recently privileged to represent IAMCR, along with Vice President, Aimée Vega, at the first meeting of the International Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for Media and Gender (GAMAG) in Geneva, November 4-5th. Coordinated by UNESCO, GAMAG is a network of 500 media and media development, unions and civil society organisations across the globe. It seeks to harness new opportunities and address new challenges for gender equality and women's empowerment in and through media in an information society context. The Geneva meeting called on UN member states to include strong provisions on gender, media and ICTs in the post- 2015 Sustainable Development Goals.
This is an exciting development and we are pleased that IAMCR is a member of GAMAG's International Steering Committee and will take a leading role in the research activities of the alliance. A book co-edited by IAMCR and UNESCO, Media and Gender: A Scholarly Agenda for the Global Alliance on Media and Gender, was launched at our 2014 Hyderabad conference and is available for free download. Future IAMCR activities will be coordinated by the recently created Task Force on the Global Alliance for Media and Gender, headed by Aimeé Vega, and including Carolyn Byerly, Margaret Gallagher, Kaitlynn Mendes, Lisa McLaughlin, Claudia Padovani, and Karen Ross. (More information is included in this issue.)
IAMCR is also involved in an ongoing initiative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Elske van de Fliert, vice-chair of the Participatory Communication Research Section, represents IAMCR on the Advisory Council of the Forum on Communication for Development and Community Media for Family Farming (FCCM). A meeting in Rome on 23 and 24 October, attended by more than one hundred participants, established the FCCM as a mechanism to advocate for rural communication policies and services. For more information about this initiative follow this link.
Back to the future? This issue also includes the second part of a commentary on IAMCR’s history by Kaarle Nordenstreng and Cees Hamelink. I hope that you will appreciate these efforts to maintain the association’s past, which can hopefully serve as an inspiration for our future.
Finally, I would like to congratulate Bruce Girard, who has recently been appointed as IAMCR’S Executive Director. Bruce has played a fundamental role in the association’s operations for many years and has been enormously helpful to the current Executive Board. We look forward to continue working with him in his new role during the next years.
Cheers to all!
Janet