News from regional associations

IAMCR Newsletter | December 2014

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Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) News

Diana Bossio
President, Australian and New Zealand Communication Association

In 2014, ANZCA celebrated its twentieth year as a trans-national association for the support of scholars and professionals working in diverse fields of communications and it was indeed a year that celebrated historic milestones and new beginnings.

This year ANZCA held its biggest conference ever at Swinburne University, Melbourne Australia from 8-11th July, 2014. The conference "The digital and the social: Communication for Inclusion and Exchange" was attended by almost 300 scholars and professional guests. A program of over 200 presentations over the three days included an international keynote presentations from Professor Robert Picard, Director of the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and Dr Jason Farman, a locative media expert from the University of Maryland. The conference also featured two special events; the Human Rights Commissioner of Australia, Tim Wilson attended the first day of the conference and gave a presentation about freedom of speech in Australia and ANZCA also sponsored an artist-in-residence for the first time. Internationally-renowned media artist Dr Troy Innocent created ‘Xawthorn’, a transmedia game experience especially for the Melbourne conference.

ANZCA celebrated the launch of its new journal Communication Research & Practice, at the International Communications Association Regional Conference, held at the Queensland University of Technology. Communication Research & Practice aims to publish research that contributes to international scholarship and practice in the broadly defined field of communication. The journal is owned by the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA), and will be published four times a year by Taylor & Francis, with the first issue to be published in May 2015. The journal will be open to contributions from across humanities and social sciences, and to contributions relating to communications practice (e.g. public relations, journalism, visual communication, digital media practice), and applications of communication theory (e.g. promotional campaigns, organisational and industry analyses, public policy deliberations). For further information, please contact the Editor, Professor Terry Flew, at t.flew [at] qut.edu.au. 

This year ANZCA also awarded the inaugural Anne Dunn scholar of the year award recognising the important work of an important Journalism scholar, colleague and friend of ANZCA, the late Professor Anne Dunn. A $3,000 prize supported by ANZCA, JERAA (Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia) and Anne Dunn’s family, was presented to Dr Siobhan McHugh at the conference. Dr McHugh a is senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Wollongong.

Finally,  the Association is looking forward to the next conference in Queenstown, New Zealand, to be held from 8-10 July, 2015. The call for papers for the conference "Rethinking Communication, Space and Identity" can be found at the conference website: www.anzca2015.wordpress.com. I look forward to seeing both new and familar faces!

AMIC Report for IAMCR

Ramon Tuazon, AMIC Secretary General

In a highly competitive site-selection process, the Mohammed Bin Rashid School for Communication (MBRSC) at the American University in Dubai (AUD), has won the bid to host the 24th International Conference of the Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC). The event is scheduled to take place June 10 – 13, 2015. The conference theme is Communicating in an e-Asia: values, technologies, and challenges. The call for papers is available via the AMIC official conference website.

AMIC has been in existence for 43 years, while its conference is now in its 24th iteration. Since 1991, the annual event has become the premier Asian conference for the communications field.  The selection of AUD as the host represents the first time the conference will be held in the West Asia/Middle East region. It is the major, and most prestigious scholarly communications conference to be held in the Gulf Region ever.