Section Head Election 2019 - Call for candidates and statements

Community Communication and Alternative Media Section

The IAMCR Community Communication and Alternative Media Section (COC) will be holding elections during the business meeting at the upcoming conference in Madrid, Spain. The date and time of the business meeting will be included in the final programme of the IAMCR 2019 conference. One Co-Chair position and one Co-Vice-Chair position are open. The terms run for four years. Responsibilities include all phases of conference programming for the Section. Further details on IAMCR elections are available here: https://iamcr.org/s-wg Further details on COC can be found here: https://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/community-communication 

The current officers of the Section are Salvatore Scifo (Co-Chair), Andrea Meyer Landulpho Medrado (Co-Chair), Claudia Magallanes-Blanco (Co-Vice-Chair) and Tanja Dreher (Co-Vice-Chair). In order to ensure a staggered leadership transition, Salvatore Scifo and Tanja Dreher will be stepping down as Co-Chair and Co-Vice-Chair respectively. The terms for Andrea Meyer Landulpho Medrado and Claudia Magallanes-Blanco will expire in 2020. 

CCAM is a large, diverse, inclusive and truly international Section, with a commitment to diversity of participation, uses all official languages of IAMCR, English, French and Spanish, and engagement with practitioners and activists as well as scholars of community and alternative media. 

Any IAMCR member who would like to serve as an officer in the leadership team of the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section must submit their name and institutional position, and a statement of no more than 400 words to the current officers (see contact details below) with a copy to IAMCR General Secretary Gerard Goggin gerard.goggin [at] sydney.edu.au and to the IAMCR secretariat membership [at] iamcr.org, by 14 June 2019. Any member interested in nominating is strongly encouraged to liaise with the current CCAM leadership team well in advance of this deadline. 

The 400-word candidate statement should address the CCAM priorities. Please include details on: relevant expertise and experience; previous contributions to the Section; commitment and capacity for diverse and multilingual participation; capacity to commit to the tasks required, including any available institutional support. 

IAMCR Section leadership roles are volunteer positions. IAMCR does not offer a fee waiver at the annual conference or any further financial support for Section Chairs / Vice Chairs. 

Section officers must be IAMCR members, either directly, or through an IAMCR institutional member who has listed them among its IAMCR representatives.

Only IAMCR members who are registered as Members of CCAM and in good standing at the time of the election are eligible to vote. 

You can find the election rules at: https://iamcr.org/governance/swg-rules 

    • Salvatore Scifo (Co-Chair):  sscifo [at] bournemouth.ac.uk 
    • Andrea Meyer Landulpho Medrado (Co-chair): andreamedrado [at] id.uff.br
    • Claudia Magallanes-Blanco (Vice-chair): claudia.magallanes [at] iberopuebla.mx
    • Tanja Dreher (Vice-chair): t.dreher [at] unsw.edu.au

Candidates and statements

For Co-Chair:

For Vice-Chair:

Statements of candidates for Co-Chair

Alejandro Barranquero (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)

Dear colleagues, 

I have been an active participant in the Community Communication Section of the IAMCR since my first participation in an IAMCR annual Congress in The American University in Cairo (2006) when I was still involved as a doctoral student. I have presented papers, reviewed abstracts, disseminated activities and actively collaborated in the preconference, conference & postconference events, also in the last encounters: Cartagena de Indias (2017), Quebec (2015), Dublin (2013) & Braga (2010). 

I have co-founded and I am the current director of the Research Network on Community, Alternative & Participatory Communication (RICCAP), the first Spanish organization focused on the study of community media and participatory communication processes in alliance with other nodes and research groups in Latin America and Europe (www.riccap.org). Together with other organizations (IAMCR CCAM section, OurMedia, Data Justice Lab, etc.), we are also in charge or organizing the Preconference and Postconference events and visits in the present edition of IAMCR in Madrid 2019: 

https://iamcr.org/madrid2019/community-communication-and-alternative-media-section-prepost-conference-events

I have founded and I am the Head of the Thematic Group “Communication and Citizenship” at the Spanish Association of Communication Research (http://ae-ic.org), the main research association in communication studies within the Spanish context. Along my research career, I have been strongly committed to the epistemological perspective and research lines of CCAM Section, including works in different areas such as: communication for development and social change; community, alternative & citizen media; media literacy and education/communication processes; environmental communication; NGO & social movements’ communication/mobilization strategies; journalism, human rights and social justice, and more. I have also directed the research project “Youth and Third Media Sector in Spain”, which set down the foundations of RICCAP (https://jovenesytercersector.com), and I have an extensive experience in developing and strengthening research teams and networks, which would be a great value for the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section team. A selection of my recent work can be accessed through Academia.edu: http://uc3m.academia.edu/AlejandroBarranquero

My priorities for the CCAM current challenges include:

  1. To keep on building bridges between the Spanish-speaking and the Anglosaxon research communities in community communication and alternative media, prioritizing knowledge developed from the Global South and relations with research groups and research Sections in the area in the main Southern communication research associations: ALAIC, FELAFACS, AE-IC, etc. In this sense, I would like to bring continuity to the impulse of Global South, Latin American and Spanish-speaking research perspectives into the section, following the work of other team leaders such as Adilson Cabral, Amparo Cadavid or Claudia Magallanes. 

  2. To strengthen the rigor and validity of community communication research, opening dialogues with classical and new theoretical perspectives such as: social/environmental justice, data justice & data from the South, participation and voice, commons & cooperative work, decolonial and indigenous perspectives; degrowth, slow and transition movements; feminist and postcolonial approaches; etc.
  3. To develop the research agenda and periodical activities in the Section as well as to get involved in the annual IAMCR congresses. Regarding this point, I would like to continue strengthening the dialogue between academy and community media practitioners as well as to develop innovative approaches to appropriate media and ICT resources within the Section and with/by the academic and practitioners communities we are actually connected to.  

Given this context, I believe my self-nomination would be an important value for the Section Team since I can propose innovative research lines, connect Southern and Northern approaches, and support the current research and practice agenda, incorporating the voice and vision of those academics and contexts which are still suffering from austerity policies, also in the research field. 

Alejandro Barranquero 
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 

Vinod Pavarala (UNESCO Chair on Community Media / University of Hyderabad, India)

It is my privilege to nominate myself as Co-Chair of the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section (CCAM) of the IAMCR. 

Relevant expertise and experience:

I am a Senior Professor of Communication at University of Hyderabad (UoH), where I have also held the UNESCO Chair on Community Media since 2011.  I have served for many years as department head, Dean of the School, and Director, International Affairs at the University.

I have been involved in community media work since early 2000, reflected in my much-cited book, Other Voices: the struggle for community radio in India (co-authored with Kanchan K. Malik, Sage: 2007). A new edited volume on South Asian community radio is forthcoming with Routledge.

Since establishment of the Chair, the first of its kind in the world, I have created an intellectual ecology for community media studies at UoH, including Faculty Fellows and several doctoral students. I have had the honour of addressing international forums, including UNESCO, AMARC, Community Media Forum of Europe (CMFE), and national community media networks around the world. I am on the editorial boards of Journal of Alternative and Community Media, Radio, Sound and Society, and Journal of Creative Communications. I have served on the Advisory Council of the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) and currently serve in a similar capacity for CCAM and the Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change.

In these difficult times globally, the broad objective of our Section should be to sustain a community of scholars committed to researching the processes of community communication and their modes of resistance/negotiation. 

Previous contributions to the Section:

I have been an active member of IAMCR and CCAM for 10 years. Apart from attending the annual conference regularly, I helped organize one in Hyderabad in 2014, including a two-day OURMedia pre-conference. I regularly contribute to CCAM by reviewing abstracts, Chairing sessions and mentoring emerging scholars. 

Commitment to promote diversity of participation:

I have always admired IAMCR’s international and critical outlook, reflected very conspicuously in our own Section. If elected, I would like to suggest holding regional conferences to encourage regional dialogues and academic exchanges. With the growth of community media in Asia and Africa, I would like us to reach out to scholars from these regions. Our Section should encourage representatives of civil society movements and community media organisations in different countries to participate. 

Capacity to commit to the tasks required, including any available institutional support:

While committing myself to the tasks at hand, I will leverage administrative support from the UNESCO Chair team as well as from the UoH to carry out my functions efficiently. 

I hope I have given you enough reasons – academic background, administrative experience, and commitment to the Section’s goals – to elect me to a leadership position in the Section.  I look forward to your support and cooperation.

Vinod Pavarala
UNESCO Chair on Community Media
University of Hyderabad, India 

Statements of candidates for Vice-Chair

Andrew Ó Baoill (National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland)

I have been active with CCAM for almost 10 years, and see it as my primary intellectual home within IAMCR. I have presented to CCAM at every IAMCR at which I have been present (Braga (2010), Istanbul (2011), Dublin (2013), Montreal (2015), Leicester (2016), Eugene (2018)), and consider myself an active member of the section, reviewing papers, assisting as needed as session chairs, contributing to mentorship programmes etc.

I am a lecturer at the National University of Ireland Galway, where I have worked since 2014. My PhD is from the Institute of Communciations Research (ICR) at the University of Illinois (USA), and my MA from Dublin City University (Ireland). My work focuses on the political economy of community media, and I have recently received an Irish Research Council New Foundations grant to progress my research on the sustainability of community media. I am, with Salvatore Scifo, in the final stages of preparing a special issue of JoACM on this topic, and recently hosted a conference in Ireland on the related topic of resilience in community media.

CCAM is a large and diverse group within IAMCR, and I have, since my first conference, found my engagement energising and inspiring - I want, as a member of the leadership team, to help ensure that is continues to be the experience of all those who wish to get involved with the section.

Part of this commitment includes continuing the work of CCAM leadership to champion inclusion, in its various forms, within IAMCR. Examples of this has included inclusion of multi-lingual sessions, use of OURmedia and other alliances to reach beyond the academy, and the piloting of remote/video presentations. Questions of the affordability of IAMCR, particularly for those with low-wage or unstable employment, as well as those with more limited access to funding to defray the cost of conference involvement, have been an area where CCAM has offered important contributions to debate, as well as taking concrete steps internally, and I hope to continue to contribute productively in this area.

Another part of this commitment includes being open to new ideas about how we can foster and support CCAM as an intellectual community. Coming together, physically, in conference settings is important, but we also need to be open to new ways we can interact, where they might improve or complement current practice - whether that is different ways to structure conference sessions, or social programming outside formal sessions, or new spaces for online interaction and discussion.

I am committed to continuing to contribute to the success and development of the section. I hope that the membership will support my goal of doing to as a member of the leadership team.

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