Section Head Election 2020 - Call for candidates and statements

International Communication Section

The International Communication (INC) Section of IAMCR will hold online elections to vote for their leading team for the period 2020-2024.

The leading team of the INC Section consists of one Chair and two Vice-Chairs: 

  • Current Chair, Karen Arriaza Ibarra, and one of the Vice-Chairs, Deqiang Ji, would like to continue serving in the leading team for four more years. 
  • Vice-Chair Viola Milton will not run for another period and steps down in July 2020. Therefore, at least one Vice-Chair position needs to be filled this year.

Candidates must send their name, institutional position, a statement of no more than 400 words, and, optionally, a photograph, to the INC Section’s Chair (arriazaibarra [at] ccinf.ucm.es), with a copy to the IAMCR General Secretary Gerard Goggin (gerard.goggin [at] ntu.edu.sg), and the Executive Secretariat (membership [at] iamcr.org) no later than 10 June. All candidates must be current members of IAMCR, and of the INC section.

Elected officials will lead the INC Section in a variety of ways and will have the opportunity to shape the Section’s thematic descriptions for the time of their tenure. The main responsibilities of these positions refer to planning for the annual IAMCR conference, from the Call for Papers stage to finalizing the Section’s Program, but elected members are expected to be available to serve the section all year long. Conference locations are international, and the attendance for the elected officers is mandatory during the conferences.  INC Section heads may decide to pursue other tasks and projects that they may see fit for the benefit of all Section’s members. 

The International Communication Section is one of the largest and oldest sections in the IAMCR. It draws sizeable membership both in terms of geographical areas as well as a range of ranks in academia and the international development industry. The section has a roster of senior and distinguished scholars who, besides holding leadership positions in their respective academic institutions, have served in various consultative capacities in several intergovernmental organizations. Annual conference programs for the INC Section reflect a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive research program and often carry at least one distinguished panel and presentations by authors from both academic and non-academic backgrounds. 

The elections will be held online from 6 to 12 July 2020 using the SurveyMonkey platform. Voting lists will be generated on 10 June. Individual members and representatives of institutional members who are also registered as members of the INC Section at the time the voting lists are generated will be sent ballots. Members who join the Section after the voting list has been generated will not be able to vote.

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

Candidates

For Chair:

For Vice-chair:

Statements

Karen Arriaza Ibarra (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)

My name is Karen Arriaza Ibarra, from Madrid, Spain. I work since 2005 at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where I am also the director of the Complutense research group « The Nordic Media and Culture in the Information Society ». My research areas include comparative analysis of public and private media, political communication, gender issues and cultural industries. I am particularly interested in studying media phenomena such as European populism or women’s rights movements that cut across country contexts.  My recent publications include « Global Perspectives on the #MeToo Movement » (Intellect, 2019), « Commemoration and Political Identity » (Elsevier, 2018), and « Public Service Media in Europe: A Comparative Approach» (Routledge, 2015).  I have also been guest professor in Stockholm University, Sciences Po Grenoble, Mid-Sweden University, and Communication University of China. 

I am a member of IAMCR since 2008 and have attended most annual conferences since then. I have served as Vice Chair (2012-2016) and then Chair (2016-2020) of the International Communication section, and I also acted as coordinator at the annual S-WG heads’ meetings from 2016-2019. I would like to be re-elected Chair of the ‘International Communication’ Section and continue the work that I started eight years ago, together with the collaboration of the two section’s Vice Chairs. 

During these years, my attention and effort have been focused in making the INC section a truly international one. Now I am proud to say that our section reaches all continents, with members coming from small and big cities who participate every year in our conferences by sending abstracts not only in English, but in one of the other two official languages of IAMCR as well, while the number of participants and subjects continue to grow.  Since last year, we have also managed to have our members publish their research work in prestigious peer-reviewed journals.  We have organized pre and post conferences, held international seminars, and, together with Vice Chair Deqiang Ji, we also have acted as hosts in our cordial and successful ‘get-togethers’ for last years’ conferences.

If I am re-elected as Chair of the Section, I intend to continue these and other tasks. My aim includes strengthen the bonds among scholars coming from nations all over the world and reflect the diversities of their research interests in this International Communication section of IAMCR. That is why I kindly request your vote this year. Your support is the best motivation for this mission.

Thank You!

Deqiang Ji (Communication University of China, Beijing, China)

I am Deqiang Ji, Ph.D. & Associate Professor of International Communication at Communication University of China (CUC) in Beijing. I am also the Vice Dean of The Institute for A Community with Shared Future, a newly established interdisciplinary institute dedicated for global communication research at CUC.

In 2016, I was elected as the Vice Chair of International Communication Section of IAMCR at its annual conference in Leicester, UK. Since then, I have been working closely with Prof. Karen Arriaza Ibarra (Chair) and Viola Milton (Vice Chair) to organize programs of our section at IAMCR annual conferences, host pre- and regional conferences, build international partnerships with universities and academic journals, maintain frequent communications among section members, and promote the inclusiveness and diversity of the section community. 

As a Chinese media and communication scholar, I bear the responsibility to deepen the connection between our section and IAMCR with Chinese and Eastern Asian academic community. In the past four years, I completed the following four missions to raise the reputation of our section in this region and beyond: 

  • first, utilize social media platform (i.e. WeChat) to post updates of IAMCR activities ranging from annual conferences to different awards to publications, which have so far received more than 65,000 clicks in total and make IAMCR the most popular international association of media and communication studies in Chinese social media space; 
  • second, organize one pre-conference at IAMCR Madrid Conference in collaboration with Universidad Complutense de Madrid and CUC, which attracted a high diversity of paper submissions from both European and Asian universities; 
  • third, facilitate the building of official partnership between INC and the Sage journal Global Media and China, which creates a greater space for section members to get works published; 
  • fourth, in the course of preparing and organizing the Beijing Conference, though postponed due to the outbreak of COVID-19, and the following Tampere Conference, I have been assisting both Local Organizing Committees to announce CFP and facilitate communication with Chinese and Eastern Asian scholars. 

I am now running for re-election for the Vice Chair position of INC. If elected, I will dedicate myself to further internationalize our section, promote the diversity of voices and spirits among section members, work with section leadership in solidarity, host two regional conferences in China or other Eastern Asian countries, collaborate with more academic journals to enlarge the space for section members to publish their works, and most urgently, facilitate the organization of IAMCR Beijing Conference in 2021. 

Please vote for me and for a brighter future of International Communication Section. Thank you!

Kateryna Kasianenko (Sydney, Australia)

My name is Kateryna Kasianeko, I have been an enthusiast collaborator of the International Communication Section of IAMCR, and I have done it with my best intentions. In my research, I have been trying to answer the question about the possibility of cosmopolitanism in the current inter-media environment, and I truly believe that the international aspect of the phenomenon of communication needs to be in the center of scholarly investigation and collaboration.

I would like to continue my involvement with the section in the future, and I wanted to present myself as a candidate for Vice-Chair of the International Communication Section this year. I would be thrilled if I could serve the Section for the period 2020-2024. In that sense please consider this email as a formal request to become a member of the leading team of the International Communication Section. I believe that my strong interest in the field of international communication, and my intercultural experience gained through conducting academic research in Ukraine and Japan, could be an asset to the section.

I have started my research in the field of media studies at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, investigating the use of metaphors in Japanese political news. I went on to continue my studies at the University of Tokyo, studying the intermedia image of the Ukraine crisis in Japan and evaluating the modern media environment's cosmopolitan potential. During my time at the University of Tokyo, I also undertook the roles of a teaching assistant and a research assistant for a large-scale international project on news consumption, and have delivered 2 presentations at IAMCR and one publication, related to my side project on the framing of sexual harassment in Russian and Japanese news.

Currently, I am based in Sydney, Australia, I am looking at the possibilities to continue my studies as a Ph.D. at one of the country's universities next year, and I will update the association as soon as I gain enrollment.

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