The annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association will be held in Auckland (NZ), July 4th-8th, 2018. The closing date for submissions is February 26th, 2018 (see http://anzca2018.org/index.php/abstract-submissions for details).
As the world changes rapidly around us, communicators are dealing with new spaces, technologies, and strategies for communication, each of which are creating multiple realities. Communication forms, actors, and messages are in a state of constant flux, negotiating between change and stability, transgression and orthodoxy, hybridity and homogeneity. Emergent communication practices and economies may support diverse modes of expression and/or, potentially, divisiveness. What are the new realities being articulated in our shared public life? What kinds of communication are changing? Are there new unities, alliances, and convergences? Are there new divides? What certainties are being disrupted, and what are they being replaced with? Where is the authority to determine new realities, and where is this being challenged? What impact do these new realities have on publics’ trust and respect?
The theme encapsulates multiple dialectical tensions: between fluidity and stability; hybridity and purity; transgression and orthodoxy; inclusion and exclusion; crossing borders and building walls; among the global, the national, hyper-local and hyper-personal. It invites consideration of the roles media and communication play within these tensions, and the ways these tensions impact communication practice, policy, and theory.
Submissions might include, but not be limited to, papers and panels addressing the following: