Call For Abstracts and Workshop Proposals

 

The 22nd Annual ICA Mobile Pre-Conference 2026

Mobile Communication and Inequalities in Context

​

Submissions Deadline: January 30, 2025

 

Location: University of Cape Town (8KM from Cape Town Convention Center]

Date: 13 June 2026, 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

 

Extending on ICA’s main conference theme, the 2026 pre-conference theme is an invitation to critically reflect on mobile communication and inequalities. We encourage submissions to reflect on past, present, or future inequalities of MMC, including inequalities of:

• Mobility (e.g., inequalities with how people experience mobility, use technologies of mobility, negotiate disabilities, experience urban AI, etc.)

• Media (e.g., with access, accessibility, uses, literacies, platforms, cultures, vulnerabilities, etc.)

• Communication (e.g., with power, identity, relationships, processes, expectations, norms, etc.)

 

We also encourage submissions to reflect on past, present, or future inequalities in the field of MMC with regard to:

• Scholarly approaches (e.g., epistemologies and methods)

• Geographies of scholarly development (e.g., Western and Global South contexts)

• Socio-economic status (e.g., wealthy vs. precariously housed)

• Social identity groups (e.g., in MMC scholarship or among MMC scholars)

• What does equality look like? (e.g., how it can be envisioned or where we might be able to see productive movement toward it?)

 

We also recognize that mobile media devices and technologies are becoming increasingly distributed throughout environments, bodies, vehicles, and infrastructures. Furthermore, mobile AI is reconfiguring the human-machine boundaries around agency. Our hope is that the pre-conference can also address inequalities, old and new, that these transformations present at different levels of social order (e.g., individuals, networks, cultures, societies, etc.).

 

We invite scholars from diverse disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical backgrounds. We also welcome a diversity of scholars at different stages in their careers: graduate students, postdocs, junior faculty, along with more senior scholars to consider these issues in an open, informal, and conversational setting. Practitioners in the field are also encouraged to apply.

 

Based on positive feedback about last year’s format, the pre-conference this year will accept two kinds of submissions: interactive Blue-Sky workshop sessions and extended abstracts. We welcome research ideas at various levels of gestation: ideas that are just being formed, open questions to the field, as well as the sharing of research results, as long as they are presented in an interactive manner. We also welcome explorations of practical projects, such as mobile applications, mobile media artworks, and mobile games.

​

This pre-conference is equally open to different topics, methods, and theoretical traditions. Submissions should centrally engage with mobile media/communication as well as the pre-conference theme and aims. Beyond that, all topics and research approaches are welcome. We are open to a wide variety of themes associated with the social uses of mobile media and communication, especially ideas related to emerging trends and practices.

 

Submissions:

Workshops and Extended Abstracts proposals can be submitted via email to icamobilepreconference@gmail.com.

 

Extended Abstracts:

Target word length is 1000-1500 words plus tables and references. Use APA 7th edition format for all elements of the abstract. All manuscripts need to have complete blinding of authorship.

​

Before submitting your abstract, please note the following:

1. ⁠If your extended abstract describes an empirical study, data collection needs to be completed at the time of submission and your submission needs to report at least preliminary findings. In other words, we won’t accept submissions of empirical work where data collection is planned or ongoing.

2. ⁠The extended abstract needs an explicit statement (50-100 words) on the front page describing the fit with the division. You can consult the call and the keywords to determine fit.

Accepted extended abstracts will be presented as short oral presentations of 5-7 minutes in length.

 

Workshops:

Each workshop will be allocated a time slot of 60 minutes and should include “hands-on” or active audience participation. A workshop will typically be organized by four or five participants, but we will accept more or fewer organizers. Pre-conference attendees will be able to attend multiple workshops throughout the day.

Submissions should be between 500-800 words (excluding title and references) and include:

1. The title of the workshop;

2. The workshop’s description and goals;

3. The workshop’s connection to the pre-conference theme;

4. The scheduled activity, detailing how participants and audience members will be involved, and

5. The list of workshop participants and their relationship/contribution to the workshop.

 

Review Process:

Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of scholars. Proposals will be selected based on:

• Relevance for the field of Mobile Communication;

• Originality;

• Clarity;

• Theoretical/practical contribution;

• Fit with the pre-conference theme.

​

Notifications of acceptance will be emailed to contributors close to the date of the acceptance notification for the general conference, to accommodate travel planning.

​

For any questions, contact the pre-conference organizer:
Scott W. Campbell (campbell.2844@osu.edu)

​

Organizing committee:

Scott W. Campbell (Mobile Communication Division Vice Chair), Adriana de Souza e Silva (Chair), Cecilia Uy-Tioco, Doug Parry, Francesca Ieracitano, Morgan Q. Ross; Local liaisons: Tanja Bosch, Nicola Davies-Laubscher