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The 20th annual ICA Mobile Pre-conference 2023

Mobile Communication Division

Call-for-Proposals

submission deadline WEDNESDAY 18 JANUARY 2023 23.59 CEST

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​In Brief

• Theme: Keeping it Real After 20 Years: Reclaiming Mobile Communication Scholarship in a Phone-Less Future

• Date: 24 May 2023

• Local Hosts: Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and Victoria College at the University of Toronto (local liaison: Prof. Jeffrey Boase)

• Location: University of Toronto, St. George Campus

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20-year Jubilee

In 2023, we celebrate the 20-year jubilee of our preconference. This calls for a festive edition, in which we look forward to the future, a future in which ‘phones’ and their affordances become increasingly integrated within all sorts of other mobile technologies. Having established ourselves as an ICA division, the preconference is a site to ask critical questions about the academic space that we as a community occupy: What makes mobile media and communication scholarship authentic? How do we authenticate the boundaries of our field? What are the opportunities, risks, challenges of new developments in mobile media and communication for the field’s identity? How should our scholarship develop to continue its relevance, both academically and societally, in an ever-changing media landscape?

 

In the spirit of this topic, we want to invite scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to join us as we explore what emerging trends and practices mean for research surrounding mobile media and communication. At the 20th annual ICA Mobile pre-conference, we invite the members of our community to consider these issues in an open, conversational setting.   

 

Interactive Blue-Sky Workshops

Similar to previous editions, we organize the pre-conference in the form of several interactive Blue-Sky workshop sessions where we invite teams of scholars to present ideas that are at various levels of gestation. Research ideas that are just being formed, ideas for mobile pedagogy, myriad research processes, open questions to the field, and notions of mobile applications used by practitioners in the field are welcome. This forum is designed to cultivate a supportive and integrated community of thinkers. We are happy to announce that Prof. Jeffrey Boase, our local liaison, will deliver the keynote on social complexity and the digital bond.

 

Workshop themes can focus on any of the dimensions of mobile communication ranging from mobiles and social cohesion, mobile theory/methods, mobile communication and politics, entertainment, mobiles and disasters, gaming and/or photography. They can look into mobile communication in organizations, mobile communication and development, mobile communication for the social good, and mobile communication as a means for threats to privacy, well-being and/or robotification. Workshops could look into mobile romance, parenting mobiles, locative gaming, mHealth, and the relationships of mobile technologies to the elderly or children. They could focus on mobile communication in the Global South, mobile communication and migration, mobile learning, mobile journalism, etc. In short, we are open to a wide variety of themes associated with the use of mobile communication and mobile media in society, especially ideas that inform about emerging trends and practices. 

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Each workshop will be allocated a time slot of approximately 60 minutes. We are particularly interested to see proposals that include “hands-on” or interactive types of interaction. The workshop sessions should focus on the discussion of new ideas, theory and empirical results, but can also be more practical or industry oriented. A workshop will typically be organized around a consortium of four or five main participants who present and discuss their work but will also engage the audience. Pre-conference attendees can attend multiple workshops.

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Formalities

Submissions should include a workshop summary of 500-800 words (excluding title and references). This summary should describe:

1. the topic and its relation to the pre-conference theme,

2. the goal of the workshop,

3. the scheduled activity, detailing how participants and audience members will be involved, and

4. the organizers and their relationship/contribution to the workshop.

 

Important dates

1. Deadline for submitting workshop proposals: Wednesday, 18 January 2023

2. Notification of Acceptance: first week of February

 

Proposals can be submitted via email to 2023mobileprecon@gmail.com. Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of scholars. Proposals will be selected based on criteria of relevance, originality, composition of the group, theoretical/practical contribution, the degree of interactivity with the audience, and clarity of presentation, as well as fit with the conference theme. The review will be non-blind due to the interactive workshop nature. Notifications of acceptance will be emailed to contributors in January 2023.

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You can download the PDF CfP here. 

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