Call For Abstracts and Workshop Proposals

 

The 21st Annual ICA Mobile Pre-Conference 2025

Continuities, Ruptures, and New Formations in Mobile Communication

 

Submissions Deadline: 30 January 2025

 

Location: University of Denver, Anderson Academic Commons (ACC) building

(40 minutes by light rail from conference venue; 15 minutes by car).

 

Date: 11 June 2025, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

 

Addressing ICA’s 75th anniversary, the 2025 pre-conference theme is an invitation to critically reflect on the disruptive versus consolidating role of mobile media and mobile communication in everyday life, as well on how mobile communication as a field has disrupted and consolidated communication in the past and will in the future.

 

Workshops and presentations will take stock of our past, critically review present developments, and chart out future avenues for mobile communication research. We particularly welcome contributions speaking to three important aspects of the theme: mobile communication scholarship as a transformative and stabilizing force in society, mobile media and mobile communication as both revolutionary and consolidating in how we organize and experience everyday life, and mobile communication studies as a disrupted and resilient field. In all these contexts, elements of disruption and consolidation are not necessarily antithetical but may productively be framed as a dialectical relationship. Mobile communication research is being disrupted on multiple fronts and, perhaps, with unprecedented consequences. AI-based technologies have started revolutionizing scholarly practice with vast implications for the way we conduct and evaluate scholarship.

 

We invite scholars from diverse disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical backgrounds to think about possible ways to consolidate our research environment by growing resilience and developing effective coping strategies. We welcome a diversity of scholars at different stages in their careers: Ph.D. 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.

 

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.

We are also 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 should be submitted via email to icamobilepreconference@gmail.com.

 

Extended Abstracts:

• Length: 1000-1500 words excluding tables and references. 

• Format: APA 7th edition.

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Extended Abstract submissions must include:

1. Title

2. 5 keywords

3. Engagement with relevant literature / theories

4. Methodology*

5. An explicit statement (100-200 words) on the front page describing the fit with the division and connection to the pre-conference theme. You can consult the Division’s Call for Paper and its keywords to determine fit.

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*⁠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. 

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Please note: Make sure the extended abstract is completely anonymized and there is no reference to authors.

 

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

 

Workshops:

• Length: 500-800 words excluding title and references.

• Format: APA style 7th edition.

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Workshop submissions must include:

1. Title

2. Description and goals

3. Description of a “hands-on” activity, detailing how participants and audience members will be actively involved

4. A list of workshop participants (typically 4-5) and their relationship/contribution to the workshop.*

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Each workshop will be allocated a time slot of 60 minutes. 

 

Review Process:

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

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• Relevance to the field of Mobile Communication;

• Connection with the pre-conference theme;

• Originality;

• Clarity;

• Theoretical/practical contribution;

• Methodological/theoretical rigor.

 

Notifications of acceptance will be emailed to authors about one month after the submission deadline.

 

For any questions, contact the conference chair:
Adriana de Souza e Silva (a.desouzaesilva@notheastern.edu)

 

Organizing committee:

• Adriana de Souza e Silva (chair) (Northeastern University)

• Scott W. Campbell (The Ohio State University)

• Ragan Glover (University of Michigan)

• Morgan Quinn Ross (Oregon State University)

• Cecilia Uy-Tioco (California State University, San Marco)

• Mariek Van den Abeele (Ghent University)

 

Local liaisons: Lynn Clark & Erika Polson (University of Denver)