The 74th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference was held on the Gold Coast in Queensland from 20-24 June, where DMRC members from across Australia showcased their research around the 2024 theme of ‘Communication and Global Human Rights’.
The ICA conference is the premier annual event for scholars and professionals in the field of communication, where hundreds of research papers are presented to an average attendance of over 2,000 academics, with the Digital Media Research Centre holding a strong presence throughout the program.
DMRC Chief Investigator, Distinguished Professor Jean Burgess was invited to deliver the annual ICA Steve Jones lecture. Prof Burgess’ talk, titled ‘Why the GenAI Moment Needs Communication and Media Studies’, covered the widespread integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in everyday apps and services, highlighting the importance of inclusivity, accessibility, transparency, and explainability.
DMRC members were involved significantly across many ICA sessions, presentations and panels at this year’s conference. To view all DMRC speakers and session abstracts, refer to the DMRC ICA Presenters list.
ICA Awards
Congratulations to DMRC’s Dr Ehsan Dehghan, Kateryna Kasianenko, Dominique Carlon and Ashwin Nagappa who were awarded Top Paper in the Intergroup Communications Interest Group for their paper ‘A Culture War without a Battlefront: Sedimented Polarisation across Political Subreddits’, which analysed 16 years of submissions across 11 political subreddits.
DMRC HDR student Shubhangi Heda received the Top Student Paper in the Media Industries Interest Group for her paper ‘Road to Content Regulations on Streaming Services in India’. This paper examined the policy discussions that led to implementation of content regulations on streaming services in India through doing extensive document analysis and expert interviews.
DMRC Affiliate Dr T.J. Thomson was awarded a Top Faculty Paper in the Journalism Studies division for his paper ‘Generative Visual AI in Newsrooms: Challenges, Opportunities, Perceptions, and Policies’ which was co-authored by DMRC HDR student Phoebe Matich and Assoc Prof Ryan Thomas. The paper explores how photo editors perceive and/or use generative visual AI in their editorial operations and outlines the challenges and opportunities they see for the technology.
Additionally, we congratulate DMRC visitors who have also received awards at this year’s conference, including Hannah Decker, who earned Top Paper in the Political Communication Division (alongside colleagues Yannic Meier, German Neubaum and Jana Dreston); and Jacob Ohme who received Top Paper in the ICA Computational Methods division.
Congratulations to all these awards recipients.
ICA Pre and Post Conferences
The DMRC managed several pre and post ICA conferences as part of this year’s extensive program. Some highlights included:
‘Science Communication as a Human Right,’ led by DMRC’s Associate Professor Michelle Riedlinger and Samantha Vilkins, provided a platform for scholars to present, discuss, and connect on local projects and initiatives in East Asia, India, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, examining how cultural contexts influence the perception and handling of science, scientific knowledge, scientists, and scientific institutions.
‘Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era’ offered a space for those studying audiences through interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and other human-based qualitative approaches to share both findings and methodological tips and interrogations.
Further DMRC post-conferences included ‘The impact of public relations and promotional communication on human rights, inequalities and social justice: Interdisciplinary reflections and future directions’, which explored the potential of existing research by fostering productive, interdisciplinary conversations between scholars from across media and communications who have an interest in the influence of public relations and other promotional professions on struggles over rights, inequalities and social justice.
One of the final post-conferences held at QUT Kelvin Grove included ‘P3: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation’which brought together current and emerging conceptual and applied theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the relationship between power, propaganda, and polarisation.
The significant contributions made by DMRC researchers at ICA 2024 and across the extensive pre and post conferences exemplified the Association and DMRCs’ shared commitment to advancing theoretical frameworks and strategies for communication studies.
Learn more about the International Communication Association.
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