Visual Culture Working Group

The Visual Culture Working Group invites submissions for sessions at IAMCR's 2019 Conference. The theme of the conference is Communication, Technology, and Human Dignity: Disputed Rights, Contested Truths”.

Human rights and diversity issues in light of technological development and changes in global media scape will be highlighted in sessions of our group along with theoretical contents of visual culture. The Visual Culture Working Group has been contributing to soliciting new discourse and new views in order to enhance diversity, equality and human rights particularly from non-Western perspectives. Members of VCWG have been involved in creating arguments on dynamic changes in new media technology, visual art, cinema, in Asia, South America and Africa in addition to changes in European and North American visual media. We welcome theoretical and practical research related to visual culture. We are particularly encouraging panel proposals in relation to this year’s main theme.

The prospective themes of Visual Culture Working Group sessions would be as follows though we would not exclude other themes related to visual cultures.

• Cultural studies of visual media
• History of visual media,
•  Visual communication of new technology and social media
• Visual art and aesthetics
• Cinema studies,
• Theoretical and methodological issues in visual communication,
• Journalism and visual communication
• Activism, political practices of visual media
• International/ intercultural communication and visual culture
• Technological development of visual media and human rights
• Equality and discrimination in visual media
• Theoretical and applied research in visual Communication, Human Dignity and Communication
• Social network and visual culture
• Visual communication and computer programming
• Machines and robots in audiovisual imagination in visual communication
• Artificial intelligence and games, new visual media
• Young audiences and visual media
• Ethics in automated media
• Activism and visual communication to empower citizens and reinforce their rights
• How technology threatens and enables communication processes
• Human dignity and religion in visual culture

Language policies

The official languages at IAMCR are English, Spanish and French and hence VCWG will have sessions in three languages as needed. However, all abstracts should be submitted in English for the purpose of having proper reviews. Please contact Denize Araujo regarding any inquiry of language policy at denizearaujo [at] hotmail.com. All submission will be blind reviewed by the review committee of VCWG.

Guidelines for abstract submission

-    Abstracts should be between 300-500 words.
-    Names of the authors, professional titles, institutional affiliations, email address should be included.
-    The title should be clearly marked
-    Abstracts (and full papers) should be submitted by OCS system on the IAMCR website (http://iamcr-ocs.org), not to the Section chair.

Criteria for Evaluation

Submitted abstracts will generally be evaluated on the basis of:
•    theoretical contribution
•    methods
•    quality of writing
•    literature review
•    relevance of the submission to the work of the Section or Working Group
•    originality and/or significance

Deadlines and important dates

The deadline to submit abstracts is 8 February 2019, at 23.59 UTC.
•    3 December 2018 - Abstract submission system opens at https://iamcr-ocs.org
•    8 February 2019 - Deadline to submit abstracts
•    28 March 2019 - Abstract decisions announced by sections and working groups
•    7 April 2019 - Deadline to apply for travel grants and awards
•    11 April 2019 - Deadline to confirm participation
•    7 May 2019 - Draft conference programme schedule released
•    14 May 2019 - Last day for Early bird registration
•    7 June 2019 - Deadline for full paper submission
•    17 June 2019 - Last day for changes to be made in the print version of the programme
•    7-11 July 2019 - IAMCR Conference Deadlines
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Please note that this deadline will not be extended.

It is expected that for the most part, only one (1) abstract will be submitted per person. However, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same author either individually or as part of any group of authors. Please note also that the same abstract or another version with minor variations in title or content must not be submitted to more than one Section or Working Group. Such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be rejected by the OCS system, by the relevant Head or by the Conference Program Reviewer. Authors submitting them risk being removed entirely from the conference program.

For general information about the conference, please consult the conference website or contact the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) at madrid2019 [at] iamcr.org

Questions regarding this CFP should be directed to Sunny Yoon (sunny33 [at] naver.com; syoon [at] hanyang.ac.kr), Chair of the Visual Culture Working Group.