The recently concluded International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Conference on 7-11 July 2019 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid had its largest conference ever with 1,785 registered participants coming from 83 countries and 5 continents.
Most of its participants came from the European Union, but a large number also came from Asia, Central and South America, and North America.
The theme for this year's conference was "Communication, Technology, and Human Dignity: Disputed Rights, Contested Truths." A panel session on Rural Communication titled "Exploring concepts and directions of the new IAMCR Working Group" was jointly chaired by Sarah Cardey (University of Reading) and Rico Lie (Wagenigen University), whose universities form part of the Global Research Initiative for Rural Communication (GRI-RC). The session explained the "focus and aim of the Rural Communication (RUC) working group as well as position the field of rural communication in a wider communication and development landscape." The RUC working group was initiated in 2018 by the GRI-RC.
Several papers were also presented within the Rural Communication theme:
- "Through their eyes I can work"; A qualitative exploration of rural medical officers' perception of mHealth (Manjula venkataraghavan, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India);
- China's We-Media Village: Urban-rural relationship and Rural self-representation (Xiaotong Zhang and Xin Liu, Peking University, China);
- Rural Women's Technological Experiences in Turkey (Perrin Ogun Emre, Kadir University, Turkey; Ferhat Kentel, Sehir University, Turkey; Murat Ozturk, Kirklareli University, Turkey);
- Rural Communication Initiatives on Climate Resiliency in Selected Coastal Areas of Southern Bangladesh (Ma. Stella Tirol, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines); and
- Media, caste and land rights movements in India: A Case of Malayalam language newspapers, 2003-2008 (Mochish, KS, FLAME University, India).
For more information about the conference, please visit the IAMCR site.
Photo credit: IAMCR Conferences Facebook Page