[Commlist] cfp - ICA lobbying postconference

Public Affairs and lobbying within and across nations
Call for Papers

This call for papers invites the submission of abstracts for a one-day 
post-conference on international and domestic dimensions of public 
affairs and lobbying, in one the most significant global centres of 
communicative practice for political influence.  Alongside the academic 
papers we expect the event to be addressed by significant keynote 
speakers from US politics and lobbying.
Public affairs and Lobbying are vital foundations for the functioning of 
representative democracies. Between elections civic society groups 
undertake campaigns to inform and persuade elected representatives. In 
theory these campaigns by organisations and social movements provide a 
bridging link between the public and politics, as well as providing the 
rhetorical spaces to mobilise participation and strengthen policy 
proposals. However, public trust in the efficacy of civic participation 
and the integrity of policy-making is damaged by the perception that 
research-rich groups, particularly transnational corporations enjoy 
unfair advantages. This trust deficit is deepened by the growing unease 
at the scale of interest groups seeking influence across borders, the 
extent to which it is not just the citizens resident within a state who 
holds sway over policy agendas, but to varying extent foreign actors as 
well. The regular stream of controversies has resulted in a situation 
where practitioners struggle to establish their legitimacy as 
protagonists who make valuable contributions to societal problem 
solving, with regulatory actions enacted to both control corporate and 
civic society activism. The globalisation of influence has evolved in 
tandem with the application of digital technology and social media. A 
mediatised public sphere has increasingly incorporated social media 
logic and open software movements have developed as attempts to 
democratise the datafication of campaigns and politics.
Over the last few years new networks of scholars interested in the 
communicative dimensions to public affairs and lobbying are being 
founded. Building on the collaborative events and research projects in 
Europe organised by the EUPRERA network on public affairs and lobbying, 
the networks are taking on new inter-regional dimensions and a presence 
at ICA annual conferences. At the ICA conference in Prague in 2018 the 
first post-conference on the theme of Lobbying and Democracy saw paper 
sessions range across themes such media strategies, contested notions of 
the public interest and the democratic legitimacy of lobbying within and 
across national borders.

The 2019 post-conference will build on this work. A diversity of 
theoretical, methodological and empirical papers is welcomed. Topics 
that will be considered for the conference include, but are not limited 
to, themes such as:  *	Dimensions of the link between inequalities and 
communicative power;
*	Lobbying or public diplomacy centred on influencing policy issues 
across national boundaries;
*	The relationship between lobbying strategies or practice and 
regulatory regimes; *	How can communication strategies be evaluated 
against democratic norms; *	Public discourses about and public 
perceptions of public affairs professionals; *	The role of news media 
and journalists in public affairs; *	Digital advocacy; *	New 
methodological innovations for analysing lobbying, particularly those 
that open up the ability to utilise public data; *	Tech and software 
innovations that can assist under represented or low resource groups to 
compete in the influence game.
Submission Abstracts (up to 800 words) should be submitted to Scott 
Davidson -  (sd310 /at/ leicester.ac.uk) - before January 31, 2019. Abstracts 
will be anonymised and reviewed with feedback and decisions on 
acceptance within two weeks of the deadline date. Submitters will be 
then asked to confirm their participation latest by end of February. All 
post conference participants are requested to send a full paper by April 
30.  The organisers are exploring the possibility of a special edition 
of a journal based on the conference and will be in contact with updates 
when there is more news on this.

Supported by: ICA Public Relations Division
ICA Public Diplomacy Division
ICA Global Communication and Social Change Division


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