[Commlist] ICA 2022 Pre-Conference Visualising What's Social: Research and Methodological Approaches

  ICA Pre-conference 2022

“Visualizing What’s Social: Research and Methodological Approaches“

May 26, 2022 | 12:30-17:00 | On-site and online

ICA Visual Communication division website is here 
<https://icavisualcommunicationstudies.com/ica-pre-conference-2022/>.

Submission Deadline: Feb. 14, 2022

Results Released March 1

Division Affiliation:  Visual Communication Studies Division, Popular 
Media and Culture Division, and Computational Methods Division.

Organizer Contact: Mary A. Bock, (mary.bock /at/ austin.utexas.edu) 
<mailto:(mary.bock /at/ austin.utexas.edu)>


      DESCRIPTION

Social media are visual media. Every day, users upload billions of 
photos and hundreds of thousands of hours of video to the internet, and 
media producers are encouraged to use still and moving images to attract 
viewers (Evelith, 2015). Images document the lives of ordinary people, 
celebrities and pets. They are also used to inform, persuade and 
deceive. Exploring the role of the visual online and in pop culture is 
essential to understanding the nature of social media.

Yet images are often harder to research than text. They pose 
methodological challenges in terms of data collection and analysis, and 
are therefore left out of many analyses of social media. Considering 
that images are cognitively and emotionally more powerful than words 
alone, this is problematic.

This Pre-Conference is designed to maximize dialogue about researching 
visuality in social media among scholars at all career levels, including 
students, early-career, mid-career and senior scholars. Students and 
early-career scholars will have the opportunity to present research and 
works-in-progress for feedback from mid-career and senior scholars. A 
session is planned for mid-career and senior scholars to present their 
research. The event will conclude with a methods workshop focusing on 
techniques and strategies for researching visuality in social media.To 
that end, we invite extended abstracts of no more than 2,500 
words pertaining to, but not limited to, the following topics:

Celebrity: How is celebrity represented and visually constructed on 
social media? In contrast, how are the quotidian and banal aspects of 
life represented and visually constructed in such contexts?

Technology: How has the ubiquity of higher-quality cameras and editing 
software/apps changed the way non-professional users are able to brand 
themselves or construct themselves as “celebrities” or influencers? 
Which techniques of visual production are used in social media? Which 
techniques are tied to old media, and which might represent new forms of 
visual communication?

Methods: What methods, technologies, and tools are being developed that 
can assist researchers in the study of images and video on social media? 
How might researchers adapt existing systems for social media analysis? 
What sort of automated or big data analyses might best be employed by 
visual researchers? Where might those analyses be limited compared to 
small data projects? What challenges do visuals pose for social media 
researchers, and how might they be overcome?

Optics: What differences exist between video and still imagery online 
and in social media? What about graphic design, such as animated GIFs? 
Are there differences in the way the forms are deployed online? How are 
optical, audio and editing techniques employed in social media?

Semiotics: What sorts of signs predominate on social media? How are they 
understood, used, or constructed by users? How have signs evolved?

Narrative: How do developments of ephemeral “story” sharing, 
live-streaming and other similar social media features change the nature 
of storytelling and representation online? What stories emerge from the 
mixing and matching shared audio tracks with video and imagery?


      SCHEDULING DETAILS

The pre-conference will include three events:

  * A poster session for the students and emerging scholars with
    mentoring from mid-career and senior scholars
  * A research session for up to five of the mid-career and senior
    scholars who served as mentors for the poster session
  * A computational research methods workshop

The poster session will allow students and early-career scholars to 
display their research and works-in-progress for feedback from the 
mentor scholars.

The traditional research session will allow the mentoring scholars to 
present research.

In the methods workshop session, students, early-career, mid-career and 
senior scholars confer together on research methods for visual data 
collection and analysis. In this workshop, all pre-conference 
participants will discuss methodological approaches for visual data 
collection and analysis in current networked media environments and 
avenues and guidelines for best practices — as well as any ethical 
concerns that arise in the course of such research.

This pre-conference will be designed as a hybrid to maximize 
opportunities for participation. It will use video conferencing as 
necessary to enable remote engagement.

If the pre-conference needs to be moved fully online because of 
COVID-19, we will adapt to a fully virtual format and organize 
synchronous mentoring and workshop sessions (grouped according to time 
zones) over Zoom.


      How to participate/register

Click here to submit to the pre-conference 
<https://grady.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7OGuWzbCtPyvp2K>

Registration is open to all and will be available at a later date.

The fee to attend is $30.

We encourage students, early-career scholars and those from the Global 
Majority to participate. A limited number of waivers will be available.

*Saumava Mitra*

Ollamh Cúnta | Assistant Professor


Scoil Chumarsáide  | Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath |

School of Communications | Dublin City University


Vice Chair | Visual Communication division, International Communication 
Association


Recent publications:


Mitra, S., Witherspoon, B. & Creta, S. (2021). Invisible in this Visual 
World? Work and Working conditions of Female photographers in the Global 
South. /Journalism Studies/. Available here 
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1461670X.2021.2007163>.


Witherspoon, B. & Mitra, S. (Sept-Oct, 2021). Collisions and 
Collaborations. /British Journal of Photography 
<https://www.thebjpshop.com/product/september-october-2021-activism-protest/>/, 
pp. 163-7.


Mitra, S., Creta, S. & McDonald, S. (2021). How our Rage is Represented: 
Acts of Resistance among Women Photographers of the Global South. In 
Orgeret, K. [Ed.] . /Insights on//Peace and Conflict 
Reporting./Routledge, pp. 89-105. Available here 
<https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003015628/insights-peace-conflict-reporting-kristin-skare-orgeret>.



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