[Commlist] ICA 2020 pre-conference call for papers: Storytelling, persuasion and mobilization in the digital age

*_ICA 2020 Pre-conference call for papers: _**_Storytelling, persuasion 
and mobilization in the digital age_***

*Date: Wednesday 20 May 2020, 9:00am-5:00pm*

*Location:* Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

*Sponsoring ICA Divisions:* Activism, Communication and Social Justice 
Interest Group; Political Communication Division; Public Relations Division.

*Organizers:* Filippo Trevisan (American University), Ariadne Vromen 
(University of Sydney), Michael Vaughan (University of Sydney)

Storytelling is central to the persuasion and mobilization strategies of 
advocacy organizations, activist groups, NGOs, political parties, and 
campaigns. However, technological, communicative, and political changes 
have challenged traditional storytelling practices and incentivized 
significant innovation in this area in recent years. Changes in 
technology have transformed the scale and pace at which individual 
stories can be collected, digitally archived, curated, and then 
distributed through online platforms. Changes in communication and 
politics have increased the emphasis on personalized advocacy strategies 
targeted at affective publics (Papacharissi, 2015), as campaigners seek 
to navigate an increasingly fragmented and polarised information 
environment. Researchers today face a challenge in representing both the 
continuity in the narrative dimension of politics while also 
interrogating emerging and impactful innovations. This raises important 
questions about power dynamics and representations associated with 
changing storytelling practices, roles, and relationships between 
individual storytellers, organizations, and social groups in a 
constantly evolving media landscape. These questions are relevant to 
multiple related fields including, among others, the sociology of 
political communications (Polletta 2006), policy studies (Jones, 
Shanahan and McBeth 2014) journalism studies (Polletta and Callahan 
2017), and public interest communication.

This one-day preconference pays attention to these questions and brings 
together researchers from multiple disciplinary perspectives to discuss 
the impact of changing storytelling practices on individuals, groups, 
organizations, target publics, and public discourse more broadly. We 
welcome submissions from theoretical and empirical inquiries that 
examine the following areas:


  * Reconciling conceptualizations of storytelling from intersecting
    perspectives in political life: in particular interest groups,
    social movements, NGOs, parties and political campaigns, as well as
    journalism;
  * The impact of evolving digital communication technologies, including
    but not limited to social media, mobile devices, and database
    technology on the practice of persuasive storytelling;
  * How publics and citizens respond to stories;
  * The role of storytelling in response to changing political and media
    contexts, in particular the evolution of information consumption
    habits and the rise of “fake news;”
  * The significance and impact of advocacy storytelling on the
    (in)visibility of groups that are traditionally marginalized and
    under-represented in public discourse (e.g. gender, LGBTQI+, race,
    ethnicity, disability, etc.);
  * The outcomes of storytelling in politics, such as successes or
    failures in public policy;
  * The ethics of storytelling and the power relationship between
    advocacy organizations and individual storytellers;
  * Storytelling in a comparative and global context, such as the
    diffusion of storytelling practices between political actors and
    countries, as well as their relationship with culture and media
    environments;
  * Innovative methodological approaches to study persuasive
    storytelling and analyze its impact.


*_A PDF copy of this call for papers is available here_: 
*https://tinyurl.com/ica2020-storytelling-preconf

*_Submitting your abstract: _*Please submit abstracts for 15 minutes 
paper presentations through this Google Form 
<https://forms.gle/f5PBbd3KGd4NhdzR7> (https://forms.gle/f5PBbd3KGd4NhdzR7) no 
later than January 20, 2020. Abstracts are limited to a maximum of 4,000 
characters including spaces (approximately 500 words).

Contributors will be selected by peer-review and will be notified of 
decisions on or before February 1, 2020. Authors are expected to attend 
the preconference and present in person.

All participants must register. Registration costs will be 50 USD and 
include coffee breaks and buffet lunch. To register, participants should 
follow the instructions on: www.icahdq.org 
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.icahdq.org_&d=DwMGaQ&c=U0G0XJAMhEk_X0GAGzCL7Q&r=CYqwEkyUTxOfkX8u0h7MJ1VKiRhFw3f1HrsRtFJ-2bk&m=6BkJwQN3EqkrA0UgCeAM3EbPMHpu8uTRo4NujXqzpVs&s=I6APx6XONd7ENRkXLEOwdBdjqCfCg7meo0Y-gVo7_Cc&e=>.

*_Key dates:_*


  * 20 January 2020: Deadline for abstract submission
  * 1 February 2020: Corresponding authors notified of decisions
  * 1 May 2020: Conference registrations close
  * 20 May 2020: Pre-conference starts in Sydney


*_Location:_* Please note that this event will take place off-site at 
the Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney. The pre-conference will 
conclude at 5:00pm on May 20, leaving participants ample time to travel 
to Gold Coast for the opening of the main ICA conference in the evening 
of the following day (21 May).

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