[Commlist] 2025 ICA Pre-Conference on Urban Communication: Call for Abstracts

*2025 ICA Pre-Conference on Urban Communication: Call for Abstracts – 
Deadline Extended to Feb 3*

**

For those doing research in cities interested in communication and media 
processes, we are very excited to invite you to submit extended 
abstracts and participate in the 2025 ICA Preconference 
<https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/2025-ica-urban/home>dedicated to 
Urban Communication. This preconference builds on a series of inspiring 
ICA events, more recently a Blue Sky, Big Idea Workshop//at the 2024 ICA 
conference.

This coming year’s pre-conference topic will be:*/“Disrupting and 
Consolidating Communication Research to Address Emerging Urban 
Challenges/*/.*”*/

We are grateful for the support of four ICA divisions, including: 
/Ethnicity and Race in Communication, Health Communication, Mobile 
Communication,/and/Popular Media & Culture/.

Below you will find a description with more about this endeavor’s 
objectives, as well as a detailed call for extended abstracts (including 
information about where to submit your abstract).

We have extended the submission*deadline*to*February 3, 2025*, at the 
end of the day in your time zone.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out using 
this e-mail address:(_matthew.matsaganis /at/ rutgers.edu) 
<mailto:(matthew.matsaganis /at/ rutgers.edu)>_

////


*2025 ICA PRE-CONFERENCE 
<https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/2025-ica-urban/home>*

*Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research *

*to Address Emerging Urban Challenges *

*CALL FOR EXTENDED ABSTRACTS *

*/Submission Deadline/: 3Feb.2025 *

Co-Organizers:

Matthew Matsaganis, Rutgers University

Matthew Bui, University of Michigan

Myria Georgiou, London School of Economics

Germaine Halegoua, University of Michigan

Pan Ji, Fudan University

Jeffrey Lane, Rutgers University

Erika Polson, University of Denver

*Co-sponsoring ICA Divisions *

/(Alphabetically) /

Ethnicity and Race in Communication

Health Communication

Mobile Communication

Popular Media & Culture

**

*Additional Sponsors *

/(Alphabetically) /

Center for Information and Communication Studies, Fudan University

Center for Digital Communication Studies, Zhejiang University

London School of Economics

Rutgers University

University of Denver

University of Michigan

*Location: *Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center

*Date: *12 June 2025, 9 am - 4 pm (local time in Colorado)

**

*Description & Call for Extended Abstracts *

Considering the U.N.’s prediction that two-thirds of the world’s 
population will be living in cities in 2050, it is now more critical 
than ever for us as a field to /first /reflect on how communication 
research has contributed to how cities’ diverse stakeholders understand 
and address enduring and emerging challenges. And /second/, it is 
important to reimagine how urban communication scholars can continue to 
intervene in pressing debates about power and inequality amid multiple 
convergent crises, including but not limited to affordable housing 
shortages, increasing poverty and socio-economic inequities, 
privatization of public spaces, persistent health inequities, forced 
migration and refugee crises, climate change, and potential harms posed 
by artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging surveillance technologies.

On ICA’s 75th anniversary, we aim to convene communication scholars to 
reflect on urban communication's past, present, and future and to 
consider how Communication can disrupt and facilitate the integration of 
research to help address emerging and persistent challenges of urban 
communities. This pre-conference aims to create an open and 
collaborative environment to discuss themes and challenges related to 
urban communication and opportunities to advance ethical and equitable 
futures for and through urban communication, technology design, policy, 
artistic and archival practices, scholarship, and activism.

The pre-conference’s agenda is driven by several key questions. We 
invite extended abstracts that address these questions (in part or 
combination) from a variety of perspectives and methodologies:

● What is urban communication? Where does it fit in communication 
research relative to other subfields? How might urban communication 
evolve further to shape the future of communication research and/or to 
allow communication research to shape neighboring fields and academia 
more broadly?

● What novel/robust urban communication theories and methodologies exist 
to address new/persistent social, political, and economic challenges 
within local, transnational, and global urban contexts?

● What are the connections between communication, smart cities, 
algorithms, and the datafication of urban life? How do these connections 
enable understanding the persistence and potential alleviation of 
“wicked problems” (e.g., poverty, homelessness, climate change)? How do 
they allow for new forms of connection and community-building among 
diverse populations?

● Are cities today more or less capable of dealing with diversity and 
promoting social integration than cities of the past? What’s 
technology’s role in this? What is the role of the media as community 
stakeholders and as institutions? What is the role of journalists?

● How does place impact our health and health inequities? What is the 
role of communication as a process (mediated or not) in this 
relationship? What is the role of communication technologies (from 
smartphones and wearables to apps that support the gig economy) more 
specifically?

● How do media technologies and practices encourage new sensory 
experiences, artistic practices, and social interactions within urban 
environments? How can these technologies be used to understand embodied 
urban experiences, collective memory, situated knowledge, and placemaking?

● What are the ethical and practical considerations for engaging with 
diverse stakeholders including marginalized groups and communities 
around urban communication? How are (urban and digital) policy and 
design implicated in these issues?

Work foregrounding questions of power and inequality from local, global, 
and/or transnational lenses, underrepresented regions and communities is 
strongly encouraged.

The pre-conference will unfold over four consecutive sessions. 
Participants with accepted abstracts will begin the conversation in the 
first three sessions with short presentations. In the day's final 
session, organizers and participants will work together to develop an 
urban communication agenda to inform research for the next decade and 
discuss plans leading to a collaborative publishing project and 
bolstering a network of urban communication scholars. As it is crucial 
to identify mechanisms to sustain and grow a community of scholars whose 
work can help shape the future of cities and facilitate the discipline’s 
meaningful engagement with urban communities globally, in this closing 
session, participants will discuss models for achieving this goal within 
ICA and beyond.

*Submission Guidelines *

Abstracts should be approximately 1000-1500 words in length, excluding 
references. Participants with accepted abstracts will be expected to 
present their work as short presentations during the first half of the 
pre-conference.

*Extended abstracts should be submitted via this form 
<https://tinyurl.com/bdhbckw7>by the end of the day in your time zone, 
on 3February2025. *

*Registration Fee *

There will be a $50 registration fee to help offset the cost of food and 
refreshments during breaks and lunch.

*Questions? *

If you have questions, please write to Matthew Matsaganis at this e-mail 
address: (matthew.matsaganis /at/ rutgers.edu).


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