Thematic Organization

Introducing IAMCR’s Section and Working Group Thematic Organisation

IAMCR encourages studies in five main thematic areas:

1. Media Production & Consumption - how the media are produced and consumed within the broader context of globalisation and the local structures and practices of production and everyday life;
2. Media, Communication, Participation & Community - the role of the media and communication processes in fostering participation in local, national, regional and global institutions and in informal and highly situated communities;
3. Media and Communication Policy & Law - concerned with with formal regulation and law, and with practices and means of mobilising political action, frequently with an emphasis on civil society actors;
4. Education & Journalism - media education and professional education, including training, content, ethics and rights and obligations of the media within society;
5. Cross-Cutting Theme - includes activities that are distinguished in a way that makes them difficult to place elsewhere:
   

• The History Section addresses all of the technologies of media and communication, bringing the methods of historical analysis to bear on the continuities and discontinuities in the development of media and communication practice through time;
• The International Communication Section is distinguished by its strong international orientation – though it considers global issues in the light of local issues;
• The Political Economy Section fosters work that might fall within the other themes, but does so with a strong commitment to the history and traditions in the study of power through the lens of political economy theory;
• A Working Group on Ethics of Society & Ethics of Communication is concerned with journalism and the media;
• A Junior Scholars Network attracts enthusiastic scholars, offering them an additional home.

In all these thematic areas IAMCR encourages researchers who are often concerned with social justice, democratisation, social inequality, the construction of identity and its mediation through the media, and with information and/or communication rights and responsibilities. We encourage the use of a wide variety of methods and frequently there is a strong desire to encourage a foundation for comparison – whether this is at a micro, ethnographic level or through macro, structural forms of analysis.