Category: Miscellaneous

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Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research: Applying Communication Theory to Practice

June 12-June 16, 2025, Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand

Oceania Hub: Aotearoa New Zealand

Hosted by:

Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE)

Communication and Media Studies at Massey University

Organisers: Debalina Dutta, Sy Taffel, Sean Phelan, & Mohan Dutta

Call for Submissions EXTENDED; now Due on March 14, 2025, 11:59 pm NZST

The Oceania Hub of the International Communication Association (ICA) 2025 conference, hosted at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand, explores questions surrounding disrupting Communication Research through the lens of Te Tiriti and Social Justice. Drawing on communication scholarship organised around the various registers of social justice, the Hub examines the intersections of communication theorizing and practice, mobilized toward disruptions and consolidation. The hub will be held in hybrid form, with both in-person and virtual sessions. Selected panels, papers, and interventions will be considered for waiver of conference registration fees.

We invite disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions and multimedia communication interventions (video stories, film, performances, art forms, photographic images, sound productions) from the broader Asia-Pacific, focusing on the representation of the scholarship of communication practice from the Islands of the Pacific. The salience of Pacific participation is constituted around the global sustainability challenges of climate change, rising water levels, extreme inequality etc. We see the hub as offering an opening for disrupting what counts as communication scholarship through the engagement with practices of communication for social change.

The ICA Regional Hub at CARE will comprise a one-day hybrid workshop on “Connecting theory and practice as disruptions.” The workshop will bring in scholars from across the Asia-Pacific in both virtual and face-to-face sessions, focusing on key questions exploring the intersections of theory and practice in the context of addressing complex global challenges at a time when reactionary forces are on the rise. Aligned with the ICA 2025 conference theme of “Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research,” the workshop will center the questions of disruptions from the context of the Pacific, anchoring the conversations in the struggles for justice and/or sustainability among others in communities across the Pacific. Sessions will connect with local organisers and activists in generating conversations on key questions on decolonizing knowledge. Centering the principles of Kaupapa Māori and indigenous methods across Asia and the Pacific, the workshop will explore the role of community as an organising space for building knowledge.

The Hub will operate in a hybrid model, with face-to-face participation complementing virtual participation. We welcome paper or panel submissions on the following topics and beyond:

  • The futures of struggles around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
  • Theorizing communication applications
  • Decolonizing communication scholarship
  • Sustainable communicative futures
  • Science communication futures
  • ‘Disruptive innovation’ and social justice
  • AI and/as disruption
  • Disruptive alternatives to corporate platforms and infrastructures
  • Indigenous data sovereignty
  • Internationalization of the culture wars
  • Communication theory and mutant neoliberalism
  • The normalization of reactionary politics
  • Cultures of political resistance
  • Health communication and social determinants
  • Climate justice
  • Communication theory, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity
  • Media cultures and ecologies
  • Imperialism, geopolitics and multipolarity
  • Critical development communication

We extend a special invitation to postgraduate students, activists and scholars from the Global South, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+ and those living with disabilities.

We invite submissions from the region addressing the theme “Disrupting and consolidating Communication Research.” The submissions can take the form of academic papers as well as multimedia forms beyond the text such as photos, audio, video stories, film, performance etc.

Please submit a title and an abstract no longer than 250 words. If you are submitting a multimedia intervention, please describe the interventions in the abstract. Please email your submission to Debalina Dutta at D.Dutta@massey.ac.nz by March 14, 2025, 11:59 pm NZST.

#ICA2025 #CommunicationResearch #SocialJustice #DecolonizingKnowledge #IndigenousMethods #PacificScholarship #MediaStudies #ClimateJustice #AIandDisruption #CommunicationForChange #TheoryAndPractice #SustainableFutures #HealthCommunication #PoliticalResistance #CriticalDevelopment #CulturalStudies #OceaniaHub #HybridConference #AcademicCall #DisruptiveInnovation #CommunityEngagement

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Prof. Mohan J. Dutta presents at the National Communication Association 102nd Annual Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

NCA Opening Session: Putting Bodies on the Line and Words into Action – Celebrating the Joys of, Challenges in, and Opportunities for Civic Engagement

Sponsor: NCA First Vice President
Thu, 11/10: 5:00 PM  – 6:30 PM
Marriott Downtown
Room: Grand Salon E – Level 5
Dr. Bryant Keith Alexander has built a career thinking about and embracing queer black bodies moving through the vectors of racism and homophobia; Dr. Mohan Jyoti Dutta has spent the past decade advocating for health care justice in developing nations; Dr. Billie Murray has chronicled her participation in movements for social justice in the wake of Confederate memorializing and in the face of hate speech. A Dean, a Chair, and an Assistant Professor; a colleague from LA, another from Singapore, a third from Philadelphia. While our speakers embody diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and methodology and area expertise, they are united in their commitment to using communication activism for the common good. Come hear their stories from the front lines of change; listen as they engage in spirited dialogue about why communication matters, and how, and to whom; and please lend your voice to our collective celebration of those who put their bodies on the line and words into action. The NCA Opening Session is sponsored by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.

Chair

Lisa A. Flores, University of Colorado, Boulder  – Contact Me

Presenter(s)

Bryant Keith Alexander, Loyola Marymount University  – Contact Me Mohan Dutta, National University of Singapore  – Contact Me Billie Murray, Villanova University  – Contact Me

Sponsor/Co-Sponsors

Activism and Social Justice Division
La Raza Caucus
NCA First Vice President
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“Food Insecurity in Singapore: The Communicative (Dis)Value of the Lived Experiences of the Poor”

“Food Insecurity in Singapore: The Communicative (Dis)Value of the Lived Experiences of the Poor” – This journal article co-authored with Naomi Tan, Satveer Kaur, Prof Mohan Dutta, and Nina Venkataraman just got published in the Health Communication! Here is a link for 50 free downloads. Link:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2016.1196416 Abstract: “Food insecurity is a form of health disparity that results in adverse health outcomes, particularly among disenfranchised and vulnerable populations. Using the culture-centered approach, this article engages with issues of food insecurity, health, and poverty among the low-income community in Singapore. Through 30 in-depth interviews, the narratives of the food insecure are privileged in articulating their lived experiences of food insecurity and in co-constructing meanings of health informed by their sociocultural context, in a space that typically renders them invisible. Arguing that poverty is communicatively sustained through the erasure of subaltern voices from mainstream discourses and policy platforms, we ask the research question: What are the meanings of food insecurity in the everyday experiences of health among the poor in Singapore? Our findings demonstrate that the meanings of health among the food insecure are constituted in culture and materiality, structurally constrained, and ultimately complexify their negotiations of health and health decision making.”

NUS CARE researchers assisting Willing Hearts charity to prepare and distribute food to recipients in Singapore

NUS CARE researchers assisting Willing Hearts charity to prepare and distribute food to recipients in Singapore

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[CARE Documentary Screening] “Cotton for my Shroud” by Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena

Join us for the screening of an award-winning documentary film, Cotton for my Shroud, by Kavita Bahl and Nandan Saxena on 1 June (Wednesday), from 2.00 – 4.30 pm, at the CNM Playroom. This event includes the film screening, followed by a Question and Answer session with the filmmakers. The film focuses on the farmer suicide crisis in India, situating this within the wider neoliberal context of governance in India that has shaped the agricultural industry. If you are interested in attending this event, do register at the following link: http://goo.gl/forms/KTSgiu0w0hWXTgSA3 See you there!

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Prof Mohan and the Deconstruction of the News Hour Debate on Feb 10

So what makes up news? Prof Mohan analyses an episode of the “News Hour Debate” to address the role of the Indian media in cooking up the anti-nationalism debate in India. By providing a few points to lay out the criteria of what makes news, Prof Mohan then deconstructs the Feb 10 episode and goes on to highlight the role of the media in shaping the national conversation and in driving public opinion in a one-sided manner. He also addresses how the media here serve as propaganda tools of the state. Watch the clip below.

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‘Films for Social Change’: Screening of “Wira Pdika” by Samarendra Das

Join us on 24 October for a captivating journey through the heart of Orissa’s tribal communities with a 120-minute screening of “Wira Pdika.” This poignant documentary unveils the staggering discrimination and injustices faced by these resilient communities at the hands of large mining and metal industries. Following the screening, engage in a Q&A session with filmmaker Samarendra Das and CARE director Prof. Mohan Dutta, as they illuminate the Adivasi struggle for justice and amplification of their voices.

Films for Social Change is an initiative by the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), a health communication research centre based in the National University of Singapore.

To register for either or both events, please click here. Brought to you by CARE, with kind support from UTown Residence.

You can find more information on Prof Dutta’s research work here.