Category: Research talk

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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 Dutta, CARE, Massey University presenting at Philippine Association for Communication and Media Research, Inc (PACMRI) Masterclass 2024

Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) is proud to share that Prof. Mohan Dutta, Massey University will be featuring at the PACMRI Masterclass 2024 on 11 October 2024 | 3PM Philippine Time on Zoom and Facebook LIVE with renowned scholars.

Date: 11 October 2024 | 3 PM Philippine Time via Zoom and Facebook Live

Discover the Culture-Centered Approach to Communication and Media Studies!

Are you passionate about amplifying marginalized voices and challenging dominant narratives? Join us for the fourth Philippine Association for Communication and Media Research, Inc. PACMRI Masterclass to explore a transformative framework that centers these communities in media and communication featuring renowned scholars Prof. Mohan Dutta from Massey University , Dr. Sudeshna Roy from Marquette University and Dr. Dazzelyn Baltazar Zapata from the University of the Philippines

Register for the Zoom session here: https://bit.ly/2024Masterclass3

#CultureCenteredApproach #CommunicationStudies #MediaStudies #SocialChange #RadicalDemocracy #PACMRIMasterclass #MohanDutta #SudeshnaRoy #DazzelynBaltazarZapata #UPLBCommunication #MasseyUniversity #MarquetteUniversity #UPDiliman #EmpowermentThroughMedia #AmplifyVoices #InclusiveCommunication

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Future Directions of Applied Communication Research Lecture Series | Strategies for Conducting Applied Communication Research that Can Make a Difference

Lecture Topic: Strategies for Conducting Applied Communication Research that Can Make a Difference with Distinguished Professor Gary Kreps, George Mason University

Tuesday, 3rd September 2024 @ 10 am NZST on Facebook LIVE & YouTube LIVE!  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/RMBrKaZwjuCLG5XZ/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/H-KCN0hnwuU

About the Lecturer: Prof. Gary Kreps is completing his 20th year on the faculty at George Mason University, where he currently serves as a Distinguished University Professor of Communication and Founding Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication.   Prof. Gary teaches courses concerning Communication Research, Health Communication, Risk Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Consumer-Provider Health Communication, Health Communication Campaigns, and Digital Communication.  

Prior to joining the faculty at Mason, he had the pleasure of serving as the Founding Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NIH), where he planned, developed, and coordinated major new national research and outreach initiatives concerning risk communication, health promotion, behavior change, technology development, and information dissemination to promote effective cancer prevention, screening, control, care, and survivorship.

Prof. Gary also served as the Founding Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and in faculty and administrative roles at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities.  

Read more here

Read more about the CARE Lecture Series:

https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/care-to-host-renowned-academics-in-its-applied-communication-lecture-series/

#AppliedCommunicationResearch #CARELectureSeries #CommunicationResearch #GaryKreps #CAREMassey #MasseyUni #GeorgeMasonUniversity #CARECCA #Aotearoa #NewZealand

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Public Talk – CARE Visiting Academic Series: The Embodied Meaning Making of Museums – Presented by Professor Greg Dickinson, Colorado State University

CARE is excited about this upcoming Public Talk, a part of the CARE Visiting Academic Series: The Embodied Meaning Making of Museums – Presented by Professor Greg Dickinson – Professor and Chair Communication Studies, Colorado State University.

Tuesday,23rd April 2024 @ 11am Palmerston North City Library, 2nd Floor- Heritage Space and Livestream on CARE Facebook & CARE YouTube channel.

The presentation explores how contemporary rhetorical scholarship helps us weave together symbolic, material and embodied understandings of museums.

Museums are powerful cultural and communicative institutions. Museums are often and correctly understood as institutions of Western modernity, central to colonialism and imperialism, and are a location of crucial contestations of the relations among past, present, and future. They are also powerfully effective and affective technologies of communication. Understanding how to engage museums as communicative institutions depends on a rich understanding of the modes of museal communication.

In this presentation Prof. Dickinson will trace the communicative and rhetorical modalities of museums. Drawing on my, and my colleagues, research on US American museums—with particular attention to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West—he will focus on the rhetorical nature of collection and display practices within museums. While many within museum studies have explored both collecting and display, rhetoric scholars bring field-specific questions and concerns to these practices, questions and concerns that can enliven us to the political consequentiality of museums. Contemporary rhetorical scholarship helps us weave together symbolic, material, and embodied understandings of museums.

Livestream Links:

Facebook LIVE: https://www.facebook.com/events/1126142745176836
YouTube LIVE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG4pwEiJVhA
CARE Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/CAREMassey
CARE YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF760E7rBst3U5GmJ5FhDDw
CARE Twitter page
https://twitter.com/CAREMasseyNZ

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Professor Mohan Dutta to delivers 2023 G. Jack Gravlee Lecture on Decolonizing Democracies at Colorado State University

Professor Mohan J Dutta delivering 2023 G. Jack Gravlee endowed lecture in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University

Professor Mohan Dutta, Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication and the Director of the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) will deliver the 2023 G. Jack Gravlee endowed lecture in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University on September 19, 2023.

Professor Dutta’s lecture, titled “Decolonization as organizing radical democracies: Centering health, resisting climate colonialism, securing food systems, and resisting hate” will be delivered in conversation with the University’s theme this coming year (2023-2024), Democracy and Civic Engagement.

The lecture will draw upon two decades of ethnographic fieldwork carried out by Mohan Dutta in struggles for Indigenous rights, migrant rights, transgender rights, anti-racism, and working-class politics, exploring the everyday habits of democracy that are sustained through community action.

The talk will outline the key tenets of the culture-centered approach as an organising framework for decolonizing democracies, attending to Indigenous, Black, and various Global South traditions for organising democracies. It will attend to the ways in which white supremacy shapes the infrastructures of settler colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial democracies, with hegemonic notions of democracy scripted into practices of extraction, expulsion, and displacement through the mobilisation of violence.

Professor Dutta will wrap up the talk by offering insights into the organising work of building transformative democracies through the co-creation of community voice infrastructures that work toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, addressing the challenges of climate colonialism, food insecurity, poverty, and digital colonialism.

Massey News:

Professor Mohan Dutta delivers Gravlee Lecture at Colorado State University

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CARE manuscripts accepted at 71st International Communication Association Conference, 27-31 May 2021

ICA 2021 conference theme of Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice

CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation is looking forward to the opportunity to share our work at the 71st International Communication Association Conference #ICA21. This year’s virtual ICA conference is to be held on 27-31 May 2021 and has the theme “Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice”.

The following manuscripts have been accepted for presentation

  • Negotiations of health among Rohingya Refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh: A culture-centered approach to health and care by Mahbubur Rahman; Mohan Jyoti Dutta
  • Receiving healthcare while locked down: Voices from the margins in Aotearoa New Zealand by Phoebe Elers,Steven Elers & Prof. Mohan Jyoti Dutta
  • Extreme neoliberalism, migrant labour and COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore: A culture-centered interrogation by Prof. Mohan Jyoti Dutta
  • Migrant worker health as a human right: A culture-centered approach by Prof. Mohan Jyoti Dutta
  • Nobody Cares About Us: COVID-19 and Voices of Refugees from Aotearoa New Zealand by Pooja Jayan
  • If they cared, they’d listen:’ Culturally centering listening to disrupt the logics of community engagement by Christine Elers
  • Innocence lost: Community building as praxis by Prof. Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Prof. Shiv Ganesh & Christine Elers

In addition to: ‘Prejudice toward the “Other” during the Covid-19 Pandemic’ by Stephen Croucher, Thao Nguyen, Mohan Dutta & Doug Ashwell, along with fellow academics Tatiana Permyakova & Oscar Gomez

#ICA21 #ICA2021 #SocialMedia #communication #Connectedness #SocialJustice #CARE Massey #CARECCA #MasseyCJM #MasseyUni #masseyuniversity #Research #NewZealand #Aotearoa

https://www.icahdq.org/page/ICA2021

About ICA 2021 conference theme

The ICA 2021 conference theme of Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice calls for our examination of how care forms the fabric of our social and interconnected lives. From the moment that we enter this world we are completely dependent on the care of others, and as we move through our lives, the care of our teachers, doctors, leaders, and artists shape us into the adults that we are today. Even as we leave this earth, on our last days, we are comforted by the care of loved ones.

“Care” can be understood from a variety of perspectives relevant to communication. Namely, care can refer to:

  • Providing Assistance for Others (She takes care of my aunt.)
  • Being Interested in a Topic/Issue/Idea (They care about the notion of compassion.)
  • Concern about Others’ Well-Being (He cares what will happen to his children.)
  • The Provision of Needed Attention or Resources (Do they provide care at the hospital?)

The concept of care can also be understood from at least two vantage points that intersect with those meanings: self-directed and community-centered. The relative priority of self and community care within a given community reflects deeply embedded cultural values, experiences of oppressions, access to resources, and histories of trust.

The concept of “care” requires our thoughtful examination and reflection. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis of climate change, and militarized police brutality that continues to target, harass, and kill people of color, the urgency of care to address entrenched inequalities, an overarching climate of neglect, and a global political economy of individualized self-help has been rendered visible. Communication emerges in this backdrop as a transformative site for re-working care, anchoring it in relationships, communities, organizing processes, media systems, and social formations. Care is both constituted by and constitutive of communication, as a register for creating spaces of compassion and connectedness.

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CARE White Paper Issue 4: March 2020

COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Package

by Christine Elers (Ngā Hau), Junior Research Officer, Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research & Evaluation (CARE)

CARE White Paper Issue 4 March 2020Download

We are writing about the government’s covid-19 wage subsidy package, in particular:

  • the sick leave payment due to be folded into the modified covid-19 wage subsidy package; and
  • the online publication outlining the names of all employers who have received the covid-19 wage subsidy package.