Audience Section - Call for Proposals 2023

The Audience Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites proposals for IAMCR 2023, to be held in Lyon, France, from 9 to 13 July (Lyon23) with an Online Conference Papers (OCP23) component from 26 June to 5 July.

The deadline for submission of proposals is 9 February 2023 at 23h59 UTC.

See the CfPs of all sections and working groups >

Conference themes

IAMCR conferences have a main conference theme that is explored from multiple perspectives throughout the conference in plenaries and other moments, including the programmes of the thematic sections and working groups. Additionally, each section and working group also defines some of its own themes, which are described in their individual calls for proposals. Proposals for contributions to the conference are submitted to the sections and working groups and may focus on an aspect of the main conference theme as it relates to the concerns of the section or working group, or address a theme identified by the section or working group.

Main theme – Inhabiting the planet: Challenges for media, communication and beyond

The main theme for IAMCR 2023, “Inhabiting the planet: Challenges for media, communication and beyond,” is concerned with possibilities for rethinking communication research agendas at a time when the irreversible effects of climate change is compounded by stark geopolitical, sociocultural and religious tensions in human communities. At this juncture, urgent reflection and research is needed on how we can hope to flourish today and in the future, and also how media and communication tools and environments can be positive forces and spaces for change.

Five sub-themes of this central theme have been identified: Humanity and progress; democracy; media, information and communication; cities and territories; and environmental accountability.

Consult a detailed description of the main theme and its sub-themes

The Audience Section (AUD) invites papers that reflect the 2023 conference theme and sub-themes. Our section aims to encourage interest in understanding audiences for a range of media technologies, in diverse settings, reflecting the role of media in identity, everyday life and broader social, cultural, and political engagement reflecting the interplay between audiences and publics. Considering the constant changing and dynamic media contexts, questions for inclusiveness, respect and reciprocity remain pertinent for audiences and their identities linked to media that cross and blur boundaries between cultures. Such blurring experience, however, provides new opportunities for diversity of identity and forms of expression.

Audiences have gone through significant changes due to the proliferation and reconfiguration of mediatized settings in the past years. We invite our section members to recognize the consequences of these processes for the audiences, their engagements, and responses in the context of dynamic worldwide developments. On the one hand, we have been witnessing a trend of over-dependence on the proliferation of new technologies to stay connected in mediatized environments; on the other hand, we have observed that such over-dependence creates anxieties and deepens existing divides. Similarly, the small world effect of networked audiences and publics continue to be mediated by the global media industry and the algorithmic order. We particularly invite papers that engage with these sub-themes of the conference.

We encourage reflections on the changing nature of audiences and innovations in ways of studying audiences across a range of media and contexts. Submissions should address the challenge of an increasingly complex convergent media environment that complicates not only theoretical and methodological underpinnings of audience research, but also more practical issues of audience measurement.

In addition to the call for papers that reflect the general conference theme, we would like to invite papers and proposals for papers and panels that address the following themes, although we are also open to innovative and critical research on audiences from the full range of disciplinary and theoretical positions:

Authentic and inauthentic audiences: During the past years the media landscape has been plagued by the concept of post-truth, thus reconfiguring audiences and reception of the content and information. Audiences are reconfigured in the context of the regimes of truth, post-truth; information and mis-disinformation. These contexts include not only authentic actors but also algorithmic, bot-based behaviors. What are the dynamics between authentic and inauthentic actors are perceived or interacted with?
Global, local, subcultural and minority audiences: Audiences are not monolithic structures but fragmented and unique in their practices. Those practices can be based on subculture, minority practices, local and global tendencies. Such diversified audiences and fans are reflected through an increasing range of audio-visual content available to consumers, fans and publics, including translations, subtitling and fan subbing of fiction and non-fiction television and social media. Doing such audience research calls for multi-faceted approaches to varieties of audience experiences grounded in social and cultural contexts. We welcome papers that explore such facets of audiences, distribution contexts, geo-cultural approaches to audiences, and the significance of place and time for researching audiences, users and publics.

Generational Audiences: Young people’s relationship with media has been the subject of both the celebration of the potential for new forms of creative expression and anxiety regarding the impact of powerful media on vulnerable audiences and especially marked by digital technologies. In relation to new media forms, young people are frequently seen to be in the vanguard of new audience trends and emerging practices of consumption and engagement. We welcome papers that explore audience experience from the adolescent perspective, and that examine opportunities, risks, and challenges faced by children and young people in the current media environment. Additionally, this generational perspective appeals to those works focused on not-so-young people that have witnessed the constant and long transformation of media audiences: media experiences across lifetimes are also key to explore our multifaceted landscape.

Audiences in Context: There is a growing acknowledgement that the audience is not only to be found in front of the television in the domestic space of the living room. Studies of fans and other dispersed audiences have encouraged an ethnographic turn in audience studies and the decentering of the contexts and practices of being an audience. We welcome submissions that follow audiences into different contexts and engage with the ways that media are dispersed through the practices of everyday life. Complementing this is a rethinking of the spaces of media consumption, including the home, which integrates a range of media technologies in everyday practice.

Audience Experience: There are a variety of ways in which audience experience(s) are being rethought in media and communication. For example, as participants in social media, audiences contribute to the media environment through their online practices and join a variety of groups and movements. There has been a growing recognition of the importance of belonging and affect in media engagements suggesting new ways of thinking of the visceral aspects of audience engagement that afford new forms of connectivity. These shifts are both welcomed as creating inclusive spaces of engagement and feared because of the strength of feeling associated with populism. The section welcomes presentations that engage these new ways of thinking about audience experiences, such as audience experience mediated by AI recommendations and customization.

Audiences, metrics, and industries: Academic audience research no longer ‘owns’ the concept of ‘the audience’, as media industries, governments, regulators and NGOs are increasingly interested in audience research, and many times through technologies. A variety of methods are developing to quantify audience practices in different ways. Broadcasters gather data on audience responses through means that are displacing traditional audience surveys and panels. Social media feeds provide resources for big data analysis of connected audiences and their sentiments. Submissions reflecting on new media audience research tools and applications are welcomed. We welcome papers that address the varied ways in which audiences are conceptualized, measured, and addressed by media industries, governments, NGOs and online groups and participants. How is the audience configured in these different contexts, for different reasons and using different methods?

Rethinking Audience Research: Innovations in theory and method are essential if audience researchers are to keep pace with a rapidly changing media environment where audience(ing) takes multiple forms and resists easy categorization or investigation. We welcome proposals for papers that address new conceptual and practical approaches to studying audiences in the complex convergence of digital and linear media across a range of platforms and that reflect on the emerging agenda for audience studies in a radically transformed media ecology.

Contributing to the conference: Lyon23 and OCP23

There will be two ways of joining IAMCR2023:

If you are not able to or don’t want to join the face-to-face conference in Lyon but do want to submit an online-only paper, submit your abstract to OCP23 only. If accepted, you’ll later submit your full paper to the online platform, which will be open for discussion from 26 June to 5 July.
If you do want to join the face-to-face event, submit your abstract to Lyon23 and OCP23. If accepted you’ll submit your paper to the online platform and present it at the face-to-face conference.

Guidelines for abstracts

Abstracts should have between 300 and 500 words and must be submitted online here. Abstracts submitted by email will not be accepted.

The deadline to submit abstracts is 9 February 2022 at 23h59 UTC.

It is expected that authors will submit only one (1) abstract. However, under no circumstances should an author submit more than two abstracts as a single author or as the lead author of a co-authored paper and no author will submit more than one abstract to the Audience Section. The same abstract or another version with minor variations in title or content must not be submitted to more than one section or working group. Any such submissions will be deemed to be in breach of the conference guidelines and will be rejected.

Proposals are accepted for both single Papers and Panels. Proposals for panels can only be submitted to Lyon23 and OCP23. Panel submissions must include an abstract for each paper submitted here and a description & supplemental information submitted via this form on the conference website.

See important dates and deadlines to keep in mind