The Popular Culture (POP) Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites the submission of abstracts for IAMCR 2025, which will be held in Singapore from 13 to 17 July 2025, hosted by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University.
The deadline for submission is 7 February 2025, at 23h59 UTC.
See the list of all sections and working groups and their remits
See the CfPs of all sections and working groups
IAMCR conferences address many diverse topics defined by our 37 thematic sections and working groups. We also propose a single central theme to be explored throughout the conference with the aim of generating and exploring multiple perspectives. This is accomplished through plenary and special sessions, as well as in many of the sessions of the sections and working groups. The 2025 central theme is Communicating Environmental Justice: Many Voices, One Planet.
Consult a detailed description of the main theme
In keeping with this year’s conference theme, POP is concerned with how narratives of environmental justice reorient, challenge and change the texts and contexts of pop-cultural production and consumption. Members of the Popular Culture Working Group are interested in the (academic) intersections that the study of popular culture evokes. Embracing insights from critical disciplines such as cultural studies, media studies, gender and queer studies, literary studies, and theatre studies, the Working Group engages with multifarious perspectives and embraces the richness of popular culture as a field of study. It considers popular culture and its analysis a ‘pivotal arena of struggle for the distribution and deployment of resources for self-understanding and social agency’. Consequently, it prioritizes critical and interpretative approaches to popular culture that are less concerned with linear effects or causal models, and more with modes of analysis attuned to contextuality, complexity and contradiction.
POP eagerly invites papers and panel proposals that investigate how popular culture, in all its modes of creation, circulation and contestation fits within an era of environmental crises, social disparities, and the questions about engagement and listening they raise.
Topics addressing the central theme
POP is committed to examining the ever-changing nature of the social, political and economic forces that configure communication processes and, specifically, the communicative role of popular culture. We premise the study of popular culture on the idea that our object of analysis, in its many forms, offers sites to understand how the relation between structural and subjective agents comes into being, and how institutions and individuals interface with each other. In keeping with IAMCR 2025’s theme, POP invites submission of abstracts and panel proposals that explore the following:
- Sustainability and environmental justice in popular culture narratives
- Technologies of engagement and listening and/in popular culture
- Structures of and resistance to neo-global popular representations
- Popular narratives of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and ability
- Digital technologies: friend or foe in popular culture
- Engagement with celebrity, fandom and on/offline community
- De-colonization and popular media industries
- Ethical perspectives (and sustainability) in popular culture
- Imaginaries of “truth” in/by popular culture narratives
- Aesthetics and aestheticization and sustainability in popular landscapes
- Nation, the national, nationalism and populism in popular culture
- Neo-global consumer structures/contexts and consumer subjectivities/identities
- Social justice, human rights, equality and inclusion in popular narratives on environmental justice
- Ecology, climate, sustainability and popular culture
- Social media and social mediation/mediatization in a de-colonizing landscape
Themes within abstracts and panel proposals not mentioned above but still relevant to the study of popular culture will also be considered.
Guidelines for abstracts
Abstract should be between 400 and 600 words. and must be submitted exclusively through IAMCR’s submission system from 3 December 2024 through 7 February 2025, at 23.59 UTC. Abstracts submitted by email will not be considered.
Authors are expected to submit only one (1) abstract, and no more than one (1) abstract can be submitted as first author to POP. Moreover, under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same author(s), either individually (e.g. as 2nd author) or as first author. Please note as well that 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 multi-paper sessions. Please note that there are special procedures for submitting multi-paper sessions. You can find the detailed procedures when submitting your abstract online in the abstract submission system.
Statement on use of AI tools
IAMCR does not encourage or condone the use of generative AI tools to prepare abstracts submitted for consideration for our conferences. IAMCR values originality, integrity, and transparency in academic work, and believes that human-authored contributions best support rigorous and innovative scholarship in media and communication research. Should an author choose to use a generative AI tool in the preparation of an abstract, we require that they include a clear statement within their submission disclosing the tool's use. This statement must specify: (1) the name of any AI tool used; (2) how the tool was used in preparing the abstract, and; (3) the reason for using the tool. Failure to disclose the use of generative AI in accordance with these guidelines may impact the evaluation and acceptance of the submission.
Languages
POP accepts abstract submissions in English only.
Deadlines and key dates
The deadline to submit abstracts is 7 February 2025, at 23.59 UTC. For other key dates see https://iamcr.org/singapore2025/keydates. Dates are subject to change.
Contacts
For further information about the Popular Culture Working Group, its themes, submissions and multi-paper sessions, please contact, Florian Vanlee <Florian.Vanlee@ugent.be>, Yongliang Gao <gaoyongliang@cuc.edu.cn>, or Tonny Krijnen <krijnen@eshcc.eur.nl>.
