Media Education Research Section - Call for Proposals 2025

The Media Education Research (MER) Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) invites the submission of proposals for in-person presentation of papers or panels for its 2025 conference, 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.

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The central theme of IAMCR 2025 is Communicating Environmental Justice: Many Voices, One Planet. The intention is to address both environmental crises and social disparities, highlighting diverse stakeholder voices and collaborative action that address the pressing challenges of our time.

Consult a detailed description of the main theme

Working in the seams of educational, cultural, and social sites, educators, librarians, community activists, media makers, journalists, and communications researchers are positioned in a unique manner to address central, challenging local and global issues, while also working alongside individuals and groups to help develop and nurture media competencies, conceptual frames, and ethical comportments. Media education settings offer space for critical reflection and provide practical strategies to groups and individuals to engage with media in their daily lives. Media education involves teaching with and about media. It draws widely upon social, cultural and technological conditions, situates learners and instructors in the broad context of their lived realities, and treats media as pedagogical resources.

The Media Education Research Section (MER) is calling for papers related to the conference's main themes from the perspective of ongoing situated research or theoretical developments.

The abstracts can follow a range of directions such as: 

  • How should media education address new and evolving environmental, cultural, political, technological, and ethical challenges? 
  • How are neo-colonial and global South challenges and approaches contributing to media education? How do we decolonize media education? 
  • How and in what ways has ecomedia literacy impacted media education?
  • How can media education contribute to democracy and social movements?
  • How does media education help us engage with algorithms, datafication, platforming and/or artificial intelligence?
  • Can media education address information chaos and fragmentation? Does it adequately respond to mis- or dis-information and hate speech?
  • What role does children’s and youth media play in media education? 
  • How are media production initiatives shaping global and/or local communities?
  • What critical media education interventions are needed today, locally and/or globally? 

Exclusions:

  • Journalism education proposals should be sent directly to the IAMCR’s Journalism Research and Education section.
  • Ed Tech research on ICT use in classrooms and distance education can be directed to ISTE and other such conferences.

Guidelines for abstracts

Abstracts must be submitted exclusively through IAMCR’s submission system from 3 December 2024 through 7 February 2025, at 23.59 UTC.

Abstract should be between 400 and 600 words.

Typically, authors will submit only one (1) abstract to the conference as a whole. Under no circumstances should there be more than two (2) abstracts bearing the name of the same author, either individually or as part of a group of authors. Please note also 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.

Most MER proposals are for both single-authored or multi-authored Papers but we also accept proposals for multi.paper panels.

Statement on use of AI tools

IAMCR does not encourage or condone the use of generative AI tools to create 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

The Media Education Research Section accepts abstracts only in English. Full conference papers can be submitted in English or Spanish.

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 on the MER themes, submissions and panels please contact the Section Heads:

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