Dear members,

if one was to select one word to designate the 2017, it could certainly be “communication”. The term featured prominently on public and political agenda throughout the year, revolving for the most part around disenchantment with communication technology and fears about strong, negative effects of communication.

What stood out against this backdrop which twittered between conspiracy, moralising and disillusionment, was the social value of critical, theoretically founded and historically grounded communication research that ECREA aims to promote. What also stood out was the necessity to continue with its promotion – both within our community and to the general public.

From ECREA’s perspective, 2017 has been successful in this regard – our response to disenchantment with communication is somewhat expectedly – enhanced communication. It was not only a year in which our Sections, Networks and Temporary Working Groups organised over different 30 events, but also a year in which we redeveloped our communication infrastructure, strategies and activities, which included the complete rebuilding of our website, membership management platform and intranet, introduction of the association’s new visual identity and much more.

In the light of this, I would like to complement our new year's greetings with an invitation to browse through our latest communication endeavour – our revived ECREA newsletter, which is intended to give “voice” and “face” to the association.

ECREA is an association entirely managed by volunteer labour and engagement. We are dependent on the enthusiasm and dedication of our elected representatives to nurture existing and develop new fields within Sections and TWGs, to support precarious groups through Networks, and to ensure general management and day-to-day functioning of the association. To celebrate this volunteer work and intellectual engagement, the newsletter will go beyond featuring reports on activities of S/N/TWGs. It will give voice to members and their representatives through rubrics featuring proprietary content, such as Opinions (commentaries and interviews), ECREAns engaged (presenting a member or institution’s engagement in protecting ECREA’s core values and ideals of an academic community), and Publications (ECREA book series).  

At the same time, we would also like to give “face” to those who signed up for larger chunks of the volunteer labour – mainly S/N/TWG management teams and members of the Executive Board. However, we chose to do it in a different way, by exposing their serious and exciting, but lesser known, non-academic engagements. ECREA is not only a community of communication scholars, but also a community of serious marathon runners, craft beer makers, DJs, jazz band musicians, football coaches and foosball wizards – and as you will see in the first edition of these semi-volunteered exposes – of beekeepers and furniture makers.

Contrary to the constant flickering of social media messages, the ECREA newsletter will attempt to bring a slower-paced, quarterly overview of past and upcoming activities. In 2018 it will also carry additional and background information on the ECC conference in Lugano. I hope the newsletter will not only provide you the insight into the work of association, but also serve as an inspiration to participate in our activities, and possibily, to share your stories with us.

On behalf of ECREA Executive Board, I wish you a happy and communicative New Year.

Ilija Tomanic Trivundza
ECREA President