August 28-30

University of Cape Town

Deadline: April 15, 2019

Current communication debates are increasingly dominated by polarities and conflicts. On closer inspection, these polarities are not always defined by antagonism or opposing ideologies, but are also informed by power imbalances in terms of race, class and gender, technological access, education, age, geospatial factors, and mobility.

This year’s theme looks at the positions of communications specialists, media producers and users as being inside or outside media systems; from being inside the echo chamber to being shut out by censorship; from speaking as an inside whistleblower to being left outside the frame. Who has and who controls access to creative technologies and distribution?

Who speaks, who is being followed, who is being listened to and whose voices are being amplified? What is heard on air, or edited out? How does one’s position (either inside or outside) make one vulnerable, empowered, educated or misinformed?

Themes may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Content platforms and gatekeepers
• Film, media and marginality
• Media networks and ecologies
• Film and media censorship
• Citizen journalism, community media and media corporations
• Television beyond the box
• Media scholarship and inclusion
• African media scholarship in the world
• Media platforms and questions of access
• WhatsApp and citizen witnesses
• News writing and news aggregation
• Threats to media freedom
• Social media
• Corporate communication, crisis communication, strategic communication,
• organisational communication
• Development communication
• Election coverage

ABSTRACT CATEGORIES

There will be three categories of presentation:

• Category 1: Full 20-minute conference paper presentations
• Category 2: Panel discussion sessions and/or roundtable/workshop proposals
• Category 3: Poster presentations

Best Paper Prizes

There are two paper prizes: a student award and an open paper prize. To be eligible for the awards, *full papers must be submitted by 5th of August.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS

All abstracts must be submitted to the email address: sacomm2019@gmail.com, using the correct abstract submission form. Submissions not submitted on the correct form will not be accepted. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted.

Submission of one abstract per person is encouraged to keep the programme manageable. No more than two abstracts per person (for different streams) will be allowed.

The Abstract Submission form can be downloaded here

Sacomm website: sacomm.org.za

Key dates:

• Abstract: 15 April 2019
• Notification of acceptance: 31 May 2019
• Full paper submission: 5 August 2019