Interventions: Communication Research and Practice

“Intervention” points to a range of communication practices that engage with a political event, social phenomena, industrial or socio-cultural practice, in order to alter and disrupt events and the norms and practices that contribute to their occurrence.  Interventions prohibit events from proceeding in a “normal” course.  Interventions approach or critique practices and phenomenon resulting from tensions or absences occurring in: events, structures, (institutional governmental, media industry), discourses, and socio-cultural and subcultural events.  Intervention presents the opportunity to explore boundaries, assumptions and strategies that appear to be different or irreconcilable, viewing them instead as possibilities for productive engagements.

Communication interventions— in both research and practice— insert insights from diverse voices, marginal positions, emerging organizational practices and digital technologies, to broaden and enrich dialogue. Interventions bring complex reframings to events and phenomenon.  Interventions seek to alter a course and effect changed practices in a range of spheres: governmental and social institutions, cultural and nongovernmental groups; industry and organizational life, new media and digital spaces, socio-cultural environments, subcultural groups, health environments, affective and behavioural life, and in everyday life.  Whether made through action, publication, theory, art practice, media production or making practices, inventions aid us in better understanding and addressing pressing global issues of the day, including: globalisation, global security, climate change, migration flows, human rights (indigenous & gender rights, human trafficking), pro-democracy movements, the global wealth divide, in information society, and in digital media and emerging technologies, among others.

The conference will invite both traditional research papers and panels, as well as practice-based (eg research creation; media; art/design) work as interventions; the latter could include: zines, blogs, websites, media products and artifacts (film/video, mobile, wearable, gesture-based), online games, mapping projects, tweet campaigns, Flickr/Youtube/Tumblr events, and more.  The conference will host a “Making & Doing” exhibition and prize competition, and invite Divisions to offer panels hosting practice-based interventions.

(Quelle: ICA)