Comunicar Journal Blog

conference

FLAME (Films, Languages and Media in Education)

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FLAME (Film, Language and Media in Education) is an innovative project that combines the areas of teaching foreign languages with film and media. It is based in Manchester Metropolitan University and its main aim is to promote research projects as well as become a reference point for those working on the field. To find out more about FLAME, visit  https://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/flameresearch/

Their first conference was held in June 2015 with a huge success. It was a fantastic and well-organised event that put together professionals from different parts of the world. Dr. Kieran Donaghy and Prof. Brian Tomlinson were keyspeakers in an event that had around 60 speakers and more than 100 participants. More than 95% of the attendees expressed their desire to become affiliate members of FLAME. The following video summarises the experience http://https://vimeo.com/141644210

Don’t hesitate to contact the FLAME team if you have any further questions on the project: FLAME@mmu.ac.uk

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Re-imagining Scholarly Publishing

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The 2015 AEJMC Annual Convention came to a close yesterday. Like many other academic conference goers, I was there to learn new ideas and refresh with old friends from many difference places on this planet.

Among all the delightful and exciting encounters there, it was the most impressive knowing that my UNC-Chapel Hill professor Deb Aikat was one of the only two recipients of book contracts in the first year of the Scholarsourcing initiative. Feeling happy for him, I also started to look into what it means by “scholarsourcing.”

Scholarsourcing is still new – if you type the word into a MS Word document, it is still unrecognized and red-underlined, reminding you to check spelling. It seems the term is based on the idea of “crowdsourcing”, which has been analysed in Comunicar 43. Crowdsourcing, a term associated with the popularity of Internet and social media, is defined by Merriam-Webster as the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers (limited number of people). That is to say, then, scholarsourcing means soliciting contributions from a large group of scholars online.

AEJMC has partnered with Peter Lang Publishing since last year for the new Scholarsourcing Series, which aims to re-imagine how scholarly books are proposed peer-reviewed and approved for contract. So here is how it worked for my UNC professor Deb Aikat with his new book “Who’s a Journalist? News in a Digital Age.” In the competition’s inaugural year, AEJMC invited organization members to submit book proposals that are relevant to journalism and mass communication. Aikat made one in. The submissions were then reviewed and voted on by other AEJMC members. After the peer review, an editorial committee reviewed the top proposals, top two of which eventually earned book contracts with the publisher.

In an interview, Aikat said the scholarsourcing competition allowed him to run his idea past fellow media researchers and receive feedback. “I wanted to test market my book idea among AEJMC’s vibrant academic milieu of more than 3,700 educators, students and practitioners worldwide.”

AEJMC has launched the Year 2 Scholarsourcing Series and is now inviting abbreviated book proposals with an Oct. 15 deadline. Catch it if you can!

The Fourth International Conference of Media Literacy: Multidisciplinary Approach of Media Literacy Research and Practice

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CALL FOR PAPERS

The Fourth International Conference of Media Literacy: Multidisciplinary Approach of Media Literacy Research and Practice

Organized by

School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University & Institute of Communication Studies, Communication University of China

Date: 5-6 November 2015

Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University

The field of media literacy is located at the crossroad of many academic disciplines, and it possesses a multidisciplinary characteristic. Media literacy attracts scholars and educators from communication studies, education, journalism, cultural studies, health communication, language, arts, new media, etc. to work in this field and establish diversified development. This conference will be held in Hong Kong Baptist University. It is hoped that, in the 21st century new media environment, outstanding scholars and educators can gather together to discuss the new developmental path of media literacy education.

The theme of the conference is multidisciplinary approach of media literacy research and practice. The objectives of the conference are:

  1. To bring together international scholars and educators to discuss how different disciplines are contributing to the development of the field of media literacy and to put forward new idea and practice models;
  2. To explore how young people deal with digital media, including their social media lives, values cultivation, media consumption, news and information searching, creative media production, online shopping, healthy eating, leisure, work and study, social participation, etc. through interdisciplinary discussion in the new age of welcoming Web3.0. In addition, to discuss the relationship between media literacy training and the well-being of digital generation;
  3. To discuss how to bring the field of media literacy forward and review the criteria of building media literacy as an emerging academic discipline.

Specifically, topics for this conference shall include (but are not restricted to):

  1. Communication and media literacy
  2. Education and media literacy
  3. Journalism and media literacy
  4. Information science and media literacy (Media and Information Literacy)
  5. Health and media literacy
  6. Arts and media literacy
  7. Language and media literacy
  8. Technology and media literacy
  9. Cultural Studies and Media Literacy

There will be several plenary sessions and two expert roundtable forums will be held during the conference. Renowned media literacy scholars in China and overseas are invited to be plenary speakers. After the conference, the conference papers and the roundtable discussions will be edited for publication.

A 500-word abstract should be submitted to the email of Communication University of China (kai61a2003@163.com) by 25 June 2015 for mainland China scholars. Scholars in Hong Kong and overseas should submit a 500-word abstract to the email of Hong Kong Baptist University (comm2015@project.hkbu.edu.hk) by 25 June 2015.

For further details, please visit www.comm.hkbu.edu.hk/medialiteracy2015.

Interested parties in mainland of China may contact Professor Kai ZHANG at kai61a2003@163.com. For interested parties in Hong Kong and overseas, please contact Dr. Alice LEE or Professor Kara CHAN at comm2015@project.hkbu.edu.hk.

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