The 72nd Annual ICA Conference theme One World, One Network‽ invites reimagining communication scholarship on globalization and networks. The use of the interrobang glyph – a superposition of the exclamation and question punctuation marks – seeks to simultaneously celebrate and problematize the “one-ness” in the theme.
The theme invites research, reflection, and critique of the “One World, One Network‽” discourse in communication studies on questions including (but not limited to) the following:
- How do we theorize and model interdependent networks nested at many levels (from brain cells to societies) to better understand and enable how communicative processes and structures shape our world?
- How do global networks organize and mobilize socio-political contestations online and offline? How can networks of resistance, solidarity, and counter-power through regional formations both beyond and beneath the nation-state shape “Another World”?
- How are advances in artificial intelligence, robotization, the Internet of Things, genetic engineering, and neuroscience, among others, contributing to the future trajectories of algorithmically infused societies and networks, at work and play, around the world?
- How are media systems – old and new – nurturing networks of “intimate publics” and “counter publics” among communities around the globe?
- How and why do some networks infiltrate mainstream media systems with disinformation, propaganda, and hate while other networks find themselves ignored, censored, or targeted?
- How are networks contributing to images of the Global South produced and consumed in the Global North – and vice versa? How do these asymmetries shape inequities in our responses to global challenges such as pandemics and sustainable development?
- How can networks change the lived experiences – training, mentoring, publishing, co-authoring, and recruiting – of under-represented scholars around the world in the field of communication? How do we square the circle of “oneness” while promoting visibility of minoritized positions? What must we do to decolonize communication scholarship and address methodological imperialism? How do we expand the notion of “One World” to also signal, inclusively, “All Our World(s)”?