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Tuesday 10th June 2008 9:00 am
Andrew Flanagin: Digital Media & Learning at the ICA Conference
A UCSB Professor reports on the recent Digital Media & Learning reception held at the International Communication Association’s Annual Conference in Montreal.
Consistent with the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning (DML) initiative, research by members of the International Communication Association (ICA) often focuses on various dimensions of how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. To publicize the DML initiative among ICA members, in late May the MacArthur Foundation sponsored a reception at the ICA annual conference in Montreal. The reception, hosted by myself and Miriam Metzger also from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was attended by representatives from the MacArthur Foundation and MIT Press, representatives from recent DML supported work, and approximately 300 ICA members.
ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. ICA currently has an active membership of more than 4,300 individuals in 70 countries who teach and conduct research in colleges, universities, and schools. Other members are in government, the media, communication technology, business law, medicine, and other professions. Through its 23 Divisions and Interest Groups, various publications, annual conferences, and its relations with other associations, ICA promotes the systematic study of communication theories, processes, and skills. Despite its diversity, ICA represents a coherent discipline in which all different aspects of communication are linked by common processes, structures, theories, and methods. Since 2003, ICA has been officially associated with the United Nations as a non-governmental association (NGO).
Over recent decades the field of communication research has grown rapidly all over the world, reflecting the need to seek answers to urgent social problems involving communication. To provide these answers, ICA members conduct academically sound research that often results in policy-related solutions. A cross-cutting concern of ICA members is the relationship between digital technologies and youth, reflected by the sessions, papers, and topics at this year’s ICA conference, which included research on the learning effects of interactive media, media literacy and the health and well-being of children, the perceived credibility of online information, the social impact of online games, and managing online acquaintances, among many other topics.
Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected
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