27 June 2019: The 2019 Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) Conference will bring together researchers, students, teachers, artists, activists, media and communicators across multiple communication disciplines to discuss the links between data, power and access to information in a highly digitised world.
The ANZCA 2019 Conference Making sense: Data, publics and storytelling will be hosted by the Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra and the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD). It will start with a day of activities for postgraduate students and early career researchers at the University’s Bruce campus on Tuesday 2 July, followed by the three-day conference from 3 to 5 July at the spiritual home of Australian Democracy – Old Parliament House.
“Digital disruption is happening everywhere and it’s critical to understand its effect, impact and opportunities on how we engage as society and adopt it into new learning and communication areas,” said Associate Professor Sora Park, Co-convenor of ANZCA 2019 and Associate Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts & Design.
The conference will interrogate, through various panel sessions and keynote addresses, the protection of young people, risky behaviours, the ethics of digital citizenship and how digital technologies are changing generations for better or worse.
Professor Lelia Green from the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University in Perth will, in her keynote address Confident, capable and world-changing: Teenagers and digital citizenship, draw on examples of small-scale teenage activism, and link these to the big questions of our age: climate change, gender equity, gun control and social justice.
“Her address will examine the move beyond discussions of tech-addiction and online passivity to an investigation of adolescents’ strategic employment of digital resources to share their vision as active digital citizens.” said Dr Park.
What does the digital revolution mean in the context of political participation and does social media influence how we engage with politics?
Associate Professor and Associate Director of the School of Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University Dr David Karpf will address this and other questions in his keynote Politics in internet time: Lessons from the first 25 years of the digital revolution.
Drawing on his research on digital political associations and a recent project studying the history of the digital future, Dr Karpf will discuss five key points that are often overlooked when we project the future of digital technology and society.
Stories are being told in many contexts and Professor Paul Crawford from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom will introduce a range of innovative work in the health humanities across the areas of narrative, storytelling and reading in his keynote Minding stories: Health humanities and the power of tales.
“This keynote will introduce storytelling as therapy, incomprehensibility and narrative, digital storytelling, humiliation narratives, reading rooms, reading groups and animated stories, and how they are integral to any health service,” ANZCA2019 Co-convenor Dr Kate Holland said.
The session panels have been carefully selected against the Conference theme to ensure effective value on key areas that impact digital media literacy and how it can help democracy.
“The Conference has been designed to cover numerous topics and focus areas that would appeal to the delegates and their fields of expertise and interest. We anticipate that it will initiate debate, encourage conversations and embrace a new approach to digital technology, how we communicate and what implications this has to policy,” said Dr Park.
Conference Tag: #ANZCA19
