Elly Mackay
16 June 2025: Professor Sora Park from the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre has received one of the highest honours in communication and media studies: she was last week inducted as an International Communication Association (ICA) fellow, during the association’s 75th annual conference held in Denver, Colorado.
The ICA is the largest, most prestigious academic association in ommunication and media studies and attracts more than 4,000 delegates to its’ annual conference. A truly global organisation, it has more than 7000 members from across 80 countries.
Fellow status in the ICA is primarily a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication, with the primary consideration for nomination a documented record of scholarly achievement.
Professor Park will be the sixth Australian scholar.
“It’s an honour to be appointed as a Fellow of the ICA, and it was wonderful to be at the conference in person to receive this accolade,” Professor Park said.
“To even be nominated was a career highlight, so being appointed is something that I will be proud of throughout the remainder of my career.”
Candidates are nominated by ICA members, and must receive a majority vote from current Fellows, and approval by the Board of Directors, in order to achieve Fellow status.
Professor Park is a leading scholar in media industry and audience studies and a Professor of Communication at the News and Media Research Centre at the University.
She is the lead author of the Digital News Report (DNR): Australia, which is an essential resource for policy makers and industry about the changing nature of Australia’s news media landscape.
Her nomination is based on her research trajectory that has been strongly multidisciplinary, with a mixed methods approach.
“My studies have largely focused on how people respond to disruptive media technologies,” Professor Park said.
One of the key achievements of her research career has been the ability to develop relationships and work collaboratively with stakeholders beyond academia to affect real-world outcomes and deliver tangible benefits. She was appointed the inaugural Research Professor at SBS, where she worked with the Audience Data and Insights team to provide advice and collaborate on multilingual audience research.
She has played a key role in providing evidence to policymakers and engaging in debates about media policy and regulatory issues that emerge from the changing digital environment, both in Korea and Australia. In Australia, she has been called to provide advice to several government enquiries, such as the Senate Committee on the Future of the Public Interest Journalism and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platform Enquiry.
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor The Honourable Bill Shorten congratulated Professor Park on her appointment.
"Professor Park’s appointment is wonderful achievement, and is testament to her hard work and the quality research she is conducting here at the University,” he said.
“The ICA is a highly regarded association in both academic and wider communications circles. Professor Park’s appointment will not only benefit the Association, but will continue to create stronger ties between UC and the communications industry.
“Congratulations Professor Park.”
