ViRe-team at #ica20
- Post by: Petra Mazzoni
- June 4, 2020
- No Comment
A new conference experience for the ViRe-team: the annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), one of the biggest conferences in the field of media and communication research, originally scheduled for 21-25 May 2020 at Gold Coast, Australia, has been convened as an entirely “virtual” conference.
From 20-27 May 2020, Katharina Lobinger, Federico Lucchesi, Seraina Tarnutzer and Rebecca Venema gained first experiences of what large-scale online conferencing entails and discussed their work with more than 2000 other conference delegates around the globe.
The team had submitted the paper “Visual Intimacy: Conceptualizations of a Complex Concept” that was presented by Federico Lucchesi and Seraina Tarnutzer who attended ICA for the first time.
Together with the project partner Asko Lehmuskallio from Tampere University, Katharina Lobinger organized a thematic panel on “Visual Intimacy and Surveillance”. Within this panel, she and Rebecca Venema presented their work on “The Intimacy of Surveillance and Surveillance in Intimacy: Discerning Conceptual Entanglements”.
All presentations were pre-recorded and uploaded on a conference platform. Conference delegates could then watch them and provide comments and questions asynchronously at a time of their convenience over the conference week.
This came with advantages and drawbacks. The online set-up allowed us to explore the at first glance almost overwhelmingly rich diversity of more than 2000 talks, workshops sessions, panel discussions and meeting sessions that normally run in parallel sessions and to vividly discuss the project with international colleagues on the conference platform and on Social Media.
We enjoyed sharing insights into our work, to discuss with international about current trends and directions in Visual Communication Research – or about technical difficulties in digital meeting rooms and chats.
ICA20 has been a different and interesting conference experience – and we hope to be able to discuss with colleagues and share our work soon again in person and outside our living rooms.