Global Interventions in Communication Policy, Rights, and Justice: Reflections on the International Panel on Social Progress

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Proposal

Abstract

Much of humanity now every day holds in its hands the means to connect and be connected across the world: to family, entertainment, and the broadcasts of corporations, states, and, increasingly, counter-state organizations such as ISIS. This differently connected world has major implications for social progress and global justice.

In the midst of such significant global challenges, especially associated with communication transformations, how we can grasp and rethink global media policy, governance, rights, and social justice?

How do the complex infrastructures of connection today both expand capitalism but also enable counter-movements? From scientific and policy perspectives, as well as the standpoints of other key actors, how can we approach media infrastructures as a specific site of social and political struggle?

What opportunities and challenges are available to us, across the various domains of global media policy, struggling to deal with longstanding issues in media power, as well as new issues in Internet governance, intellectual property, social media platforms, mobile media, the data turn, and so on?

What kind of interventions can we imagine, on what scales, by whom, with what likely or potentially unforeseen implications and effects?
 
Engaging these urgent questions that engage and highlight the stakes and prospects in communication interventions today, this panel introduces and explores a major international initiative the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP; http://www.ipsp.org/) involving over 300 scholars, ‘rethinking society for the 21st century’.

The IPSP includes a number of IAMCR scholars, as well as other leading figures in the field, responsible for the pivotal chapter on communications and media. Roundtable participants will include various authors from the IPSP communication chapter in dialogue with experts in framing and intervening on global media concerns.

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chair

• Gerard Michael Goggin, The University of Sydney

Individual Presentations

• Introducing the IPSP: Global Infrastructures of Connection and New Questions of Social Justice - Nick Couldry, London School of Economics & Political Science

• The IPSP and the Social Progress Index - Clemencia Rodriguez, Temple U

• Social Progress in the Dimension of "Fluid" Public Communication - Ingrid Volkmer, U of Melbourne

• Journalism, Public Knowledge and Social Progress - Herman Wasserman, U of Cape Town

Respondent

• Sasha Costanza-Chock, Massachusetts Institute of Technology