Communication scholars to discuss the impact of technology at ICA conference

The International Communication Association will hold its 64th annual conference, May 22-26 in Seattle, Washington. The theme of the 2014 conference will explore what the "good life" means in a networked and digital society.

Featuring over 2,300 academic papers on Communication and attended by over 2,200 Communication scholars representing over 40 countries, the ICA conference is the largest scholarly international communication conference in the world. This year's conference features sessions that focus on Facebook, big data, mobile phones, public perception of video games and how the public responds to environmental reports.

Video game designer, critic and researcher Ian Bogost will deliver the Steve Jones Internet Lecture. Titled "The Mistrust of Things," he'll explore how we can learn to live with "things," where "things" means stuff rather than ideas and events. And danah boyd, Microsoft Research, joins for a panel on Venture Labor and "The Good Life." Over 500 sessions will feature the release of studies and data to the public for the first time.

With the help of the University of Washington Department of Communication and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ICA will also host a number of preconference sessions. The variety reaches from media neuroscience, the influence of digital games, and how data collection can lead to discrimination.

"Any change in technology has an impact on how people communicate and interact with each other and always has. But the extremely rapid changes we have seen lately by ways of digitizing data are unprecedented and so is the magnitude and the power it has on how we live our lives," said Peter Vorderer, ICA President-Elect, conference chair and Professor at the University of Mannheim, Germany. "I currently cannot see any other discipline that takes such a rather broad and holistic approach to the question how these developments change the way we live and whether they support or rather compromise a "good life."

"Seattle is a place where much of this technology is conceived and developed. It's fitting that Seattle will host the largest international association of communication scholars to meet and discuss the many aspects and facets of these most pressing questions," Vorderer added.

Source: International Communication Association