2025 ICA Media Sociology Postconference
“Theorizing Disruption and Consolidation in Media Sociology:
Youth, News, Inequities, & Politics”
Tuesday June 17, 2025
PROGRAM
All times on the webinar program are in Mountain Daylight Time.
Time Zone Converters include: World Time Buddy and World Clock
6:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Welcome by Julie Wiest and Panel: Politics and Power
Chair: Julie Wiest
Post-truth, news and echo chambers: wave of misinformation on social media on the aftermath of Pahalgam attack by Adrija Bose and Hari Charan Behera
Election Engineering: The Strategic Blueprint of IPAC in Indian Politics by Neelatphal Chanda and Ishayu Gupta
Independent Resistance Media in the Era of Neo-colonial Hegemony by Reza John Vedadi
Viromemeology and the Dynamics of Digital Virality: Multimodality of Internet Memetic Dissemination by Abirlal Mukherjee and Sweta Mukherjee
7:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Panel: Journalism and News
Chair: Julie Wiest
American Journalism in Transition: A Review of Early Themes in the 2024 Trump Administration by Syed Ali Hussain
Sociotechnical imaginary of the use of AI in the journalistic landscape of US and UK by Sangya Tyagi
Dissenting Voices through Collaborative Journalism in India in the Digital Era: A Study of Ravish Kumar Official by Agnitra Ghosh
Abandoning of mainstream news channels to listen to local journalists on YouTube: Are Rural Youth in India traversing inequities & Politics? by Chhavi Garg Deepti
Between platform logic and news logic: Disruption as resistance to platform power in digital-native journalism by Ms Amrutha K J and M Shuaib Mohamed Haneef
8:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Panel: Inclusion, Education, and Support
Chair: Grant Blank
Vulnerable people’s ‘digital good’ in four life domains of vulnerable people by Panayiota Tsatsou, Gianfranco Polizzi, and Magdalena Brzeska
The Digital Divide in Education in Egypt: A Critical Discourse Analysis of UNESCO, UNICEF and Foreign Media Coverage (2020-2024) by Yousra Elkhashab
A Struggle for Algorithmic Repair of Imagined Intergenerational Violence: A Study of Migrant-Background Youth Outside Employment and Education in Norway by Gilda Seddighi, Benedicte Nessa, and Rebecca L. Radlick
Disrupting the Narrative: Reclaiming Mizrahi Feminist Memory through Digital Space by Eden Boutboul Shtrimberg
Role-play Support: How ‘Internet Fathers’ Provide Paternal Care in ‘r/DadForAMinute’ by Xuan Kang
9:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Opening Keynote: Maria Laura Ruiu, American University of Sharjah
Introduced by Grant Blank
Maria Laura Ruiu (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Media at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. Her research spans environmental and media sociology, with a particular focus on environmental communication, social capital, and digital media. Her recent book on Digital-Environmental Poverty explores the need to redefine poverty in the digital age by integrating environmental and technological dimensions.
10:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Welcome by Lynn Schofield Clark and Introduction to
Organizers Keynote: Jeremy Schulz, UC Berkeley
Jeremy Schulz’s current research focuses on digital inequality and work and wealth among economic elites. He has also done research and published in several other areas, including digital sociology, sociological theory, qualitative research methods, work and family, and consumption. His article, “Zoning the Evening,” is published in Qualitative Sociology and received the Shils-Coleman Award from the ASA Theory Section. Other publications include “Talk of Work” published in Theory and Society and “Shifting Grounds and Evolving Battlegrounds,” published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. Since earning his PhD at UC Berkeley he has held an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University.
11:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time
Panel: Contemporary Issues and Emergent Methodologies
Chair: Jeremy Schulz
Political Communication in Wartime Ukraine By Grant Blank
PassportbrosGPT: Adopting Neocolonial Masculinity and Sex Tourism through Social Media by Dhiraj Murthy and Kellen Sharp
(Trans)forming NCAA policy in women’s sports: The communicative battleground in a politicized ideological fissure over gender by Travis Bell
The liminal space of non-standard news practices: methodological challenges for the study of how audiences drift away from news by Ximena Orchard
Beyond access: Digital news inequalities through trace data interviews in the UK and Brazil by Constanza Gajardo
13:00/1:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time
Midday Keynote: Svetlana S. Bodrunova, St. Petersburg State University
Introduced by Jeremy Schulz
Svetlana S. Bodrunova currently works at School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St. Petersburg State University, Russia. Svetlana does research in computational communication science, human-computer interaction, social media and inter-ethnic conflicts, and Russian media and public sphere. She has authored and co-authored over 150 academic works and leads the Center for International Media Research at her School. She serves on editorial boards of four international communications journals.
14:00/2:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time
Senior Scholar Keynote: Pablo J. Boczkowski, Northwestern University
Introduced by Katia Moles
Note to Colleagues and Audience Members from Prof. Boczkowski: “During my upcoming seminar I plan to share ethnographic material that includes reference to difficult mental health issues—such as death, suicide, self-harm, substance abuse, trauma, different forms of violence, and loss—which could be upsetting for some. I bring this to your attention in case you may wish to opt out of attending. Many thanks for your understanding and consideration.”
Pablo J. Boczkowski has doctorates in Clinical Psychology (Universidad de Belgrano, 1994) and Science and Technology Studies (Cornell University, 2001). He completed a four-year interdisciplinary residency in mental health at the Alvear Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before moving to the United States to retrain in S&TS. He was an assistant professor at MIT from 2001 until 2005, and since then has been at Northwestern University, with a primary appointment in the Department of Communication Studies. His research program examines digital culture from a comparative perspective, with a special focus on Latin America and Latinx USA. Boczkowski’s publication record includes seven books—with an eighth one forthcoming later this year—five edited volumes, and more than sixty journal articles.
15:00/3:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time
Afternoon Keynote: Heloisa Pait, São Paulo State University
Introduced by Laura Robinson
Heloisa Pait, a Fulbright alumna, teaches sociology at the São Paulo State University Julio de Mesquita Filho. She has taught in Brazilian and American universities and investigates the role of new means of communication in democratic life.
16:00/4:00 PM Mountain Daylight Time
Panel: Gender and Activism
Chair and Discussant: Katia Moles
Personalization, Image, and Leadership in San Luis, Argentina: Claudio Poggi by Sergio Quiroga
Contested Youth Visibility from the Global South: Trans Rights, Media Disruption, and the Politics of Recognition in Brazilian Journalism by Carlos Augusto Júnior
Media Narratives of SA in Azad Kashmir: An Analysis of Truth and Sensationalism by Momna Rani
17:00/5:00 Mountain Daylight Time
Panel: Work and Inequalities in the Digital Age
Chair and Discussant: Jeremy Schulz
Digital Inclusion in the Japanese Workplace by Takeshi Mori and Hiroshi Ono
Digital Networks and Regulated Solidarity: Re-imagining Trust in the Ethnic Labor Market by Anna Zhang
Understanding the social role of journalism in young people with unequal access to news: a strategy against misinformation by Rayén Condeza
Closing Remarks
Sponsors:
Registration was free thanks to our sponsors ICA GCSC Global Communication and Social Change, University of Denver, UT Austin, West Chester University, Santa Clara University, and Emerald Studies in Media & Communications.
Organizers:
The event was possible thanks to the service of local hosts at the University of Denver: Professor Lynn Schofield Clark and Associate Professor Erika Polson from the Department of Media, Film & Journalism Studies, as well as the Global Advisory Board: Grant Blank, Wenhong Chen, Kenneth Kambara, Muyang Li, Zhifan Luo, Noah McClain, Katia Moles, Sonia V. Moreira, Anabel Quan-Haase, Massimo Ragnedda, Laura Robinson, Maria Laura Ruiu, Jeremy Schulz, Juliana Trammel, and Julie Wiest (all names in alphabetical order). Finally, SCU student researchers Morgan Vodzak, Poiema Dai, Ryan Pool, and Cristina Dai comprised the communication support team.
Questions or need help?
Email mediasociologysymposium@gmail.com.
