ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

June 29, 2022

Virtual meeting

First of our 2022 series: your reminder to join us for the virtual launch of the DFC's new report in their Education Data series, looking at the challenges schools face in managing children's education data

Thank you to those of you who have already registered to join us next week for a breakfast briefing to launch the Digital Futures Commission's latest report, 'Education Data Reality: The challenges for schools in managing children's education data'.

If you haven't already, it's not too late! Tune in to find out how schools are struggling to manage the considerable complexity of students’ data collected and processed by EdTech. What support do they call for, and what changes do they want, to ensure children’s best interests?

Details:

• Date: Wednesday 29th June
• Time: 09:00 - 10:00am BST
• Location: virtual, see link below

Register for the event here

Sonia Livingstone OBE, Professor of Social Psychology at LSE and DFC Research Lead will be joined by:

• Al Kingsley, CEO of NetSupport and Chair of a Multi-Academy Trust
• Sarah Turner, PhD researcher focusing on data protection and socio-technical cyber security

To learn more about what you can expect from the launch event, read the Digital Futures Commission's latest blog post here. There will be time for an interactive Q&A with attendees at the end.

We do hope you will be able to join us, and please do feel free to forward this invitation to anyone in your network who may be interested in attending.

If you have any questions about the event or the Digital Futures Commission please contact us on info@5rightsfoundation.com.

Thank you,

The Digital Futures Commission team

The Digital Futures Commission – hosted by 5Rights Foundation – is a flagship project driven by a board of Commissioners. It consists of three work streams – Play in the Digital World, Beneficial Uses of Education Data, and Guidance for Innovators. In each strand we are trying to shift the dial – our outputs will be focused on reimagining the digital world as if it were built for children, by design.

Our Commissioners represent the following organisations: 5Rights Foundation; BBC Research & Development North Lab; Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation; Erase All Kittens; EY; Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop; LEGO; London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Technological University Dublin; The Alan Turing Institute; The Behavioural Insights Team; University of Leeds.

You can learn more about the Digital Futures Commission here. You can also check out our blog, where we regularly profile the DFC's work.

School of Communications / Institute for Future Media Democracy and Society DCU

The DCU Institute of Future Media, Democracy and Society (FuJo) is seeking a PhD researcher. FuJo is a multidisciplinary research centre focused on the digital transformation of media, democracy, and society. FuJo investigates how to counter digital threats; enhance public participation through democratic innovations; and secure the sustainability of high-quality journalism and media.

The student will be based at the School of Communications at DCU which is home to almost 1,000 students at undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD levels. With a tradition stretching back more than 40 years, the School is defined by excellence in both teaching and research. In the QS global subject rankings in 2021 DCU was in the top 150 (of almost 1,500) universities worldwide in the area of communications. DCU is ranked number 1 nationally in Communications & Media Studies.

FuJo is seeking a doctoral researcher to work on a funded project to study the transmission of climate denier (greenwashing) and rebuttal narratives through social platforms, mainstream media, and political speech and help establish whether deliberative assemblies can help elites move towards climate action and withstand lobbying and information campaigns from vested interests. Quantitative skills will be vital and a background in a relevant social science is desirable: communications, political science or psychology.

The role is a part of a larger funded project and there will be excellent training and travel opportunities, as well as a tax-free stipend of €18,500 plus fees. The School also offers PhD candidates opportunities to gain teaching experience.

(For further information, contact Prof. Jane Suiter – jane.suiter@dcu.ie)

NB. Applications should consist of a 1,500-word research proposal as well as a brief CV detailing academic qualifications and professional experience to date.

NB. All applications should be submitted directly to Prof. Jane Suiter.

Successful candidates will be shortlisted and interviewed either in person or online in July. Successful candidates then will be required to apply formally to be admitted as PhD students and may also need to show proficiency in the English language. Successful candidates will begin their studies in October 2022 and are required to be normally resident in Dublin for the duration of their studies.

Closing date for applications: Friday 8 July 2022.

Colleen Kennedy-Karpat (Anthology Editor), Feride Çiçekoglu (Anthology Editor)

The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda celebrates the feminist legacy of French director and visual artist Agnès Varda, who died in 2019 after more than six decades of innovative work in film, photography, and installation art. Co-edited by Colleen Kennedy-Karpat (Bilkent University, Dept. of Communication and Design) and Professor Feride Çiçekoglu (Istanbul Bilgi University), the essays collected here explore how creation, connection, and environment form the core of Varda's artistry.

With chapters inspired by the "Virtual Varda" conference hosted at Bilgi in 2020, marking the first anniversary of Varda's death, the volume discusses a wide range of work, from the French New Wave classic Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) to contemporary documentaries The Beaches of Agnès (2008) and the Oscar-nominated Faces Places (2017) as well as selected art installations. The book's fourth section also features preeminent scholars from around the world writing about how they have incorporated Varda's art and feminist pedagogies into their classroom.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/sustainable-legacy-of-agn%c3%a8s-varda-9781350240902/

Deadline: November 1, 2022

Dear ECREA members, would you like to join us in a pioneer scientific work of mapping higher journalism education in Europe supported by UNESCO?

There are numerous study programmes that educate journalists, but there is no central place where one can access updated information about them fast and easily. This freely accessible interactive map presenting data with regard to geographical, institutional and programme characteristics, useful for future students, researchers, professionals and the wider public, will resolve that problem. It will be developed by an international European team of diverse collaborators - researchers, teachers, journalists, managers, students, etc.

Are you one of them?

The project is already up and running: we have an interactive digital database platform, and the Manual for collaborators which you are strongly advised to consult before deciding whether to collaborate.

You can start by adding data about your institution and study programme, and then collecting and entering data about other institutions in your country. The information we seek - name of the institution/department/faculty/study programme, institution ownership, type, and address, study programme foundation year, duration, degree level, website link, etc. We especially encourage those who will be dedicated to the entry of all study programmes that educate journalists in a particular country.

What is interesting is that you can see your own entry right away on the map, and track other people’s contributions. Every HEJDE project collaborator contributing to building the map will receive an official certificate of collaboration.

The deadline for this HEJDE project activity is November 1, 2022.

Mapping higher journalism education in Europe is the main activity of the institutional scientific project Higher Education of Journalists in a Digital Environment (HEJDE) of the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula for a three-year period (2021 – 2023). It is directed toward the research on the state, challenges and educational opportunities of the European academic education of journalists in the digital environment. It brings together an international team of associates, scientists and institutions organized in a few teams which work on key project activities from different perspectives. ECREA TWG Journalism and Communication Education is one of the HEJDE project partners.

If you are interested you can directly Sign up. Should you have any questions please write to the HEJDE project leader e-mail tijana.vukic@unipu.hr

We hope you will join us in this highly important work!

TWG JCE management team

Medijska istraživanja / Media Research (special issue)

Deadline: November 20, 2022

The editors of Medijska istraživanja / Media Research indexed in SCOPUS would like to invite contributions to a special issue.

Digital age has significantly transformed higher education of journalists from both of its main aspects - academia and profession. New possibilities and opportunities, as well as more demanding challenges conditioned by rapid technology development particularly call for a specific scientific research and regular improvement of the content of study programs, and of the way they are organized and performed. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the traditional perception of journalism education and the educational experience for all main participants of the educational process.

Scientific journal Medijska istraživanja / Media Research helps to improve journalism theory and media research from 1995 by focusing on a range of important subjects, therefore thematising this topic continues the tradition. This special issue aims to present contemporary practice and theoretical thought of higher journalism education in an online environment with the intent of reviewing new trends in that scholarly area, particularly in the European context. The topic is relevant primarily because we passed the turning point where, using different technological solutions, the conventional journalism education was enriched with new teaching methods, tools, and approaches for educational purposes allowing it to adequately answer the media industry demands. Complex issues arising from web-based/online teaching and learning on an academic level of journalism education requires research of conducting professional journalism competencies from at least two main focuses:

1. Distance academic programs that educate journalists

Distance study programs are those performed entirely at a distance, respectively those in which all courses are performed online and those in which the complete teaching and learning process is mediated by ICT (Sener, 2015, Bates 2020). Distance academic programs that educate journalists have existed in some countries, such as the United States, for almost three decades (Castaneda, 2011), while in some areas, such as Southeastern Europe, they are still missing. There is, as well, a particular lack of literature presenting the introduction of such study programs, analysing curriculum, discussing challenges, advantages and disadvantages, as well as comparative research (Vukić and Brautović, 2021). On that trail, we seek for articles on the following topics:

- planning and conducting study programs

- program concepts diversity

- (specific) teaching contents

- (national) case studies

- analysis of curricula and / or syllabuses

- advantages and disadvantages of study programs

- international comparative analyses

- organization of students' practice in media, etc.

2. Conducting e-learning in study programs that educate journalists

The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus required an urgent shift to distance learning at all levels of education and for all the professions around the world, including academic programs that educate journalists, but e-learning in a hybrid form or only remotely was, in some institutions already a well-known academic practice. Similarly, student internships in students' media and in partner media organizations, have moved into a virtual environment. As such teaching experience differs significantly from the classroom experience and from in-person teaching, the transformation was a certain challenge for those who have encountered e-learning for the first time in these circumstances.

Although, there is a range of research topics regarding e-learning which resulted in different insights and conclusions, based on the recent experience of the heads of the higher journalism education institutions in Russian Federation during pandemic (Vartanova and Lukina, 2021), it could be argued that the journalism education in an online environment in the recent years faced numerous issues that can be associated with three key aspects: technological, pedagogical, and communicational. A number of articles illustrates it. For example, Fowler-Watt et al. (2021) present teaching experience of covering COVID-19 crisis within specific pedagogic challenges of the pandemic, such as teaching mobile journalism, reporting of the community and Zoom managing of students' wellbeing during lockdown. Further, Pain, Ahmed and Zahra Khalid (2021) discuss the consequences that the low internet connectivity, and the lack of access to technology brought to journalism education, giving the example of a good practice and remedy in the case of Kashmir, India. Studying the journalism students' distance learning experience at the Lomonosov Moscow State University during restrictive measures Poluekhtova, Vikhrova and Vartanova (2020) found that while effective online education presumes stable communication of all participants in the teaching process and among departments, online learning is not an alternative to the in-person journalism education because the formation of professional identity is hard to acquire at a distance.

Of all the mentioned perspectives from a general or from the emerging pandemic circumstances point of view, we encourage various contributions on the following topics:

- analysis of teaching documentation and curricula and/or syllabuses

- adaptation of teaching contents that are performed in the classroom for e-learning

- e-learning and teaching methods

- lifelong e-learning

- collaborative e-learning systems (Moodle, Merlin, MS Teams, etc.)

- hybrid forms of teaching

- e-learning experiences (teacher/student perspective)

- creativity in e-learning

- conducting student internships at a distance (student media/media organizations), etc.

We are looking for scientific research articles from a wide range of academic contexts and methodologies, and for book reviews of the books published in 2021-2022, and we actively encourage interdisciplinary, comparative and innovative submissions that will contribute to the development of the journalism education research field.

The Editor-in-Chief of Medijska Istraživanja / Media Research is Nada Zgrabljić Rotar and the guest editor of this special issue is Tijana Vukić. All submissions and questions about this call for contributions should be sent to a special issue editor's email: tijana.vukic@unipu.hr.

The special issue will appear in the second half of 2023.

The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2022.

The procedure with the received papers for this special issue is identical to the procedure for regular publication in the journal Medijska istraživanja / Media Research. Submitted articles are subject to double-blind review and only those submissions with two positive reviews will be published. We seek for 8000 words long articles (about 50,000 characters). Detailed description of the journal, the journal style guide and Guidelines for contributors can be found at http://www.mediaresearch.cro.net/en/guidelines-for-contributors/

This special issue is organized as a project collaboration within the three-year (2021-2023) international scientific project Higher Education of Journalists in a Digital Environment (HEJDE). It is an institutional project of the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula aimed at the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research of the state, challenges and educational opportunities of the modern academic education of journalists.

Documentary Summer School at Locarno Film Festival

August 8-12, 2022

Locarno, Switzerland

Submission Deadline:

• 17 June 2022 for participants who need a visa to enter Switzerland
• 30 June 2022 for participants who do not need a visa

https://www.locarnofestival.ch/en/LFF/about/factory/documentary-summer-school

Established 23 years ago as a joint initiative between the Institute of Media and Journalism of the Università della Svizzera italiana and the Locarno Film Festival, in collaboration with La Semaine de la Critique, the DSS offers to its participants a unique platform to meet and learn from high-profile international film scholars and non-fiction filmmakers and representatives of film institutions, all while enjoying the vibrant atmosphere of one of the top film festivals in the world.

The Documentary Summer School (DSS) programme entails five half-days of lectures, coupled with screenings of films selected in the Semaine de la Critique section and participation to masterclasses and events of the Locarno Academy.

How to participate

The DSS takes place from Monday 8th to Friday 12th of August 2022 in Locarno.

It is open to 30 participants among:

• university and film school students
• early PhD students
• emerging filmmakers

The participation fee is of 550 CHF, inclusive of:

• Lectures
• Exclusive Q&A sessions with filmmakers from La semaine de la critique
• Participation to Masterclasses and Locarno academy events
• Bed and breakfast accommodation for 7 nights in shared room (two and three-beds rooms), at the Locarno Youth Hostel from Sunday 7th to Sunday 14th August 2022
• Locarno Film Festival accreditation
• Closing dinner with Locarno academy participants
• Certificate of attendance

Meals other than breakfasts and travel to and from Locarno are at the expense of participants.

As part of the Festival we will enforce any Covid-19 restriction or rule that will be required for Festival attendees. Detailed information will be provided in due time.

Attendance to the DSS is rewarded with 3 ECTS (the number of credits may vary according to the participant’s educational institution), subject to the submission of a concise theoretical and/or practical work, to be agreed with the organizing committee.

Applications

Candidates shall submit the following documents to dss@usi.ch:

• Personal CV
• Brief motivation letter
• Passport-size digital photo (max 1MB)

Selected participants will be notified via email within three weeks after the deadlines for submission.

Faculty

The DSS faculty is composed by international film scholars and film practitioners, including filmmakers selected in the Semaine de la Critique section.

• Cristina Formenti is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at University of Udine. She is the author of Il mockumentary: la fiction si maschera da documentario (Mimesis 2013) and The Classical Animated Documentary and Its Contemporary Evolution (Bloomsbury 2022) as well as editor of Mariangela Melato tra cinema, teatro e televisione (Mimesis 2016) and Valentina Cortese: una diva intermediale (Mimesis 2018). She is co-editor of the journal Animation Studies and serves on the board of the Society for Animation Studies, where she co-founded the Documentary Special Interest Group.
• Andrea Segre is an award-winner Italian filmmaker who has directed over twenty films of documentary and fiction genre, among which: Shun Li and the Poet (Lux Prize 2012), Ibi (2017), Venetian sMolecules (2020) and Welcome Venice (2021), the latter shot during the Covid pandemic. Andrea is co-founder of ZaLab, a video production and distribution organization, which promotes participatory filmmaking as a means for social inclusion. He holds a PhD in Sociology of communication from the University of Bologna.
• Till Brockmann is the head of Semaine de la Critique, an independent section of the Locarno Film Festival, organized by the Swiss Association of Film Journalists, which presents seven international documentaries, with five world premieres and two international premieres. Till has worked as a film journalist and film critic since 1995, mostly for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Till also has vast experience as a lecturer in film studies, as well as a curator for institutions such as the Heritage Film Festival for the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region in Abu Dhabi.

Applications and inquiries

Documentary Summer School – Organizing committee:

• Dr Eleonora Benecchi is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Media and Journalism of the Università della Svizzera italiana and she is responsible for courses on audiovisual theory and production and digital cultures. Her research and publications focus on fandom and audiovisual culture.
• Dr Gloria Dagnino is a lecturer at the Institute of Media and Journalism of the Università della Svizzera italiana, where she is also Equal Opportunities Officer. Since 2019 she is responsible for the Film Economics module of the Master Réseau Cinéma CH.
• Dr Stefano Guerini Rocco is an Adjunct Professor at the Università Cattolica in Milan and a Lecturer at the SAE Institute of Milan. He is a programmer for Orlando Festival and a documentary developer selected at Biennale College (2018) and IDS Academy Series (2021).

Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook (Special issue)

Deadline: October 1, 2022

Abstracts of 400–500 words, together with a brief biographical note, shouldbe submitted by 1 October 2022. Please email these directly to belen.puebla@urjc.es and sgomez@uva.es

Full papers of 6500–7000 words are due on 15 December 2022.

Description and Thematic Areas:

The contemporary challenges facing the political culture are to be seen as risks to the well-being and proper functioning of democratic systems.

A functioning democracy requires that the role of the media, as vehicles of political socialization, but also as instruments of participation and public opinion, be taken into account. Consequently, the media are seen as both parts of the problem and part of the solution.

The scope of the Special Issue, ‘Pop Politics on a Mutable Screen’, attempts to broaden the vision of political communication beyond hard news and to consider that the messages received by the audience increasingly include soft news and media associated with entertainment and popular culture.

From cinema and television to video games, through the different social platforms and the figure of the prosumer.

For this thematic issue, we invite theoretical and empirical contributions that explore how technological change affects and is affected by political communication processes and what characteristics make up the politainment. We would like to explore a wide range of topics involving political communication, entertainment, digital engagement, platformization, infotainment, screen time and alternative forms of communication as their central themes.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Audiovisual content platforms with politainment formats, selective consumption, and social audiences.
• Viral political content distributed through social media and platforms.
• Gamification, politicking and digital games with political content.
• Myth and ideology in contemporary video games
• Ideological polarization, political spectacularization and hate speech through the reception of information on social networks.

• Social algorithms in personalized information dissemination of spectacular political content.
• Complexity and political discourses in entertainment contexts.
• Mobilization and democratic constraints in the new digital ecosystem of the ideological polarization
• Strategic use of entertainment in social networks for online campaigning and political engagement.
• Democratic consequences and citizen perception of politainment.
• The role of the prosumer of political infotainment on the internet.
• Characteristics, transmedia narratives and formats of the new political fiction in cinema and television.
• Political storytelling: storytelling by politicians for strategic purposes.
• Music entertainment to generate engagement among social audiences and other uses of music by political parties.
• New strategies in digital campaigns, disguised advertising through infotainment, and gate-watching techniques to generate campaign content.

• Political personification of politics and appearance of the political figure in unusual media and formats.
• Representation of politicians in political infotainment content.
• Emergence of political movements in new media.
• Technification of politics.
• Political ethics in infotainment.

Full CFP can be found at: https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/66825/1/NewCinema_Pop_Politics_on_a_Mutable_Screen_CfP.pdf

The full author guidelines can be read at: https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/8890/1/NL_NFC.pdf

December 5-6, 2022

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: September 15, 2022

The concept of ‘captured media’ has been used to describe media systems in countries that have transitioned from authoritarian to democratic regimes in the late 20th century (Mungiu-Puppidi 2013; Guerrero & Marquez-Ramirez 2014). Despite being far from a homogenous reality, young democracies have experienced difficulties in building strong, independent media ecosystems, and are still characterized by self-censorship and both political and economic pressures as part of the daily routine of newsrooms. These systems either go down “the path toward an Authoritarian/Communist type media system” (Batorfy, 2019) or “serve as propagandists and political instruments to befuddle, misinform, and disinform audiences and thus oppose civil society and democratization.” (Armanca & Gross, 2020). In this respect, the concept of captured media exhibits many of the dimensions that factually stifle freedom of expression and its role in a democracy. Hallin and Mancini (2004) speak of political parallelism which, in its extreme form, may lead to political instrumentalization, party colonization (Bajomi-Lazar, 2014), and oligarchization (Ryabinska, 2014), with the creation of a media system that is merely a mouthpiece of political elites (Zankova, 2021).

Thus, the conference “Captured Media: Researching Media Systems in and after Transitions” aims to bring together researchers working on media systems in countries that participated in the third wave of democratization, from Portugal in 1974 to Asia-Pacific and Latin American countries in the 1980s and Eastern Europe, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The aim is to discuss how media systems have evolved after the establishment of democracy, and to debate how media and journalistic institutions are co-opted by political and economic structures in countries that lack a strong tradition of press freedom and adequate guarantees.

While the media are traditionally perceived as performing a central role in the democratic process, responsible for scrutinizing power structures, this role has been particularly questioned and undermined in the last decade by populist movements (which label journalism as an ‘enemy of the people’), the collapse of traditional business models, the emergence of new reception practices and ultimately a climate of uncertainty that has led to profound changes in the relationship between the media and the outside world (Ribeiro & Zelizer, 2022). While these tendencies can be found in most countries, in young democracies they may be particularly disruptive, due to the lack of a strong culture of press freedom and media independence, close ties between the media and the political class and ineffective legal frameworks. They may result in self-censorship and deficiencies in media professional standards and accountability. Thus, the conference welcomes papers with comparative research, and others, focusing on case studies from countries and media systems that have undergone a transformation from authoritarian to democratic regimes. Papers dealing with the following topics are especially welcome but many others may be proposed:

• Press Freedom and media independence in young democracies;
• Self-censorship;
• The evolution of media systems in young democracies;
• Political parallelism;
• Journalism practices in times of uncertainty;
• Media and journalism and new business models;
• Media and populist discourses;
• Media concentration and opacity of media ownership;
• Comparing news practices in different countries;
• Media in transition;
• Democratic culture and media;
• Media frameworks and media freedom guarantees.

Abstracts for paper proposals between 300-400 words may be submitted until 15 September (deadline) by email: conferencecapturedmedia@gmail.com

All abstracts will be peer reviewed before final acceptance. A collection of some of the papers may be published after the conference

Conference organization

The conference is organized by the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) hosted at the Faculty of Human Sciences at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in cooperation with the project ‘The Media System and Journalism Culture in Bulgaria (A Study in the Light of the Three Models of Media – Politics Relations by Hallin and Mancini)’, hosted by Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Medhodius and funded by the Bulgarian Scientific Fund.

The conference will be held at the Lisbon campus of Universidade Católica Portuguesa, which can be easily accessed via metro (30-minute ride), bus or taxi (10-minute ride) from the Lisbon airport.

Submission of open access book chapters proposals

Deadline: July 31, 2022

We are currently seeking contributions for a forthcoming book proposal for the Routledge Studies in European Communication Research and Education Series.

Meta comes from the Greek word meta, which means “after” or “beyond”. When combined with words in English, meta- often signifies “change” or “alteration” as in the words metamorphic. So, we are at the entrance of a new universe in communication that the companies and social media groups are building, like Facebook or Instagram, that pour its resources into constructing virtual reality products and setting up the Metaverse.

This is a concept that blends augmented reality and virtual reality together, providing people with the future of the internet, where the new generations create their new digital communication universe. How will the new communication in this new universe be constructed? Are we facing a complete change of how we communicate on the internet?

Submit your 300-word abstracts and 5 key words about any of the following themes: Metauniverse and : Communication, the Future, Violence, Narrative, Law, FakeNews,Business, Journalism, Art, etc.

Deadline July 31st., 2022. 0.00 hours Central European Time (CET). Send proposals to raqubeni@ucm.es and to elisagut@ucm.es

I am pleased to invite you to the next in the series of IPRA Thought Leadership webinars. The webinar Communicating with GenZ: the challenges and opportunities will be presented by Vivian Kobeh, corporate communications director at Millicom, Miami on Thursday 14 July 2022 at 12.00 GMT/UCT (unadjusted).

What is the webinar content?

I head a communications practice where the majority of our +21,000 employees are young. This generation has different ways of receiving and digesting information. The webinar will be about the major differences between Millennials and GenZ communications at a time when companies are measured by their values and by how they walk the talk.

How to join

Register here at Airmeet. (The time shown should adjust to your device’s time zone.)

A reminder will be sent 1 hour before the event.

Background to IPRA

IPRA, the International Public Relations Association, was established in 1955, and is the leading global network for PR professionals in their personal capacity. IPRA aims to advance trusted communication and the ethical practice of public relations. We do this through networking, our code of conduct and intellectual leadership of the profession. IPRA is the organiser of public relations' annual global competition, the Golden World Awards for Excellence (GWA). IPRA's services enable PR professionals to collaborate and be recognised. Members create content via our Thought Leadership essays, social media and our consultative status with the United Nations. GWA winners demonstrate PR excellence. IPRA welcomes all those who share our aims and who wish to be part of the IPRA worldwide fellowship. For more see www.ipra.org

Background to Vivian Kobeh

Vivian Kobeh is corporate communications director for Millicom, a leading provider of cable and mobile services under the brand TIGO, in Latin America and Africa. She is responsible for the company’s corporate conversation. Vivian has spent more than 25 years in the technology sector, formerly with Nokia, Blackberry, and Dell. Born in Mexico City, Vivian has a BA in Communications. She was a pioneer of LinkedIn’s Latin America communicators group. In 2020 she was named a Top Women in PR by PRNews.

Contact

International Public Relations Association Secretariat

United Kingdom

secgen@ipra.org

Telephone +44 1634 818308