President’s Corner
February, 2018
Our division leadership was busy over the holidays overseeing the review of research paper submissions for the division paper competitions. Now that judging is completed, we can preview some of the research sessions at BEA2018.
Sixteen of BEA’s nineteen interest divisions will be presenting top research from their annual paper competitions this year. Student Media Advisors and Two-Year/Small Colleges typically don’t receive research for the competitions, but we are happy to report that our two newest divisions – Religion & Media and Service Learning both received submissions for the 2018 convention.
We are reporting a 35% acceptance rate to the traditional top paper research sessions. In addition to these top paper sessions, we will have five Scholar-to-Scholar Digital Research Presentations (S2S). Once again thanks to LG, the S2S digital sessions will take place on Sunday, April 8th on a series of monitors in the #BEAVegas exhibit hall.
In addition to the interest division sponsored research sessions, Faculty and Student Research-in-Progress Digital Poster Research Presentations will be held on Monday, April 9th; and on Tuesday April 10th we’re bringing back our research sessions for graduate students — Grand Plans & Great Expectations. We will be accepting grad student research submissions through February 21st.
This marks the ninth year for the BEA Research Symposium. The day-long symposium —The Golden Age of Data: Big Data and Media will be held on Sunday, April 8th. Don Grady, Elon University, has put together an excellent lineup of sessions, including a keynote from Lee Rainie, Director, Internet, Science and Technology, Pew Research Center. Select research from the symposium will be published in an upcoming volume of the BEA Electronic Media Book Series. While not directly related to BEA2018, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the latest volume in the series — Risk and Health Communication in an Evolving Media Environment, edited by H. Dan O’Hair — was just released by Routledge.
There are also a number of research sessions that were accepted as panel sessions. For example, a group of researchers from China will participate in a session on The Media Transformation and Social Development in China. The session is co-organized by the Chinese Communication Association and Communication University of China.
I have mentioned just a few examples of how this year’s conference continues the organization’s mission for the presentation of current scholarly research related to aspects of the electronic media. You can see specifics of all the research sessions in the BEA2018 program.
