Latest News from ICA Headquarters

POSITION: ICA President 

Candidate: Ingrid Bachmann, Pontificia U Catolica de Chile
The personal is not only political, but also professional. Our experiences and contexts define our scholarship and situate our knowledge. In my case, my research, teaching, and even personal networks have been greatly influenced by my upbringing and academic career based in South America, as well as my involvement with ICA. For this reason, I am deeply honored, grateful, and excited to be nominated for president of ICA.

I have been an ICA member for almost twenty years, since I was a Ph.D. student at the U of Texas at Austin. In all these years, ICA has been at the heart of my intellectual and professional growth. I have served as chair of the Feminist Scholarship Division, chair of the ICA Membership and Internationalization Committee, co-chair of the Professional Standards Committee, and member of the ICA Outstanding Article Award Committee, among others. I was involved in organizing the first regional ICA conference in Latin America and the first regional hub in Latin America for an ICA conference in 2022. I currently serve as associate editor of two ICA journals, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Annals of the International Communication Association. 

Today's complex and politically fraught scenario underscores the relevance of impactful research. Communication scholars make important contributions to our understandings of matters such as the growth of authoritarianism and decline of democracy around the world; increased attacks on press freedom; the growing naturalization of misogynistic, racist, homophobic, and anti-science discourse; pervasive trust decline; and ethical and transparency issues of digital platforms. As scholars, we have plenty to take up, asking vital questions and examining how these issues are implicated in mediated, organizational, interpersonal, and other aspects of communication in today's world.

Some of these questions are at the forefront of my work. Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, I grew up in a dictatorship that heavily restricted civil liberties and press freedom, which exposed me to the power of collective action and grassroots organizing and the importance of a free and independent press-all of which led me to a career first as a journalist, and now as a social scientist focused on the intersections of news narratives, gender, and political participation, often relying on mixed methods and multiple epistemologies.

My experiences shaped my interest in the role of the news media in defining identities and meanings within the public sphere. A former reporter, I am involved with press freedom advocacy groups. I work in the School of Communications at the Catholic U of Chile -a leading research university in Latin America- where I chaired the Journalism department from 2016 to 2020, and where currently I lead the Millennium Nucleus on Digital Inequalities and Opportunities (NUDOS), an interdisciplinary center funded by Chile's National Agency for Research and Development, and examining the promises and challenges of digital inclusion, such as the strengthening of people's social ties and empowering activism, exposure to misinformation on social media, and gender gaps in digital skills.

The personal is political and professional, indeed. I am a gender and news scholar from -and based in-- the Global South, and I have first-hand experience with matters of inequities, representation, and power dynamics, all of which give me a unique experience and perspective in further serving ICA. Under successful previous leadership, ICA has gone to great lengths to try to internationalize and be more diverse in theoretical perspectives, methods, countries, and areas of inquiry. Still, there is room to strengthen our culture of excellence and achievement.

Thus, if elected President, my priorities will be the following:

• Strengthening cross-divisional collaborations and networking within ICA. ICA's growth puts its 33 divisions and interest groups at risk of becoming silos. Building bridges among different divisions and ICA spaces, such as by encouraging cross-divisional awards and events, having dedicated time in the conference program for networking, or engaging more actively with ICA journals and affiliate journals would better inform our research and foster an exchange of ideas, rationales, and arguments. Amplifying our inner networks can help us as ICA members enhance our research and broaden its potential impact.

• Supporting more diversity and representation throughout all levels in our conferences, spaces, and journals, so ICA is home to more people from different backgrounds, geographical contexts, languages, and affiliations. ICA has made important inroads in this regard, but the inequalities that we often study also apply to ICA's membership, leadership, and journals. So, we need more support and mentoring for Global South, marginalized, and overall less-privileged members, and we need to value and encourage research in different contexts and languages on its own merits rather than simple examples of otherness.

Support and funding for more diversity should also consider different career trajectories and circumstances, such as the disadvantaged position of most early-career scholars and underrepresented individuals, or the family dynamics and responsibilities of those attending ICA. International liaisons and student representatives have called our attention to such realities, and we need to heed their suggestions and have a task force to examine the diversity and inclusion practices within our association.

• Promoting our public engagement so that the value of our research extends beyond academia. Several divisions are already working on this, and as an association, we should pay more attention to outreach and go outside of the so-called ivory tower, including involving more non-academic parties in our events and developing learning experiences to showcase our work to policymakers and individuals outside of academic circles. More consideration of the impact of our scholarship will also help avoid universalizing approaches.

ICA is a strong and well-established organization, but I envision going further and helping it become a truly inclusive, international organization that can continue to lead our field.