CALL FOR PAPERS 1
Deadline: January 15, 2008

1st Info letter

Russian Communication Association (RCA) in collaboration with North American Russian Communication Association and Russian University of Cooperation, supported by the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies, Moscow State University, Interregional Association in support of UNESCO program "Information for all" and Russian Association of film and media education announce the Fourth international conference "Communication Studies Today: at the Crossroads of the Disciplines" (Communication-2008) to be held in Moscow on June 9-13, 2008.

International partners and informational co-sponsors of the Conference are National Communication Association (USA) and International Communication Association.

Aims of the Conference:

1. To join together Russian and international scholars, educational and research institutions in discussion of the following issues:
   • Impact of the traditional academic fields (natural and social sciences, humanities) on communication studies
   • Communication studies within the boundaries of traditional fields of knowledge.
   • Developing communication theory as an interdisciplinary field
   • Analysis of communication studies development in social work
   • Advancing communication and mass media education
2. To promote a dialogue of cultures and to enhance information exchange between Russian and international educators and researchers in various areas of communication studies.

The following topics are proposed for the Conference work:

• Communication theory
• Mass communication, media culture, and mass media
• Social communication
• Political communication
• Intercultural communication
• Organizational, professional, and business communication
• Interpersonal communication
• Speech communication, public presentations, and rhetorics
• Cultural conditioning of language and communication
• Computer-mediated and technical communication, new media
• Instructional communication, educational communication and media education.

Papers are invited in all the abovementioned fields of discussion. The Conference organizers will also invite applications to organize specific panels, round-table discussions, and master classes. Students are invited to submit papers for poster sessions.

The deadline for abstracts submission is January 15, 2008. All the materials must be submitted electronically to the Conference Coordinator (rca2008@mail.ru copied also to marina.raskladkina@gmail.com). Submission material include an abstract in the 2-5 page range (not more than 9,000 characters with spaces) and the Registration Form (see below together with Abstract Guidelines) and must be sent as attachments to the body of the letter. The subject line of the letter should read RCA-2008 together with the name of the abstract author(s).

Abstracts must contain information on the purpose of the study, data, methods of analysis and results.

Applications proposing round tables, panels of papers and master classes must include the names of all of the presenters, the titles of the presentations or papers submitted, as well as a few paragraphs describing what the program will include.

The Program Committee will notify applicants by March 30, 2008.

Organizers of the Conference plan to publish and distribute the accepted abstracts at the conference. The acceptance letters will include a request to submit camera-ready copies of the abstracts for publication.

After the Conference the organizers plan to publish selected presentations as a separate issue of the RCA Bulletin and the official journal of RCA The Russian Journal of Communication. At authors' will all the conference materials, including Power Point presentations, may be published online on the Conference website:
(http://www.russcomm.ru/rca_projects/rca-conf2008/ - Russian,
http://www.russcomm.ru/eng/rca_projects/rca-conf2008/ - English).

The Conference working languages are English and Russian.

For more details on the Conference preparation, on previous RCA conferences and ongoing RCA activities see: http://www.russcomm.ru/rca_projects/ (Russian) and http://www.russcomm.ru/eng/rca_projects/ (English)