Papers presented at the 67th annual conference of the International Communication Association, held 25-29 May 2017 in San Diego, California.

What is a «good life» and how can it be achieved? In this volume, communication scholars and media experts explore these fundamental questions about human existence and aspiration in terms of what a «good life» might look like in a contemporary, mediatized society. While in many ways a mediatized society brings us closer to some version of the «good life», it also leads us away from it. The affordances of new technologies seem to have shifted, for many, from an opportunity to an obligation. Rather than choosing when and where to be connected to these larger networks of information and acquaintances, we feel we must be permanently available, thus losing the luxury of controlling our time and attention. This volume illuminates the complexity of our modern era, exploring how society can leverage exciting new opportunities whilst recognizing the complex challenges we face in a time of constant change. It helps us understand how we have come to this point and where we may be going so that we may study the opportunities and the dangers, the chances and the risks, that digital media pose in our quest for some version of «the good life».

In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume's authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products. In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. At the same time, prudence is required, as many of the empowering and transformative opportunities cover-up a multitude of restrictions that deal with muting voices, appropriations, techniques of surveillance, inequalities, and exclusions. This volume thus provides its readership with a set of analyses that reconcile the appreciation for the analogue and digital empowerment and emancipation with the critical analysis of their boundaries.Participation and Media Production is the result of the intellectual work of the participants of the 2007 San Francisco Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA).

The chapters in this collection, chosen from among the invited plenary speakers, top research papers, and ideas discussed at the ICA 2015 meeting in San Juan, explore the multiple ways communication affects, reflects, and directs our life transition.

The advance technological development has led to the revolution on the way people communicating. People, things, and systems now are all connected in cyberspace and optimal results obtained by artificial intelligence (AI) exceeding the capabilities of humans fed back to physical space. This process brings new value to industry and society in ways not possible previously. To explore and examine it, the proceedings comprise themes (1) communication industry and beyond that focused on the concept of personalization to the next level of “mass personalization” in the communication fields, (2) social cultural and its implications that explore communities based on interest, religion, or shared identify to achieve a forward-looking society whose members have mutual respect for each other, transcending the generations, and lead an active and enjoyable life, (3) the digitization of content that focuses on the process of converting information into a digital format where the big data becomes the central of this area that make easier to preserve, access, and share information to people worldwide, but implied by the competencies and ethics, (4) governance; politics and good public governance that explore the way public control others and participate to all governance-related activities for encouraging transparency and public accountability politics and democracy, (5) entrepreneurship that focuses on the endorsement of technological-based innovation that give opportunity to create and develop an initiative effected to society, from a scale up start-up to a global level or become a social entrepreneur using the technology as a place to break a social change, and (6) special issues exploring interests in global, regional, national, and local level.

A vital and comprehensive starting place for understanding the key concepts, this book explores 177 diverse types and styles of listening named in academic scholarship to date. This book is an encyclopaedic-style synthesis of existing literature related to listening styles and types. Through online academic resource curation and literature review synthesis, this key reference work offers a deep dive into the interdisciplinary foundations of listening. By providing a brief descriptive overview of each of the identified listening styles and types as well as the inclusion of key scholars related to them, this book challenges assumptions about “listening” as a singular communicative activity and offers students and scholars alike a place from which to draw key listening concepts. No other text has attempted to bring together previous listening scholarship in this expansive interdisciplinary way. This book promotes both the field of listening itself while also expanding opportunities for students of many disciplines to embed listening scholarship in their knowledge and practical application. The first of its kind, Listening: The Key Concepts is an expansive, state-of the-field exploration of listening scholarship that can be used as a guidebook for undergraduate and graduate students in Listening, Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, and Intercultural Communication courses as well as other related disciplines.

Although media studies and digital humanities are established fields, their overlaps have not been examined in depth. This comprehensive collection fills that gap, giving readers a critical guide to understanding the array of methodologies and projects operating at the intersections of media, culture, and practice. Topics include: access, praxis, social justice, design, interaction, interfaces, mediation, materiality, remediation, data, memory, making, programming, and hacking.