Dear colleagues,
as many other sections, the Digital Culture and Communication section is also approaching the end of its first official term in office.
We are therefore planning an election during the ECREA conference in Barcelona.
We would like to invite all members to consider a more active role in the section at this point and to consider standing for election for the chair and vice chair positions.
There are two possibilities to put yourselves forward for election: first of all as an individual (for the post of Vice-Chair) or second as a whole section team (i.e. three people).
The first stems from the fact that I, Maren Hartmann, will step down as chair of the section. I have other commitments that do unfortunately not allow me to continue this post at present. Caroline Bassett and Kate O'Riordan, however, have declared their willingness to stand for re-election. I fully endorse their candidacy (I could not have wished for better co-chairs) and hope that interested individuals will step forward to join them in these efforts.
Please send any nominations (individual or team) to me (hartmann@udk- berlin.de) on or before October 15th, 2008. We currently assume that the election/s of nominated candidates will take place during our business meeting during the conference in November.
Let me also take this chance to thank everyone for having made this work so rewarding and fun (especially my two co-chairs, but also everyone who has attended our events and everyone from ECREA who has supported us thus far.
With having had a very interesting stream of papers during the first ECREA conference (where we had a separate call) and a great workshop in Sussex last autumn plus yet another wonderful set of abstracts for this autumn (many of which we unfortunately had to turn down), I feel the section is beginning to have both a content identity and an organisational structure (see http:// www.digitalcultureandcommunication.blogspot.com/). Surely this work will be the continued focus of the section until the next election.
Together with my German colleagues (from the media sociology and computer-mediated communications sections of the German communication association), I will still host the section conference planned for November 2010 in Berlin.
My involvement with the section, I hope, will therefore not cease.
I am very much looking forward to your nominations as well as to the conference in November.
Regards,
Maren Hartmann
