Academic papers of critical research rigour are invited from interested academics, research scholars, and industry professionals for the International Conference on Media and Communication (ICMAC) 2026 on the conference theme Media Industries in the Platformisation Landscape: Introspections, Iterations & Interventions
The contemporary media industries are characterised by a shifting platformisation topography - a dynamic topography defined by the emergence of digital platforms, algorithmic infrastructures and global-local entanglements. This landscape has various participants, who range between creators and audiences, platforms and regulatory bodies, whose interactions occur within systems that are continuously being reimagined. Consequently, this conference welcomes rigorous responses to how platformisation is changing media production, circulation and consumption. Instead of understanding this transformation as a single, linearised age, we might instead comprehend it as a complex and conflicted terrain that emphasises the specificities of region, technological intervention, and evolving power structures. The tracks for the conference focus on the politics of memory and resistance in screen cultures; the changing journalistic practices under platform capitalism; the reorganisation of digital cultures through algorithmic and immersive technologies, and the socio-technical implications of artificial intelligence in the creative economy. Intertwining interdisciplinary thinking and approaches with methodological creativity, this assemblage will seek to chart the major interventions, identify emergent iterations, and develop introspections that trouble the hegemonic discourse of technological inevitability. By doing so, we collectively wish to rethink how media futures are being envisioned, negotiated and fought over, across geographies and infrastructures.
International Conference on Media and Communication (ICMAC) 2026, being organised by Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), seeks to place these important questions on the mantle, in convening Media Industries in the Platformisation Landscape: Introspections, Iterations & Interventions
ICMAC 2026 invites academics, research scholars, and practitioners to participate and submit 300-500 word abstracts to the conference, in line with the following proposed tracks:
The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the media and creative industries in India has activated a compelling revolution across domains, restructuring conventional workflows, allowing innovative ways of content generation, and redefining the dialogue between its creators, audiences, and intermediaries. It has redefined not just the roles of media professionals and artificial intelligence infrastructures but also the relationships between both these entities. This track welcomes papers addressing the socio-technical, politico-economic, as well as cultural aspects of AI in media and creative industries framed through the application of innovative theoretical frameworks and new methodological perspectives. We particularly encourage submissions that look beyond automation or disruption, and provide more nuanced analyses within the purview of theories such as, but not limited to, Technological Determinism, Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), Political Economy of Communication, Platform Studies, and Critical Media Industries Studies. The track hopes to explore the intersections of AI with themes like labour precarity, creative ownership, human intervention, vernacular utilisations, archival practices, media regulation, and digital ethics. With regards to methodology, this track seeks papers that apply diverse ethnographic, discursive, or design-based methods to deliberate on the dilemmas that arise from media and creative industries adopting artificial intelligence and simultaneously getting transformed by that very adoption.
Potential sub-themes include, but are not limited to:
Amid fast-evolving technological shifts and intensifying platform influence, digital cultures are undergoing profound transitions. This track explores the layered interplay between algorithmic systems, emerging media technologies, and the mediatisation of everyday life, critically examining how digital infrastructures shape and are shaped by human agency, cultural practices, and social meaning-making. From algorithmic curation and AI-generated content to immersive storytelling and decentralised platforms, digital cultures are increasingly shaped by tensions between control and creativity, visibility and resistance, automation and affect. The track invites critical inquiry into how individuals, creators, and institutions navigate shifting digital terrains marked by artificial intelligence, attention economies, and new forms of mediation. It particularly encourages explorations of how communities respond—through adaptation, resistance, or creative appropriation—to transformations in power, governance, and cultural production brought about by technologies like the metaverse, synthetic media, and decentralised infrastructures. We welcome contributions that foreground user agency, innovation, and cultural resistance across both global and local contexts. Interdisciplinary approaches that bridge theory, practice, and policy are especially encouraged, including theoretical inquiries, empirical research, and creative or practice-based work that illuminate how digital cultures are continuously being shaped and reshaped.
Potential sub-themes include, but are not limited to:
The present era, where we live, is of mass culture without mass media. This new emerging culture operates without traditional public spheres; instead, it relies on para-social intimacies, influencer economies and mimetic virality to construct our sense of collective engagement. Journalism practices are increasingly evolving to address this shift. Influence of societal forces, altering public values, ever-evolving technologies and shifting business logics lay a foundation for decoding these changing practices. This track intends to discuss and deliberate tech-enabled, platform-driven, digital-public-centred contemporary journalistic practice.
Potential sub-themes include, but are not limited to:
Digital revolution, along with the proliferation of screens and the wide availability of affordable data, has transformed the world of cinema in all its dimensions. Cinematic practices - production, consumption, and distribution - have undergone massive shifts in contemporary India, by incorporating the ubiquitous presence of screens and the expansive influencer economy into the ecoscapes of the industry. With a creative economy set to exceed $1 trillion by 2030, the convergence of multifarious mediated content creators and multiple screens, the world of filmmaking has evolved in complex ways. Governmental support has helped in this process, as the state sees this Orange Economy to be the driving force behind the idea of India’s growth as a soft power. This track seeks to explore the world of cinematic practices in the new media ecoscape of the Creator Economy and the pervasive presence of screens in contemporary India. Papers that delve into the world of cinephilia, the impact of the Influencer Economy, governmental interventions, regional/popular/independent cinema, and other related phenomena around the Indian cultural landscape will be welcomed. Ideally, we would prefer methodologies that work towards a discursive reading of the theme of Creator Economy in the context of Indian cinematic practices.
Potential sub-themes include, but are not limited to: