Annenberg Presentations and Events at ICA 2026
The International Communication Association will hold its 76th annual conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
The International Communication Association's 76th annual conference, “Communication and Inequalities in Context," will be held June 4-8 in Cape Town, South Africa
All Annenberg contributions to the conference are listed below, with panel name and room location. Please note that non-Annenberg authors have been omitted from this list, but can be seen in the full ICA 2026 program.
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
PRECONFERENCE: Global Disruptions: Platforms, Power, and Contested Communication
Location: Lanzerac Hotel, Stellenbosch, South Africa
- Bianca Zamora Perez: "Technological Lapidaries: Race GenAI Productions of the Other"
More information can be found here.
9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
PRECONFERENCE: African and Global Media Representations of Africa
Location: University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa
- Adetobi Moses: Participant
More information can be found here.
Thursday, June 4, 2026
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
PRECONFERENCE: Rethinking Global Discourses of Racial Inequality
Location: CTICC | Cape Town International Convention Centre - 2.41-2.43
- Bianca Zamora Perez: "Arte es Ética (Art is Ethical) and the Earth as Author: Latin American Counternarratives on GenAI and Copyright Law"
More information can be found here.
9:30 AM - 5:00 PM
PRECONFERENCE: Whose Protest Counts? Power and Exclusion in Online Activism
Location: Location: 1.63 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Guobin Yang - Organizer
Friday, June 5, 2026
7:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Annenberg Alumni Breakfast (RSVP Required)
Location: Westin Ballroom East (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
Environmental Communication: Welcome Meeting and Psychological Distance of Climate Change
Location: 1.41 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Wei Wang: “More than time or place: Social distance drives Republicans’ climate change preferences”
All About Tiktok
Location: 1.64 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Cristina Monzer: “Gendered Body Representation on Political TikTok videos: A cross-national comparison of Norway and Romania”
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Top Papers in Mass Communication
Location: Orchid (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Cristina Monzer: “Ceilings and Thresholds: Agenda-Setting Effects of News Coverage Among Individuals with High and Low Initial Issue Salience”
Popular Media & Culture Research Escalator Session
Location: Orchid (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Harry Hudome: “‘Moments worth waiting for.’: Exploring disposable camera use among members of Gen Z”
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
Transversal Feminist Politics, Digital Activism, and Movement Infrastructures
Location: 1.42 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Valentina Proust: “Life in Leggings and Caribbean Feminist Resistance: Solidarity, Care, and Digital Activism”
BLUE SKY: Is Religion a Blindspot at ICA? Should It Be?
Location: de Gama (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
- Sarah Banet-Weiser: Organizer
Saturday, June 6, 2026
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
Affect, Solidarity, and Resistance
Location: Freesia (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Valentina Proust: “‘Nos Queremos Vivas’: Digital Circulation of Grief and Feminist Solidarity Through Protest Anthems”
HIGH-DENSITY: Interpersonal Communication
Location: Westin Ballroom West (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
- Yiheng Zhang: “Digital Gender Wars: Investigating Teenagers’ Interpretations of Gender-Oppositional Content on TikTok through Methodological Triangulation”
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Auditing Algorithmic Curation and Information Flows
Location: Protea (CTICC2, Lev 1)
- Yphtach Lelkes: “The Elite Effect: Elite visibility on social media drives misinformation and distorts political learning”
Logics and Tactics in Digital Activism
Location: Freesia (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Devo Probol: “Digital Activism and the Multiple Logics of Action in the Meme Stock Movement”
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
Keyboard Cultures: Satire, Memes, and Negotiated Feelings
Location: 2.44-2.46 (CTICC1, Lev 2)
- Sarah J. Jackson: “Kamala is Brat: TikTok and the Affective Politics of Memes”
AI, Algorithmic Power, Bias, and Feminist Interventions
Location: Edward & Schappen (Westin, Mezzanine Level)
- Shana Kleiner: “What is AI without the Mother?: A Xenofeminist Framework for Understanding Artificial Intelligence as Truth”
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
HIGH-DENSITY: Neural and Physiological Mechanisms of Media Processing
Location: Westin Ballroom West (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
- Emily Falk: “Reward Activity During Social Inclusion is Associated with Negative Attitudes Toward Marijuana Use”
HIGH-DENSITY: Queer Identities, Resistance, and Advocacy
Location: Centennial Foyer (Regency 3)
- Taylor L. Smith: “#ContradictoryConservatism: Black Women, Purity, and Religious Authority in the Age of Digital Religion”
3:00 PM - 4:15 PM
HIGH-DENSITY: Computational and High-Throughput Approaches
Location: Westin Ballroom West (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
- Emily Falk: “The Relationship Between Adolescent Well-being and Self-focused Posting on TikTok and Instagram Moderated by Neural Sensitivity to Peer Feedback”
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Annenberg East/West Reception
Location: Westin Ballroom East (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
Sunday, June 7, 2026
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Local News in Australia, China, and the United States
Location: 2.65-2.66 (CTICC1, Lev 2)
- Aaron Hyzen, Victor Pickard: “Sustaining Robust Local News in Pennsylvania: The Challenges of Nonprofit News as a Way Out of the Journalism Crisis”
Computational Methods Research Escalator
Location: Westin Ballroom West (Westin, Old Harbour Level)
- Vishwanath E.V.S., Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon: “Research Escalator: Unpacking How Conversation History Shifts the Framing of LLM Outputs”
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
Language, Politics, Power, and Protest
Location: 1.44 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Gayoung Jeon: “Dehumanizing through Malicious Accusation: Unpacking Russian Propaganda in Framing of pro-West Ukraine as anti-civil on Telegram”
Reflections on the Past and Future of Activism, Communication and Social Justice Division
Location: 2.44-2.46 (CTICC1, Lev 2)
- Guobin Yang: Participant
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
HIGH-DENSITY: Representation, Resistance, and Racialized Media Systems
Location: 8.2 (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Shana Kleiner: “Defensive Enclaves: The Creation of the Black Manosphere”
3:00 PM - 4:15 PM
Fandom World-making Across Time, Culture, and the Fourth Wall
Location: 2.61-2.63 (CTICC1, Lev 2)
- Yuzhe (Julian) Lei: “Reimagining Chairman Mao: The Emerging Mao Fandom and Its Multimodal Persona Construction on Chinese Social Media”
4:30 PM - 5:45 PM
Robert McChesney’s Critical Legacy
Location: Orchid (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Victor Pickard: Moderator
- Sydney L. Forde: “Don't look up, look out.”
Monday, June 8, 2026
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
Immersion, Play and Affective Politics
Location: 1.44 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Juan Llamas-Rodriguez: “Play and Power in Migration-themed Virtual Reality”
Digital Health Inequalities: Strengthening Capacity to Promote Community Health
Location: 2.64 (CTICC1, Level 2)
- Ying Zhang: “Digital Divide and Health Equity: A Case Study of Philadelphia’s Non-Emergency Service Request Patterns Using Social Network Analysis
The Power of Visuals for Protest and Justice
Location: Protea (CTICC2, Lev 1)
- Yuan (Riley) Xu: “Visual Resistance and Collective Identity: Poster Politics in Philadelphia’s No Arena Movement”
HIGH-DENSITY: Political and Technical Risks and Alternative Journalism
Location: Protea (CTICC2, Lev 1)
- Aaron Hyzen: “Contested Dissent: Technogarchy, Illiberalism and Alternative Journalism in the U.S.: The Case of Aaron Parnas”
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
HIGH-DENSITY: Health, AI, and Gendered Inequalities
Location: 8.1 (CTICC2, Lev 2)
- Yuan (Riley) Xu: “Framing Digital Gender Violence across Firewalls: Transnational Feminism and the MaskPark Scandal”
3:00 PM - 4:15 PM
Digital Ambivalence: Race, Empire, and Participation in Global Digital Culture
Location: 1.64 (CTICC1, Lev 1)
- Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, Silvia Teliz Martinez: “Poder Prieto: Media, Colorism, and Cultural Activism”
Addressing Methodological Challenges in LLM-enhanced Computational Communication
Location: 2.64 (CTICC1, Level 2)
- Duncan Watts, Amir Ghasemian, Homa Hosseinmardi, Upasana Dutta: “LLM-Assisted Recommendations and Their Hidden Impact on Human-AI Ecosystems”
