Union for Democratic Communications
UDC 2026 Conference Announcement
Join us in Ithaca, New York for the next gathering of UDC. Co-hosted by Project Censored and the Park Center for Independent Media, this conference will bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners to explore critical questions about Independent Media and the Fight for Democracy in an Authoritarian Age.
Conference sessions will take place Friday, October 23 and Saturday, October 24, with a welcome reception on Thursday evening, October 22.
The conference will feature paper presentations, panel discussions, and opportunities for networking and collaboration.
Watch this space for more information including the Conference Theme, Call for Papers, and Registration information
You can find ongoing conference information on this website or at any of our social media accounts:
Bluesky: @uniondemcomm.bsky.social
Twitter: https://x.com/udc2025
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theUDC/
Congratulations to the 2025 Dallas Smythe Award Recipient: Dr. Nick Couldry
Dr. Nick Couldry will be delivering the Dallas Smythe lecture Saturday evening, June 21, at UDC 2025.
Dr. Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus and Professional Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. He is also a Faculty Associate of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. A prominent and prolific sociologist of media and culture, he has written extensively on both the concentrated structures of media institutions and the symbolic power of their output and their implications on democratic function, public spheres, individual subjectivity, and collective action.
While already renowned for such works as Media, Society, World (2012), The Mediated Construction of Reality (2017) amongst numerous others, in the last decade he has turned to questions around Big Data, AI and data collection practices more broadly and their ethics, politics, and deep social implications. With Dr. Ulises Mejias, the rigorous The Costs of Connection (2019) and its update Data Grab (2024) offer powerful critiques and theorizations of current practices by Big Tech and their implications for social life, governance, democracy and possibilities for activism in what they call an era of ‘data colonialism.’ Most recently, in late 2024, he published The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can’t? (Polity, 2024), the first volume in a trilogy entitled Humanizing the Future, which offers a radical new vision of how to design our digital spaces so that they build, rather than erode, both solidarity and community.
Alongside his rigorous scholarship, Dr. Couldry has sought to craft global conversations around these topics, co-founding the Tierra Comun project (https://www.tierracomun.net/), writing solo and with numerous co-authors in popular press on these pressing topics. We are thrilled to welcome him to our conference and to continue these conversations together.
What We Do
UDC 2025 Conference Has Been Announced!
Conference
Every 18 Months we hold a conference where communication scholars and activists can share their research and experiences fighting for social, economic, and political justice. Established, emerging, and new scholars are welcome to submit abstracts and participate in our conference proceedings
Peer-Reviewed Journal, the Communique
Journal
Our journal, the Democratic Communique, is focused on critical media analysis. Topics range from legal critical legal studies to analysis of race/class/gender, to considerations of media content, industries, and consumers. We are also interested in book reviews on recently published works pertaining to critical media studies.
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Connect
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