Reports
- LASA Mass Media and Popular Culture Section Annual Report 2020- Virtual
Prepared by Mariana De Maio
During the last LASA Congress the Mass Media and Popular Section met on Friday, May 15, 2020. Sixteen people participated and we used the time to exchange ideas and make plans for the next congress. We decided to continue building the connections between Journalism Studies and Popular Culture and to strengthen our relationships especially using our WhatsApp group for day to day communication. The link to the group was disseminated through social media as well as email with the section membership.
This coming year we will organize the allotted amount of participations for the section as round tables, to allow our members to present their research in panels in the LASA tracks as we did last year. We will help our membership organize those panels once more. For the last congress we were able to organize 11 panels and 2 roundtables, and we hope that we can increase the numbers this year.
Another plan for this year is to offer travel scholarships (if the congress is face-to-face) and a research award. Details on these awards will be disseminated soon.
Section Board
• Mariana De Maio, Co-Chair (Lehigh University)
• Sallie Hughes, Co-Chair (University of Miami)
• Grisel Salazar, Secretary (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas)
• Celeste González de Bustamante, treasurer (University of Arizona)
• Stella Maris Poggian, Social Media Chair (Universidad Nacional del Comahue / Instituto Universitario Patagónico de las Artes)
• Perla Rodríguez Fernández, student outreach chair (Universidad de Puerto Rico)
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Section Report: Mass Media and Popular Culture LASA 2019 – Boston
Prepared by Matthew Bush
In the meeting of the Mass Media and Popular Culture section at LASA 2019, nine colleagues attended the gathering and discussed a series of topics. The most important of these issues was the announcement of the new co-chairs of the section: Mariana De Maio and Sallie Hughes. These colleagues will now take leadership of the section over the next three years, holding their first section meeting at LASA 2020 in Guadalajara. Among the other topics discussed were the use of social media to further section participation. The group was informed, as were present co-chairs Pablo Alabarces and Matthew Bush at the section chairs meeting, of LASA’s aid in configuring and maintaining Facebook and other social media accounts. There was interest among the colleagues present at the meeting to also establish a Whatsapp thread to inform colleagues of section activities and news. There was also some discussion of re-visiting the section’s mission statement whose focus is largely geared toward cultural studies, but makes little mention of the field of journalism in which many of the section’s colleagues are active. A final issue that was mentioned was the topics that could be proposed for the section’s panels for Guadalajara 2020. One possibility that was signaled was the question of security for journalists in Mexico, which was of interest to many colleagues in attendance. As Pablo Alabarces and Matthew Bush now step down from our leadership role we greatly thank Mariana De Maio and Sallie Hughes for their willingness to head the section and will help in whatever capacity we may to ensure a smooth transition.
New Section Co-Chairs
Mariana De Maio, Lehigh University, 2020-2022
Sallie Hughes, University of Miami, 2020-2022