NCA2018 Recap

Communication at Play was a beautiful theme for the National Communication Association 2018 annual conference (NCA2018). I thought the event as a whole was an excellent opportunity for scholars from various locations, academic backgrounds, and research practices to come together and celebrate what defines our discipline. This post is a brief overview of my experiences during the week.

I need to thank David Rhea, the NCA Mass Communication Awards Committee, and the entire Mass Communication Interest Division for awarding me their annual Service Award. It was a pleasant surprise to hear David call my name during the business meeting. I am always happy to serve the Division whenever possible. Also, I glad that the Executive Committee of the Division finds me useful as the Parliamentarian for the Division.

I also had the pleasure to serve as the respondent for the Top Papers Session for the Communication and the Future Interest Division. There usually is a written response for this session as in the past few years I had an opportunity to review the papers before the conference and would have time to collect my thoughts enough to write them down. I didn’t have time this year as the papers were not available via the All-Academic website. I did have a chance to write down my thoughts during their presentations.

Jihyun Kim et al. presentation on the connection between the act of playing Pokemon Go and building a sense of community belonging was interesting. Presence was one of the forces that allow players to feel like they belong to the larger community of Pokemon Go players. Enjoyment related to the game and exploring the community was founded (via a survey of 325 Pokemon Go players) to be two other factors that lead to the feeling of community. I challenged the authors to explore more the geo-locative nature of the game to assist with the definition of community. Besides, I felt that they could have studied the non-face-to-face elements of the game more in their research. Specifically, I want the authors to talk more about how Facebook Groups and Discord help the players feel like that are part of the local Pokemon communities. Besides, I was hoping that the author would talk about what this study means for the future of AR gaming and AR gaming communities.

Brianna L. Lane et al. presentation on users of dating websites interpretation of dating profiles used digital affordances theory to create a 3x2x3 model for analyzing how different platforms (Craigslist, eHarmony, and Tinder) and the various modes of messaging within those sites will lead to more “success” in a casual or in a serious relationship. One of the points of focus was the use of a dress-up, dress-down, or no photo in the dating profile. The conclusion of the research is that profile with pictures of the person dressed-up were more likely to find a serious relationship within the three platforms when compared to featuring a dressed-down picture or no picture at all. I mentioned that this finding seems to speak to an issue related to class. I was also hoping for more of an analysis of what the researchers’ conclusions mean for not just the future of dating platforms helping users find a serious or causal relationship, but also what their research suggests for the future of users within those sites and their ability to read the presentation on those sites.

Rebecca K. Britt presented the research she did with Andrew Englebert on piloting a mHealth application for a campus-community initiative. I thought their use of Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model was sound given the community of study was a rural region of the United States. Their findings of “perceived ease of use had a positive effect on attitudes and utility, while perceived usefulness had a positive effect on technology intent” was well discussed throughout the course of their presentation. The authors noted that they were less than satisfied with their overall results, analysis, and findings, even though the organization that sponsored the research was happy with the findings of the research. The one point I raised in the response was the form factor of the application was worth studying. Specifically, I thought the phone/mobile form factor was limiting in this environment as it would require the user to carry their phone with them while performing health-related activities. I felt a pilot study of a wearable-based application would be interesting with the limitations and reservations of the current study.

The University of Central Florida is always well represented at the Top Paper for Communication and the Future. Jonathan Matusitz has presented a paper in the Top Paper Session as long as I can remember. Typically, the focus is on cybersecurity. This year he (along with John McCormick) presented on effects of Internet use on human obesity in the United States. He gave a solid work on sedentarism (physical inactivity) and its impact of the future of health in the United States.

Overall, I felt that the four Top Papers spoke to the broad scope of our division and the ability of our division to address issues that can impact the future of society, especially in the realm of communication actions.

I thought the use of the play space in the middle of the convention center was well done. One of the concerns I have with the past NCAs was a lack of time to network and interact with other scholars during the ordinary course of the conference. This various games and activities hosted by the play space maintained the mission of the association while giving the members a chance interact with one another in the open arena of play. Also, I love the various clay design competitions they held during the conference.

I thought our Scholar-to-Scholar (and by our I mean Communication and the Future, Mass Communication, Game Studies, and Human Communication and Technology as those are the four interest divisions I belong to at NCA) was a fantastic success on Friday. I was impressed by Kiki Miller’s “Hashtag Activism” and “Instagram and the 2016 Presidential Election” posters, Justin Grandinetti’s “A Deleuzian Approach to Pokémon GO and Augmented Reality” poster, and John McArthur & Erin Hunt’s “Toward a Theory of Brand-Event-Self Integration: A grounded theory analysis of #cowappreciationday on Instagram” poster.

Salt Lake City was a beautiful host city for our conference. There were signs in many of the restaurants and shops welcoming NCA to SLC. I look forward to NCA2019 in Baltimore where the theme will be “Communication for Survival.”