Title: Disrupting and Consolidating Human-Machine Communication
Date: Thursday, June 12, 2025 (Full day, 8:30am‑5:00pm)
Venue: On-site at the ICA25 conference venue in Denver, CO, USA
Building on the spirit that launched HMC—the drive to explore uncharted spaces where human communication with machines occurs—the 8th HMC Pre-Conference aims to facilitate dialogues about the disruptive potential and consolidating force of machines in communication research, while reflecting on how HMC itself is shaped by these dynamics. For this pre-conference, we define “disruption” as significant changes in understanding, experience, or practice, and “consolidation” as uniting ideas into a new whole as well as strengthening or solidifying them.
1) Disruptive Potential of HMC
The first key area of this pre-conference explores the disruptive potential of HMC regarding machines that have transformed into communicators, collaborators, colleagues, friends, assistants, or competitors. By studying human communication with machines, we aim to advance understanding, questioning, adapting, or evolving the concept of communication, the communicative process, as well as the communication field itself. Therefore, we seek to examine how HMC challenges conventions, facilitates reconfigurations, and establishes redefinitions. We invite contributions that address questions related to this disruptive potential, including but not limited to the following:
Disruption of concepts:
- How does HMC disrupt ontological definitions of a medium, communicator, and communication?
- How does HMC disrupt the role of the human in communication scholarship and theory?
- How does HMC disrupt conceptions of the communicative world, relationships, meaning-making, and ethical questions in communication?
- How does HMC disrupt communication theories and in what ways do traditional communication theories accommodate (or fail to accommodate) the disruptive potential of machine communicators?
Disruption of research:
- How does HMC research disrupt traditional notions of communication research?
- How does HMC research disrupt methodological conventions in communication research?
- How does HMC practice disrupt conventions in the definition, collection, and analysis of data?
- How does HMC practice alter conventions of understanding, writing, and presenting research?
Disruption of everyday systems and life in a society:
- How does communication with machines disrupt global communication and power dynamics, including in historically marginalized regions, inclusivity, privacy, and socioeconomic divides?
- How does communication with machines disrupt relationships, work, labor, or education?
- How does communication with machines disrupt the domestic, social, and policial sphere?
2) Consolidating Potential of HMC
The second key area of this pre-conference explores the consolidating potential of HMC as a stabilizing force in communication research. While HMC has demonstrated disruptive impacts, it also holds promise for stabilizing and strengthening communication scholarship and real-world practices. However, as the field of HMC is relatively young and communicative machines are only beginning to integrate into daily life, significant gaps in understanding this potential remain. We, therefore, invite contributions that address questions related to this consolidating potential, including but not limited to the following:
Consolidation of concepts:
- How does HMC help unify fragmented theories or frameworks in communication research?
- How can HMC provide cohesive frameworks that integrate and explain emerging communication phenomena across diverse cultures, contexts, and disciplines?
- How does HMC research contribute to the development of durable and scalable communication models and concepts?
Consolidation of research:
- How can HMC consolidate methodologies and ethical guidelines in communication research?
- How does HMC contribute to the development of shared terminologies and metrics for evaluating communicative processes?
- What is the potential for HMC to build interdisciplinary bridges and foster long-term research agendas that span disciplinary silos?
Consolidation of everyday systems and life in a society:
- How does HMC stabilize communication processes, relationships, and meaning-making in professional, social, or personal contexts?
- How can HMC enhance communication systems in organizational, societal, or cultural contexts?
Organizers:
- Andrew Prahl, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Katrin Etzrodt, TU Dresden, Germany
- Jihyun Kim, University of Central Florida, USA
- Marco Dehnert, University of Arkansas, USA
- Nan Wilkenfeld, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
- Kun Xu, University of Florida, USA
We Need Reviewers:
To enhance the quality of the review process, we need reviewers. In addition to all first authors of the submitted papers, who will be required/expected to review 3–4 submissions, we still need more voluntary reviewers. Please contact Andrew Prahl ([email protected]) if you’re interested in helping us. Your time and support are greatly appreciated
Sponsorship Call:
The pre-conference welcomes sponsors. Primarily, sponsorships are being used to support student registration fees. If your organization would like to contribute funds and be recognized on promotional materials at the event, please contact Andrew Prahl ([email protected]). We will facilitate the process with the support from ICA.