Northwestern Qatar at ICA

Theme:  Communication and Inequalities in Context

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Preconference: Echoes and Overlaps in Arab and African Thought on Media and Culture: Forging New Directions for Research
Organizers: Clovis Bergère and Marwan M. Kraidy

Panel 2
Discussant: Marwan M. Kraidy

• Echoes and Overlaps of Youth in Williams Sassine’s Chronicles Assassines
  Clovis Bergère
• A “Possible Modernity”. The Arab Self, Diaspora, and Cultural Rapprochement in the Waning Years of Third World Solidarity
  Angela Haddad

Panel 3
Discussant: Clovis Bergère

• The Negation of Zero. Alienation, Refusal, and Confrontation in Arab and African Thought
  Chafic Tony Najem

Thursday, June 4, 2026

The 76th Opening Plenary of the International Communication Association: Conference: Inequalities and Knowledge Production in Communication: Inroads and Challenges Ahead
Discussant: Marwan M. Kraidy

Friday, June 5, 2026

Digitality as Zombie Analogicity
Marwan M. Kraidy

The Chronopolitics of Carcerality: Weaponizing and ContestingTemporalities Under Lebanon’s Penal Laws
Chafic Tony Najem

Victoria & Alfred PTC Business Meeting, Philosophy, Theory and Critique
Discussant: Heather Jaber

Saturday, June 6, 2026

Why the Nakba Matters to Communication and Media Studies
Heather Jaber

What Is Wrong with Hate Speech Research? Global Media as Method and Theory
Discussant: Marwan M. Kraidy

Making Solidarity Sexy: Political Engagement Through Affect, Desire, and Digital Play
Yasmeen Mekawy

Prison Media Histories in the Arab World: Illicit Communication Practices as Counter-Infrastructures
Chafic Tony Najem

Off-Label Mobile Practices: Temporal Capital in Lebanon’s Telecommunication Sector
Chafic Tony Najem

China-Saudi Infrastructure and the Politics of Smart Cities and Esports
Joe F. Khalil

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Southern Digitalities: Rethinking the Digital From the Global South
Clovis Bergère and Marwan M. Kraidy

Lessons From Behind the Great FireWall: Chinese Journalists' Views on AI Integration in Newsrooms in China
George Anghelcev , Claudia Kozman , Geer Chen ’26, and Yudian Zhao ’28

From Beirut and Cairo to the Gulf: Political Economies of Media Reconfiguration
Joe F. Khalil

Digital Inequality and Online Civic Participation: Comparative Evidence From Spain and Qatar
Eddy Borges-Rey

Monday, June 8, 2026

The Erotics of Solidarity: Invested Detachment and the Affective Politics of Digital Play
Yasmeen Mekawy

Discourse of Depression and Trauma on Arabic Social Media: A Matched-Pairs Approach to Gendered Narratives of Mental Health
Wajdi Zaghouani

Storytelling and Reaction Videos: From Legacy Media to Creator Genres in the MENA
Heather Jaber

Environmental Advocacy through the Lens of AI: Introducing SCOPE-TRA, an LLM-Based Method for Studying Online Influencers Follower Communities
George Anghelcev