Media Psychology Conference 2021

The 12th Conference of the Media Psychology Division of the German Psychological Society will take place from September 8th to 10th, 2021, at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Both the division and the local organizer, Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, sincerely invite all of you to join the discussion.

National and international researchers from all areas of media psychology as well as associated disciplines are invited. We welcome contributions on a broad range of topics that demonstrate the importance and impact of 'the media' in its various forms. This year's conference will pay special attention to human-machine and human-agent interaction.

The conference will be held in English. The conference program will include keynote presentations, thematic panels, and poster sessions. The division will also give out the Best Paper Award 2021 at the conference. Continuing the division’s efforts to promote rigor and transparency in research, the conference will also host a special panel of registered reports in which presenters also compete for funding of the study presented.
We hope to be able to offer the conference as a hybrid event with both a physical presence in Aachen as well as virtual components. Depending on the status of the Covid-19 pandemic, we may have to switch to an all-virtual format. This decision will be made end of June 2021 (about 10 weeks in advance of the conference date).

SUBMISSIONS

The conference invites several types of submissions:

POSITION PAPERS & THEORETICAL PAPERS

Position papers and theoretical contributions will be presented in plenary talks. These presentations should cover a current topic in media psychology and be of broad interest to the research community. This could include systematic reviews or meta-analyses, but also advances in theoretical work, or new approaches to describe and understand the available literature in a given field. For position papers please submit extended abstract of 1000 words max.

RESEARCH REPORTS

This year, all research reports will be presented in the form of posters. Proposals for posters should be submitted as 500-word abstracts. In the abstract, you should provide (1) a brief description of the theoretical background, (2) research questions, and (3) a summary of the methodological approach. Please do not include any results of your study in the submission. Submissions will be judged on quality of theory and methods, not results. However, participants are expected to present their results at the conference.

REGISTERED REPORTS: PHASE 1 PROPOSALS

Registered Reports submissions can be made by simply submitting a Phase 1 study protocol that is currently under review at any one journal that offers Registered Reports and for which data collection has not yet begun at the point of submission. Speakers present their study design in plenary talks. Further, a jury chooses one of the studies to receive financial support by the division of up to 2000 EUR. There is no particular journal that the Phase 1 protocol should be under review at, but the study should be relevant to the media psychology community. If you would like to learn more about Registered Reports and which journals offer them, you can do so on this website . Registered Reports have no word limit.

MEDIA PSYCH DEBATE CLUB: Topics and Speakers

With the Debate Club, the conference is introducing a new format in which speakers engage in a scholarly on-stage debate on a contentious topic in media psychology.
Submissions should include potential debate topics in the domain of media psychology in the form of short (and potentially provocative) statements (such as “Reading comics is harmful to minors!”) that can be discussed from two opposing positions (e.g., pro/contra). Notably, submissions may indicate which position the speaker would prefer to represent during the debate, or, alternatively be randomly assigned to represent one of them. At the conference, both speakers then give some prepared remarks and get to reply to the statements made by their discussion partner. Submissions can be made jointly by two speakers who would like to debate each other, or individually, in which case the conference organizers will facilitate the search for a discussion partner.

Submission and Review Procedure

All submissions have to be uploaded via the easychair system and will be reviewed by the Conference Committee. Each author may submit and present only one contribution as first author (Debate Club submissions do not count toward this limit); additional contributions as co-author are welcome. The submission system will be open until April 15th, 2021 .