The World Journalism Education Council decided to cancel the 2023WJEC because of the lack of global outlook in the submissions and the travel restrictions
The call for papers for the 2023 Congress closed on October 15. In the event, we received 393 abstracts, but 85 percent were submitted by journalism educators from China. This means that many parts of the world are either under-represented or not represented at all. And if the conference is massively dominated by participants from a single country, it will simply not be possible to achieve the WJEC’s stated mission of “providing a common space for journalism educators from around the world to focus on issues that are universal in the field”.
Planning for 2023 has been seriously undermined by the pandemic and associated travel restrictions. Many educators have already questioned the feasibility of attending, a situation which is further complicated by the fact that different governments provide different advice about travelling to China. This advice ranges from ‘don’t travel’ and ‘exercise a high degree of caution’ to advising individuals to be prepared to undergo a mandatory quarantine period of anything from seven days to four weeks.
We would like to thank the China Communication University and Shanghai International Studies University, and particularly our colleagues Professor Guo Ke and Professor Zhi Li, for the great work done in preparing the bid and promoting the congress. – the uncertainty of times is simply beyond our control.
All colleagues who sent an abstract in, will be informed about the WJEC decision. We will coordinate work with colleagues in China and if two universities decide to run a national or regional conference, we will share the news and inform participants.
The upcoming national and regional conferences of j-educators are always good news, so please get in touch if you are planning one.
Let’s hope the world becomes a better place soon and we start seeing each other at various conferences before we all meet in Perth in 2025. More on that to come!
