Registration details can be found here: https://www.natcom.org/convention-events/convention-resources/preconferences
The nature of work is evolving in fundamental ways. The landscape and trajectory of traditional jobs, as well as work in non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, and even social movements, is changing as organizational structures and communication evolve. Despite recent research in this domain, there is still a need to consider how shifts in the sociotechnical environment impact the communication processes at play within organizations. Thus, as attention shifts to examine how information communication technologies are deployed, communication scholars are focusing on issues related to advances in artificial intelligence, automation at work, and increasing expectations of alignment and interaction between humans and technology. Communication theory and research have distinctive contributions to make in understanding and navigating the future of work. The technological and scientific progression offers an opportunity to advance fundamental communication accounts of novel and changing forms of organizing including the emergence and transformation of industries and occupations, forms of production, work-life balance, participation, the fostering and sustenance of innovation.
Advances in information communication technologies and the growth of artificial intelligence, automation at work, and increasing expectations for humans and technology partnerships have combined to create new avenues of research and theorizing. The evolution of work in tandem with the growth of information communication technology presents great opportunity, it is also clear that there are significant risks and concerns that much be addressed. For instance, automation of work and automation of routines may create or perpetuate certain hierarchies or biases in the workplace. Growing dependency on technology as a tool for organizing has implications for privacy and surveillance. Workplaces, movements, advocacy groups, and NGOs struggle with the development of appropriate policies and frameworks for engaging with new technology and new routines.
These opportunities and challenges underscore tensions between how academics, professionals and policymakers think about the role of technology in advancing modern society and the modern workplace.
This preconference will provide a space for discussing and theorizing the future of work today, and for thinking about the survival and evolution of existing organizational practices in ways that should have broad appeal for communication scholars. For example, these changes have profound implications for how we communicate about health and communicate in caregiving, how we manage our personal relationships in and out of the workplace, and how we grapple with autonomous agents in the public sphere. Likewise, media portrayals of AI, robotics, and ubiquitous, mobile, and interconnected computing shape and are shaped by macro-discursive constructions of the nature and future of work.