The ICSI Regional Conference is the 6th bi-annual meeting of the Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction Division of ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association. This year’s conference is hosted by Tilburg University, Department of Communication and Cognition, will be held in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

This year, we welcome over 50 participants. We have 2 very interesting keynotes by Jeffrey Treem, associate professor of Communication Studies, Organizational Communication & Technology Group, University of Texas at Austin and Marjolijn Antheunis, professor of Communication and Technology, Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University.

This year’s theme is “(Re-)Connecting Perspectives on Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction”. The title of the conference refers to the two main themes we want to address in this conference.

First, in this conference we want to connect scholars from the different sub-disciplines of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Amongst us are scholars who study workplace interaction, communication in interpersonal relationship, impression management, and interpersonal health communication. Connecting our insights from different fields may inform our own research, provide creative ideas for future research, and help theory development. For example, patient-doctor interactions may mirror employer-employee communication and research on online dating may inform how employees become successful brand ambassadors.

Second, our title reflects the fact that our mediated and unmediated interactions are increasingly connected and integrated. We can no longer consider online communication as separate from offline communication. This raises question as to how to combine different online and offline communication channels in our daily interactions. For example, how do we strategically employ different communication technologies to attain our work and private goals? Can we establish an interpersonal relationship with a device like Amazon’s Echo and can Google Pixel indeed take care of our mobile conversations? How do online support communities help us in our daily lives? As advanced communication technologies increasingly become part of our everyday experience, we are forced to revisit and connect theories of online and offline social interaction.

See https://ICSI2019.nl for more information.