The Canadian Communication Association is a national, bilingual association of communications researchers, educators, and private and public sector professionals in Canada. Established in 1979, the CCA/ACC "seeks to advance communication research and studies in the belief that a better understanding of communication is crucial to building a vibrant society."
History
1970s
The creation of the CCA has been considered to be due in part to research that emerged out of the Ontario Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry of 1976. This commission drew together a number of scholars who later met at a conference in the University of Windsor in 1978 and again in 1979 in Philadelphia where the presentations tended to focus on research that came out of the commission. In this same year, the CCA was established on June 1, 1979 during the Learned Societies Conference in Saskatoon, Canada. The pre-existing Canadian Journal of Communication was voted to be the official journal of the association. However, discussions over this arrangement led to the absence of any legally binding relationship between the two. The journal exists independently of the association and is owned by its subscribers.
1980s
Part of the activities of the CCA in its early years was to address the combination of unique Canadian perspectives and the burgeoning theories on the nature and definition of communication. Advancing the debate, especially at early CCA meetings and conferences were "pioneers of Canadian communication studies" including: Earle Beattie, William Gilsdorf, Garth Jowett, Annie Mear, William Melody, Walter Romanow, Paul Rutherford, Liora Salter, Eugene Tate, James R. Taylor, Gaëtan Tremblay, Gertrude Robinson and others. Indeed, "he politics of the Canadian Communication Association was grounded in the search for an answer to the very definition of communication." The creation of the CCA and has been described as a part of the larger trend to establish the interdisciplinary field of communication as part of emergent scholarly, professional, and corporate activities in the twentieth century.
1990s
In the early 1990s, news and discussion about the association was communicated by an electronic mailing list called CCANet. In the later half of the 1990s, the Association for the Study of Canadian Radio and Television / Association des études sur la radio-télévision canadienne ended its term as an association and merged with the CCA due to a lack of interest from young scholars.
Structure
Current
The governance structure for 2016-2018 is as follows:
The Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize was initiated by David Taras, president of the CCA in 1998-1999 and is named in honour of Gertrude J. Robinson. The 2016 honouree was Nick Dyer-Witheford for Cyberproletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. Toronto, ON: Pluto Press/Between the Lines.
Beaverbrook Media@McGill Student/CCA Paper Prize, previously known as the Van Horne Prize, is awarded to the best student paper submitted to the annual CCA annual conference.
