Below is an abbreviated CFP for the Human-Machine Communication Preconference at ICA 2020 in Gold Coast, Australia. Full CFP available here: https://humanmachinecommunication.com Time/Date: 8:00-17:00, 21 May 2020 Location: On-site, Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre Cost: $75 faculty; $50 students Theme: Open Questions in Human-Machine Communication Brief description: The fifth annual pre-conference on Human-Machine Communication (HMC) aims to identify and explore the most pressing "open questions" surrounding communication between humans and technologies, such as chatbots, social robots and smart assistants. Scholars should address what they see as important open questions concerning the exchange of messages and creation of meaning between people and physical or virtual digital interlocutors, toward progressing theoretical and/or practical breakthroughs in relation to communication with these technologies and the discourses surrounding them. The pre-conference is open to all sorts of scholarship, both empirical and theoretical, quantitative and qualitative. Submissions might consider questions relating to: -Gender and communicative technologies such as chatbots, social robots and smart assistants -Accessibility to such technologies for people with disabilities -Uses to which communicative technologies are already being put and might be put in the future -Ethical questions around technologies that communicate in humanlike ways -Implications of integrating such technologies into people’s daily lives -Potential repercussions of the increasing deployment of communicative machines for societies more broadly -Specification of boundaries for convergence and divergence between human-human and human-machine communication practices -Power relations between chatbots, social robots, smart assistants and humans -Social representations and folk models of chatbots, social robots, and smart assistants Submission format: Papers, 750-1000 words excluding references. Submission deadline: 7 February 2020 Questions and submissions should be directed to Autumn Edwards, autumn.edwards@wmich.edu _______________ Andrea L. Guzman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Communication Northern Illinois University alguzman@niu.edu Inaugural chair, ICA Human-Machine Communication Interest Group: https://www.icahdq.org/group/hmc Recent Publications: Artificial Intelligence and communication: A Human-Machine Communication research agenda (with Seth C. Lewis) New Media & Society: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444819858691 Automation, journalism, and Human–Machine Communication: Rethinking roles and relationships of humans and machines in news (with Seth C. Lewis & Thomas R. Schmidt) Digital Journalism: https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1577147 <https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1577147> Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, & Ourselves: https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/64309?format=PBK