Conference Track

Description / Focus

1.     Promoting global and local health, reducing the impact of disease and tackling major health incidents through behavioural influence

Non-communicable and communicable disease research, implementation, and evaluation. Action at policy, strategy and operational programme delivery levels in both the Global North and Global South settings. Formative and evaluative research examining gender and other social determinants of health and how they were considered by health interventions. Sessions are also welcome that focus on strategies to promote behaviour change during emergency contexts such as pandemics, considerations of differential responses to the needs and contexts of remote, rural, peri-urban and urban populations.

2.     Tackling and combating mis and disinformation

Interventions, research and strategies for dealing with growing mis and disinformation and other influencing strategies designed to subvert positive social programmes. Information literacy, media regulation and online safeguarding.

3.     Using citizen focused design thinking, participatory design, actor engagement and co-creation

Citizen insight and engagement in the deployment, implementation and evaluation of social marketing interventions. The use of design thinking, co-creation, action-research, and prototyping in social marketing. Cross cultural issues. Individual, group, community, and/or organisational wellbeing. Strategies to give a voice and improve the agency of non-mainstream communities, programmes and research.

4.     Education, peacebuilding and transparency

Behaviour change strategies aiming at improving education and literacy (e.g., financial literary, child development through play libraries), youth empowerment through the arts, citizen empowerment to demand transparency and integrity from governments; and fostering citizen culture to drive social cohesiveness and advance peacebuilding. Initiatives implemented in conflict or post-conflict contexts or humanitarian emergencies, working with migrants and refugee camps and strategies to combat anticorruption and foster a transparency culture at the down-, mid- and up-steam levels are welcome. Solutions at the interception of social marketing, education for global citizenship, social and behaviour change communication, law and international human rights are encouraged.

5.     Mental health and wellbeing

Research and interventions aimed at promoting positive mental health, dealing with mental disorder, stigmatisation, community well-being promotion, social capital development and community resilience and tolerance.

6.     Reducing crime, addressing domestic violence, people trafficking, promoting safety, security, and social cohesion

Action on understanding and combating crime and other forms of anti-social behaviour. Safety promotion and accident prevention, safer communities, and social cohesion. National security, anti-radicalisation, people trafficking, all forms of physical, mental, and economic violence; discrimination, migration and supporting refugees. The conference also welcomes work focused on social conflicts impacting social mobilization, post-conflict resolution, issues arising from poverty and anti-corruption initiatives.

7.     Addressing intersecting inequalities and advancing equality

Initiatives addressing inequities and inequalities based on gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, and/or other social identity factors. Reducing poverty, action on promoting community empowerment, community, and rural development. Conceptual submissions and practical behaviour change strategies using feminist, queer, cultural, and intersectional multidisciplinary perspectives to address inequities and inequalities. Formative studies examining the social, cultural, historical, economic, environmental, and political conditions that inhibit or advance equality in Global North and Global South contexts. Submissions about gender-based violence, sexual harassment, unequal pay based on gender, racism, and women-empowerment are part of this track.

8.     Global climate change, environment protection, over consumption and sustainability

Prevention and problem-solving research and programme implementation related to sustainable consumption, production, farming, fishing, and including action on safety mobility/transportation and sustainable mobility. Strategies addressing behavioral, ecological, and political drivers of sustainable energy consumption and living, including solutions for informal settlements. Environmental safeguarding, species protection and ecological campaigning. Strategies involving indigenous peoples, afro communities and/or small farmer communities (comunidades campesinas in Spanish) and/or considering ancient knowledge/wisdom (saberes ancestrales in Spanish), Links between environment, conservation, consumption, consumer behaviour, urbanism, architecture, culture, and health.

9.     Digital and technological impact on social behaviour. New platforms and techniques, programme implementation and government policy

Positive and negative impact new technologies on human behaviour and influence. The use of technology, social media, artificial intelligence, gamification, and other forms of digital/ online community action. Technology applied to problem solving and collective action to address social issues. Intended and unintended consequences of the use of digital platforms and technologies to influence behaviour change, as well as ethical and critical regulatory considerations (e.g., data protection) are explored in this track.

10.   Reducing the impact of addiction including substance, misuse alcohol, tobacco and gambling

Prevention, treatment detection and harm reduction programmes. Research and evaluations across sectors, regions, cultures, and level of economic development. Historical and geopolitical perspectives, both individually and collectively. Links between social marketing, public health, law, culture, and foreign policy.

11.   Interdisciplinary and cross sector action to influence behaviour for social good

Cross disciplinary, cross sector partnerships and coalitions. Strategies to reduce social problems among partners and participants and to foster equitable collaboration considering the voices of women, under-represented groups, and early-career researchers, and promote sustainable intervention programmes. Partnership management, stakeholder engagement and evaluation. Skills integration and strategies to build equitable partnerships, for example, in the contexts of North-South and South-South cooperation projects; and to manage power relationships among the funder, partners, and participants.   

12.   Advancing theory, research in social marketing and behavioural influence

Innovative, new theoretical thinking/ research methods and approaches in social marketing theory. Looking at why social marketing sometimes fails. Learning from other sectors and disciplines.

13.   Using systems thinking to solve complex societal problems and influence social policy

Systems approaches to theory and research focused on systems analysis and developing systemic critical response to complex social challenges. Policy integration and upstream social marketing. Transformative services delivery, midstream social marketing social marketing management and planning.

14.   Critical Social Marketing

Critical social marketing examines the impact of commercial marketing and business on society and/or critically analyzes social marketing theories, concepts, discourses, and practice, to generate critique, conflict, and change that facilitates social good. This track encourages submissions that engage with critical theories, ideologies, citizen-driven initiatives, citizen-cultures, theoretical pluralism, historical contexts influence on behaviour change, as well as on critical approaches to examining the impact of commercial marketing and institutions on society (e.g.alcohol/tobacco/food/neoliberalism). This track encourages work advancing critical debate and reflexivity in social marketing such as critiques of current social marketing principles and practice, and how to improve it to be responsive to changing times. Submissions advancing the emancipatory social justice agenda, decolonization, ethical and moral dimensions, and Global South perspectives are also welcome on this track.