This conference will set a new agenda for media studies in new media worlds, generating new dialog, and making a critical difference in the field. The historical compartmentalization of media studies into different approaches, often in different academic departments, has left the field poorly prepared for the new dynamics. Such nominal fields as mass communication, journalism, broadcasting, telecommunication, and policy studies have each developed their theories, methods, and habits of thought in reference to only some media, parts of the communication process, and historical and cultural contexts. Compounding that fragmentation, the media are of increasing concern to scholars in many other areas of communication scholarship, from rhetoric to health to organizational communication, each bringing their own agendas and methods. The Exploring New Media Worlds conference will generate a discussion that ranges across all media and modes of communication, bringing scholars together from each approach, addressing the changing configurations of media in social life in historical and global contexts.