scholarly journals Sinking the Flagship: Why Communication Studies is Better Without One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jefferson Pooley
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
American Sociological Review ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Quarterly Journal ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Citation Metrics ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Media And Communication

Does U.S. communication research have a flagship journal? Not really, if by flagship we mean something like the American Sociological Review or the American Political Science Review. Those are unquestioned flagships, ratified (in a self-reinforcing loop) by citation metrics and by the disciplines’ tacit knowledge (Garand & Giles, 2003; Hargens, 1991; Oromaner, 2008). Ask a media studies scholar, and she might mention the Journal of Communication—but she could just as easily offer Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly or even Cinema Journal. She wouldn’t be wrong in any case. All four titles carry a major scholarly association's imprimatur. What is odd, of course, is that there are four scholarly associations all claiming the same territory. If media and communication has no flagship, it is because there no coherent discipline in the first place.Let’s stipulate that there is no media studies flagship. While our would-be discipline’s problems run deep, my view is that this is no longer one of them. Maybe it is OK, in other words, that we do not have an organ to anoint the “best” stuff. There was always something problematic about the flagship anyway: It is too easy for a narrow agenda to seize the power to consecrate. (Just ask a sociologist.) But the main reason that we are better off without a flagship, after all these years, is that its good and valuable functions can be taken up elsewhere.

Mediation Analysis and Warranted Inferences in Media and Communication Research: Examining Research Design in Communication Journals From 1996 to 2017

2020 ◽  
pp. 107769902096151
Author(s):  
Michael Chan ◽  
Panfeng Hu ◽  
Macau K. F. Mak
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Mediation Analysis ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Communication Research ◽  
Media And Communication

The number of studies employing mediation analysis has increased exponentially in the past two decades. Focusing on research design, this study examines 387 articles in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Media Psychology between 1996 and 2017. Findings show that while most studies report statistically significant indirect effects, they are inadequate to make causal inferences. Authors also often infer that they uncovered the “true” mediator(s) while alternative models and mediators are rarely acknowledged. Future studies should pay more attention to the role of research design and its implications for making causal inferences.

scholarly journals Professor Janet Wasko: An Interview with the President of the IAMCR and one of the Key Representatives of the Political Economy of Communication Approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Jernej Amon Prodnik ◽  
Janet Wasko
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
International Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Communication Approach ◽  
The University ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Political Economy Approach

This paper presents an interview with Janet Wasko. She is a Professor and Knight Chair in Communication Research at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and widely considered as one of the key authors working in the tradition of the political economy of communication. Currently she is serving as the President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), one of the key international associations in the field of media and communication studies. She previously held several other positions in the IAMCR and served as the head of the Political Economy-section, which she also helped to establish. Professor Wasko published several influential books on the film industry, especially on Hollywood and the Disney Corporation. We talked especially about the influences on her approach, about her position in the IAMCR, her understanding of how the cultural and media industries work, the political economy approach in media and communication studies, and issues related to the film industry, which she mostly tackles in her own research.

scholarly journals Media and communication studies in Sweden

Publizistik ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Springer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Information Centre ◽  
The North ◽  
Sister Organization ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Media And Communication

AbstractMedia and communication studies is a comparatively young academic discipline in Sweden. The subject’s establishment began with the 1960s—a time when the expansion of mass media led to a bigger demand for analysis, education and critical reflection. Along with that, political and commercial interests in more knowledge led to commissioned research, another considerable factor in the subject’s development and institutionalization. The field was brought forth by humanistic and social-scientific strands, and some actors conveniently travel between these two since the demarcation lines are less pronounced in the North. Currently, roughly around 250 scholars are active in the field, with about 200 of them organized in DGPuK’s Nordic sister organization FSMK. Media and communication research in Sweden is also greatly oriented towards the broader Nordic context, institutionalized for instance through the Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom). For scholars, the labour market is comparatively open, not only for other Nordic academics but also for entries from countries outside Scandinavia. For students, the field provides a rich smorgasbord of general and highly specialized programmes or stand-alone courses of variable length offered in both Swedish and English. This article aims to inform about the history and the contemporary conditions of Swedish media and communication studies, with a personal note based on own experiences.

scholarly journals Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Media and Mass Communication Theory and Research: Positionality, Integrative Research, and Public Scholarship

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1(28)) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Mark Deuze
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Public Scholarship ◽  
Integrative Research ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Mass Communication Theory

In this essay I intend to tell a story of media studies and mass communication research as a field, based on the work of the late Denis McQuail – and that of editing the new edition of his seminal handbook McQuail’s Media and Mass Communication Theory (McQuail & Deuze, 2020). Using McQuail’s historical storytelling method, I specifically look at the challenge for the field in the context of a global pandemic alongside an infodemic, at a time when the whole world faces the consequences of recurrent lockdowns, social distancing measures, and institutional pressures to stay at home. Media studies and (mass) communication research, while having a distinct narrative, as a field has only just begun to articulate its relevance to society – we have only just started to tell our story. Using developments in understanding the self as a research tool, the implementation of integrative research designs, and calls for engaged and public scholarship, the paper outlines challenges and opportunities for what we can do with our field.

scholarly journals From Wasteland to Flower Bed: Ritual in the Website Communication of Urban Activist Gardeners

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Graf
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Urban Garden ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Patterns Of Communication ◽  
And Function ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Empirical Material

The goal of this article is to explore the website communication of urban activist gardeners by focusing on the concept of ritual as a heuristic category. In contrast to the majority of those doing research on ritual, I use a systems-theoretical approach in applying the concept of ritual to communication processes. I explore the role played by ritual in communication in order to answer questions such as, “What is specifically unique about the ritual mode of communicating?” and, following from this, “What function do these rituals serve in communication?” My subject, urban garden activism, is thus addressed from the perspective of media- and communication research. First, I briefly describe urban activist gardening and how communication is usually structured on their websites. Second, I present an outline of some theories and concepts of communication and ritual within media studies, and give a brief account of the systems-theoretical approach that I use. Third, I define some areas of ritual – that is, ritualized patterns of communication found in the urban activist gardeners’ empirical material – so as to provide answers regarding the means and function of ritual in communication.

scholarly journals Media Ecology – (Un)necessary Research Perspective in Communication and Media Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Laskowska ◽  
Krzysztof Marcyński
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Media And Communication

<p>The aim of this review and theoretical study is to determine the importance of media ecology theory for communication and media studies. Bearing in mind this research goal, the following research questions were asked: What is the media ecology theory? What approach to media and communication research does it represent? What research perspectives are proposed in the field of media ecology? What new can media ecology bring to communication and media studies? An additional objective of the article, and, at the same, time the intention of the authors, is to raise the interest of Polish researchers in the subject of media ecology and its various aspects, enriching research in the field of communication and media studies.</p>

scholarly journals Media Studies the Nordic Way

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Kirsten Drotner
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractBased on an overview of Anglo-American stocktaking of media and communication studies, this article situates Nordic media studies as a third route staked out between academic binaries of administrative and critical approaches. The key argument is this: Nordic media studies displays distinctive features of development that are shaped by Nordic welfarist ideals from the 1970s and 1980s rather than by international trends in the academy. Furthermore, these ideals are worth holding on to if the field of media studies is to thrive with quality and relevance in a globalised, connected, and deeply datafied platform society. I take media studies – not communication studies – as my point of departure, since this is the most feasible umbrella term when studying current modes of communication that are technologically mediated in ways that can be stored, shaped, and shared across time and space.

A History of International Communication Studies

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
International Communication ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Information And Communication

The intellectual impetus for international communication research has come from a variety of disciplines, notably political science, sociology, psychology, social psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and, of course, communication science and international relations. Although highly diverse in content, international communication scholarship, past and current, falls into distinct research traditions or areas of inquiry. The content and focus of these have changed over time in response to innovations in communication technologies and to the political environment. The development and spread of radio and film in the 1920s and 1930s increased public awareness and scholarly interest in the phenomenon of the mass media and in issues regarding the impact on public opinion. The extensive use of propaganda as an instrument of policy by all sides in World War I, and the participation of social scientists in the development of this instrument, provided an impetus for the development of both mass communication and international communication studies. There was a heavy emphasis on the micro level effects, the process of persuasion. Strategic considerations prior to and during World War II reinforced this emphasis. World War II became an important catalyst for research in mass communication. Analytical tools of communication research were applied to the tasks of mobilizing domestic public support for the war, understanding enemy propaganda, and developing psychological warfare techniques to influence the morale and opinion of allied and enemy populations. During the Cold War, U.S foreign policy goals continued to shape the direction of much research in international communication, notably “winning hearts and minds” of strategically important populations in the context of the East-West conflict. As new states began to emerge from colonial empires, communication became an important component of research on development. “Development research” emphasized the role of the mass media in guiding and accelerating development. This paradigm shaped both national and international development programs throughout the 1960’s. It resurfaced in the 1980s with a focus on telecommunication, and again in the 1990s, in modified form under the comprehensive label “information and communication technologies for development.” Development communication met serious criticism in the 1970s as the more general modernization paradigm was challenged. The emergence of new information and communication technologies in the 1990s inspired a vast literature on their impact on the global economy, foreign policy, the nation state and, more broadly, on their impact on power structures and social change. The beginning of the 21st century marks a transition point as the scholarship begins to respond to multiple new forms of communication and to new directions taken by the technologies that developed and spread in the latter part of the previous century

scholarly journals Artificial companions, social bots and work bots: communicative robots as research objects of media and communication studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1410-1426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Hepp
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Operating Systems ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Relevant Field ◽  
Research Objects ◽  
Media And Communication

The aim of this article is to outline ‘communicative robots’ as an increasingly relevant field of media and communication research. Communicative robots are defined as autonomously operating systems designed for the purpose of quasi-communication with human beings to enable further algorithmic-based functionalities – often but not always on the basis of artificial intelligence. Examples of these communicative robots can be seen in the now familiar artificial companions such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, the social bots present on social media platforms or work bots that automatically generate journalistic content. In all, the article proceeds in three steps. Initially, it takes a closer look at the three examples of artificial companions, social bots and work bots in order to accurately describe the phenomenon and their recent insinuation into everyday life. This will then allow me to grasp the challenges posed by the increasing need to deal with communicative robots in media and communication research. It is from this juncture from where I would like to draw back on the discussion about the automation of communication and clearly outline how communicative robots are more likely than physical artefacts to be experienced at the interface of automated communication and communicative automation.

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