Does communication studies have an identity? (original) (raw)
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Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 2020
Introduction: In “Ferment in the Field” (1983), 37 years ago, Katz stated that the best thing that had happened to communication research was to stop looking for evidence of the media's ability to change opinions, attitudes and actions in the short term to analyze its role in the configuration of our images of reality. Mattelart (1983) encouraged scholars to study the interaction between audience and media from a noncommercial perspective and Ewen (1983) proposed using oral histories or literary sources. Four decades later, the short-term effects of media continue to be studied, predominating the analysis of their content (Martínez Nicolás and Saperas, 2011, 2016), the type of analysis on which, as it happened thirty years ago (Cáceres and Caffarel, 1992; p. 12), the field seems to support its specificity, suffering the lack of an intellectual institutionalization (Peters, 1986; Lacasa, 2017) which can be filled through a meta-research of ideas that distills perspectives, concepts and methods used in communication research. Method: Through the analysis of three reference volumes in meta-research, the volumes of the Journal of Communication “Ferment in the Field” (1983) and “The Future of the Field. Between fragmentation and cohesion” (1993), and the volume 1 of Rethinking Communication (1989) “Paradigm Issues”. Results: We will be bringing perspectives regarding the meanings of communication, the disciplinary character of the field of communication research and regarding the requirements needed for turning this field into a discipline. The perspectives and proposals emerge, mainly, from two ways of understanding communication: as product or result and as a relationship.
What's in a name? Defining communication and communication theory
European Journal of Communication, 2023
Communication is among the most used and least theorized concepts across various disciplines, including communication studies. There are many communication theories and models, most of which take communication for granted, only as a name and an unproblematic/self-evident concept. The concept's ambiguity relates to the definition of borders and the discipline's content. In 'Communication theory and the disciplines', Jefferson D. Pooley (2016a) presents an exhaustive list of disciplines that relate or are sensitive to communication theory, including sociology, psychology, political science, geography, economics, philosophy, history, literary studies, and cognate fields such as cultural studies, visual studies, game studies, popular music studies, gender studies, and LGBT studies. Located at the intersection of various disciplines, communication studies host a plethora of analytical frameworks, epistemological paradigms, and research interests. However, 'what it gained in intellectual richness. .. it lacked in disciplinary focus and shared identity' (Waisbord, 2019). Labeling communication studies as a post-discipline, Waisbord points to ontological plurality, theoretical heteroglossia, hyper-specialization of contemporary scholarship, and the overall decline of grand theories as the main reasons for the identity crisis. Communication is defined as connection, dialogue, expression, information, persuasion, and symbolic interaction (Waisbord, 2019). However, the ontological status of communication as such has not been adequately elaborated. What defines communication scholarship? What is the object and subject of communication? Most important of all, what is communication? These questions remain and seem to remain valid in the foreseeable future.
Recognizing ‘ourselves’ in media and communications research
International Communication Gazette, 2016
In this article, I argue that interdisciplinarity in the media and communication field encourages a focus on why the media and communication matter. It helps to draw scholarly attention to the need for theory development and critical analysis of the material and symbolic facets of mediated communication. Interdisciplinarity offers a pathway for resisting the hegemony of disciplinary projects and this approach encourages reflexive engagement among scholars within the media and communication field and beyond. The interdisciplinary pathway differs from a disciplinary approach because it can be open and responsive to the lived problems and experiences of social actors, examined from a variety of theoretical standpoints. For this reason, the interdisciplinary approach to the field means that while there is a need for an orientation to the problems to be investigated, it does not need to own a set of ‘disciplinary’ problems.
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Communication Research (pre-peer review version)
This article argues that the perceived deficiencies of Communication Research are not due to derivative research, but result from the inappropriate application of paradigmatic thinking to the field. Instead, I advance the view that paradigmatic incommensurability should not be thought of as disciplinary ships passing in the night, but rather a bustling port where disparate ideas and theories meet and propagate. Beginning with a brief discussion of Kuhn and paradigms, I use the sub-field of Framing as a synecdoche for Communication Research to exemplify the utility that stems from theoretical cross-pollination. In conclusion, embracing perspectives from competing communicative traditions is an invaluable basis for solving real world problems, and a legitimate praxis through which Communication Research can return something of value to society.
What is the science of communication? A possible definition
International Journal of Social and Educational Innovation (IJSEIro), 2021
The article's aim is to provide a definition of the science of communication together with the delimitation of the field of research and the identification of a general research method. The starting point is the general phenomenon of communication in the living world, as the research field of communication science is limited, by successive delimitations, to media discourses. The most important aspect that has been highlighted is the political nature of media speeches. Politics de-homogenizes the discursive mass and at the same time provides a clear criterion for classifying discourses. Thus, insofar as communication is media-based, it is also a political communication. The science of communication is defined as the study of the phenomenon of integration and discursive distancing, in other words of the discursive competition and social negotiation. The starting point of the entire process of definition is the work "Autonomous Discourse. Communication Strategies" (2013).
An analysis on communication theory and discipline
Scientometrics, 2012
This research explores the structure and status of theories used in Communication as an alternative for Communication discipline identity research and characteristics evaluation. This research assumes that communication theories are not only ongoing practices of intellectual communities, but also discourse about how theory can address a range of channels, transcend specific technologies and bridge levels of analysis. It examines widely-cited theoretical contentions among academic articles and the connections among these theories. Network analysis suggests that framing theory is the most influential of the identified theories (ranking first in frequency and degree, closeness, betweenness and eigenvector centrality) and serves to link other communication theories and theory groups. While mass communication and technology theories exhibited the highest centrality, interpersonal, persuasion and organization communication theories were grouped together, integrating sub-theories of each group. Framing theory was the most popular and influential communication theory bridging not only mass communication theories, but also interpersonal, technology, information system, health, gender, inter-cultural and organizational communication theories. Scientometrics (2013Scientometrics ( ) 95:985-1002 987 authors or author teams. In comparison, the present study identified 89 theories that appeared more than three times in the 1,156 research articles of the four journals. 785 of these articles met Anderson's requirements for inclusion in the study (177 articles out of 238 from HCR, 301 articles out of 404 from JOC, 127 articles out of 222 from CM, and 180 articles out of 292 from CR). The theory group (i.e., mass, interpersonal, health, technology communication theories) to which each theory belongs was determined by following the definitions and guidelines suggested by Littlejohn and Foss (2009).
Communication as Social Science (and More)
International Journal of Communication 5 (2011), Feature 1-20
As often happens, I submitted my title before I knew what I wanted to talk about. I do want to speak about communication research as a field, but not only as a field of social science. To try to contain communication in actually existing social science would be to reduce it in unfortunate ways. But at the same time, as someone much invested in social science, I harbor hopes that communication research will be deeply and widely integrated into social science more generally. I believe that the intellectually serious study of communication should be transformative for the social sciences. Preparing for this speech, I thought I should find out what the field of communication research actually was. I had a few preconceptions and I thought I had learned something from experience. I have done research on themes that are prominent in the field of communications. I have served on several PhD committees and even hold a "courtesy" faculty appointment in NYU's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. I have been a dean, director of two major university centers in which research on communication figured prominently, and President of the Social Science Research Council. Indeed, in my years at the SSRC we have launched programs both in the field of communication (art and media, intellectual property rights, media reform, the public sphere) and on the field of communication (an effort to promote links between academic researchers and activists). So I didn't think I was totally ignorant. Nonetheless, I was not confident in my grasp of just what knit the whole field of communications together, gave it boundaries and a center of gravity, and made it tick. So naturally I did what my undergraduates do, and what if we are honest, we all do. I looked it up in Wikipedia. Here, I learned the following: Communication as an academic discipline, sometimes called "communicology," relates to all the ways we communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The communication discipline includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A body of scholarship all about communication is presented and explained in textbooks, electronic publications, and academic journals. In the journals, researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for an ever-expanding understanding of how we all communicate. Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study Copyright © 2011 (Craig Calhoun, calhoun@ssrc.org). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org. 2 Craig Calhoun International Journal of Communication 5 (2011) dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about (sic). Definitions of communication range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the different parameters of human symbolic interaction. 1 Let me sum up my electronic research. Communications is an academic discipline that: 1. Covers everything.
Building on an in-depth analysis of the core literature grappling with the philosophical problematization of communication, this article examines the oft-asserted interdisciplinary nature of communication studies by assessing some of its underlying presuppositions at the ontological and epistemological levels. The article evaluates the coherence of our fragmented discipline through the articulation of the categories of the One and the Multiple in ontological and epistemological directions. In doing so, the recurrent conception of communication studies as an interdiscipline is criticized while recognizing the importance of undertaking interdisciplinary research within the field. Are especially considered the historical roots of interdisciplinary advocacies, namely the institutional demands for interdisciplinarity that have often resulted in conceptions of communication studies by communication scholars themselves as a crossroads or a service discipline. Building from Ernst Cassirer's developments regarding the " theory of the concept'', the author contends in the final section of the paper that the solution to the lack of coherence of the field lies in the necessity for communication studies to discipline themselves in order for the research undertaken within the field to acquire a common framework of intelligibility.
MEDS 501 communication and media theories (2023 version)
Masters in Media Studies (MMS) MEDS 501 Communication and Media Theories (3 cr hrs) This course is aimed at developing strong theoretical understanding of communication and media among the students. It also aims at enabling the students to approach and analyze various social and cultural phenomena from the perspective of communication. It deals with various aspects of communication theory with special reference to the trajectories of communication theorization, classic and recent media theories and the multicultural, multidisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic turn of the communication discipline. Glocal discernment of communication through this course is aimed at preparing the students for coping with contemporary discursive practices in the academia with special reference to communication theory. Contents include various traditions of and approaches to communication theory, inter/multi-disciplinarity of communication/media studies with special reference to philosophy and various social science disciplines, selected theories of communication and media, De-Westernization of and generative ideas for communication theorization and analysis of recent academic endeavors with regard to theorizing media.