When Communication Became a Discipline argues that speech and journalism professors embraced the concept of communication between 1964 and 1982. They changed the names of their scholarly societies and journals and revised their academic curricula. Five “strands” of scholarship became and remain central to this transformation. Communication is not a traditional academic discipline, but its scholars convinced their colleagues to understand and embrace it. When Communication Became a Discipline presents an argument with historical evidence that illustrates scholarly creativity at its finest.
Communication studies is a fragmented field. As a result of its roots in various disciplinary traditions, it is built on fluid intellectual boundaries with no theoretical or analytical center. Should we worry about this state of dispersion or be concerned that the discipline does not meet the basic conditions that define an academic field of inquiry? Silvio Waisbord argues that communication studies is a post-discipline and that it is impossible to transcend fragmentation and specialization through a single project of intellectual unity. What brings communication studies together is an institutional architecture of academic units, professional associations, and journals, rather than a shared commitment to a common body of knowledge, questions, and debates. This should not, Waisbord argues, be a matter of concern. Communication studies is better served by recognizing dispersion, embracing pluralism, fostering cross-cutting lines of inquiry, and tackling real-world problems, rather than hoping to meet conditions which would qualify it as a discipline. Communication: A Post-Discipline is important reading for scholars and advanced students of communication studies, as well as anyone interested in the state of this fascinating and vital academic field.
'Solid and elegantly written introduction to its subject, up to speed with the current movements in the field, this is an excellent textbook for first-year students. The layout is well-conceived, and interspersed with Berger's own whimsical cartoons' - Sight and Sound
A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.
A provocative and eye-opening study of the essential role the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency played in the advancement of communication studies during the Cold War era, now with a new introduction by Robert W. McChesney and a new preface by the author Since the mid-twentieth century, the great advances in our knowledge about the most effective methods of mass communication and persuasion have been visible in a wide range of professional fields, including journalism, marketing, public relations, interrogation, and public opinion studies. However, the birth of the modern science of mass communication had surprising and somewhat troubling midwives: the military and covert intelligence arms of the US government. In this fascinating study, author Christopher Simpson uses long-classified documents from the Pentagon, the CIA, and other national security agencies to demonstrate how this seemingly benign social science grew directly out of secret government-funded research into psychological warfare. It reveals that many of the most respected pioneers in the field of communication science were knowingly complicit in America’s Cold War efforts, regardless of their personal politics or individual moralities, and that their findings on mass communication were eventually employed for the purposes of propaganda, subversion, intimidation, and counterinsurgency. An important, thought-provoking work, Science of Coercion shines a blazing light into a hitherto remote and shadowy corner of Cold War history.
This concise volume presents key concepts and entries from the twelve-volume ICA International Encyclopedia of Communication (2008), condensing leading scholarship into a practical and valuable single volume. Based on the definitive twelve-volume IEC, this new concise edition presents key concepts and the most relevant headwords of communication science in an A-Z format in an up-to-date manner Jointly published with the International Communication Association (ICA), the leading academic association of the discipline in the world Represents the best and most up-to-date international research in this dynamic and interdisciplinary field Contributions come from hundreds of authors who represent excellence in their respective fields An affordable volume available in print or online
This book explains why the earliest cities had grid-form street systems, what conditions led to their being overwhelmingly preferred for 5000 years throughout the world, why the Founding Fathers wanted gridform cities and how they affect economic transactions. Real property has been instrumental in forming urban settlements for 5000 years, but virtually all urban form commentary, theory and research has ignored this reality. The result is an incomplete and flawed understanding of cities. Real property became a means of arranging spatial patterns caused by millennia of human evolutionary and historical developments with respect to access and movement. As a result, access to resources of all types became a regulatory mechanism controlled, at least in part, by real property ownership. The effects of real property on urban spatial patterns are currently best seen by examining American urban space, which has changed significantly over the past 200 years. This change, which began in the 1840s and established path dependence through a combination of design thought, sentimental pastoralism and financial prowess resulted in an urban regime shift that diminished economic resilience. This book offers a rethinking of how real property relates to real space, examines the thought of form promoters, links space, property, neurological evolution and settlement form, shows access is measurable and describes the plusses and minuses of functionalism, rent seeking, general purpose technology, grid-form street systems and what the American Founding Fathers thought about urban form.
In The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture, Isaac E. Catt offers a unique criticism of naturalistic reductions of humans to animals, to neuro substrates and to DNA. Catt explores a new interpretation of Plessner and Bourdieu, revealing the combinatory logic of semiotic phenomenology in both and their common problematic of communication. Through an emergent synthesis of philosophical anthropology and communicology, this book provides a basis for criticism of the failed mechanistic medical model in psychiatry, a fresh argument for reconceptualizing psychiatry as a human science, and for construction of a new ecological image of communicative being. Throughout the book, alternative attempts to transcend dualisms such as cybernetics, anti-anthropocentrism, and biosemiotics are revealed to risk reification of the very objects of their analysis. Scholars of communication, semiotics, philosophy, psychiatry, cultural studies, mental distress, and psychology will find this book of particular interest.
Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen have won the 2019 Danish communication prize (KOM-pris) for their world-class research in organisational crises, crisis management and crisis communication. This prize is awarded by The Danish Union of Journalists (Dansk Journalistforbund) and Kforum. http://mgmt.au.dk/nyheder/nyheder/news-item/artikel/finn-frandsen-and-winni-johansen-win-the-kom-pris-2019/ The aim of this handbook is to provide an up-to-date introduction to the discipline of crisis communication. Based on the most recent international research and through a series of levels (from the textual to the inter-societal level), this handbook introduces the reader to the most important concepts, models, theories and debates within the field of crisis communication. Crisis communication is a young and very vibrant field of research and practice. It is therefore crucial that researchers, students and practitioners have access to presentations and discussions of the most recent research. Like the other handbooks in the HOCS series, this handbook contains a general introduction, a chapter on the history of crisis communication research, a series of thematic chapters on crisis communication research at various levels, a chapter perspectives, a glossary of key terms, and lists of further reading for each chapter (with references to publications in English, German, and French). Overview Section I – Introducing the field General introduction A brief history of crisis management and crisis communication: From organizational practice to academic discipline Reframing the field: Public crisis management, political crisis management, and corporate crisis management Section II – Between text and context Image repair theory Situational crisis communication theory: Influences, provenance, evolution, and prospects Contingency theory: Evolution from a public relations theory to a theory of strategic conflict management Discourse of renewal: Understanding the theory’s implications for the field of crisis communication Making sense of crisis sensemaking theory: Weick’s contributions to the study of crisis communication Arenas and voices in organizational crisis communication: How far have we come? Visual crisis communication Section III – Organizational level To minimize or mobilize? The trade-offs associated with the crisis communication process Internal crisis communication: On current and future research Whistleblowing in organizations Employee reactions to negative media coverage Crisis communication and organizational resilience Section IV – Interorganizational level Fixing the broken link: Communication strategies for supply chain crises Reputational interdependence and spillover: Exploring the contextual challenges of spillover crisis response Crisis management consulting: An emerging field of study Section V – Societal level Crisis and emergency risk communication: Past, present, and future Crisis communication in public organizations Communicating and managing crisis in the world of politics Crisis communication and the political scandal Crisis communication and social media: Short history of the evolution of social media in crisis communication Mass media and their symbiotic relationship with crisis Section VI – Intersocietal level Should CEOs of multinationals be spokespersons during an overseas product harm crisis? Intercultural and multicultural approaches to crisis communication Section VII – Critical approaches Ethics in crisis communication Section VIII – The future The future of organizational crises, crisis management and crisis communication For a detailed table of contents, please see here.
