Addressing Whiteness in communication scholar composition and collaboration across seven decades of ICA journals (1951–2022)

Abstract

The persisting legacies of colonialism have called for scholars to be more active in their efforts to dismantle and decenter the normative foundations of Whiteness in scholarly practices. This article examines the intersectional structures of authorship and collaboration patterns among scholarly teams within five flagship Communication journals. We used a bibliometric analysis to examine the race, gender, institution, and institution type of 11,292 authors from five International Communication Association journals between 1951 and 2022. We found that the dominating representation of white, male, and U.S.-based scholars is decreasing, but stark disparities within the composition of and collaborations among Communication scholars still remain. We offer insights into how these patterns reproduce structural inequities and propose future directions for scholars to support and participate in the ongoing work to dismantle and decenter Whiteness in academia. All data, code, and analyses are available at https://osf.io/8bszj/.