{"title":"Communication theory and application in post-socialist context","authors":"Marton Demeter, Andrea Bajnok","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47704822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Can a right to memory be counted among the rights society needs to safeguard, if so, what are its theoretical and conceptual foundations, and how do they relate to communications? We answer these questions by offering a new perspective regarding the right’s components, origin and justifications, the mechanisms needed to realize it and the legal framework required for such realization. We begin by first recognizing the fundamental role of memory in human life, in particular as it pertains to the creation, preservation, and endowment of identity, which justifies the need to protect it. We then discuss memory’s four elements—remembering, forgetting, being remembered, and being forgotten—and their dependence on communications. We follow by describing the nature of rights and the distinction between different types of rights. This helps us claim that recognizing the right to memory requires ensuring the capability to communicate by designing appropriate communication policies.
{"title":"A right to memory and communication policy: safeguarding the capability of remembrance","authors":"Noam Tirosh, Amit M. Schejter","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Can a right to memory be counted among the rights society needs to safeguard, if so, what are its theoretical and conceptual foundations, and how do they relate to communications? We answer these questions by offering a new perspective regarding the right’s components, origin and justifications, the mechanisms needed to realize it and the legal framework required for such realization. We begin by first recognizing the fundamental role of memory in human life, in particular as it pertains to the creation, preservation, and endowment of identity, which justifies the need to protect it. We then discuss memory’s four elements—remembering, forgetting, being remembered, and being forgotten—and their dependence on communications. We follow by describing the nature of rights and the distinction between different types of rights. This helps us claim that recognizing the right to memory requires ensuring the capability to communicate by designing appropriate communication policies.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44095443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article argues that concept of popular culture, as conceptualized within the media/cultural studies tradition in the Anglophone West, is in crisis. The idea of the “popular” that continues to be embraced by many critical media/communication and cultural studies scholars derives from postwar assumptions about mass media which no longer accurately fit present conditions. However, the resilience of these assumptions has created “the problem of popular culture,” a complicated and longstanding series of dilemmas for contemporary scholarship. This article documents several manifestations of this problem and proposes that scholars reserve the term popular culture for instances of popular practice.
{"title":"The problem of popular culture","authors":"D. Powers","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article argues that concept of popular culture, as conceptualized within the media/cultural studies tradition in the Anglophone West, is in crisis. The idea of the “popular” that continues to be embraced by many critical media/communication and cultural studies scholars derives from postwar assumptions about mass media which no longer accurately fit present conditions. However, the resilience of these assumptions has created “the problem of popular culture,” a complicated and longstanding series of dilemmas for contemporary scholarship. This article documents several manifestations of this problem and proposes that scholars reserve the term popular culture for instances of popular practice.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45311865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Formal modeling is rare in communication studies. Still, several mathematical models have been proposed regarding the persuasive effects of message discrepancy, the difference between a message’s advocated position and a message recipient’s initial position. With numerical simulations, we analyzed four formal models to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Based on analyses of previous models, we proposed a modified psychological discounting model by solving a differential equation regarding the rate of change of the probability of message acceptance with respect to psychological discrepancy. Whereas previous models predicted nonmonotonic relationships between message discrepancy and belief change, the new model predicts that as message discrepancy increases, belief change monotonically increases unless facilitating factors change due to extremely discrepant messages. We discuss differences between the previous models and the new model, and their significance and implications for theories of persuasion as well as the limitations of the new model.
{"title":"Mathematical models of message discrepancy: previous models and a modified psychological discounting model","authors":"Sungeun Chung, E. Fink","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Formal modeling is rare in communication studies. Still, several mathematical models have been proposed regarding the persuasive effects of message discrepancy, the difference between a message’s advocated position and a message recipient’s initial position. With numerical simulations, we analyzed four formal models to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Based on analyses of previous models, we proposed a modified psychological discounting model by solving a differential equation regarding the rate of change of the probability of message acceptance with respect to psychological discrepancy. Whereas previous models predicted nonmonotonic relationships between message discrepancy and belief change, the new model predicts that as message discrepancy increases, belief change monotonically increases unless facilitating factors change due to extremely discrepant messages. We discuss differences between the previous models and the new model, and their significance and implications for theories of persuasion as well as the limitations of the new model.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41465959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two widely applied entrances to critically analyze mediated political communication are framing and discourse theory. While media discourse and framing are used in close connection in academic literature, we examine how the approaches theorize media power and politics differently. Framing theory examines how issues are constructed interactively, represented in mediated form, and interpreted within an institutionalized policy sphere. Some framing studies critically examine structural or hegemonic power. However, the preoccupation with manifest interactions entails a diminished sensibility to systematic exclusion. Discourse theory provides a post-foundational conceptualization of politics as the political in which media discourses are antagonistic, contingent, and open to change. Discourse theory expands media power to include (subversive) positions beyond hegemonic politics. We argue that applying either discourse or framing theory in media studies has theoretical and analytical consequences and that theoretical sensitivity will strengthen the discriminatory power of framing and discourse theory as two distinct fields.
{"title":"Media power and politics in framing and discourse theory","authors":"Mette Marie Roslyng, Camilla Dindler","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Two widely applied entrances to critically analyze mediated political communication are framing and discourse theory. While media discourse and framing are used in close connection in academic literature, we examine how the approaches theorize media power and politics differently. Framing theory examines how issues are constructed interactively, represented in mediated form, and interpreted within an institutionalized policy sphere. Some framing studies critically examine structural or hegemonic power. However, the preoccupation with manifest interactions entails a diminished sensibility to systematic exclusion. Discourse theory provides a post-foundational conceptualization of politics as the political in which media discourses are antagonistic, contingent, and open to change. Discourse theory expands media power to include (subversive) positions beyond hegemonic politics. We argue that applying either discourse or framing theory in media studies has theoretical and analytical consequences and that theoretical sensitivity will strengthen the discriminatory power of framing and discourse theory as two distinct fields.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48829060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Outside the Bubble, by Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani","authors":"C. Wells","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42214321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When members of an audience are exposed to the same messages, their brains will, to a certain degree, exhibit similar responses. These similar, and thus shared audience responses constitute the recruitment of sensory, perceptual, and higher-level neurocognitive processes, which occur separately in the brain of each individual, but in a collectively shared fashion across the audience. A method called inter-subject-correlation (ISC) analysis allows to reveal these shared responses. This manuscript introduces a theoretical model of brain function that explains why shared brain responses occur and how they emerge along a gradient from sensation to cognition as individuals process the same message content. This model makes results from ISC-based studies more interpretable from a communication perspective, helps organize the results from existing studies across different subfields, and generates testable predictions. The article discusses how research at the nexus of media, audience research, and neuroscience contributes to and advances communication theory.
{"title":"Theory and Method for Studying How Media Messages Prompt Shared Brain Responses Along the Sensation-to-Cognition Continuum","authors":"Ralf Schmälzle","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 When members of an audience are exposed to the same messages, their brains will, to a certain degree, exhibit similar responses. These similar, and thus shared audience responses constitute the recruitment of sensory, perceptual, and higher-level neurocognitive processes, which occur separately in the brain of each individual, but in a collectively shared fashion across the audience. A method called inter-subject-correlation (ISC) analysis allows to reveal these shared responses. This manuscript introduces a theoretical model of brain function that explains why shared brain responses occur and how they emerge along a gradient from sensation to cognition as individuals process the same message content. This model makes results from ISC-based studies more interpretable from a communication perspective, helps organize the results from existing studies across different subfields, and generates testable predictions. The article discusses how research at the nexus of media, audience research, and neuroscience contributes to and advances communication theory.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47365335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although there have been extensive discussions on decolonizing the field of media and communication(s), not much attention has been paid to the way that curricula reproduce colonialism, imperialism, and racism in the classroom. In this article, I draw on my experiences as an African graduate student in an American classroom to highlight the ways that systemic racism is replicated, reproduced and frames pedagogy. I argue that although many communication(s) scholars purport to theorize from a radical perspective, these politics are not represented in their pedagogy which means that students from marginalized communities are often erased in discussions on theory, research methods and even pedagogy. Not only are the epistemological experiences and realities of marginalized students erased, but the canon is further legitimized leading to the training of scholars and teachers who go on to (in)advertently uphold racism, White supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism in their research, teaching and service.
{"title":"Dismantling the Western Canon in Media Studies","authors":"W. F. Mohammed","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although there have been extensive discussions on decolonizing the field of media and communication(s), not much attention has been paid to the way that curricula reproduce colonialism, imperialism, and racism in the classroom. In this article, I draw on my experiences as an African graduate student in an American classroom to highlight the ways that systemic racism is replicated, reproduced and frames pedagogy. I argue that although many communication(s) scholars purport to theorize from a radical perspective, these politics are not represented in their pedagogy which means that students from marginalized communities are often erased in discussions on theory, research methods and even pedagogy. Not only are the epistemological experiences and realities of marginalized students erased, but the canon is further legitimized leading to the training of scholars and teachers who go on to (in)advertently uphold racism, White supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism in their research, teaching and service.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43244719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As intellectuals in modern education systems, “we are all foreigners,” foreign to our histories, local conditions, and commoners living next to us. The proposal for a global Bandung School (BS) has been on the table, with the mission to transform existing modes of thought and carry on the de-imperializing spirit of Bandung. By establishing Mandarin-World Bandung School (MBS), we propose to rediscover the spirit of anti-imperialism through locally grounded praxis and renewed intellectual trusteeship. De-imperialization is possible. The communication field shall be a critical site for global transformation beyond “coloniality.”
{"title":"Back to Bandung for the Future: The Never-Ending Project of De-imperialization","authors":"Kuan-hsing Chen, Miao Lu, J. Qiu","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 As intellectuals in modern education systems, “we are all foreigners,” foreign to our histories, local conditions, and commoners living next to us. The proposal for a global Bandung School (BS) has been on the table, with the mission to transform existing modes of thought and carry on the de-imperializing spirit of Bandung. By establishing Mandarin-World Bandung School (MBS), we propose to rediscover the spirit of anti-imperialism through locally grounded praxis and renewed intellectual trusteeship. De-imperialization is possible. The communication field shall be a critical site for global transformation beyond “coloniality.”","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43709330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Following a decolonial perspective, I argue that there is a coloniality of representations that shapes our understanding of the world and our place in it and that perpetuates an ongoing system of domination and inequality that we have incorporated as a natural order.
{"title":"Media and Communication Studies. What is there to Decolonize?","authors":"Claudia Magallanes-Blanco","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Following a decolonial perspective, I argue that there is a coloniality of representations that shapes our understanding of the world and our place in it and that perpetuates an ongoing system of domination and inequality that we have incorporated as a natural order.","PeriodicalId":48102,"journal":{"name":"Communication Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44449267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}