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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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CONTENTS
Cover
Front Matter
Introduction
1 Fragmentation and Hyper-Specialization
Why fragmentation?
The meanings of communication
Communication as connection
Communication as dialogue
Communication as expression
Communication as information
Communication as persuasion
Communication as symbolic interaction
Divided by communication
2 The Patchwork of Communication Studies
Making sense of communication studies
Research clusters
Should we worry about divisions?
Notes
3 The “Digital Communication” Turn
All is digital communication
The study of digital communication
Who owns the study of “digital communication”?
Conclusion
Notes
4 What has Globalization Wrought?
Institutional globalization
Intellectual globalization
The uneven consequences of globalization
Conclusion
5 A Post-Discipline
Post-disciplinarity
Communication as post-discipline
Building bridges in the post-discipline
Fostering a communication imagination
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Dedication
For Elizabeth Fox
Communication
A Post-Discipline
SILVIO WAISBORD
polity
Copyright © Silvio Waisbord 2019
The right of Silvio Waisbord to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2019 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2012-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Waisbord, Silvio R. (Silvio Ricardo), 1961- author.Title: Communication : a post-discipline / Silvio Waisbord.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018027492 (print) | LCCN 2018034842 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509520121 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509520084 | ISBN 9781509520084(hardback) | ISBN 9781509520091(paperback)Subjects: LCSH: Communication--Study and teaching.Classification: LCC P91.3 (ebook) | LCC P91.3+ (print) | DDC 302.2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018027492
The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the wonderful Polity team: Elen Griffiths originally commissioned this book and Mary Savigar and Ellen MacDonald-Kramer provided guidance and support. Many friends and colleagues offered the right balance of criticism and encouragement that helped to sharpen the arguments: Adriana Amado, Adrienne Russell, Barbie Zelizer, Claudia Mellado, Dan Hallin, Flor Enghel, Fred Turner, Howard Tumber, Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Jay Blumler, Karin Wilkins, Matt Powers, Pablo Boczkowski, Pradip Thomas, Risto Kunelius, Stephanie Craft, and Terry Flew. I am indebted to Lee Edwards, Shuang Liu, Dennis Mumby, Robin Nabi, Jack Qiu, and Thorsten Quandt for several conversations about communication studies while we served as editors for the Journal of Communication. They helped me understand research trends, debates, and common challenges. Earlier versions of arguments included in this book were presented at the University of Washington, University of Miami, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Texas Tech University, Universidad Iberoamericana, University of Missouri, and Renmin University. Thanks go to the faculty and students for the opportunity to present my ideas and for stimulating conversations, particularly Sallie Hughes, Wenshan Jia, Qin Li, Mireya Marquez, Katy Pearce, William Porath, Tim Vos, and Kent Wilkinson. Two anonymous reviewers provided invaluable comments and suggestions.
Introduction
The ideas here presented matured while I was editor-in-chief (EIC) of the Journal of Communication. As the flagship journal of the International Communication Association (ICA), I envisioned the journal to be as diverse as ICA and the field at large – the home for epistemological, thematic, theoretical, and methodological diversity. Yet having a vision was not sufficient. It needed to be operational – translated into concrete guidelines. Confronted with the shapeless immensity of communication studies, I had to develop clear, fair, and consistent criteria to determine the fit of any submission in the mission of the Journal. As I read more than five hundred papers annually on every conceivable topic related to “communication,” as well as copious reviews and author responses, I frequently pondered several questions: What is communication? What defines a paper as “communication research”? The analytical framework? The findings? The argument? The theoretical relevance and contributions? All of the above? The editorial perch not only gave a panoramic vantage point to ruminate about big questions that define a field of academic scholarship. It also demanded constant thinking about the fundamental issues that define a field of study. This book is a distillation of my answers to these questions.
In hindsight, I started thinking about several issues discussed as I moved from Argentina to the United States to study in the PhD program in sociology at the University of California, San Diego in the late 1980s. Unknowingly, I began a double intellectual transition. One transition was between two academic cultures grounded in different epistemological premises and standards – from Latin America communication studies, anchored in critical studies and close to the region’s turbulent politics and political activism, to the rarefied, ivory tower environment of US academia. Simultaneously, I embarked on another transition – from sociology to communication studies – once I realized that my research interests, namely media organizations, journalism, and politics, fitted better in the latter. I learned about the vastness of communication studies in the United States. I encountered scholarly traditions and debates that were broader than my scholarly upbringing in Argentina. Eventually, I became a “bicultural” scholar grounded in different academic traditions and different fields – a sociologist interested in communication and media questions, based in US academia, and interested in questions that squarely fit with communication studies.
Although my editorial experience became an unexpected ethnography of academic scholarship, this book is not an editorial memoir. Rather, it is an attempt to make sense of communication studies by drawing largely from my editorial experience and my research. My interest is to offer a panoramic vista of the current state of communication studies that interrogates its foundations and present condition. I do not intend to deliver close-up snapshots of particular areas of specialization. Several books and numerous articles have already done so with more competence than I can offer. Nor do I aim to offer a systematic treatise of communication studies. That would be a mighty endeavor that demands extraordinary encyclopedic knowledge and thematic range, given the seamlessness of communication studies. Even if I learned about dozens of lines of inquiry, I couldn’t pretend to have mastered all research clusters within the confines of communication scholarship. In fact, my editorial tenure has been a humbling experience for it regularly allowed me to be exposed to boundless scholarly output and ideas within communication studies. Finally, neither do I claim to have discovered the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the lost hieroglyphics of communication studies in order to understand, once and for all, what makes it a discipline or a field.
In lieu of an exhaustive survey of communication studies, I have two goals. One goal is to chart the contours of a dynamic area of academic knowledge that might help to situate communication studies at a particular historical juncture. The second goal is to invite a reflection across communication studies in the spirit of previous calls to stimulate reflexivity and question disciplinary identity (Deetz 1994) amid fragmentation and hyper-specialization. Whereas these characteristics have worried scholars in the past and motivated calls for unified definitions and theories of communication, I believe that the chaotic and polyphonic nature of communication studies makes it well suited to addressing some of the most pressing issues of the day. We should embrace its considerable analytical and thematic diversity, while trying to find cross-points to bring together disparate lines of research.
The spirit of the book is in line with Peter Berger’s classic Invitation to Sociology (1963) – an effort to place one’s area of expertise within the broader context and to encourage dialogue around what defines a discipline or field. Berger’s insight about sociology is also applicable to communication studies: the need for a humanistic perspective, characterized by an open and comprehensive vision of a field of study. The current moment has distinctive particularities with enormous implications for studying communication. Digital communication has revolutionized everything we knew about communication. Opportunities for communication have proliferated as communication technologies are available in every single corner of contemporary life. The study of communication largely exceeds the institutional boundaries of communication departments and associations. Also, globalization and the de-westernization of academic knowledge remind us that knowledge is a product of particular contexts shaped by local developments, funding opportunities, and understandings of academic excellence. The global encounter between academic cultures demonstrates the limits of knowledge. In light of these developments, it is particularly opportune to assess the state of communication scholarship.
The analysis engages primarily with communication studies in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in other countries in the West. The reasons are twofold. First, it could be legitimately argued that the field of communication studies originally developed in the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century (Peters 1999; Zelizer 2011). Even though communication scholarship developed in other countries and regions with their own particularities, an issue discussed below, communication studies was born with a distinctive “American” accent. In fact, propelled by the early internationalization and the global prominence of US academia, US communication scholarship gained influence around the world. Second, the early development of different traditions of communication studies in several Western European countries, most notably the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, also gave a unique imprint to the field. As the field evolved historically anchored in intellectual traditions and academic debates in selected countries, the canon of communication studies has remained embedded in US and European scholarship (Craig and Muller 2007; Katz et al. 2003). Different approaches to the study of communication are similarly placed in foundational works developed in the United States and some European countries. Flagging the particular geo-intellectual genealogy of communication studies is important to situate the unique context that has long shaped the field – research questions, theories, methodologies, debates. Any discipline or field reflects the particular factors of the social, intellectual, and academic context in which it is produced. There is no scientific work produced in universal or pristine conditions, even if it is grounded in academic cultures that upheld the tradition of the university as an ivory tower at a safe distance from bustling social forces. A range of social forces always seeps into the content of academic production – from real-world developments to funding priorities.
This is tangible in the case of communication studies. Unsurprisingly, theories, analytical directions, and arguments reflected particular research interests and intellectual debates in US academia. Communication studies has been largely driven by unique aspects of US academia, including academic concerns, theoretical debates, flows of funding, geopolitical interests, and dominant epistemologies during the past century. It reflected interest in particular developments in US society – from the role of print media in the absorption of immigrant communities to intercultural communication in a multicultural society in the interwar period, from fears about mass society and the loss of individualism to the rising interest among social institutions in communication processes in the postwar years. Concerns about media influence and propaganda prompted interest and funding in landmark studies on media effects in the 1940s. The strong position of particular psychological theories, methodologies, and schools in US academia laid the foundations for persuasion studies in the postwar years. The critique of elite-dominated news charted new directions for research in journalism studies in the 1970s. US constant involvement in war and conflict sporadically sparked studies on political persuasion around war and peace. Massive investments by government agencies and philanthropic foundations laid the funding and technical directions for health communication studies. Doubtless, unique national factors played critical roles in the emergence and consolidation of the field in the United States. Nowhere else do we find the confluence of intellectual and institutional factors that defined the field’s research directions and analytical scaffolding, particularly during the interwar years and after World War II. Intellectually, the field developed from the sedimentation of the tradition of sociological studies in public-opinion media effects, coupled with growing interest in information science, and social psychology set the intellectual parameters of the field (Dennis and Wartella 1996). Also, the combination of philanthropic and government interest in specific communication questions shaped research agendas and charted analytical directions. As sponsors of landmark studies on media effects and propaganda, they gave the field an initial push that left a long-lasting imprint (Simpson 1994).
Elsewhere, communication studies evolved through different paths, influenced by different intellectual traditions and local circumstances (Simonson and Park 2015). Landmark works and central debates in other countries and regions carried unmistakable premises of particular contexts. For example, the genealogy of communication studies in France and Germany is quite different. Whereas communication studies was initially aligned with culturalist and semiological perspectives and information studies in France, it grew out of studies of public opinion and philosophy in Germany (Löblich and Scheu 2011). Consequently, theoretical paradigms, disciplinary genealogy, and research questions have been different. National histories of communication studies have shown the particular characteristics and combination of factors in the history of communication studies in other countries in Europe, too. Like the field of communication in general, particular areas of specialization also developed differently. The study of intercultural communication in France, Germany, and the United States reflected distinctive intellectual debates and disciplinary traditions in each of those countries (Averbeck-Lietz 2013). Significant differences are also found in the study of intercultural communication in the United States and other countries (Asante, Miike, and Yin 2013). Nor did organizational communication develop along similar intellectual lines in the United States, France, and Germany (Schoeneborn and Wehmeier 2013). The study of organization communication in Europe has not only a shorter history but different intellectual roots. Likewise, the emergence of health communication at the crossroads of social psychology, communication studies, and social marketing in the early 1970s was unique to the United States (Kreps 2012).
Outside the West, the field of communication also had different historical trajectories and intellectual progeny. Although it evolved similarly as an offshoot of various disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, nowhere did media effects and social psychology have as strong a presence as they did in the United States. And the field developed in close contact with trends in communication research and other disciplines in the United States and some European countries, notably France and the United Kingdom. Cultures of communication research were not insular, but they have been connected to intellectual trends in the West.
Communication studies in the global South developed from the blend of local philosophical, political, and religious traditions with influences from external intellectual trends. Although some scholars remained convinced that the field largely reflected external paradigms and concerns, the field has not been simply a projection of foreign paradigms. Exposure to and dialogue with western research has generated hybridized local scholarship. For example, communication studies in the Middle East have been located at the intersections of the different influences by US and Western European scholarship. In Latin America, the blend of indigenous traditions and historical conditions, coupled with influences, originally from continental Marxism and French semiology and, later, from British cultural studies, produced a distinctive current of communication thought. The Latin American school of communication attests to the dynamic formation of academic cultures in which the trans-border traffic of ideas is reinterpreted in light of local contexts and indigenous intellectual traditions. In Africa, varied western intellectual influences have been reinterpreted in light of local developments and indigenous insights.
In summary, the field of communication developed differently across countries and regions (Simonson, Peck, Craig, and Jackson 2013). It was embedded in different intellectual trajectories and histories of the social sciences and the humanities. The field has not only been characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism as in the West; it has also comprised multiple analytical foci. The study of communication has been associated with mass communication, media industries, media occupations, interpersonal and mediated communication, information studies, cultural studies, and semiology. Instead, communication scholarship in the rest of the world has historically drawn from quite different political, economic, sociocultural, and academic settings, notwithstanding the exposure to US and European intellectual traditions. Just because of its location and historical context, communication research in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America confronted questions about the intellectual origins of frameworks and research questions much earlier than in the West. Intellectuals in the periphery were more likely to reflect upon these conditions. Today, amid academic globalization, it is important to keep these differences in mind.
These histories are important to contextualize central issues discussed in this book: the perennial fragmentation and hyper-specialization of communication studies exacerbated by the “digital turn” in academia, as well as the globalization of academic scholarship under strong western influence. Communication scholarship has long been described as a heterogeneous and fragmented field of inquiry. Such conditions resulted from the fact that it is rooted in a host of disciplinary traditions (e.g. rhetoric, psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy) and disparate understandings of communication. Such intellectual differences have been hard to bridge. What essentially brings communication studies together is an institutional architecture of academic units, professional associations, and journals, rather than a shared collective commitment to a common body of knowledge, questions, and debates. Yet it remains necessary to cultivate analytical bridges around theoretical questions and real-world problems for communication scholarship. Becoming a more cohesive intellectual community is a challenge that should be at the forefront.
The book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 offers a survey of current fragmentation and hyper-specialization in communication studies and advances an explanation for why it remains deeply divided. While these conditions partially reflect the current chaos of academic knowledge across disciplines and fields, they are also the result of particular factors in communication studies, namely its multidisciplinary genealogy, as well as persistent differences and debates about the definition of communication. Chapter 2 offers a road map of communication studies by outlining research clusters, and it argues that the state of division cannot be redressed. This should not be a matter of concern, however; it should be approached pragmatically as the inevitable outcome of an unwieldy collection of scholarly interests. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze two current developments that have further fragmented communication studies: the digitalization of social life and the globalization of academic scholarship. As digital communication has become the subject of study for numerous disciplines and fields, it has further revealed and deepened the lack of an ontological center of communication studies. Simultaneously, the globalization of communication studies has added layers of complexity around the subject and its analytical frameworks. Given these conditions, the breadth of research is remarkable. Torn in different ontological and theoretical directions, communication studies is versatile, vibrant, and messy. These conditions make communication a post-discipline, the subject of chapter 5. Post-disciplines are interdisciplinary meeting points that represent academic trespassing – a growing and productive trend across universities. They are concerned with addressing specific social questions through research and pedagogy rather than with strictly disciplinary matters. They celebrate “undisciplining” knowledge. Unlike typical post-disciplines, such as environmental studies, migration studies, and human rights studies, communication studies lacks a common ontological center grounded in real-world problems. Instead, communication studies is sustained by a growing institutional academic architecture of schools, associations, and journals, rather than by a well-defined intellectual community. Considering this situation, I make a call to cultivate integrative frameworks and research questions grounded in the diversity of communication studies. Notwithstanding the pull of academic specialization, it is important to develop and refine cross-cutting theoretical propositions and research. An engagement with communication problems in contemporary public life not only sharpens the contributions of academic scholarship to societies. It also helps to build intellectual bridges among disparate research clusters and to make academic research relevant to multiple publics.
1Fragmentation and Hyper-Specialization
This chapter aims to offer a stage-setting analysis and conceptual ground-clearing to assess the state of communication studies. It lays out definitions and positions. Interpretations and analytical foci are anchored in classic philosophical understandings as well as in contemporary approaches. No single definition captures the richness of perspectives about communication. Long-standing attempts to bring differences under a common conceptual roof have not been able to contain dispersion or reorganize lines of research.
Communication studies has long been fragmented into multiple lines of inquiry, disciplinary and theoretical traditions, levels of analysis, and institutional trajectories. It has been a big academic tent for various research areas, as well as disciplinary and methodological traditions (Corner 2013; Levy and Gurevitch 1993; Simonson, Peck, Craig, and Jackson 2013). The symptoms of fragmentation are many. One telling sign is continuous disagreement and confusion about what to call communication scholarship. The usage of various terms such as “communication,” “communications,” “communication science,” and “communication studies” to name schools, departments, journals, books, and conferences reflects confusion and dispersion. Disagreements about whether to call communication a field, science, discipline, or art signal fragmentation too. Underlying multiple institutional names is remarkable intellectual diversity. Also, the constantly growing number of communication journals, with different analytical foci, is symptomatic of such division. One could reasonably argue that these dynamics are not unique to communication, but they reflect broad trends in academic publishing, namely publishers’ persistent interest in expanding the numbers of journals. Likewise, the creation of new sections and divisions in professional organizations expresses schisms in thematic areas of specialization.
Over recent decades, communication has developed into an intellectually rich but jumbled field. Undoubtedly, hospitality to multiple traditions and research interests has been the source of its enormous intellectual richness and ontological diversity. Because there has been no single, unified understanding of communication scholarship “across knowledge claims, practices, and values”, communication scholarship comes in various types and shapes (Anderson and Baym 2004).
Communication has been a field manqué – too diverse, separated, and pulled in different directions to become a common intellectual enterprise. It has remained a balkanized, anarchic area without intellectual coherence. Kaarle Nordenstreng’s (2007: 12) summary of the state of communication studies in Finland applies to the field as a whole: “The nature of the discipline often remains unclear, while its identity is typically determined by administrative convenience and market demand rather than analysis of its historical development and scholarly position within the system of arts and sciences.”
The lack of a common epistemological core raises the question of whether communication is indeed a distinctive field of inquiry. Communication studies evolved into what “communication” scholars do, rather than something that is immediately understandable and clear. Given that communication scholars have wide-ranging interests and understand communication in different ways, the field has evolved into a disorganized collection of theories, methodologies and research lines without obvious, straightforward connections.
Producing a Borgesian map that covers the integrity of the territory of communication research is impossible. No cartography or abbreviated summary could do justice to the multiple ways in which research is constantly defined, (re)configured, and organized. Communication studies is an ever-expanding landscape with many sides without fixed boundaries. It is a “contradictory and mobile whole,” to repurpose the words Walter Benjamin used to define himself. It does not demand strict credentials for entry in terms of theoretical interests, analytical motivations, conceptual frameworks, and so on. Any taxonomy focused on identifying neat boxes misses the enormous diversity within research clusters as well as the connecting threads across lines of specialization.
Intellectual divisions are grounded in analytical frameworks, foci, and levels of analysis. Studies are embedded in a vast array of epistemologies, disciplinary traditions, and theoretical frameworks that cover the whole spectrum of the social sciences and the humanities (plus influences from information sciences and the “hard” sciences). Whereas some lines of scholarship are grounded in the empirical social sciences, others draw from the intellectual framework of interpretive theories and methodologies identified with the humanities. Just like in other social sciences (Steinmetz 2005), the great methodological divide between quantitative and qualitative approaches is also present in communication studies. Research focuses on different interpersonal and mediated dimensions, as well as different levels of analysis of communication processes – individual, interpersonal, community, society, and systems and structures. Also, whereas some scholars are interested in the institutional dimensions of communication, including media settings, organizations (workplace, corporations, governments, international agencies), and policies and regulations, others are primarily concerned with the psychological aspects of communicative processes.
Communication studies is also scattered over many areas of thematic specialization. This reflects the analytical focus on various “settings” or contexts where communication acts take place, be they politics, health, organizational, intergroup, intercultural, children and youth, environment, science, and risk. These thematic specializations generally exist in relatively compartmentalized quarters with few bridges connecting them. Each area has several specialized journals and is represented by sections and divisions in professional organizations.
Communication studies also pervades the “platform/technology/channel” studies that have expanded over the years with the continuous arrival of information and communication technologies. These include studies of newspaper, film, radio, television, internet, video games, and social media.
Other research clusters are organized around particular institutions and industries of “public communication,” such as journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising, and entertainment. Even these traditional clusters have continued to break down into smaller areas of thematic specialization. Continuous technological innovations break up traditional “platform/technology” studies as they generate new channels, behaviors, and phenomena with their own particularities. Second screening and binge watching have emerged as a thematic focus in television studies; social media has become disaggregated into “platform” specializations such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tinder, given the particularities of each channel.
It is not an exaggeration to say that all areas of specialization are multidisciplinary in nature and straddle communication studies and other fields and disciplines. A considerable body of work in political communication sits at the intersection of communication, cognitive psychology, and political science. Health communication connects communication studies to public health, social psychology, health education and promotion, community health, social marketing, and behavioral studies (Parrott and Kreuter 2011). Risk communication brings together communication scholarship with the psychology of risk and perception. Communication policy connects public policy, media and information policy, political economy, sociology, and technology studies.
Like the field as a whole, areas of thematic specialization are broken into parallel lines of research. Not only do they lack a shared theoretical and analytical corpus, many also lack a common subject of study. For example, health communication contains research clusters concerned with parallel analytical foci such as the effectiveness of message design in modifying knowledge, attitudes, and practices, the uses of digital platforms to strengthen social capital and health, and the impact of community mobilization on health indicators. Health communication is also split into clusters around specific health areas and diseases (chronic and infectious diseases, and diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and polio), as well as aspects of communication processes and dynamics such as levels of interaction (provider/patient, government/citizens, corporations/consumers), messaging (type of appeals) and platforms (e.g. mobile health, web health, gaming). Likewise, science communication is broken up into clusters that examine questions at the intersection of science and communication around specific themes such as nuclear energy, climate change, genetically modified foods, biomedicine, and pharmaceuticals.
Research in political communication, too, is split into various fields, such as propaganda studies, election communication, participation and collective mobilization, government communication, public opinion, and parallel lines of research concerned with information processing, the linkages between media and political institutions, and so on (Reinemann 2014). Likewise, mass communication studies is fragmented into questions about the impact of different elements of narrative, audience characteristics, the significance of various channels, and so on (Lang 2013). Media policy is similarly split into many thematic interests, from the political economy of specific industries and technologies to legal frameworks affecting public speech, with virtually no overlap of cross-cutting questions and arguments (Picard 2016). Journalism studies is divided into various areas embedded in different epistemological and theoretical frameworks, including reader behavior, news industry, news effect, and journalistic organization and practices (Zelizer 2004). Environmental communication comprises studies on the impact of news framing on environmental attitudes, analysis of news coverage of environmental disasters, and the role of communication platforms and strategies in environmental movements. Public relations is also separated into various lines of research, overlapping with adjacent fields and lacking a welldefined theoretical core (Dühring 2015).
