In each Newsletter leading up to the conference, we will highlight two of the fascinating master classes that have been planned for Phoenix. Master lecturers will feature Mark Knapp (U of Texas-Austin), Chin-Chuan Lee (City U of Hong Kong), Dafna Lemish (Southern Illinois U-Carbondale), Jack McLeod (U of Wisconsin), James Curran (U of London), and Stan Deetz (U of Colorado-Boulder).

From Misunderstanding the Internet to the Rise of Media Entertainment
by James Curran

I will begin by contrasting my own rudderless drift as a young academic, in easy-going institutions, with the focused purpose of contemporary young scholars in an intensely competitive university environment.  After this autobiographical detour, I will outline three projects that I have been working on.

The first is on the internet's impact. Numerous academics, politicians, business leaders, and journalists predicted that the internet would transform society.  I will revisit these predictions, and check whether they have come true.  While the internet has modified the nerve system of the economy, it has not generated a cascade of wealth for most people or equalised the relationship between small and large corporations. The internet has empowered activists, but has done little to promote global understanding. And it has weakened the old order of journalism without, as yet, giving rise to the promised renaissance of citizen journalism. These and other predictions proved wrong for two reasons: They were extrapolations from the internet’s technological prowess that underestimated the wider influence of society.  And they did not anticipate that the world would influence the internet more than the other way around.

The second project is my belated involvement in quantitative media effects research. I will briefly describe three comparative studies that have come to the same conclusion: Americans are exceptionally ignorant about politics and international affairs – more so than citizens of all other sampled nations (apart from Colombia) – in part because Americans are badly served by their market-driven television system, and are low consumers of news.

The third is my return, like a homing pigeon, to media history in the form of a study of the rise of mass entertainment in Britain from c. 1800. Media entertainment was not just about entertaining: it also contributed to nation-building, the spread of secularism, the redistribution of esteem between social groups, and much more besides.
What do these very different studies have in common? They reflect a desire to apply different methods of research; to raid different territories of knowledge; yet remain committed to a critical perspective. 

James Curran is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. The most recent of his 21 media books are Misunderstanding the Internet (with Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman), Routledge, 2012; Media and Democracy, Routledge, 2011; Power Without Responsibility, 7th edition (with Jean Seaton), Routledge, 2010; and (ed.) Media and Society, 5th edition, Bloomsbury, 2010. In 2011, he won the C. Edwin Baker Award for his long-term research on media, markets and democracy.

Stan Deetz

2012 is the 20th anniversary of my book on democracy where I tried to chart the course toward a more responsive and generative democracy and detail the potential contribution of new communication concepts and practices to that. A lot has happened since then.  I plan to move this discussion forward focusing on "governance" in our contemporary time and the need for communication scholars to be actively engaged in these discussions and the invention of new concepts and practices. The discussion will mostly focus on specific projects. From a more personal standpoint, I will suggest why I remain first and foremost a teacher and how actively engaged scholarship and practice can be integrated into a career.

The problem of governance is one of the most discussed issues of our time.  Traditionally governance (the processes for making decisions for the common good) was often left to governments and communication studies focused on related political processes. But problems are evident with this model.  Frequently governments do not have the resources, capacity, legitimacy, or processes to make quality creative decisions and nonstate actors have become more powerful. State units have not been able or willing to address diverse social, economical and ecological needs.  As interdependence becomes greater the need for alternative forms of governance to produce creative mutually beneficial decisions becomes greater.

Cross-sector—involving civic groups, government units, businesses and communities—decision making seems key to addressing conflict and a number of social and environmental problems. The success of these cross-sector collaborative initiatives has been mixed mostly because they have focused on developing structures and meeting forums but have not developed the theory, expertise, and standard practices necessary for consistently developing and choosing mutually beneficial decisions. Collaborative interaction designs and practices are critical.  That is where we can make an important contribution if we are willing to give up a lot of old stuff. 

Stan is a Professor, President’s Teaching Scholar, and Director of the Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance and the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is author/coauthor of over 100 scholarly articles and author/editor of 12 books including the award winning, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization.  His research focuses on alternative conceptions and practices of communication and democracy and the micropractices of power.  His professional practice has worked with the design of communication processes for cross-functional and multiparty decision making both within organizations and between organizations and external communities.  He has lectured and worked on projects in twenty-some countries.  He has served as a Senior Fulbright Scholar and is a National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar and an International Communication Association Past-President and Fellow.