Speakers for the major plenary panels and sessions for the upcoming conference in San Francisco have all been invited and have accepted. I'm delighted with the line-up of great speakers and discussion topics, as these really bring to life the conference theme of Creating Communication: Content, Control, and Critique. In this column, I'd like to publicise the plenaries, update everyone on conference preparations, and end with some heartfelt thanks to all who’ve contributed to planning the conference.

 

 

Opening Plenary

Communication and Critique: Reflections On The Critical Role of Communication Scholarship

Thursday, May 24th, 6pm - 7:15 pm

 

This opening plenary panel will explore stimulating and diverse perspectives on the possibilities for critique in communication scholarship. An invited panel of speakers will ask, what constitutes critique in today's intellectual and political context? Are we all critical scholars, in one way or another, or is critique itself fading from our field? As societies become more complex, commercialised and globalised, and as traditional political divisions and familiar ethical values are uprooted or challenged, what critical standpoints, if any, would the panel make their priority for future research?

 

Chaired by Susan Douglas, expert on issues of culture, gender, and broadcasting history at the U of Michigan, speakers include Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths College, U of London and author most recently of The Uses of Cultural Studies and currently writing Gender Culture and Social Change), Robin Mansell (London School of Economics, currently editing the Oxford Handbook on ICTs and recent author of Trust and Crime in Information Societies), Bella Mody (U of Colorado, Boulder, author of International and Development Communication: A 21st Century Perspective), and Ellen Seiter (U of Southern California, author of The Internet Playground: Children's Access, Entertainment and Mis-education).

 

This plenary will be followed by the Welcome Reception in the Hilton, to which all delegates are warmly invited. Come and meet your colleagues and friends in a convivial atmosphere with some food and drink provided.

 

 

Plenary

What's So Significant About Social Networking? Web 2.0 and its Critical Potential

Friday, May 25th, 12 - 1:15pm

 

Web 2.0 is high on the public agenda right now. Indeed, from MySpace and YouTube to collective journalism and open-source software production, online social networks are transforming our lives. This panel will take a critical look at the changes under way and their implications for communication researchers, chaired by Fred Turner (author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture at Stanford U).

 

Speakers are leading researchers Howard Rheingold (author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs, participatory media activist and Instructor at the U of California, Berkeley), Beth Noveck (pioneer of The Do Tank and the State of Play Academy at New York Law School), Henry Jenkins (author of Convergence Culture and Textual Poachers, among other books, at MIT), and Tiziana Terranova (author of Network Culture and Bodies in the Net, U of Essex). Together, they will map the social and technological forces driving the rise of these networks, as well as the debates surrounding them. The aim is to assess how digital social networks interact with offline cultural and political institutions and to identify the roles that scholars might play in shaping that relationship.

 

 

Half-Plenary

The Politics of Publishing: The Future Of Academic (Book) Publishing

Friday, May 25th, 4:30pm - 5:45pm

 

Many of us publish academic books, but what do we know of the politics of publishing? This panel focuses on the changing structures of the book publishing industry - its structures, institutions and powers. Its starting point is the irony that one of the only media industries in which academics have any direct involvement as active players is the publishing industry, and yet this is the one media industry about which academics know almost nothing.

 

Chaired by Michael Schudson, expert in the sociology of news at U of California, San Diego, the keynote presentation at this plenary will be given by John B. Thompson (author of Books in the Digital Age and Professor of Sociology at Cambridge U). His arguments will be complemented by the reactions of two respondents who are each active leaders in current developments in book and journal publishing: John Willinsky (U of British Columbia’s Public Knowledge Project, and author of The Access Principle) and Steve Smith (Vice President and Editorial Director of Academic Books at Blackwell Publishing).

 

 

Later on Friday, from 7pm - 9 pm, we’ve arranged a Special Reception at the Asian Art Museum. I look forward to meeting many of you there. You can buy tickets for this when you register for the conference.

 

 

Plenary

Presidential Address: "Unusual Routines: Organizational NonSensemaking"

Saturday, May 26th, 4:30pm – 6pm

 

ICA President Ron Rice (Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication and Co-Director, Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media) will make his address to the conference. Giving us an advance insight into the argument from his new book, and with topical examples promised from the world of academia, Rice will argue that unusual routines involve contradictory and frustrating subprocesses that inherently generate negative outcomes for some organizations, system users, organizational representatives, and their customers and clients, while generating completely sensible and even effective outcomes for others. 

 

The presidential address is traditionally combined with the Annual Members' Meeting and Awards Presentation, making for an action-packed session. I would like to urge all ICA members to attend this meeting, not only because these meetings have sometimes been poorly attended but, more importantly, because this is an opportunity to hear about the latest developments and plans within the Association, and to offer comments and suggestions. So, do put this in your conference diary.

 

 

Plenary Interactive Paper Session

Sunday, May 27th, 12 – 1:15pm

 

Papers from all the Divisions and Interest Groups will be displayed in this main plenary event, so everyone should find something relevant to their work here. Presenters will be standing by their papers, ready to discuss their research with interested participants.

 

The Top 10 Plenary Papers will receive a certificate, and the Top 3 will receive cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100, to be awarded during the event itself. Coffee and water will also be provided, and sandwiches, rolls and fruit will be on sale, so this is another good opportunity to mingle and meet like-minded researchers.

 

 

Half-Plenary

News, Journalism And The Democratic Potential of Blogging: From
Antagonism To Synergy?

Sunday, May 27th, 4:30pm – 5:45pm

 

There’s a lot of popular speculation about blogging and its potential challenge to established journalism, but what’s really going on? Chaired by Nico Carpentier (editor of Reclaiming the media: Communication rights and democratic media roles), Vrije U Brussel & Catholic U of Brussels), four leading scholars will debate whether and how blogging, or citizen journalism, can develop into new informational and representational practices that advance our democracies. They’ll inquire into the democratic potential of the transformations of journalism(s) through a cross-fertilization of journalism with blogging. But the panel will also critically address the limitations and restrictions, the struggles and counter-strategies, which these democratic innovations face in taking on the more hegemonic articulations of journalist identities and the resulting practices.

 

The speakers will be Jay Rosen (leading figure in the public journalism reform movement, and author of What are Journalists For?, at New York U), Geert Lovink (U of Amsterdam and Hogeschool van Amsterdam, author of Dark Fiber - essays on Internet culture, and Uncanny Networks), Fausto Colombo (Author of Digitising TV at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), and Gaye Tuchman (U of Connecticut, author of Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality).

 

 

That's the plenaries! Any more, and there wouldn't be time for regular sessions.

 

 

Registration

Registration for the conference is now open, and lots of information is already available on the ICA website – for example, the conference programme, application form for travel grants, etc., and we’ll be adding more information in the coming months. You’ll also see information on the pre-conferences and the theme events, so make your choices early. Register online at http://www.icahdq.org/conferences/2007/confregistration.asp.

 

Everyone who submitted a paper should have heard by now whether their submission has been accepted. Congratulations to those who've received good news. As I wrote in the last issue of the Newsletter, submissions were up by 30% this year, so it has been tough for programme planners and reviewers in making the selections, and tough also on those who didn’t get selected – still, I hope that everyone who can come, will, if at all possible.

 

 

Thanks

Every year, the conference chair learns this process from scratch! So let me end with some heartfelt thanks to everyone who has worked so hard in preparing the conference programme. First, I’m hugely grateful to Michael Haley and his great team at the ICA office – Sam Luna, Deandra Tolson, Tina Zeigler, and Mike West.

 

I’d also like to thank all the unit planners, who've worked so hard, often over weekends, getting everything reviewed, planned, and fitted into the sessions allocated. So, many thanks to Paul Bolls, Pam Kalbfleish, Robin Nabi, Cynthia Stohl, Min-Sun Kim, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Kevin Barnhurst, Amy Nathanson, Dave Buller, Ingrid Volkmer, Jan Van Dijk, Lynn Clark, Betteke Van Ruler, Vicki Mayer, Sharon Strover, Steve McDowell, Mark Aakhus, Marion Mueller, James Neuliep, John Newhagen, David Phillips, Bernadette Watson, Kumarini Silva, John Sherry and Nico Carpentier.

 

It’s been great working with Nico Carpentier as Theme Chair, who with Benjamin De Cleen has put together the theme events listed above as well as arranging the theme sessions. (Visit the theme session website at http://www.vub.ac.be/icatheme07/.) I’m grateful also to Fred Turner for organising the 'social networking' plenary, to Heather Hudson of the local host committee and to Seeta Peña Gangadharan for local student support. Thanks, last, to Ron Rice, for handing on lots of helpful information about conference planning, and to the Executive Committee for guiding me when needed.

 

 

Next month: Theme Sessions, Theme Events, and Exhibitions!

 

ICA Journal Citations

 

ICA continues to improve on many fronts, due to involved members, a professional and innovative staff managed by Michael Haley, an active Board of Directors, and an experienced Executive Committee. I'd like to highlight just one of those areas this month: the ICA journals. 

 

With the 2006 contractual relationship with Blackwell Publishing, all three of the ICA print journals have considerably increased institutional subscriptions, and impact ratings greater than 1.0 (something like the number of citations to a journal in a 2-year period, divided by the total number of articles published by those journals in the prior 2 years):

 

Communication Theory, now at volume 17, impact rating of 1.51

Journal of Communication, now at volume 57, impact rating of 1.13

Human Communication Research, now at volume 33, impact rating of 1.08

 

And three years ago the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication - originally begun by Peggy McLaughlin and Sheizaf Rafaeli and hosted by the Annenberg School of Communication at USC - became an ICA journal, now at volume 12. Although JCMC is now listed on the Web of Science, it is not yet included in annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

 

Beginning in 2008, ICA will add an additional print journal, Communication, Culture and Critique. 

 

As part of its emphasis on increased internationalization, beginning with the January 2007 issues, ICA will provide translations of each journal’s article abstracts in the six UN languages. (Translations are available through the ICA website.) This is fairly costly but was widely supported by the Internationalization Committee and the Board of Directors.

 

The underlying citations of and from journals, as reported in JCR, are the basis for computing the impact factor. They are also the basis for identifying clusters of shared interests, journals, and authors – one widely used form of bibliometrics, or citation analysis.

 

It might be interesting to see just how the three ICA print journals are located in their local citation environments.  Leydesdorff developed a reasonable way to extract what he calls “journal-citation environments” from the otherwise unwieldy matrix of possible citation relations (1710x1710 for social-science journals, and 5907x5907 for science journals). These matrices are also largely empty, as most journals generally cite each other in dense clusters even within their own discipline, and not very frequently across disciplines, although there is a low-level "fuzzy" amount of citations across a wide diversity of other journals. So, rather than try to analyze the entire matrix and identify the clusters and relations within that large but very clumpy set, Leydesdorff instead developed a procedure whereby one can choose any particular journal of interest; the program computes the distribution of citations to and from, and selects only those journals that involve at least one percent of the total citations (from or to). Frequently, it turns out that 10 to 20 or so journals represent most of all citations, so all remaining journals are ignored.

 

Leydesdorff also uses the cosine between the two vectors as the measure of similarity between each pair of resulting journals. He prefers this to the more commonly used correlation, as it does not normalize for the mean and doesn't produce negative values. So his program begins with a specific journal and produces two files: one for all the journals whose citations to the given journal each represent at least 1% of the total citations of the given journal, and one for all the journals whose citations by the given journal each represent at least 1% of the total citations from the given journal. Each file contains the list of journal names, a matrix of cosines between each pair of journals, and a value indicating the proportion of the total journal-citation environment that each journal represents (controlling for within-journal citations). He provides this set of files for each of the social-science and science journals for 2003, 2004, and 2005. The data come from the Journal Citation Reports 2005 from the Social Science Citation Index (1712 journals total) provided at http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/jcr04; for related programs, data, and publications, see http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/.  Amazing!

 

So I downloaded the 2005 cited and citing data for the three ICA journals (JCMC was not yet included in ISI). Of course, one can also do this for each of any set of "communication" journals. These may include the Journal Citation Report's "core" communication journals, the Iowa Guide’s communication journals, or any other set one might want to compare (as long as they are included in the Social Science Citation Index).

 

Using UCINET and Netdraw, I produced the accompanying figures. These apply multidimensional scaling to the cosine matrices, arraying the journals according to their similarity in two-dimensional space. The area of the journal nodes is proportional to the extent to which each journal provides citations (in the "citing" figures) or receives citations (in the "cited" figures) within that set of journals, controlling for within-journal (self-) citations. The "cited" value represents the local impact in terms of citation volume, while the "citing" value represents "how the relevant journal environment is perceived by the collective authors of a given journal" (p. 25). One can also indicate the strength of citation links between the journals through proportionally thicker lines, but it becomes difficult to read. Additional network analyses are possible, as well, such as computing individual betweenness centrality of each journal. However, my purpose here is primarily impressionistic.

 

Communication Theory is cited primarily by Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, and Communication Monographs.  It also has small (but greater than 1%) citations from Health Communication, Media Psychology, and Journal of Health Communication. However, nearly all of its citations go to Communication Monographs, with just a few in its local citation environment to Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Thus, given the criterion for the local citation environment, Communication Theory's "audience" - those journals citing it - is much more diverse than its authors' perceptions of its primary environment.

 

Human Communication Research is embedded in a dense and diverse network of citing journals, including Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journalism and Mass Communication, Political Communication, and, less frequently, Critical Studies in Mediated Communication, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, European Journal of Communication, Media/Culture/Society, New Media & Society, and Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics. Its citing environment (at least 1%) is far less dense, involving Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Journal of Communication, Journal of Social & Personal Relations, European Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychology Bulletin, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

 

The Journal of Communication is similar to Human Communication Research in being embedded in a dense and diverse journal citation environment.  Most frequent citers of Journal of Communication articles include Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Common Monographs, Journalism and Mass Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Political Communication.  Other direct but less frequent citers in the environment include Journal of Public Opinion Research, Media Psychology, Harvard Journal of Press and Politics, New Media & Society, Media/Culture/Society, and European Journal of Communication. Also like HCR, JOC cites a few primary journals, including Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Political Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Journalism and Mass Communication, Human Communication Research, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

 

These very brief summaries of only the 2005 data help to identify the local citation environments of the three print ICA journals - both the primary set of journals that authors in these ICA journals cite, and the (usually much fewer) primary set of journals whose authors cite articles from these ICA journals. Note that these analyses do not include the complete network of communication journals; they show only the local citing and cited environment from the perspective of each separate journal. Nor do they show the diffusion of citations infrequently received and given by the remaining  journals (those each with less than 1% of the total citations relating to the given journal).

 

This kind of analysis might be useful to editors, authors, and reviewers, for understanding better who their "audiences" are, in terms of scientific communication through citations. These may, of course, be quite different from the more usually understood concept of "audience" - those of us in ICA and elsewhere who read these articles.

 

Here is some literature on the reasons (normative, proposed, and empirically identified) for citing: 

 

Borgman, C.L. (Ed.) (1990). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Broadus, R. (1983). An investigation of the validity of bibliographic citations.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 34(2), 132-135.

Brooks, T. (1985). Private acts and public objects: An investigation of citer motivations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36, 223-229.

Cano, V. (1989).  Citation behavior: Classification, utility, and location.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 40(4), 294-290.

Chubin, D. & Moitra, S. (1975). Content analysis of references: Adjunct of alternative to citation counting? Social Studies of Science, 5, 423-441.

Cronin, B. (1984).  The citation process.  London: Taylor Graham.

Funkhouser, E. (1996).  The evaluative use of citation analysis for communication journals.  Human Communication Research, 22(4), 563-574.

Garfield, E. (1972).  Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation.  Science, 178, 471-479.

Garfield, E. (1996).  When to cite.  Library Quarterly, 66, 449-458.

Gilbert, G.N. (1977). Referencing as persuasion.  Social Studies of Science, 7, 113-122.

Kaplan, N. (1965). The norms of citation behavior: Prolegomena to the footnote.  American Documentation, 16(3), 179-184.

Leydesdorff, L. (1998).  Theories of citation? Scientometrics, 43(1), 5-25.

Leydesdorff, L. (2007). Visualization of the citation impact environments of scientific journals: An online mapping exercise. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 25-38.

Maricic, S., Spakventi, J., Pavicic, L, & Pifat-Mrzljak, G. (1998).  Citation context versus the frequency counts of citation histories.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49, 387-399.

Oppenheim, C. & Renn, S. (1978).  Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 29(5), 225-231.

Shadish, W., Tolliver, D. Gray, M. & Gupta, S. (1995).  Author judgments about works they cite: Three studies from psychology journals.  Social Studies of Science, 25, 477-497.

Small, H. (1978). Cited documents as concept symbols. Social Studies of Science, 8, 327-340.

Zuckerman, H. (1987). Citation analysis and the complex problem of intellectual influence.  Scientometrics, 12, 329-338.

 

And here is some work on communication journal citations.

 

These two use a variety of author citation, survey, vita, and archival data to look at the evolution of two competing research areas over a 10-year period:

 

Perry, C.A. & Rice, R.E. (1999). Network influences on involvement in the hybrid problem area of developmental dyslexia. Science Communication, 21(1), 64-100.

Perry, C. & Rice, R.E. (1997). Scholarly communication and network influences in the hybrid problem area of developmental dyslexia. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(2), 151-168.

 

These use a variety of citation data and analysis methods to assess author, concept, article, and journal networks:

 

Borgman, C. & Rice, R.E.  (1992). The convergence of information science and communication: A bibliometric analysis.  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 43(6), 397-411. 

Rice, R.E., Chapin, J., Pressman, R., Park, S., & Funkhouser, E. (1996). What's in a name?  Bibliometric analysis of 40 years of the Journal of Broadcasting (and Electronic Media).  Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 40, 511-539.

Rice, R.E., Borgman, C. & Reeves, B.  (1988). Citation networks of communication journals, 1977-1985: Cliques and positions, citations made and citations received.  Human Communication Research, 15(2), 256-283.

Reeves, B. & Borgman, C. (1983).  A bibliographic evaluation of core journals in communication research. Human Communication Research, 10, 119-136.

So, C.Y. (1988). Citation patterns of core communication journals.  Human Communication Research, 15, 236-255.

 

This one applies content analysis to assess what are the primary purposes, based on the context of the citing article, for citations (i.e., methods, empirical review, theory), and what role the citations play in the citing paper.

 

Rice, R.E. & Crawford, G. (1992).  Context and content of citations between communication and library & information science articles.  In J. Schement & B. Ruben (Eds.) Information and behavior, vol. 4.  (pp. 189-217.)  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.

This one specifically looks at the validity and reliability of the citation data found in the Institute for Scientific Information's Journal Citation Report.

Rice, R.E., Borgman, C., Bednarski, D. & Hart, P.  (1989). Journal-to-journal citation data: Issues of reliability and validity.  Scientometrics, 15(3-4),257-282.

 

Communication Theory, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Communication Theory, Citing, 2004.

 

 

Human Communication Research, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Human Communication Research, Citing, 2004.

 

 

Journal of Communication, Cited, 2004.

 

 

Journal of Communication, Citing, 2004.

Participants from developing/transitional countries and students from U.S. ethnic minority groups, who have been accepted to present papers, can apply for travel grants to the ICA Conference in San Francisco between January 15 and March 1, 2007. The travel-grant application is available online at http://www.icahdq.org/cgi-shl/TWServer.exe?Run:MEMONLY:/membersonly/confgrantappl/fundrequest.asp.

 

Developing/transitional countries are identified annually by the United Nations. Potential applicants should check the country tier chart on the ICA website (http://www.icahdq.org/membership/Countrytierchart.asp) to determine whether they are eligible to receive a travel grant. Countries that appear in Tiers B and C qualify as developing/transitional countries. Note that ICA determines eligibility based on country of residence, not of origin.

 

You must be an ICA member to apply.

 

Potential applicants should also contact their Division or Interest Group Chair for possible funding from the divisional Annenberg travel grant. Of the $20,000 allocated by ICA for student travel grants, $6000 will be held aside for Divisions/Interest Groups. Up to $300 for each Division/Interest Group will be available from the $6000 to match travel allocations to their student members.

 

Conference program chair Sonia Livingstone and executive director Michael Haley will review the applications provided through the online application form. From the remaining $14,000, they will use their discretion (considering the general distance of travel to the conference, etc.) in providing up to $500 for qualifying applicants (up to $9,000 for students, and up to $5,000 for faculty from developing/transitional countries). The conference planner and executive director will allocate these funds and notify applicants by April 1.  Recipients must pick up their checks at the conference by showing identification at the registration desk.

 

Any unused funds will be added to the amount available for 2008.

 

While the amount of the grants depends on actual travel costs, the overall availability of funds is limited. A $2 surcharge on each conference registration and other available funds finance these grants. Additionally, each division and special interest group may award travel grants to students selected for top paper or other honors.

 

Applicants will receive notification of the results by April 1, 2007. ICA travel grants will be available at the conference registration desk on Sunday, May 27, 2007. Divisional paper awards and Annenberg travel grant awards will be delivered in the awarding Division or Interest Group business meeting.

Media and communication studies are in the process of transformation: Transnational communication infrastructures, satellites and the Internet in particular, deliver new content "flows" that challenge conventional concepts of "the media." Increasingly fragmented supra- and subnational audiences require a reorientation of communication research that - while retaining what was useful about older vocabularies of mass audience, gate-keeping, agenda-setting, and power and communication - seeks to both accommodate and go beyond these in dealing with significant changes in the global communications environment. Transnational media, for example, are arguably becoming complex platforms of "softpower" of "public diplomacy," mediating political conflicts and shaping worldviews in a globalized political sphere.

 

Within this framework of transformation, transnational media research is needed which helps to detect new phenomena, reflect worldwide "flows" in view of different cultural and societal parameters, and define new structures of "power," of participation and democratic discourse.

 

This preconference will provide a broad platform for the discussion of new emerging paradigms, approaches, and parameters relevant to today's globalized research terrains. The preconference provides a platform for discussing methodological frameworks and the meaning of 'comparison,' but also for sharing research experience in a transnational setting.

 

In addition to introductory papers, which set the agenda of the conference, five panels such as "Journalism and Political Communication," "Comparative Research and New Media Cultures," and "Difference in Comparative Research" will debate the role of comparative research.

 

But the preconference is not only a platform for academic debate. Research funding in our discipline is a key aspect for successfully building a new transnational research environment. The preconference will also discuss the funding policies of major research foundations. Among invited speakers are representatives of the Markle Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. In addition, industry representatives will present their approaches to international media research.

 

The preconference is cosponsored by the Philosophy of Communication Division; the Intercultural, International, and Development Communication Division; and the Public Relations Division. The conference is also sponsored by The Center for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, U of Pennsylvania.

 

For the organizing team:

 

Ingrid Volkmer, Vice-Chair

Philosophy of Communication Division

This special issue will be coedited by Brian G. Southwell and Marco C. Yzer, both of the U of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

 

Half a century ago, Katz and Lazarsfeld presaged the trajectory of late-20th-century mass communication research and its move away from an assumption that media exposure dictates people's behavior directly. They noted that information often does not flow from media outlets directly to atomized individuals but instead travels via intermediary processes that are conversational in nature. Despite recent interest in interpersonal networks, however, the roles of conversational networks in media effects have lain surprisingly underappreciated in theoretical work in the past 50 years. Communication Theory will dedicate a special issue on "Conversation and Campaigns" to restart the relatively dormant discussion in this area.

 

Discussions of a wide range of dimensions relevant to this topic are invited, with a special emphasis on explicitly theoretical work that discerns the various roles that interpersonal conversation can play with regard to mass-media campaigns relevant to politics, health, or any other domain, or clarifies the conditions under which we can expect those roles. For example, we need to know more about various possible roles for talk, for example as mediator or moderator, and about important caveats, such as the importance of group composition and conversation content. We actively encourage submissions from a range of subareas, as scholars studying interpersonal communication, language and social interaction researchers, and those who primarily investigate mass communication, for example, have much to learn from one another. This special issue offers a way to connect different groups of researchers in a way that is long overdue.

 

Manuscripts can be submitted electronically via Communication Theory's web site on Manuscript Central at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/comth. If you are a new user, you may create an account by clicking on "Create Account" in the top right-hand corner of the screen and following the step-by-step instructions. Returning users may log in by clicking on "Log In" in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Manuscripts are submitted through the Author Center. Manuscripts will be considered for this issue if they are received no later than September 1, 2007. Manuscripts should not exceed 30 pages, including text, references, notes, tables, and figures, and must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). The cover letter should indicate that the manuscript is for consideration for the "Conversation and Campaigns" special issue.

Bing Han and Irina Gendelman are student affairs committee members who proposed writing a column about how advisors and professors identify important factors that predict graduate students' success in academia. For this purpose, Bing and Irina designed a survey and sent it to 52 graduate programs in communication. They received 54 faculty members' responses. Based on the received data, Bing and Irina extracted the dominant themes that the faculty members used to predict graduate students' success in their academic careers. In this column, we present Bing and Irina's research findings. If you have further questions or comments, please feel free to email Qi Wang or Rebecca Hains, or the original authors. We welcome diverse responses from our readers.    

 

 

How to Become a Professor: Faculty Perceptions of Communication Ph.D. Student Characteristics Needed to Succeed in Academia

By Bing Han and Irina Gendelman

 

During the course of a Ph.D. program, a student is gradually socialized into the culture of the academy. At this stage, however, a question remains as to whether the student will have a successful academic career in the future. Advisors oftentimes have an intuitive knowledge of which students will be more successful than others in academia. What are the implicit indicators that professors rely on in their judgment? How do they predict the future success of a graduate student?

 

Identifying these implicit expectations could help graduate students understand early in their training what is expected of them as they adjust to life in graduate school. These criteria could act as a powerful guide for graduate students to get the best out of their graduate study, set appropriate goals, assess their dedication to the academy, and lay a solid foundation for their future success in academia. Making these expectations explicit could also assist faculty in advising students and aid departments in designing graduate-student professional development programs that actively cultivate the valued characteristics.

 

This article is a brief report of a study that asked faculty in Communication departments to indicate how they judge graduate students. This study aims to inform graduate students of what is important in their early development as young scholars, and also to facilitate faculty in developing a consistent policy in advising graduate students. Due to limited space, this article will only report some of the questions included in the study. A full research article can be obtained by contacting the authors.

 

Research Questions

In this article, four research questions from the study will be presented. These questions seek to understand what communication faculty members perceive to be necessary characteristics that graduate students need in order to succeed in academia.

 

RQ1: What are the typical characteristics that lead to the success or failure of communication graduate students in academia?

This question seeks to find out the typical characteristics (e.g., behaviors, personality, character, etc.) of four categories of communication graduate students: outstanding, very good, ordinary, and ill-suited.

 

RQ2: How important is time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree in assessing a graduate student’s potential as a successful scholar?

This question examines the importance of time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree as an indicator of graduate students' success, and asks faculty members how long they took to complete their own degrees and what they think is a reasonable range of time in getting a Ph.D. in communication.

 

RQ3: What is the best research/publication model a graduate student should use (solo, collaboration, or both)?

This question explores faculty members' suggestions as to how graduate students should go about doing research and publishing based on their own experience and their observation of outstanding graduate students.

 

RQ4: How critical are some of the characteristics in contributing to a communication graduate student's success or failure in comparison with each other?

 

 

Method

 

Participants

Participants in the study were faculty in communication departments across the U.S. These departments were chosen from the ranking schools based on an NCA (National Communication Association) 2004 Doctoral Reputational Study of the doctoral programs in communication. An online survey was sent to 52 communication departments in the U.S. and in total, 54 faculty members responded to the survey. The average age of the participants was 47.55 (SD = 9.46 years). The range of age was from 30 years to 62 years. Males composed 53.7% of the sample. Most identified as Caucasian (83.3%) and a few identified as Asian-American/Asian (3.7%), African-American (1.9%), and other (9.3%). Together, the 54 faculty members had 912 years of experience, had advised approximately 1367 graduate students, and had sat on about 2461 dissertation committees. The average participant had been a professor for 17 years, advised about 25 dissertations, and served on about 46 committees.

 

Procedure

The chairs of targeted communication departments were asked to relay an online survey solicitation email to faculty members in their departments. The survey included five open-ended and two closed-ended questions. The open-ended questions asked the participants to characterize four categories of graduate students: outstanding, very good, ordinary, and ill-suited. Participants were asked to discuss what specific strengths a graduate student should bring to a collaboration with faculty members, whether time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree is a good indicator of the success of a graduate student, and what the best research/publication model is for a graduate student to use. They were also asked what characteristics had helped them succeed as a graduate student. Finally, the two closed-ended questions asked participants to rate listed characteristics in terms of how critical they were in contributing to a student’s success or failure.

 

 

Results

 

RQ1: What are the typical characteristics that lead to the success or failure of communication graduate students in academia?

When asked to give "a typical description of an outstanding Communication graduate student," university professors agreed on a number of measures. Naturally, there was no unanimous formula for an outstanding graduate student, but the responses were consistent enough that it was possible to organize them into the following overlapping themes -- initiative, engagement, work ethic, intelligence, creativity, and flexibility.

 

These themes are conceptualized in a way that seemed most useful for aligning the expectations between graduate students, professors, and departments. The themes, however, vary from tangible to abstract. For example, writing or time management are concrete skills that a graduate student can tangibly develop over time, while intelligence or creativity are more abstract qualities that may be more difficult or time-consuming to build up, if indeed they can be acquired at all. An attempt is made to unpack the abstract qualities into some tangible attributes described by participants.

 

Initiative. Most consistently, an outstanding student was sketched as a student who is "independent," "motivated," "self-directed," and overall shows "initiative." Repeatedly, university professors painted a picture of a student who is not only motivated to get through graduate school, but who readily takes initiative or has enough motivation to take action without much prompting. As one professor wrote, students who require "little hand-holding" stand out from their peers. Others wrote that an excellent student "does not need his or her hand held" but also "knows how to seek advice and guidance," emphasizing that initiative can be demonstrated over time and refers not only to initiating projects or seeking out collaboration, but also to asking for help and getting feedback.

 

Engagement. Faculty described students who take the opportunity to engage in their immediate as well as in the broader community. They wrote, for example, that "he or she also tends to be excited by others' work and encourages them to do well" or that outstanding students tend to engage with the larger academic network by participating in conferences, writing papers for publication, collaborating with others, engaging with existing theory, integrating teaching with research, asking for feedback, asking questions, and generally engaging with other scholars. Respondents placed an emphasis not only on engagement with others, but also on engagement with the practice of scholarship, stating that a promising academic should actually have a passion and curiosity or enjoy and love research and teaching. For example, answers included statements like "they should have an interest in the topic and discipline," or possess "hunger for knowledge" and be "eager to learn," and that an outstanding student is someone who is "genuinely interested in communication (high curiosity)." Overall, respondents articulated engagement as a drive to search for answers, discuss ideas and view research as a tool to higher understanding, or a knowledge that might be extended beyond the academy, to "change the world" or "to advance the human condition."

 

Work ethic. Work ethic was most often articulated as "hard work," which was then qualified by language such as focus, energy, discipline, professionalism, commitment, and persistence. Another less repeated, but noticeably recurring theme was productivity—such as (in order of most frequently mentioned) conference presentations, writing for publication, and publication and grants. Finally, organization and time-management skills also figured prominently in the responses.

 

Some of the responses were conceptually very broad. For example, simple descriptions of students as "intelligent" or "smart" risk reducing intelligence to binaries (intelligence vs. ignorance). Explaining what action demonstrates intelligence, however, allows students with initiative to take action. Therefore, it is useful to unpack complex concepts such as intelligence, creativity, and flexibility, and to conceptualize them as achievable goals or merit rather than as an innate quality. Much conversation already exists about the meaning of these concepts and could easily fill another volume, but for the sake of this article, our focus falls on unpacking the broad concepts through an analysis of answers obtained within the survey.

 

Intelligence. Several faculty wrote that being "smart" or "intelligent" is key to academic success. To interpret this, we consider a number of skills that were discussed as possible indicators of intelligence. A high majority of the respondents agreed that writing is a key measure of a graduate student’s excellence, stating that a graduate student should be a very good writer, require little or no editing, be eager for suggestions, and be responsive to feedback. Second to writing, respondents emphasized reading breadth and comprehension, i.e. retaining information, synthesizing material from a body of literature, and quickly grasping new concepts. The focus here was not on writing or reading skills only, but on the ability to absorb and produce information. Professors wrote that outstanding students are motivated to read more than just the bare minimum for a class, and, as one person summarized, these students contextualize their research "in the prevailing secondary-source literature, and digest it in a manner that advances cross-disciplinary understanding of the topic under study. All writing produced intensively, on every page, does the above."

 

Creativity. In addition to simply mentioning creativity as an important characteristic, faculty also identified such elements of creativity as students' ability to "conduct cutting-edge primary-source-based research," being "creative and finding a niche for themselves where they can contribute to the field of study and to theory building," having the aptitude to "make a cogent and creative argument in an engaging and informed way," as well as being "creative and able to visualize what literature/research is missing and perhaps even a way to fill that gap." Faculty linked creativity with an ability to produce cutting edge research, find a niche in the discipline, advance the field, and demonstrate resourcefulness in research and problem solving.

 

Flexibility. Flexibility was another common characteristic that respondents valued in praising open-mindedness and playfulness in contrast to a resistance or defensive reaction when faced with new or opposing ideas. Respondents wrote that it is important for the student to have the ability to discuss ideas with peers in a collegial manner, to challenge and disagree while also having the ability to listen. Another type of flexibility mentioned was a willingness to use a variety of methods and undertake a variety of projects, demonstrating interests beyond the primary focus of study.

 

RQ2: How important is time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree in assessing a graduate student’s potential as a successful scholar? 

Faculty members' responses differed greatly as to whether time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree is a good indicator of a graduate student’s future success in academia (i.e., whether it is "the sooner the better" in getting a Ph.D. degree in communication). Three major opinions emerge from the data analysis supporting a fast approach, a steady approach, or a middle approach to completing a Ph.D. degree.

 

A fast approach. Seventeen out of 54 participants believed that time taken to complete a Ph.D. degree is a good indicator of the success of a graduate student. The most cited explanation is motivational factors. Students who work at a faster pace are "highly motivated" and "internally driven" to accomplish. They bring "dedication," "enthusiasm," and "excitement" to what they are doing. "Timely finishers are probably more focused and disciplined than their slower counterparts," and "nothing matters more in finishing a degree or having a successful career than discipline." Moreover, finishing fast "demonstrates organization and structure," and "indicates good follow-through" to "get the work done."

 

In addition to motivation, the second most cited reason is professional requirement. One professor stated the importance of finishing fast for functioning professionally:

 

Fast finishers demonstrate motivation and the ability to work independently and quickly. These skills are essential to assistant professors. While it is possible to extend the time required to complete a Ph.D. a great deal, no such timeframe is available for assistant professors on the tenure-track who must publish to keep their jobs.

 

A steady approach. Among the 54 participants, 22 faculty members believed that speed is not a good predictor of a graduate student’s future success. These professors argued that "extra time" is not necessarily a bad thing—it all depends on what the "extra time" is used for. One participant wrote that there is
"minimal correlation of speed and accomplishment or talent." "Frankly," a professor said, "I think we would produce better Ph.D. teachers and researchers if they took about the same time as a literature or history Ph.D. student, five to seven years."

 

Another professor suggested that "a holistic approach is the most important and not just the time taken to complete," because "students often mature whilst studying and grow into their studies," and "they obtain a lot of insights and need time to also reflect on what they have learnt and to incorporate their experience." "The experience of becoming a scholar is about internalizing the values and tools of scholarship." These professors suggested that graduate school is a place for "intellectual pursuits" and for taking time to "think about t