February 29, 2024

History of Media Studies Newsletter February 2024

History of Media Studies Newsletter February 2024

Welcome to the 36th edition of the History of Media Studies Newsletter. The monthly email, assembled by Dave Park, Jeff Pooley, and Pete Simonson, maintains a loose affiliation with the new History of Media Studies journal and the Working Group on the History of Media Studies. Please contact us with any questions, suggestions, or items.

1. Working Group on the History of Media Studies

Join us for the next remote session devoted to discussing working papers with authors. Hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM). Open to anyone interested in the history of the media studies fields. Instructions to join are here.

March 20, 2024

Wednesday (March 20, 2024) 14:00-15:00 UTC (10:00 am to 11:00 am EDT)

Reading for discussion:

• Esperanza Herrero, “How women researchers contributed to the proposal of two-step flow: some of the hidden gendered work behind The People’s Choice” (working paper)

For the Zoom link and the reading download, visit the Working Group page. Instructions for joining the group are here. Questions? Contact us

2. Conferences, Calls & Announcements

If you have a call or announcement relevant to the history of media studies, please contact us.

1. CFP: The Making of the Humanities XI, Lund * In 2024, the eleventh conference in this series on the history of the humanities will be hosted by the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), Lund University. The MoH conferences are organized by the Society for the History of the Humanities and bring together scholars and historians interested in the history of a wide variety of fields, including archaeology, art history, historiography, linguistics, literary studies, media studies, musicology, and philology, tracing these fields from their earliest developments to the modern day. We welcome panels and papers on any period or region. We are especially interested in work that transcends the history of specific humanities disciplines by comparing scholarly practices across disciplines and civilisations. * Conference dates: 9–11 October, 2024 * Deadline: 1 May 2024 * More details
2. CFA: The Past and Present of Humanities Peer Review * Peer review, i.e. the institutionalized evaluation of scholars and their outputs by others working in the same field, is fundamental to knowledge production and research evaluation in the present-day humanities. However, the origins and development of humanities peer review remain remarkably poorly understood, particularly in comparison to the history of peer review in the natural and social sciences. This Minerva special issue aims to bridge this knowledge gap by exploring the historical evolution of peer review in humanities disciplines such as history, theology, philosophy, musicology, and linguistics. It seeks to uncover the diverse forms of humanities peer review that have existed throughout history, extending beyond currently dominant practices of academic peer review. * Deadline: 15 March 2024 * More details
3. CFP: European Society for the History of the Human Sciences * The European Society for the History of the Human Sciences (ESHHS) invites submissions to its 43rd conference to be held from 25 to 28 June 2024. The conference will be hosted by the University of Essex, at its Colchester campus in the UK, and will be held in person only. We invite proposals for oral presentations, posters, symposia or workshops that deal with any aspect of the history of the human, behavioural and social sciences or with related historiographic or methodological issues. This year’s conference particularly encourages submissions related to the theme of inner life. * Conference dates: 25–28 June 2024 * Deadline: 15 March 2024 * More details
4. CFP: Society for U.S. Intellectual History * The 2024 USIH Conference will be a fully in-person meeting in Boston convening on November 14-16 at the Boston Sheraton. Due to the prohibitive costs of hybrid events (in combination with the challenges of making such events pleasant for participants), there will be no hybrid options for presentation or attendance. Within those parameters, we plan to facilitate a conference that is accessible and welcoming to all who identify under USIH’s broad definition of intellectual history as “ideas in action.” We are committed to using the meeting as a venue for strengthening institutional connections to related organizations and contributing to USIH’s ongoing efforts in DEI. The conference theme is “Knowledge and Belief.” * Conference dates: 14–16 2024 * Deadline: 15 April 2024 * More details
5. CFP: Langer, Creativity, and American Thought: A Conference on the Work and Influence of Susanne Langer * The Susanne Langer Circle announces an interdisciplinary conference covering all aspects of the thought of Susanne Langer. The conference will be hosted by the American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought (AIPCT), Murphysboro, IL, and by Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), June 24-28, 2024. The conference is sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and the Foundation for the Philosophy of Creativity, along with AIPCT and SIUC. The conference will include keynote addresses, an artistic experience, a virtual reality demonstration and experience, and a conference dinner. Most speakers will be presenting in a series of plenary sessions. * Conference dates: 24–28 June 2024 * Deadline: 31 March 2024 * More details
6. Call for Submissions: 20th Anniversary Issue of The Journal of Community Informatics * On October 1, 2004, the first issue of The Journal of Community Informatics was published. It has since remained a free and open access, double-blind peer review journal featuring academic research and practitioner contributions at the intersection of CI research, practice, and policy. As a way to celebrate the past 20 years of the journal, and to open up new avenues for participation, we invite original submissions in these traditional formats, as well as new formats including artistic works such as poetry, audio/video recordings, and visual artwork, on topics including the past, present, and future of community informatics; reflections from journal article authors about the impact of their contributions; and personal/professional reflections on CI as a field of research and practice. * Deadline: 1 May 2024 * More details
7. CFP: Media and Communication. 50 Years of the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication * In October 2024, the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication celebrates its 50th anniversary. We will celebrate the half-century anniversary of the establishment of the Faculty as a department of Sofia University with a jubilee collection "Media and Communication. 50 Years of the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication". The thematic scope of the collection is broad and includes: research on topics related to the theory, history and transformations of communication, journalism and media; the theory, history and strategies of public communication; the theory, history and development of book publishing and editorial and publishing activities; the theory and research of content management and communication management or comparative theoretical developments in the field of media and communication. * Deadline: 31 March 2024 * More details

3. The Journal

History of Media Studies has joined Project JASPER, an initiative to preserve open access journals.

HMS encourages submissions (en español) on the history of research, education, and reflective knowledge about media and communication—as expressed through academic institutions; through commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations; and through “alter-traditions” of thought and practice often excluded from the academic mainstream.

4. New Publications

Works listed here are newly published, or new to the bibliography.

The History of Communication Research Bibliography is a project of the Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives (ASCLA) at the University of Pennsylvania.

1. Dorsten, Aimee-Marie. "Helen Merrell Lynd (1896-1982)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 161--72. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Researching Helen Merrell Lynd often implicates her husband, sociologist Robert S. Lynd, as if they are two sides of the same coin, because they are known as the husband-and-wife team of the Middletown studies. Yet, Lynd's scholarly career is remarkable in its own right: she completed her PhD in the 1920s at Columbia University while helping build Sarah Lawrence College and raising two children.1 Her scholarship ranges across sociology, history, psychology, social philosophy, and other disciplines; includes seven soleauthor books on history, psychology, and philosophy, numerous articles, and shared authorship on Middletown: A Study in American Culture (1929) and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflict (1937). Her scholarship was based in the classics and social philosophy, including Hegelian philosophy.2 But the true pulse of her work was vigorous endorsement for critical social justice. She is cited in critical consumer studies, feminism, globalization, history, Marxism, mass communication studies, psychology, qualitative research methods, social psychology, and sociology.

2. Dorsten, Aimee-Marie. "Jeanette Sayre Smith (1915-1974)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 185--96. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Jeanette Sayre's research reflected a fascination with the power and control broadcasting exerted over public perception. She was invested in broadcasting regulation's impact on the public's lived experience, whether for farmer, homemaker, or immigrant. As a research associate, Sayre was well published as part of an esteemed cadre at the Princeton Radio Research Project (PRRP) and the Radiobroadcasting Research Project (RRP) through the Harvard Littauer Center in the late 1930s--1940s under Carl J. Friedrich.1 Sayre recognized early the power of "niche" audiences as key to the influence of radio or television programming; she was also concerned with radio's weak regulatory structure, the potential for educational broadcasting, and the public's attitude toward the medium, whether nationalized or privatized.

3. Dorsten, Aimee-Marie. "Marjorie Ella Fiske Lissance Löwenthal (1914-1992)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 39--52. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Marjorie Ella Fiske Lissance Löwenthal's highly productive career cut across radio and audience research, advertising, library studies, and psychology. Early in her career, Fiske was a mainstay at Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) where her innovations in audience studies were largely uncredited. Fiske was among several women (see also Patricia Kendall, Chapter 12 of this volume) who contributed significantly to the research BASR is famous for, but hit a glass ceiling in rank and power at the Bureau. Fiske was lauded for her scholarship in library studies and psychology, as she refashioned her career several times over.1 Her media research is cited in critical brand theory, mass communication, media effects, media studies, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and social psychology.

4. Kinkel, Marianne. "Violet Edwards Lavine (1906-1983)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 25--38. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Interest in studying propaganda has resurfaced as a response to the current collapse of public discourse and crisis in democracy. Looking for potential guidance, scholars have turned to the analysis of propaganda, studies of persuasion and public opinion conducted in the 1930s and 1940s, another moment of great turmoil. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) figures into such histories and is largely known for the seven propaganda devices developed by the Institute's director, Clyde Miller, and case studies such as Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee's analysis of the anti-Semitic radio broadcasts of Father Charles Coughlin.1 Scholarship on the IPA, however, has largely ignored the organization's Experimental Study Program and has overlooked the activities of its educational director Violet Edwards and her contributions to communication studies.

5. Abuhmaid, Hadil. "Claudia Jones (1915-1964)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 109--20. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Claudia Jones was a Black woman, an activist, a journalist, a communist theorist, a revolutionary, a fighter, and an intersectional feminist. She spent most of her life challenging racist national policies and oppressive gender roles. Class was central to Jones' understanding of identity, a category she understood to be structured by race and migration. These concerns were reflected in her politics and her fearless challenges to US class exploitation, White supremacy, gender subordination, and many forms of discrimination on the part of US government and society.

6. Dorsten, Aimee-Marie. "Emma 'Mae' Dena Solomon Huettig Churchill (1911-1996)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 75--86. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Mae D. Huettig was the first scholar to analyze the centrality of micro and macroeconomics in the US filmmaking industry; she was also rumored to be one of the ten most subversive people of the McCarthy era. Huettig's formative text, Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry: A Study in Industrial Organization (1944) exemplifies her keen ability to plot points illuminating the nexus of control and power: either in data as a progressive economist and film historian, or between people as a labor organizer, spy, and civil rights activist. Using forensic accounting and critical industrial analysis, Economic Control exposed the interdependent relationship between film production, distribution, exhibition, and studio financials (such as real estate) key to corporate Hollywood's survival at a critical juncture: the 1948 Paramount Decree antitrust case. Analyzing the "big eight"1 movie studios' oligopolistic stranglehold over film, Economic Control is precedential for critical media studies, media economics, labor and organization studies, political economy of communication, media sociology, and communication law scholars.2 Indeed, Huettig's critique of capitalistic corporate media remains radical.

7. Giner-Monfort, Jordi. "The Bureau of Applied Social Research and Comics Studies in the 1940s." The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship 14, no. 1 (February 9, 2024). https://doi.org/10.16995/cg.9900.

   ABSTRACT: The Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) was an agency specialised in mass communication research established in 1944 and initially directed by Paul F. Lazarsfeld. From 1945 to 1946 it ran four research projects on the reception of a series of cartoons and comics aimed at spreading an antiracist, antisemitic and pro-union message in the USA. To do so, they deployed different techniques to test audience reception, including a survey and focused interviews. Most of BASR's reports remain unpublished in Columbia University Archival Collections. This article focuses on Mr. Biggott, a character full of prejudice created by Carl Rose to test the effects of an intentionally racist and antisemitic comic strip. We analysed the content of the three reports developed by BASR on the reception of three comic strips: the first one examined 160 focused interviews; the second one focused on a survey with 692 respondents; and the last sought to combine the results obtained through these two techniques together. We argue that they represent a pioneering approach in Social Sciences, both methodologically (random samples, focused interviews, triangulation) and theoretically (limited effects, boomerang interpretation).

8. Hristova, Elena D. "Patricia Louise Kendall (1922-1990)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 133--46. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] From 1943 to 1965 Patricia L. Kendall worked as a researcher at the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University. There she was one of the few women who climbed the Bureau's career ladder to direct research studies, develop viable research methods for the study of audiences and teach them to graduate students, and produce key ideas about persuasion.

9. Hristova, Elena D., Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile. "Introduction." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 1--16. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] All canons have their ghosts. We catch glimpses of them in footnotes and bibliographies, but more often than not they are buried altogether, casualties of dense citational and intellectual kinship networks, editorial decisions, shifting ideas about relevance and value, and the structural inequalities that have shaped academe, libraries, and other institutions that create, curate, and preserve knowledge. Those who create canons work to make them appear natural and spontaneous, generational wellsprings of creativity and innovation, rather than the result of careful and painstaking processes of selection and legacy-building. While we tend to think about canons in terms of aesthetic and creative production--literary, visual, auditory--disciplines and fields of intellectual inquiry create canons of their own, telling stories about the genesis of ideas, analyses, and methods that shape and legitimize scholarship in the present. Dynamics of recognition and privilege, as Rebecca Solnit observes in the opening epigram, have determined the survival and salience of narratives about how fields of intellectual inquiry emerge and thus how we think about who made those fields, as well as those who belong in them. Mainly, the intellectual histories we tell rarely include perspectives other than those of White men, reflecting the commonsense belief that only White men participated in the intellectual debates and research activities of the past.

10. Kamin, Diana. "Romana Javitz (1903-1980)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 99--108. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Romana Javitz was a visionary librarian whose contributions to theories of photography, image classification, and public culture are newly resonant in a contemporary image economy in which circulating digital image collections controlled by private platforms increasingly structure our visual experience. Javitz was Superintendent of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library from 1928 to 1968, during which time the collection circulated millions of clipped pictures, cut by hand out of discarded books and magazines and available to be checked out by anyone with a library card. Users of the collection ranged from avant-garde artists including Diego Rivera and Andy Warhol to US State Department researchers to advertising professionals to schoolchildren; Javitz endeavored to make the collection accessible to all. To this end, Javitz pioneered a system in which pictures are organized in open stacks and catalogued under thousands of alphabetical subject headings, empowering user-directed searches and rejecting artistand author-centered schemes dominant in museum and library settings, which she explicitly challenged as forms of knowledge gatekeeping. All classification schemes represent values: Javitz argued that the classification of pictures should be drawn from the language of the public, eschewing hierarchical order or specialized knowledge. Further, she advocated for libraries to take picture organization as seriously as books, warning that the absence of library leadership would leave a vacuum that would be filled by commercial enterprise. This critique has proved prescient as concerns mount that free platforms like Google lack accountability and commitment to the public interest. As a librarian whose progressive politics shaped her sense of what should be preserved and who should have access, Javitz offers a vital model for the role of libraries in public culture.

11. Kinkel, Marianne. "Gene Weltfish (1902-1980)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 221--36. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] At a 1976 gathering held in honor of her contributions to anthropology, Gene Weltfish asserted that defeating prejudice and social injustice are fundamental: "Human hatred and group self-destruction must be the basis of our work, for those committed rather than merely professionalized."1 Her committed practice was shaped much earlier by her teachers, Franz Boas and John Dewey. As Juliet Niehaus argues, Weltfish integrated their ideas of democracy, social activism, and the collective production of knowledge in her own form of pragmatic anthropology.2 From the late 1930s to the end of her career, Weltfish sought social justice, but such a committed practice was arduous and perilous, especially when she became a leading anti-racist activist during post-war McCarthyism.

12. Kinney, Tiffany. "Eleanor Leacock (1922-1987)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 147--60. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Eleanor Burke Leacock was a Marxist-feminist anthropologist who studied capitalism and colonialism's impact on indigenous groups, especially by analyzing how egalitarian societies transformed into ones marked by structural inequalities.1 Active from the 1940s to the 1980s, Leacock influenced feminist anthropology by drawing from her findings on pre-classed, indigenous groups to challenge essentialist, ahistorical theories of women's subordination. Leacock's work influenced communication studies as she detailed how the Jesuits disseminated information, specifically crafting stories about socially acceptable behaviors as part of their pedagogical program to educate the Montagnais-Naskapi. Additionally, Leacock spoke at length about the psychological ramifications of the Jesuits' pedagogical/colonialization efforts: "conflicting ideologies caused profound […] psychological turmoil for these individuals […] who made an often-agonizing decision to give up traditional beliefs and practices and adhere to new codes of conduct and commitment."2 Importantly, Leacock's work considered not only how storytelling played a role in converting these indigenous groups into Christianity but also the psychological ramifications of these pedagogical efforts.

13. Levine, Elana. "Herta Herzog (1910-2010)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 65--74. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Herta Herzog is a crucial figure in the histories of communication and media studies, and foundational to the field of audience research. Born and educated in Austria, Herzog spent most of her life in the United States, moving her career between academia and industry, exemplifying the fluidity of these realms in the mid-twentieth century. Herzog's work was shaped by potentially disparate influences, including critical social theory, empirical social science, and psychological inquiry. As both an academic and a market researcher, Herzog employed a range of methods to better understand the motivations and desires of audiences, but she is best known for her qualitative research on American radio listeners, especially the women who listened to daytime serials in the 1930s and 1940s. While she disavowed an affiliation with feminism, Herzog's willingness to take the perspectives of everyday audiences seriously, and to accord them agency in their engagement with denigrated, popular, and feminized media, set precedents for audience studies and for feminist media research more broadly, carrying into the second half of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first.

14. Madikiza, Diliza. "An Analytical Lens Resting on a Tripod: De-Westernising, Internationalising, and Decolonising International Communication." Communicatio 49, no. 3--4 (October 2, 2023): 63--87. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2023.2257009.

    ABSTRACT: This article reviews three critical analytical discourses that are wrestling with the Euro-American historic bias in international communication. The de-Westernisation discourse is perhaps one that has been most prevalent. To also deconcentrate Western biases, the "internationalisation" perspective argues that the field of international communication still needs to be truly "internationalised." The article advances that there is another Western-centricity critiquing perspective--the decoloniality school of thought--that warrants a fully-fledged adoption and application as a third perspective. Together, the three disquisitions not only hold the potential to dismantle the Euro-American historical leanings evident in the field, but they also offer an opportunity to refresh international communication theory and research practice with new, alternative non-Western offerings, especially from the Global South.

15. Moody-Ramirez, Mia, Federico Subervi, Hayg Oshagan, and Emily Guajardo. "Representation in the Leadership Demographics of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication from 2010 to 2022." Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 79, no. 1 (March 2024): 86--102. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776958231222186.

    ABSTRACT: Academic associations play a vital role in the development of academic fields and their respective educational institutions. Using Critical Race Theory, this article reviews the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's (AEJMC) ethnic/racial and gender diversity, DEI research, and leadership demographics to provide context for our analysis of the organization's ethnic/racial and gender leadership between 2010 and 2022. Findings indicate AEJMC has made strides in its recruitment and retention of women and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) faculty. White females and Asian males are well represented in the organization's highest leadership positions, and in the Council of Divisions. However, Hispanics and Native Americans continue to be underrepresented in top leadership positions. Study findings, proposed solutions, and best practices aim to help AEJMC and its members make a difference in addressing shortcomings related to DEI research, retention, and leadership cultivation.

16. Mulligan, Malia, Morning Glory Ritchie, and Miche Dreiling. "Fredi Washington (1903-1994)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 207--20. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1903, Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington was a film, radio, and Broadway actor, as well as a writer, producer, and an activist. After the death of her mother, Washington was sent to a convent for orphaned Black and Indian children in St. Elizabeth's in Cornwell Heights, Pennsylvania. When she was older, Washington moved to New York City in 1919 to live with her grandmother. While working at Pace and Handy's Black Swan Record Company, Washington, who had never danced professionally, auditioned for Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. Choreographed by Elida Webb, and featuring Washington, Shuffle Along (1921) became the first all-Black Broadway hit.1 Although Washington was best known for her role as the light-skinned Peola in John Stahl's film production of Imitation of Life (1934), theater was her home. In addition to Shuffle Along, Washington performed in Singin' the Blues (1931), Run, Little Chillun (1933), The Emperor Jones (1933), Mamba's Daughters (1939), Lysistrata (1946), A Long Way from Home (1948), and numerous other theatrical productions. Washington also appeared in special programs and guest appearances on WCBS, WOR, WNBC, and WINS.

17. Rüdiger, Francisco, and Otávio Daros. "Marxist Thinking and Journalism Theory in Brazil." Rethinking Marxism 34, no. 4 (October 2, 2022): 538--57. https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2022.2139079.

    ABSTRACT: Marxist thinking gained political strength in Brazil with the creation of the Brazilian Communist Party in 1922, but it was only in the 1980s that its influence in the academic field became noteworthy. This article aims to reconstruct and analyze the origins and the main ideas related to its intervention in the academic theorization of journalism. Besides the contribution of the pioneer Nelson Werneck Sodré ("the press as a means of political struggle"), we discuss the theses of Perseu Abramo ("journalism as a means of manipulation"), Ciro Marcondes Filho ("news as commodity") and Adelmo Genro Filho ("journalism as a form of knowledge"). Finally, we question whether the perspectives opened up by the pioneers and their successors still show enough intellectual energy to think critically about journalism in times of interactive digital media.

18. Soderlund, Gretchen. "Gretel Karplus Adorno (1902-1993)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 17--24. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] When she is remembered, Gretel Karplus Adorno is best known for her correspondence with Walter Benjamin and her contributions to preparing the manuscripts of her husband, Theodor Adorno. We may never know whether Karplus wrote essays of her own; when her famous husband died suddenly in 1969, she was so grief-stricken that she destroyed most of her personal papers before attempting suicide.1 The notes, journals, and correspondences she expunged, and others that vanished later, might have provided insight into her own thought processes and helped determine the provenance of key Frankfurt School ideas. Without them, feminist historians can only speculate on the intellectual contributions Karplus made to a body of work that shaped twentieth-century philosophy, critical theory, and communications research. Because of a historical tradition of sidelining women's roles in the production of knowledge and burying their efforts in acknowledgment sections, Karplus tends to be remembered as a wife, secretary, assistant, and facilitator, but not as a scholar in her own right.

19. Stabile, Carol A. "Marie Jahoda (1907-2001)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 87--98. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Marie Jahoda was an activist and social psychologist, who began her career studying the impact of global economic crises on economically precarious communities. Coming of age in an era of political, economic, and social upheaval shaped her intellectual trajectory. Jahoda devoted her career to studying social problems, breaking new ground in interdisciplinary research aimed at understanding and addressing systemic oppression.

20. Stabile, Carol A., and Laura Strait. "Lisa Sergio (1905-1989)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 197--206. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Lisa Sergio was one of the most influential women in news broadcasting during World War II. Despite her prominence, few histories of twentiethcentury broadcasting discuss her role or the network of women in print and broadcast journalism of which she was a part.1 Little has been written about her subversive activism in fascist Italy, or her attempts to prevent its global spread through expert cultural analysis. In fact, Sergio's career exemplifies a tradition of female journalists leveraging their careers to participate in the public sphere as trusted political theorists--a space otherwise occupied primarily by men.

21. Stamp, Shelley. "Hortense Powdermaker (1896-1970)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 173--84. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Hortense Powdermaker's 1950 study of Hollywood's motion picture industry, The Dream Factory, was the first anthropological research of its kind and her observations about "the social system underlying the production of movies" remain prescient.1 Movies, she argued, played an outsized role in American life in the mid-twentieth century, where they served as "ready-made fantasies" and "collective daydreams […] manufactured on the assembly line."2 This factory-like mode of production, Powdermaker insisted, "significantly influences their content and meaning."

22. Strait, Laura, and Carol A. Stabile. "Shirley Graham Du Bois (1896-1977)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 53--64. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Throughout her life, Shirley Graham Du Bois broke new ground across fields of cultural production. She was the first Black woman to write and produce an opera, the only woman to head a Federal Theatre Project Unit, the founder and first editor of the influential journal Freedomways, and the only woman to found a national television system. Prior to the publication of Gerald Horne's biography, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (2002), Graham's many contributions to music, literature, media, and politics were suppressed because of her outspoken criticisms of White supremacy and her activism, her criticisms of capitalism, and her membership in the Communist Party.

23. Tham, Jason. "The CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication, 2004--2022: Doctoral Research Topics, Methods, and Implications for the Field." Technical Communication Quarterly 33, no. 2 (April 2, 2024): 200--226. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2023.2229382.

    ABSTRACT: This study extends the retrospective analysis of entries for the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication (1999--2003) by Stuart Selber in 2004, focusing on the subsequent two decades (2004 to 2022), to identify the topical research areas and methodologies in technical and professional communication (TPC) via the winning entries of the award. Through descriptive content analysis of 29 dissertations and corresponding summary statistics, this study reports on TPC disciplinary emphases and growth based on the sponsoring institutions on these dissertations, featured topics and their research methods or methodologies, and projected implications for the field. Accordingly, this study reveals the state of TPC graduate research through the lens of the imminent award and what it means for doctoral researchers, their advisors, and programs.

24. Tkalac Verčič, Ana, Dejan Verčič, Sinja Čož, and Anja Špoljarić. "A Systematic Review of Digital Internal Communication." Public Relations Review 50, no. 1 (March 1, 2024): 102400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102400.

    ABSTRACT: The digitalization of greater society has permeated organizations, where managers are reassessing how internal communication is practiced and defined, particularly in the context of public relations and strategic communication. These changes were already underway before the COVID-19 pandemic, which strongly highlighted the importance of effective internal communication. Now more than ever, digital transformation is profoundly affecting internal communication, yet there are substantial gaps in our understanding of the current situation. This study aims to identify and provide an overview of the research in the area through a systematic review of 77 research studies published in 52 journals between the beginning of 1990 and November 2022. The findings reveal the evolution of research on digital internal communication and highlight geographical, theoretical, and methodological gaps that should be addressed in future work. First of all, the effectiveness of different internal communication channels needs to be thoroughly researched. This includes the effectiveness of collaboration tools and platforms, the influence of channels that enable remote work, and the significance of gamification and an interactive communication approach. Also, digitalization in internal communication should be given more attention from a social perspective, underlining the effects of internal communication digitalization on employees and their satisfaction as well as employee concerns with privacy, control, and other ethical dilemmas regarding easy accessibility to data. Finally, digitalization of internal communication should be researched as a transformation process within organizations, which has not yet been done.

25. Varão, Rafiza. "Dorothy Blumenstock Jones (1911-1980)." In The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies, edited by Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and Carole A. Stabile, 121--32. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2024.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Dorothy Blumenstock Jones, a pioneer in film analysis, was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, on March 29, 1911. She attended the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1934 as an undergraduate student of political science.1 During her studies, she did not receive financial support from her parents to study "because of her gender."2 So, she worked as a typist during the first year of her BA studies, sometimes not having enough even to eat.3 But Jones soon engaged in research activities at the University of Chicago. She received a grant from the Payne Fund, from 1931 to 1932, as a statistical clerk, working with the psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone (1887--1955). In 1932, she worked as an assistant to the examiner in social sciences for the Board of Examinations of the University of Chicago and as a research associate with the American political scientist Frederick Schuman (1901--1981) from 1932--1933. Finally, from 1933 to 1937, Jones worked as a research assistant for the political scientist Harold Lasswell.