July 31, 2025

History of Media Studies Newsletter July 2025

History of Media Studies Newsletter July 2025

Welcome to the 52nd 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

The next remote session of the Working Group on the History of Media Studies will be Wednesday, September 17, 14:00–15:00 UTC (10am–11am EDT)—devoted to a working paper by member Angela Xiao Wu. Details, a Zoom link, and the paper download will be added to the Working Group page soon.

Hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), the Working Group Open to anyone interested in the history of the media studies fields. Instructions to join 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: História dos Estudos de Comunicação no Mundo de Língua Portuguesa

• [See link for Portuguese, Spanish, and English versions of the call] This symposium will give participants an opportunity to map, critique, and celebrate the histories of communication studies in the Portuguese-speaking world—including Portugal, Brazil, Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), East Timor, Macau, and the diasporas—by inquiring into how the dynamics of colonialism, post-colonialism, dictatorships, and globalization have shaped the field. We have a twofold commitment: to decentre dominant narratives, highlighting epistemologies, institutions, and marginalized figures; and to connect the multiple Portuguese-speaking world traditions, exploring transatlantic dialogues and tensions and resistances. We encourage papers that explore connections among Portugal Africa, Brazil, East Timor, and Macau, as well as connections with other countries and regions in the “Global South.”
• Conference dates: 11 and 12 December 2025
• Deadline: 10 August 2025
• More details

2. Call for Papers: Harold Lasswell and the Return of Propaganda: The Centenary of Propaganda Technique in the World War**

• Among the important events related to propaganda research whose tradition re-emerged in these first three decades of the 20th century, one stands out as a turning point: the first doctoral thesis on the subject, defended by political scientist Harold Lasswell in 1926 at the University of Chicago, which also celebrates its centenary. Published the following year, Propaganda Technique in the World War became the pioneering landmark in academic studies on war propaganda and transformed its author into the most important American expert on the subject for many years. This Esferas dossier celebrates not only the centenary of Harold Lasswell's thesis but also the approaching centenary of propaganda studies, founded on the need to understand this product of the media and which, despite its multiple facets, continues to present itself as an urgent problem to be interpreted in contemporary times.
• Deadline: 15 December 2025
• More details

3. The Journal

History of Media Studies 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. Adiprasetio, Justito. "The Chronic Impact of the Cold War and Authoritarian Regime on Communication Research." Review of Communication 25, no. 3 (2025): 164--79. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2025.2474643.

   ABSTRACT: There was a connection between America's efforts to win the sociopolitical battle of the Cold War and Suharto's New Order authoritarian regime, which influenced the dynamics and development of communication studies in Indonesia. This study shows how global geopolitical tensions synergized with the authoritarian regime, entangling and imparting chronic impacts on the development of communication studies. The discussion begins by highlighting how the Cold War was the foundation for the initial formation and development of communication studies. It continues elaborating on the intersection between American interests and the authoritarian regime's instrumentalization of communication studies and research. Finally, to illustrate the chronic impact of the Cold War and the authoritarian regime on Indonesian communication scholarship, the author conducts a systematic review of Indonesian scientific publications post reformation from 2001 to 2020. The ambivalence of Indonesian communication academia, which during the New Order had to serve state interests in promoting modernization theory within the vision and programs of development while being prohibited from producing critical research, resulted in a blunted Indonesian communication scholarship. This has had chronic implications, even as reformation has been undertaken two decades later.

2. Daros, Otávio. "Tensions between the Professional and Academic Worlds of Journalism: Paradoxes of the Brazilian Reality." Journalism 26, no. 8 (2025): 1657--74. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241261644.

   ABSTRACT: For 40 years, Brazil was one of the few places in the world in which the regulation of journalistic activity was based on the requirement of a university degree, which associated being a journalist with having an academic qualification and not necessarily a professional one, unlike other countries that established or not licensing/accreditation systems. In the light of historical sociology, this article aims to scrutinize this intricacy of relationships between the professional and academic worlds of journalism, based on the case of the largest media market and scholarship in Latin America. It is shown how, between 1969 and 2013, there was tension and resistance on the part of international press associations, national news media companies and renowned journalists in relation to the mandatory diploma defended by the unions; as well as there were disputes and demands, within the community of professors and researchers, for the emancipation of journalism education in relation to communication studies.

3. Hamera, Judith. "Text and Performance Quarterly: In and of the Humanities." Text and Performance Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2025): 113--18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2025.2453724.

   ABSTRACT: This letter of congratulations and welcome to Text and Performance Quarterly's incoming editor, Kimberlee Perez, argues for centering and advocating for the journal's epistemic commitment to the humanities within communication. It draws on archival materials, scholarship in the journal, and the author's experiences as both a faculty member and former TPQ editor to discuss the status of this commitment within the field. In a widely acknowledged moment of crisis for the humanities' position in US higher education, TPQ has a unique and vital role to play in expanding its profile within the National Communication Association and communication as a discipline.

4. Healy, Zara. "Reith and the Pre-Television Child: The BBC's Struggle to Understand Britain's First Generation of Child Radio Listeners through Children's Hour (1922--7)." Journal of British Cinema and Television 22, no. 2 (April 2025): 160--85. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2025.0762.

   ABSTRACT: The BBC has been providing public service content for children in Britain for more than a century. Radio was the testing ground to discover what young audiences wanted. The long-running radio programme Children's Hour served as an important laboratory to try out policies, practices, programming and presentation styles more than 20 years before the BBC's first regular television show for children in 1946. This article evaluates archive material to explore how the BBC attempted to understand the needs of the first generation of child radio listeners ('the pre-television child') between 1922 and 1927. Nineteen BBC stations ran individual clubs for children, mobilising thousands as fundraisers, writers, performers and collaborators, with variable access to studios, programmes and social activities across the BBC and Britain. But John Reith, who led the organisation, had no clear, BBC-wide strategic vision for Children's Hour. His reluctance to impose directives meant station directors interpreted the remit in different ways, creating an innovative but frustratingly inconsistent service. Roger Eckersley was promoted to run all programmes and budgets in London in 1926; a skilled strategist who streamlined, professionalised and centralised Children's Hour, formalising the BBC's relationship with children forever, as it transformed from private company to public corporation.

5. Humphreys, Lee, Didem Özkul, and Stephanie Belina. "100 Years of Communication: Change and Continuity in Inaugural Communication Journals 1924--2024." Communication and Change 1, no. 1 (2025): 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44382-025-00007-y.

   ABSTRACT: The field of communication has responded to changes in the world through its journals. In this study, we examine how our field has responded to 'change' over time particularly along the axes of technology, globalization, and specialization by analyzing communication journals. We draw on socio-technological analysis to situate the study of change and continuity both as a research subject within communication and as a means through which to study communication. We sampled the top 50 communication journals and compared their original titles, aims and scopes, and editorials to their 2024 titles and aims and scopes to evaluate journals' responses to change over time. Through our discourse analysis of journal titles, aims and scopes, and editorials, we found that the opportunities and concerns about change have long shaped the field. While embracing change, the journals of the field have been shaped by continuity. We found strong multidisciplinarity in many communication journals since their inception. Contrary to previous studies about the field, we found a longtime international sensibility articulated in the earliest editorials we examined. Our study demonstrates the importance of examining historical changes in the field to better understand the current and future communication landscapes, and the indispensability of recognizing continuities.

6. Knorr, Charlotte, and Christian Pentzold. "Making Sense of 'Big Data': Ten Years of Discourse around Datafication." Big Data & Society 12, no. 2 (2025): 20539517251330181. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251330181.

   ABSTRACT: This article reconstructs the sociotechnical imaginaries of "Big Data" in Germany, South Africa, and the United States over 10 years. Our inquiry into the meaning-making undertaken on expansive datafication processes began from the observation that since its inception circa 2010, the buzz phrase "Big Data" has not only denoted a technology but has also gestured toward a vast array of ambitions and concerns that are reflective of values, economic perspectives, and cultural preoccupations. We use a frame analysis to investigate the unfolding journalistic discourse and discuss the sociotechnical imaginaries of Big Data in cross-national comparison. We found three dominant views that centered chiefly on rebuilding a datafied society, reviving datafied business, and retooling datafied surveillance. Despite substantial data scandals and whistleblower revelations, affirmative views prevailed. The trope of reviving datafied business was most often evoked from 2011 to 2013, but rebuilding a datafied society became the central perspective from 2014 onward. This order of prominence existed in the United States and Germany, whereas a business-oriented view predominated in South African media. Some publications in all three countries ran counter to the general trend but only exerted limited influence on the overall picture.

7. Massarani, Luisa, and Danilo Magalhães. "When the Future of Science Journalism Looked Bright: The First Ibero-American Congress of Science Journalism (Venezuela, 1974) and Its Role in Strengthening the Profession." Public Understanding of Science 34, no. 5 (2025): 690--98. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625241300392.

   ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] Studies on the history of science journalism allow a critical analysis of this essential profession's tradition for contemporary societies. After all, as observed by Nelkin (1995), the first efforts to communicate science through the media shaped the role and style of science journalists and their relations with the scientific community, and these long-standing patterns continue to this day. Lewenstein (1992) and Nelkin (1995) emphasize that in the 20th century, the professionalization of science journalism, symbolized by the creation of the U.S. National Association of Science Writers (NASW) in 1934, involved close collaboration with scientists. Seeking to obtain the prestige of science and support from the scientific community, science journalists aligned with scientists' values concerning the importance of science and the need for public recognition of its benefits, often choosing "to interpret science" or "to educate the public" rather than to report news independently. Many Anglo-Saxon science journalists admired science, seeing themselves as "descendants of Prometheus," responsible for fomenting public interest in science. This led to a celebratory and often acritical view.

8. McRae, Chris. "Performing a Departmental Archive: Half a Century of Performance." Text and Performance Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2025): 214--30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2024.2373688.

   ABSTRACT: Performance practitioners curate collections of artifacts from aesthetic performances they direct and stage, which serve as evidence of past performances and is a practice that functions as a method of performance. This paper presents a performance of a discovery of a 50-year-old archive of staged performances within the Department of Communication at a public university in the Southeastern United States. This written performance presents the records documented by this archive. This performance imagines the generative act of creating this archive as a method of performance research, and an invitation for staging a collaged interpretation of this performance and departmental history.

9. Shao, Xinyue, Guoliang Zhang, and Lijuan Chen. "Tracing the Introduction and Diffusion of Communication in Mainland China: Evidence from Invisible College of Overseas Chinese Scholars." Asian Journal of Communication 35, no. 4 (2025): 247--67. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2025.2501982.

   ABSTRACT: Research on how scientific disciplines emerge, evolve, and influence the development of scientific knowledge is a focal point in the study of disciplinary history. However, the establishment of Communication and the trajectory of its knowledge in mainland China remains insufficiently explored. To address this gap, this article focuses on the introduction and diffusion of Communication from the perspective of overseas Chinese Communication scholars, using the invisible college theory and approach. By tracing the interactions between the establishment of Communication in the mainland and the activities of invisible college, the findings reveal a framework in which the concepts, theories, and research methods of Communication studies transcend geographical and political barriers, leading to the reintroduction into the mainland and the subsequent recognition in both political and academic contexts.

10. Takahashi, Bruno, Iasmim Amiden dos Santos, and María Fernanda Salas. "Building Bridges: A Narrative Literature Review of Spanish and Portuguese-Language Climate Change Communication Scholarship from Latin America." Environmental Communication 19, no. 5 (2025): 1016--30. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2025.2458229.

    ABSTRACT: This paper presents a narrative literature review that examines climate change communication research produced in Latin America in Spanish and Portuguese from 2001 to 2022. We highlight the scholarly contributions of Latin American scholars -- main topical trends, theoretical contributions, and methodological approaches. This scholarship is mainly characterized by a qualitative, interpretive, and critical approach. It is also more action-oriented and less theory-driven compared to research from the Global North. Most studies focused on Brazil and analyzed mainstream news coverage, which was largely driven by international discourses, lacked diversity of sources (e.g. Indigenous voices), and did not feature skeptical voices. Few studies analyzed social media and journalists' role perceptions. We expect this review will serve as a bridge that connects scholars in the Global North and the Global South who research this global threat. This review also serves as a step forward in the larger process of de-westernizing communication studies.

11. Thanouli, Eleftheria. "The Past as Experience: Phenomenological Approaches to Historical Cinema and Beyond." Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal 55, no. 1 (2025): 54--66. https://doi.org/10.1353/flm.2025.a965736.

    ABSTRACT: [first paragraph, in lieu of abstract] History on film has become an increasingly expanding field of study that draws together historians and film theorists in an effort to explore, understand, and appreciate cinema's contribution to our historical consciousness. As such, the field has invited a diverse array of approaches and methods, including the factual examination of filmic representations of the past,1 the mapping of distinct generic characteristics for the historical film (Burgoyne; Stubbs), and the formation of a poetics of historical cinema (Thanouli History). 2 These text-oriented research programs have offered invaluable insights into the form and content of historical filmmaking and have shed light on the complex relationship between written history and its audiovisual counterpart. Whether scrutinizing inaccuracies and discrepancies between films and written sources or building typologies for containing the richness of historical expression in the movies, scholars have given their undivided attention to filmic material.

12. Vandenberghe, Frédéric, and Jean-François Côté. "Theoretical Logic in Cultural Sociology: Semiotics, Hermeneutics and Dialectics in the Work of Jeffrey Alexander." Thesis Eleven 188, no. 1 (2025): 3--14. https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136251344954.

    ABSTRACT: In the Introduction to this issue of Thesis Eleven, we present the general theme that explores the theoretical logic in cultural sociology, by bringing to attention the three main threads of semiotics, hermeneutics and dialectics that seem to frame the analytical project of Jeffrey Alexander's works in sociology. We first position the term "culture" in its historical and theoretical origins in the nineteenth century, and question its further evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in order to highlight the background of Alexander's own attempt at grasping its internal dynamics, as it has been disputed in various traditions of the social sciences. Second, we delineate Alexander's position of considering the autonomy of culture with respect to both the break and the continuity that he is establishing by choosing to downplay Parsonss functionalism through a reappropriation of Dilthey, Durkheim, and Geertz, together with structuralism and pragmatic performance theory, in his efforts to theorize a true and genuine cultural sociology. While we underscore some lines of tension that run across the threads of semiotics, hermeneutics and dialectics in Alexander's own synthesis that finally coalesces in the civil sphere theory, where cultural sociology gets its overt political dimension, we open up on questions leading to the contributions of each of the participants in this issue.

Thanks for reading! The History of Media Studies Newsletter, a monthly email assembled by Dave Park, Jeff Pooley, and Pete Simonson, maintains a loose affiliation with the History of Media Studies journal and the Working Group on the History of Media Studies. Please contact us with any questions, suggestions, or items.

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