2023/12/01 by David R. Ewoldsen, Natascha Just, Chul‐joo Lee +1 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Media Studies and Communication #Public Relations and Crisis Communication #Social Media and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/joc/jqad038
openalex publication_date 2023/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
One of us (dre) is a fan of The Who. Part of the refrain from one of their hits is “Well, who are you? I really wanna know. Tell me, who are you?” Long hours were spent during adolescence pondering this question. Now this question is being pondered again regarding the discipline. The question of “who are you?” is a question that has historically plagued our discipline. And it is a question that one contemplates when taking on the editorship of the Journal of Communication (JoC). Historically, our answer to the question “Who are you?” has been that we are an extremely eclectic group of scholars united by a broad interest in communication. Ironically, however, communication scholars have often been reluctant to communicate with other communication scholars. Regrettably, our culture is one of distinct “camps,” which are making amazing progress in their self-defined areas of research, although talk across areas is severely limited (Tenenboim-Weinblatt & Lee, 2020), and different camps often disparage each other’s approaches to epistemology.1 This is an unfortunate situation because for us our diversity is one of the intellectual strengths of this discipline (Ewoldsen, 2023). For the first time in the history of the JoC, the journal is being edited by a team of four pari passu Editors-in-Chief (EICs), who are equally responsible for this editorship: David R. Ewoldsen (Michigan State University), Natascha Just (University of Zurich), Chul-joo “CJ” Lee (Seoul National University), and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). What is historically new is not only the collaborative approach of this editorial team but also that for the first time, two female scholars and a scholar from the East Asian region are involved in the editorial leadership of our flagship journal. We came together as a team to deliver on what we see as the promise of JoC: to make visible the breadth of epistemologies and methodologies that characterize our research field and to stimulate dialogue and cultivate intradisciplinary engagement in the field. The JoC is the flagship journal of the ICA and the field of communication at large. As the ICA has grown, so has the diversity of this collection of scholars. Our declared aim is thus to sustain and further strengthen this premier role of the JoC. As an editorial team, we represent and are particularly familiar with a substantial number of the divisions in the ICA and bring with us a breadth of expertise and interest, which is also visible in the range of methods we have pursued in our research, ranging, among other things, from quantitative experimental research, mathematical modeling, and survey research, through qualitative, quantitative, and computational content analyses, network analysis, and other computational methods, to qualitative interviews and focus groups, the Delphi method, and ethnographic approaches. We also possess significant experience with mixed-method approaches and aim to encourage their use in JoC publications. To support our vision, add to our expertise in terms of epistemological and methodological diversity, and further strengthen our representation across the discipline and the globe, we have brought several people on board: Nikki Usher of the University of San Diego and Charlton McIlwain of New York University have taken the lead on the JoC Forum, a novel intellectual endeavor that replaces traditional book reviews (see below for details). In addition, we selected 12 Associate Editors: Hanan Badr of the University of Salzburg, David Boromisza-Habashi of the University of Colorado Boulder, Tanja Bosch of the University of Cape Town, Richard Huskey of the University of California—Davis, Dal Yong Jin of Simon Fraser University, Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques of the Federal University of Paraná, Hee Sun Park of Korea University, Tai-Quan “Winson” Peng of Michigan State University, Jessica Piotrowski of the University of Amsterdam, Travers Scott of Emory & Henry College, Magdalena Wojcieszak of the University of California—Davis, and Anke Wonneberger of the University of Amsterdam. Moreover, we carefully compiled an Editorial Board with the aim of increasing inclusivity and diversity. The board consists of a majority of women and scholars from outside of the United States and includes several representatives from each ICA division and interest group, proportionate to the size of the divisions and interest groups. To further the goal of increased engagement across the discipline, we are making several adaptations: First, the book reviews are being replaced with the JoC Forum. The inaugural Forum features essays by three renowned scholars—Hector Amaya, Meredith Clark, and Deen Freelon—discussing four new books in the field of critical race and digital studies, as well as an introduction by the Forum editors (see McIlwain & Usher, in this issue). Overall, the goal of the Forum is to provide a location for scholars to publish integrative essays about new books from across the discipline. As stated in the online guidelines for the Forum, we are not interested in standard book reviews but in reviews that will pull together two or more newly published books as a way to provoke debate and discussion about contemporary intellectual, theoretical, and empirical debates in the field. Ideally, this will provide another location for engagement and debate about our diverse interests and provide a space for highlighting research and scholarship that has not been traditionally featured in the JoC. Of particular interest are commentaries about books that address and rearrange questions of centers and peripheries within the discipline. Second, we will occasionally extend invitations for responses to articles, when we feel that a commentary can add additional aspects to the discussion and, thus, broaden the conversation on topics of interest to many in the field. In this issue, we invited Paula Gardner to respond to an article by Braun, Heintz, Kruschinski, Trepte, and Scharkow on gender diversity at the ICA conferences. This article and the response to it provide an opportunity to foster a broader dialogue on gender at the ICA and on different epistemological and theoretical approaches for research on gender issues. The work by Braun et al. also represents a state-of-the-field article, which is a type of contribution that we will occasionally consider under our editorship. Third, we issued a call for special issues in order to encourage more scholars to participate in our pursuit of cross-subfield dialogue on emerging and pressing issues in communication research. The response to this initiative has been impressive, with scholars from various areas of communication research actively participating. We see this as a good indication that our bid to promote diversity and inclusivity and to see the JoC as a journal for everyone in our discipline will be embraced. This is the lineup with which we set sail and wish to navigate the seas of inclusivity. Accordingly, we are also looking for individual submissions that reflect the diversity of our discipline and ask authors to be mindful of the fact that, for us, the audience for the JoC is, and should be, the discipline. To build and sustain this audience, manuscripts must be written so that scholars from across the discipline can appreciate the scholarship. We therefore encourage authors to recognize that the JoC audience may be broader than the audience at a journal dedicated to a specific subarea. Accordingly, arguments may need to be better reasoned and theoretical claims more clearly articulated so that a broad audience can feel addressed and encouraged to engage outside its core area. While this seems obvious, we want to reiterate that articles published in the JoC must clearly establish their importance for readers across the discipline. If we make this effort and communicate with each other in this manner, we can hope to have the various epistemological approaches in our field truly inform one another. In the remainder of the editorial, we would like to give you some guidance on the type of manuscripts we are looking for and point out criteria that are important for us when evaluating submissions. First, we focus on the need for manuscripts to make a major theoretical contribution and then on methodological issues. We conclude with acknowledgments. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that make important theoretical contributions and thus significantly advance communication research. With this requirement, we seamlessly join the ranks of previous EICs of the JoC (e.g., Holbert, 2019; Waisbord, 2016) and a myriad of other scholars who have called for the importance of theoretical contributions and theorizing in communication research (e.g., Berger et al., 2009). When we speak of theory, there is usually no clarification of what this means, as if we were all in agreement about it. However, the singular of theory does not capture the various and often highly contested forms or meanings it can assume. At first glance, then, the requirement for theoretical contribution seems to necessitate an immediate clarification of ontological and epistemological issues surrounding the concept of theory and what constitutes a theoretical contribution, as well as a teleological clarification of the goals and subject matter of communication research. But can and should such an upfront clarification by us EICs, which inevitably entails evaluative judgment, really be the first step? This question is especially pertinent in a discipline such as ours, which draws from a variety of disciplinary traditions and in which the subject matter has broadened so much over time that it has sometimes become difficult to even recognize some of one’s immediate peers. If our stated editorial goal is to diversify, to adequately acknowledge communication research with different disciplinary roots and from different geographical regions, and to promote dialogue among its different quarters, we must first impartially accept that communication research as a whole is not a monolith but comes with different legacies and thus understandings of theory and subject matter. Theoretically, this seems plausible, but is it practicable and feasible? How can we deal with this adequately, when we come with our own professional biographical trajectories, legacies, and biases, with our own ideas about relevant topics and appropriate theoretical and empirical ways to knowledge? Is it opportune, for example, to advocate for one specific understanding of theory, in a particular instance or even at large? In our opinion, the answer depends foremost on the respective role you are in at the time of answering. When we speak as individual researchers and representatives of our own research field and in interaction with immediate colleagues, the answer will be different than when we speak in our role as EICs of the JoC, and thus as representatives of the flagship journal of a discipline as varied as ours. In this role, we are custodians and must professionally withhold our individual views on theory to adequately fulfill the journal’s promise of being a journal for the entire discipline. In this capacity, we would therefore like to start from the semantic question about theory (Abend, 2008) when approaching the theory requirement. The semantic question does not ask ontologically what theory is, evaluatively what good theory is, or teleologically what theory is for, but first simply asks what theory means. Abend (2008), for example, identifies seven semantic meanings of theory within sociology, including logically connected (sets of) propositions that establish relationships between variables, interpretations of classical works, explanations of social phenomena, hermeneutical undertakings that offer original interpretations of the empirical world, and normative and/or political accounts of social phenomena. He argues that since there is no real or objective referent for theory and thus no unified view on what theory is, the question of what theory “ought” to mean is “to a great extent a political or practical-reason problem” (Abend, 2008, p. 176). This must accordingly be addressed by political mechanisms and with the principle of ontological and epistemological pluralism. There is thus nothing innocuous in propagating a particular understanding of theory, because the “meaning of ‘theory’ is intimately related to very real institutional resources, careers, funding, prestige, status systems, (…) public relevance, and so on” (Abend, 2008, p. 192). As EICs, we will therefore embrace a semantic understanding of theory and commit to ontological and epistemological pluralism when evaluating submitted manuscripts. However, this openness and recognition of different kinds of theory and their contributions to our discipline does not mean that theory can be anything. It is still contingent. While it is not a priori necessary to favor a particular theoretical stance when approaching a subject matter, it must still be within the realm of possibility. Everything ranging from interpretative theories, concerned with the understanding of meaning making, to testable theories in the post-positivist tradition, aimed at explaining causes and effects and possibly making predictions, may be considered, as long as the contribution is ambitious, significant, and potentially relevant to scholars across different areas of our discipline. What does this inclusive understanding of theory mean for authors who wish to submit their work to the JoC? The proponents of a work, that is, the authors, have the duty to persuade with the way they present and contextualize their work. This also emphasizes the critical role communication plays in review processes and the importance of “improved communication clarity” (DeAndrea & Holbert, 2017, p. 168) regarding the theoretical contribution on the part of authors, so that editors and reviewers can adequately judge the merit and advancement of the work. Essentially, this burden of proof requires the authors to clearly articulate the purpose of their work and the ontological and epistemological framework within which their research operates, including clarifications of what type of theoretical contribution they are making and/or is achievable within the specific kind or meaning of theory they employ or scrutinize. Basically, this requires the author to provide information on what the term theory means in the specific context (What is theory?), what it is for (goals, e.g., description, explanation, prediction), and what it can do (scope, e.g., advantages, disadvantages and limitations). Moreover, this necessitates a cohesion between problem, theory, and methods, which we consider an inseparable triad in research. These elements must and be with each when a the triad and its theoretical contribution can authors, and reviewers engage in and or the work. authors to adequately present and their and theoretical contributions has been several (e.g., together with for and for this can be within approaches (DeAndrea & Holbert, However, we need such within kind of theoretical endeavor within our discipline. of the theoretical progress you offer in respective will build and recognize such across our discipline, and to better communication and understanding across the of our discipline. However, regarding the type of theoretical contribution and a are not for a in the JoC. We of submissions each and can only publish about of we about of the manuscripts When we about of submissions are This should not you from it should encourage you to even more carefully about the work you want to submit to the JoC. of research we encourage you to submit what you consider to be and and work. 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