2024/11/19 by Jefferson Pooley, Júlia Sonnevend · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice #Social and Cultural Dynamics #Public Relations and Crisis Communication
paper · doi:10.1093/joc/jqae047
openalex publication_date 2024/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/02/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/23
We are honored to assume the editorial reins of the recently established Journal of Communication Forum, with special gratitude to the section’s first editors, Nikki Usher and Charlton McIlwain. Under Usher and McIlwain’s stewardship, the journal published five Forum installments, featuring thoughtful and formally inventive review essays on race, disability, Latinx sound studies, and privacy, among other topics. Introducing the inaugural Forum, McIlwain and Usher (2023) described the purpose of the new section as helping to move “the marginal voices of our field to the center” (p. 620). The journal’s editors-in-chief, in a companion editorial (Ewoldsen et al., 2023), described their vision for the Forum as a “space for highlighting research and scholarship that has not been traditionally featured” in the field’s flagship journal (p. 534). Our aim is to build on that founding commitment—to push the boundaries of our discipline as far as we can. We see the Forum as a site of fearless, interdisciplinary, and historically nuanced essays. Highlighting books is part of that mission, particularly in a field that has tended to prize journal articles. Each Forum will feature a single review essay engaging three or more books linked by a shared question, theme, or concept. Though many Forum essays will be written by communication scholars, many of the reviewed books will hail from other disciplines by design. A complementary goal is to surface books, authors, and topics that reach beyond the Anglophone academy—as well as those that foreground history. We are keen, in other words, to highlight projects and authors that can speak to international, interdisciplinary, and/or historical dimensions. Whether in psychology, history, visual studies, political science, or other disciplines, if the book relates to media or communication, we are eager to hear about it.