New approaches to communication and the public

Abstract

In considering the prospect of a new journal focused on “Communication and the Public,” it is impossible to avoid the question of whether these concepts— broad and expansive as they are—have already been adequately addressed in other venues. Certainly, in a narrow conception of mere topical coverage, they have. Such a limited assessment, however, would overlook two vitally important dimensions of this exciting new outlet. The first of these lies in the rich set of extremely timely themes that I would argue emerge from the intertwining of communication and the public that the journal’s theme occasions. The second, and I think more important, can be found in the set of vitally important directives found within the journal’s mission statement, which challenge researchers to explore the themes just alluded to with a focus on understudied empirical contexts and a broad array of epistemological and methodological approaches. In this brief essay, I will articulate my own particular vision of these two dimensions, with the hope of contributing in some small part to what I expect will become a rich and productive conversation to take place over the course of future volumes. In each case, I will suggest that there are both more and less common ways of engaging the associated themes and directives, both of which I think can be part of the journal’s future success. To begin with the basic conceptual issues, it is certainly uncontroversial to note that in many ways, the most pressing research questions of our time engage the interrelationship between communication and publics, as well as the sense in which both are experiencing dynamic transformations. In light of sweeping socio-technical change, we explore the ways that communication affirms or negates, facilitates or hinders, and constitutes or forecloses vital democratic processes that unfold in the public sphere. In doing so, much contemporary work further examines the sense in which a changing communication environment suggests or highlights an array of public-related conceptualizations, including counter-, mini-, and issue-publics (Kim, 2009; Toepfl & Piwoni, 2015; Warren & Gastil, 2015). Whether or not one agrees with the argument that the classic paradigm of media effects has become a clear casualty of these developments (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008), one cannot deny that broader questions concerning the fundamental relationships between communication and the public, writ large, continue to gain currency and significance, despite the fact that they have also been with us for quite a long time. The most common lines of research engaging these issues deal at some level with dynamics of fragmentation, either based on levels of political interest (Prior, 2007), or among those with at least a modicum of interest in politics, according to ideological and/or partisan leanings (e.g. Sunstein, 2001), made possible and more pronounced by abundant media choice. These themes are important, and work oriented toward the study of fragmentation