Critical Communication Scholars Research Articles

A double helix of critical inquiry: dialogic methods of critical pragmatism

ABSTRACT In this essay, we propose a double helix of critical inquiry; one that binds both critical theory and appreciative inquiry through critical pragmatism. We first situate the double helix within the paradigmatic, theoretical, and praxeological commitments of the critical paradigm followed by anchoring dialogue as a methodology that activates the double helix through pragmatism. We then introduce three specific methods of dialogue that bring to life how critical communication scholars can use dialogue as a means for socially situating dialogue within historical power dynamics for envisioning and creating social change. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications for communication scholars to consider when conducting critical communication research and teaching this area of inquiry in their communication courses. Our hope is that this framework of a double helix produces communication inquiry that engages communities in the cocreation of a just society.

Laboring in Journalism’s Crowded, Precarious Entryway: Perceptions of Journalism Interns

ABSTRACT The both glamourous and precarious figure of the intern has become iconic in popular culture over the past 15 years. However, little academic research has explored interns and internships. Even fewer studies have examined internships as a form of labor in journalism (rather than as a component of journalism education), and none is based primarily on the voices of journalism interns themselves. To help fill this gap, this study explores how aspiring news workers today experience and respond to internship labor. The findings show that journalism interns face long, unpredictable work hours, rely on family support and side jobs to “afford” internships and use private resources to support their news production during internships. Their experiences often include a lack of mentorship and training, regardless of whether the internship is pursued as part of a journalism curriculum or independently. It is argued that concepts by critical communication scholars such as hope labor and aspirational labor—rather than the community of practice approach often used in research on journalism education—capture the work experiences of journalism interns in this study. Finally, a modification of the recently developed space of journalistic work model is proposed to account for interns’ growing importance to as well as precarious position in contemporary news production.

PCARE @10: reflecting on a decade of prison communication, activism, research, and education, while looking ahead to new challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACTDrafted a decade after the publication of our inaugural collectively authored essay, the members of the Prison Communication, Activism, Research, and Education collective (PCARE) reflect in this article on recent shifts in criminal justice policy and public discourse regarding the carceral state. Noting a growing consensus regarding the need to reduce national incarceration rates, as well as proliferating discussion regarding police brutality and other forms of state violence, the members of PCARE advocate an orientation of nonreformist reformism when addressing the current climate. Noting that many contemporary developments regarding prisons and policing are promising, we also argue that the prison–industrial complex remains a powerful and violent force in civil society. We begin by describing the complex coalitions that have emerged around prison reform in recent years, claiming that we should temper our enthusiasm for these developments with skepticism informed by a commitment to prison abolition. We then proceed to describe recent developments and tensions related to prison pedagogy, race, and the carceral state, and the gendered politics of policing and mass incarceration. We conclude with a call for critical communication scholars to engage in communication activism with a spirit of nonreformist reform and to humbly learn from the voices and experiences of those communities most directly impacted by the prison–industrial complex. We follow this essay with a response essay drafted by a collective of incarcerated individuals.

In Defense of Law and Order: Urban Space, Fear of Crime, and the Virtues of Social Control

There is a long tradition in critical/cultural studies that views the raising of concerns about crime and disorder as an ideological gambit concealing a more sinister project of social control. This article offers a friendly critique and revision of this position, arguing that critical communication scholars should treat urban disorder and public fears of crime as serious policy problems, if only because pervasive fears of crime impose great harm on disadvantaged urban residents. To this end, this article reviews recent work in the fear-of-crime literature to examine both the causes of fear as well as the efficacy and ethics of specific fear-reduction strategies. Drawing on this review, the article argues that the most promising response to the fear of crime is not zero tolerance policing, but rather increasing the collective efficacy of—that is, the feeling of solidarity among—neighbors. The article concludes with a discussion of the role digital networking tools could play in building neighborhood collective efficacy.

Manufacturing Consent?: Media Messages in the Mobilization Against HIV/AIDS in India and Lessons for Health Communication

Despite repeated calls for a more critical and “culture-centered” approach to health communication, textual analysis of televised public service advertising (PSA) campaigns has been largely neglected, even by critical communication scholars. In the case of “developing” countries in particular, there is an acute shortage of such literature. On the other hand, following the outbreak of major public health diseases such as AIDS, most countries have adopted PSA campaigns as the most preferred means of communicating messages. Drawing on insights from cultural studies (especially Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall), this article engages in textual analysis of the televised PSA campaigns launched by the Indian state to prevent HIV/AIDS between 2002 and 2005. Through such analysis, it argues that although few diseases in Indian history have spurred such massive and creative efforts for mass mobilization as AIDS, these efforts, in terms of their ethical implications, have been far from emancipatory. In fact, they have constructed and perpetuated the logic of domination and control along class, gender, sexuality, and knowledge systems, often contradicting and potentially harming the very goal of HIV prevention and of health promotion and empowerment. This article also holds that assessing public health campaigns through textual analysis, a highly neglected tool in health communication, can shed important light on a far more complex and changing nature of the state and public policy, especially in the developing world, thereby opening up space for alternative theorizing for health communication and social change.

Participant Activism: Exploring a Methodology for Scholar-Activists Through Lessons Learned as a Precarious Labor Organizer

Precarious labor has become an organizing issue for labor movements and a fruitful object of study for critical communication scholars. The work of communication scholars' challenging precarious labor's exploitation, however, has not been adequately explored, perhaps because communication scholars are not engaging in labor activism, but also perhaps because communication research for social justice has not yet been widely embraced. This essay offers remedies for both problems by exploring what I call “participant activism” through analysis of the epistemological and political lessons learned from working as a scholar and activist with WashTech (the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers), a high-tech labor union for precarious workers.

Exposing the Spectrum of Whiteness

This chapter continues a practice introduced by critical communication scholars to produce insightful analyses of whiteness. Specifically, this chapter synthesizes a body of rhetorical studies in which rhetors explicitly offered ideal white racial identities and cultural norms to establish and justify white supremacy in Western societies. I call this discourse “white absolutism,” which consists of absolutist religious and scientific appeals, tribalism, and scapegoating. White absolutism centers white masculinity and justifies restoring white patriarchal heterosexual control by negating black, nonwhite, and feminine archetypes that offer motives to conquer, control, and kill nonwhites. White absolutism still exists in coded and postmodern forms, and its scholarly analyses have generated four important areas of communication research: (1) cyberspace hate rhetoric, (2) cultural (re)productions of white superiority, (3) historical studies of whiteness, and (4) new, redemptive, and innocent white identity studies.