European Communication Research Research Articles

Media persistence: Theories, approaches, categorization

Despite the fact that new media are continually seen as “natural born killers” of old media, old media rarely die and very often persist. In what is alternately called the “age of the Internet,” the “digital revolution,” the “metaverse,” the era of “artificial intelligence,” old media such as books, cinema, radio, television, analogue photography, and several others are still in use. Moreover, there is a kind of re-emergence of “the analogue” in various forms and for different incentives, including nostalgia. This Thematic Section is the outcome of an intellectual journey that the five editors undertook first separately and then combined. The occasion for bringing together prior interests and combining theoretical and empirical understandings of the reasons why and the different modes how media persist over time was facilitated by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) virtual post-conference (co-)organized jointly by three ECREA sections in September 2021: the Communication History section together with the sections of Radio and Sound, as well as Television Studies. It is no coincidence that these three sections are concerned with old media, which seem to decline but apparently also do persist, as those are the sections dealing with the mediated relationship of the old and the new, the past and the present such as the viewing and screening practices of television, transformation of sonic environment from radio toward podcast, and in general old media remediating into new ones.

Forum: (De)centring Europe in urban communication research

ABSTRACT This special forum includes six contributions by scholars affiliated with the European Communication Research and Education (ECREA) “Media, Cities and Space” Section. It focuses on “European” urban communication research as a way to explore what matters, both critically and theoretically, in media and communication studies of the urban. As a whole, the special forum aims to “decentre” existing assumptions regarding the urban locales, critical questions, and conceptual outlooks covered in each contribution-both from pre-constituted notions of “Europeanness” and from dominant approaches to the relationship between communication, media, and the urban.

Introduction: Communication Rights in the Digital Age

Introduction: Communication Rights in the Digital Age

PARTICIPATION, DEMOCRACY, AND CREATING A RADICAL PROGRESSIVE UTOPIA FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: AN INTERVIEW WITH NICO CARPENTIER

NICO CARPENTIER is a renowned researcher in the field of communication and media studies. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies of Charles University in Prague, with two additional part-time positions, at the Communication Sciences Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and at Uppsala University, along with his research fellowships at Loughborough University and Cyprus University of Technology. He was one of the four founding board members of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) in 2005, the ECREA vice-president from 2008 to 2012, the treasurer of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) from 2012 to 2016, and the chair of IAMCR’s Participatory Communication Research Section from 2016 till the day. His latest books include; The Discursive-Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation (2017); Cyprus and its Conflicts. Representations, Materialities, and Cultures (2018, co-edited), Critical Perspectives on Media, Power and Change (2018, co-edited), Respublika! Experiments in the Performance of Participation and Democracy (2019, edited), Communication and Discourse Theory (2019, co-edited) and Communication as the Intersection of the Old and the New (2019, coedited).

The state of strategic organizational crisis communication research in the context of global and digital communication

Since the mid 1990s the field of crisis communication research has grown substantially as a topic of international communication studies. Especially in public relations journals a growth of the publication output has been observed recently, whereas broader communication journals still publish scarcely on crisis communication (An & Cheng, 2012; Ha & Boynton, 2014). The increasing number of conferences and specialized working groups at major academic communication associations such as the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) as well as the publication of specialized journals such as the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication indicate the ongoing institutionalization of the field (Schwarz, Seeger, & Auer, 2016a). Moreover, an increasing number of academic and public research centers, primarily at American and European universities, point to the rapid growth and societal relevance of the field (Palenchar, 2010). Within the field of public relations and strategic communication research the management of crisis communication already counts as a vital sub-discipline (Coombs, 2012b). This gain in importance can also be explained by the numerous devastating crisis events which do not only have tremendous social, political, ecological, and economic impact, but also reveal in many cases the complexity and limitations of managing crisis communication as practiced by organizations in various fields of society. This complexity and scope of crises go along with the interdisciplinarity and multiperspectivity of the research field, which in most cases lacks reciprocal reference (Coombs, 2012a; Loffelholz & Schwarz, 2008).

Digital Games Research: A Survey Study on an Emerging Field and Its Prevalent Debates

Digital games have become a popular form of media entertainment. However, it remains unclear whether a canon of accepted knowledge and research practices has emerged that may define an independent field of research. This study is a collaborative effort to analyze the outlines of digital games research (DGR) through a survey among the membership of 3 institutionalized structures focusing on the study of digital games (International Communication Association Game Studies Interest Group, European Communication Research and Education Association Temporary Working Group DGR, and Digital Games Research Association). The study reveals relatively homogeneous viewpoints among games researchers, even regarding controversial aspects of digital games. It mirrors the mainstream scholarly views on contentious issues of a recently emerged field within communication studies.

Politinės komunikacijos kultūra su europietišku potepiu: Briuselio atvejis

This article looks into research findings of the “Adequate Information Management (AIM)” project in the new light. A principal issue investigated here concerns the political communication culture, or to put it more precisely, the interface between the Brussels correspondents and their political news sources. While focusing on differences that can be detected in the processes of the EU news gathering in Brussels, the article highlights commonalities in reporting as appearing across national communication cultures. Indeed, the communications’ context in Brussels is an interesting research case: for journalists, it creates unique conditions for different journalisms and political communication cultures to meet; for scholars, it requires to address new questions in European communication research.

Pela democracia dos sistemas de avaliação da produção acadêmica: convergências de estudiosos latino-americanos e europeus

O presente texto é transcrição de conferência proferida, em 2011, no encontro anual da Europeean Comunication Research and Education Association (ECREA), que coloca em pauta os efeitos da supremacia dos pesquisadores do Norte sobre os pesquisadores do Sul no contexto da avaliação da qualidade da produção acadêmica. Embora sejam reconhecidas as especificidades locais e regionais, assim como a necessidade de adoção de diferentes metodologias e instrumentos de pesquisa para o estudo de problemas distintos, em contextos sociais diversos, a produção acadêmica dos estudiosos latino-americanos segue sendo submetida a padrões definidos em outras latitudes do mundo. Argumenta-se que a supremacia científica dos pesquisadores do Norte deve-se, fundamentalmente, à supremacia do inglês no sistema acadêmico internacional, a qual limita as possibilidades de disseminação do conhecimento em outras línguas.

“O rádio está morto... Viva o som!” ou como o rádio pode se transformar em uma nova mídia

The present article is the Portuguese translated version for the presentation given by the author at the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) during the Radio Evolution Congress 2011, an event organized by the ECREA – European Communication Research and Education Association. It aims to debate on the challenges currently faced by radio media as to become a new sound media in the context of a new soundscape or sound-sphere, for the new listeners. As the author focuses especially on the situation of radio in Spain, he stands that for radio to be successful in such scenario it has to focus on the aspect of being an exclusively sound media and also focus on a new audience which understands that the mediation performed by traditional means of communication is no longer needed.

Conference report: Community media at ECREA’s ECC08

On 25–28 November 2008 the second European Communication Conference took place in Barcelona, bringing together media and communication researchers from across the continent. Hosted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the event is co-organised by the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). Among the thematic sections of the Association, Radio Research, and Communication and Democracy’s panels discussed a wide range of recent research in the area of community media. The findings emerging from the presentations did highlight the contributions of community radio stations operating in Europe and Africa to the plurality of voices available at the local level and their empowering potential for social groups often underserved by mainstream media. Moreover, the discussed case studies in the areas of alternative and radical media did help to map out emerging practices of both progressive and conservative social movements, including television and internet-based platforms across Europe.

Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Some Introductory Remarks

Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Some Introductory Remarks