Human Communication Research Research Articles

Reflecting on 50 years of theory in Human Communication Research: where do we go from here

Abstract This essay is an introduction to the special issue on “Rethinking and Expanding Communication Theories on HCR’s 50th Anniversary.” We begin by arguing that communication research has expanded substantially since Human Communication Research’s inaugural issue. However, in light of changes in communication technologies, political discourse, means of engaging in interpersonal communication, and awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion, this special issue takes note of our current theorizing and ways to build as we look toward the future. The essays in this special issue, reviewed in this article, will undoubtedly prompt us to re-think, re-envision, and renew our commitment to the importance of communication theory, both in terms of where we have been and in terms of where we can progress.

Fifty-years of theory-driven research in HCR: prominence, progress, and opportunities

Abstract We reviewed Human Communication Research (HCR) articles that included named theories in the: (a) abstract, (b) keywords, or (c) section headers to determine theory trends, identifying 592 instances of named theories in 447 articles. We conducted a follow-up analysis of 76 articles to illustrate how HCR researchers have contributed to theory development. Our review demonstrated systematic growth in theory use; the number of named theories in our sample doubled from the first 10 years to the last. There remains the propensity for theory shopping in the discipline with over 50% of theories in each decade cited only once. We also analyzed theory development strategies. There was evidence of theorizing that: (a) extended the range of theories and (b) explored effects. There was less theory synthesis that might provide frameworks for organizing related but distinct theories. We concluded by offering recommendations for how researchers can contribute to future theoretical development.

The role of theory in researching and understanding human communication

Abstract Communication is a theory-driven discipline, but does it always need to be? This article raises questions related to the role of theory in communication science, with the goal of providing a thoughtful discussion about what theory is, why theory is (or is not) important, the role of exploration in theory development, what constitutes a theoretical contribution, and the current state of theory in the field. We describe communication researchers’ interest with theory by assessing the number of articles in the past decade of research that mention theory (nearly 80% of papers have attended to theory in some way). This article concludes with a forward-looking view of how scholars might think about theory in their work, why exploratory research should be valued more and not considered as conflicting with theory, and how conceptual clarity related to theoretical interests and contributions are imperative for human communication research.

Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.

Although chemical signaling is an essential mode of communication in most vertebrates, it has long been viewed as having negligible effects in humans. However, a growing body of evidence shows that the sense of smell affects human behavior in social contexts ranging from affiliation and parenting to disease avoidance and social threat. This article aims to (a) introduce research on human chemical communication in the historical context of the behavioral sciences; (b) provide a balanced overview of recent advances that describe individual differences in the emission of semiochemicals and the neural mechanisms underpinning their perception, that together demonstrate communicative function; and (c) propose directions for future research toward unraveling the molecular principles involved and understanding the variability in the generation, transmission, and reception of chemical signals in increasingly ecologically valid conditions. Achieving these goals will enable us to address some important societal challenges but are within reach only with the aid of genuinely interdisciplinary approaches.

Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: An HCR Special Issue

This invited essay discusses a recent special issue published by the journal Human Communication Research entitled “Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.” Articles in the special issue explore how: (a) artificial intelligence (AI) may be altering basic communication processes, (b) communication theories can help us understand and explain AI's potential impacts, and (c) research can explore how AI can help promote the public interest. These issues are explored in varied contexts (e.g., close relationships, workplaces, media, and politics) using quantitative, computational, and qualitative methods. My essay highlights the special issue's purpose, describes the peer review process that led to six articles plus the opening essay by guest editors S. Shyam Sunder and Eun-Ju Lee, features an exemplar article that explores how social bots helped amplify partisan news coverage in the Unites States during the COVID-19 pandemic, and calls for communication scholars to publish additional research on these topics in outlets such as Emerging Media.

The effect of face masks on sign language comprehension: performance and metacognitive dimensions

In spoken languages, face masks represent an obstacle to speech understanding and influence metacognitive judgments, reducing confidence and increasing effort while listening. To date, all studies on face masks and communication involved spoken languages and hearing participants, leaving us with no insight on how masked communication impacts on non-spoken languages. Here, we examined the effects of face masks on sign language comprehension and metacognition. In an online experiment, deaf participants (N = 60) watched three parts of a story signed without mask, with a transparent mask or with an opaque mask, and answered questions about story content, as well as their perceived effort, feeling of understanding, and confidence in their answers. Results showed that feeling of understanding and perceived effort worsened as the visual condition changed from no mask to transparent or opaque masks, while comprehension of the story was not significantly different across visual conditions. We propose that metacognitive effects could be due to the reduction of pragmatic, linguistic and para-linguistic cues from the lower face, hidden by the mask. This reduction could impact on lower-face linguistic components perception, attitude attribution, classification of emotions and prosody of a conversation, driving the observed effects on metacognitive judgments but leaving sign language comprehension substantially unchanged, even if with a higher effort. These results represent a novel step towards better understanding what drives metacognitive effects of face masks while communicating face to face and highlight the importance of including the metacognitive dimension in human communication research.

Theory Building as Integrated Reflection: Understanding Physician Reflection Through Human Communication Research, Medical Education, and Ethics

Grounded in a presupposition that a single explanatory framework cannot fully account for the expansive learning processes that occur during medical residency, the article examines developing physicians’ reflective writing from three disciplinary lenses. The goal is to understand how the multi-dimensional nature of medical residency translates into assembling educational experiences and constructing meaning that cannot be fully explained through a single discipline. An interdisciplinary research team across medical education, communication, and ethics qualitatively analyzed reflective entries (N=756) completed by family medicine residents (N=33) across an academic year. Results provide evidence for moving toward an integrated thematic explanation across disciplines. The authors suggest that the integration of disciplinary explanations allows for comprehensive understanding of reflection as a cornerstone in the broader formation of the physician. Examples provide evidence for an integrated understanding of a fuller human experience by considering the three thematic explanations as co-occurring, reciprocal processes.

Ethical considerations of telehealth: Access, inequity, trust, and overuse

In the U.S. healthcare system, telehealth is increasingly present and demands ethical assessment. On the one hand, telehealth increases access to healthcare services for some at-risk populations (e.g., people suffering from mental illness and addictions) and in specific contexts (e.g., rural). On the other hand, telehealth widens the digital divide and can lead to overuse of services. Furthermore, because it is still unclear how telehealth influences trust between patients and primary care clinicians, connecting relationship science and human communication research can inform critical reasoning. Finally, healthcare policy is advancing toward the wide adoption of telehealth. Hence, it is urgent to address these ethical issues and invest in further research.

Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

AbstractThis article introduces the special issue of Human Communication Research (HCR) exploring the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in communication. It situates the six articles in this issue along conceptual dimensions drawn from human–computer interaction (HCI) and computer-mediated communication (CMC) research. It also underscores the importance of typologizing AI’s involvement in human communication by building on traditional distinctions such as mass versus interpersonal communication. In doing so, it describes how AI can fulfill analogous roles as either communicator or mediator in both contexts. This article also discusses the six articles and draws out common themes, most notably the tension between human agency and machine agency caused by the arrival of AI. It concludes by expressing optimism for the discovery of new concepts, frameworks and issues as we study both the positive and negative influences of AI on the process and effects of human communication.

Reviewer Acknowledgement

Reviewer Acknowledgement Get access Human Communication Research, Volume 48, Issue 2, April 2022, Pages 374–377, https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqac005 Published: 19 February 2022

Familiars in a Strange Land

Familiars in a Strange Land

Trust and Communication: Looking Back, Looking Forward

What has been referred to as the crisis of trust in social institutions has deep connections with communications, whether it be declining trust in news media and journalism, debates about the power of digital platforms and trust in online environments, questions surrounding media effects, the rise of political populism, or how trust or mistrust shapes interpersonal and intergroup communication. At the same time, trust in communications research has something of a “hidden history” when compared to disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, political science, and economics. Through a systematic literature review of uses of the concept of trust in six journals published by the International Communication Association—Journal of Communication; Communication Theory; Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; Human Communication Research; Communication, Culture & Critique; and Annals of the International Communication Association (formerly Communication Yearbook)—this article undertakes a chronological and thematic analysis of how research into trust has evolved among communication researchers from the 1950s to 2020. It concludes with a discussion of the distinctive contributions of communications as a scholarly field to trust studies more broadly.

Mediation Analysis and Warranted Inferences in Media and Communication Research: Examining Research Design in Communication Journals From 1996 to 2017

The number of studies employing mediation analysis has increased exponentially in the past two decades. Focusing on research design, this study examines 387 articles in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Media Psychology between 1996 and 2017. Findings show that while most studies report statistically significant indirect effects, they are inadequate to make causal inferences. Authors also often infer that they uncovered the “true” mediator(s) while alternative models and mediators are rarely acknowledged. Future studies should pay more attention to the role of research design and its implications for making causal inferences.

A Study on Internal Communication factors as Determinant of Organizational Health : Evidence from Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam

After the economic reform in the 1980s, the Vietnamese government began to restructure state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to accelerate private sectors and opened the market to facilitate commerce and foreign investment. As a result of this policy, the number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been increasing at a rapid pace for the last decade. On the downside, however, as Vietnam is deeply integrating into the global economy and the trend of globalization is on the rise, a wide range of multinational corporations (MNCs) have entered Vietnam to seek new business growth opportunities and to compete with local SMEs. This intensifying competition poses a threat to the overall performance of domestic SMEs. Meanwhile, there is little interest in organizational health in the field of communication.BRThis study is, therefore, to examine the important factors of internal communication which are related to organizational health of SMEs in Vietnam. The results indicate that workplace communication and goal alignment are two significant dimensions of organizational health of SMEs in the context of Vietnam while transformational leadership and employee well-being are unrelated to health of local SMEs. These findings would provide managerial implications to the top management of SMEs as well as contribute to the extant literature on organizational health within the domain of human resource management and communication research. Based on these findings, this study has given insightful recommendations to practitioners with a focus on enhancing the corporate communications and fostering the fit between employees and organizational goals besides improving the mental illness for employed staff.

Erratum to: Human Communication Research, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2020

Erratum to: Human Communication Research, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2020

A case for directives: Strategies for enhancing clarity while mitigating reactance

Persuasive appeals that are direct and explicit are easier to understand than appeals that are indirect and implicit (Bessarabova et al. Human Communication Research, 39, 339–364, 2013; Gardner and Leshner Health Communication, 31, 738–751, 2016; Miller et al. Human Communication Research, 33, 219–240, 2007). Unfortunately, as psychological reactance theory (PRT; Brehm 1966) contends, directive messages are often met with resistance due to the likelihood of their threatening a receiver’s perceived freedom and autonomy. In response, reactance researchers have undertaken the task of identifying strategies that attempt to utilize the strengths of directives (e.g., clarity) while mitigating the occurrence of reactance. In this article, we review these strategies and argue for the merits of direct and explicit language applied to pro-social and health related contexts. We conclude by examining strategies that use reactance as a persuasive tactic rather than an outcome to be avoided.

Turn and Face the Strange Ch-Ch-Changes: How an Evolving America Activates Identity Politics

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview EssayTurn and Face the Strange Ch-Ch-Changes: How an Evolving America Activates Identity Politics White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics. By Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. White Identity Politics. By Ashley Jardina. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Identity Crisis. By John Sides, Lynn Vavreck, and Michael Tesler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.Samara KlarSamara KlarUniversity of Arizona Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 82, Number 1January 2020 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/706456 Views: 406Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryPublished online December 06, 2019 © 2019 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Daniel S Lane, Afsoon Hansia, Muniba Saleem Effects of pro-white identity cues in American political candidate communication, Human Communication Research 47 (Feb 2023).https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad002Melani Cammett, Dominika Kruszewska-Eduardo, Christiana Parreira, Sami Atallah Coethnicity Beyond Clientelism: Insights from an Experimental Study of Political Behavior in Lebanon, Politics and Religion 15, no.22 (Nov 2021): 417–438.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048321000201

Reviewer Acknowledgement

Journal Article Reviewer Acknowledgement Get access Human Communication Research, Volume 44, Issue 1, 1 January 2018, Pages 1–2, https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqx009 Published: 02 January 2018 Article history Received: 19 December 2017 Published: 02 January 2018

Scholarly productivity in communication studies: five-year review 2012–2016

ABSTRACTThis study reports prolific scholarship trends in communication studies based on individual publication rates in 24 journals from the field for the years 2012–2016. In addition, we summarized data from a subset of journals considered to be most central to our discipline (Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Communication Monographs, and Journal of Communication). Results provide information about what characterizes the 32 individuals who could be considered prolific scholars across the total list of 24 journals, and the nine individuals who could be considered prolific in the central journals. It took nine and seven articles within the five-year period to make it onto each list, respectively. Our data indicate that many of the trends (e.g., mean publication rates, rates of collaboration, etc.) found in recent analyses have largely remained the same. Results are discussed as they pertain to individual characteristics and institutional environments that support research proliferation.

Breath, Breathe, Breathing: Communication in/as Acts of Social Justice (A Metaphorical Performative Assemblage)

This performative essay is a redrafting and extension of a critical dialogue following a public presentation on the nature and importance of communication studies. The dialogue is framed by using the metaphor of breathing, as it relates to particular links between human communication and communication activist research.