International Communication Research Research Articles

An Analytical Lens Resting on a Tripod: De-Westernising, Internationalising, and Decolonising International Communication

This article reviews three critical analytical discourses that are wrestling with the Euro-American historic bias in international communication. The de-Westernisation discourse is perhaps one that has been most prevalent. To also deconcentrate Western biases, the “internationalisation” perspective argues that the field of international communication still needs to be truly “internationalised.” The article advances that there is another Western-centricity critiquing perspective—the decoloniality school of thought—that warrants a fully-fledged adoption and application as a third perspective. Together, the three disquisitions not only hold the potential to dismantle the Euro-American historical leanings evident in the field, but they also offer an opportunity to refresh international communication theory and research practice with new, alternative non-Western offerings, especially from the Global South.

A global health crisis with divided research traditions? A comparative review of Brazilian and international research in communication on the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in substantial international scientific research from high-income countries, with fewer contributions from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Utilizing a field theory approach, we contend that these output variations may underscore challenges faced by LMIC researchers in obtaining international academic recognition. Through a systematic review of Brazilian and international Communication research during the pandemic, we identify differences in research interests, constructs, methods, and use of academic references. While international literature prioritizes quantitative surveys, Brazil emphasizes qualitative content analysis. We also observe dissimilarities in covered topics and a limited number of shared references. Research traditions and distinct resource allocations pose additional barriers to international publishing, hampering academic exchanges between these communities.

Analysis of English for International Communication (EIC) Research Projects Conducted in the Independent Study (IS) Course Underpinning the Thailand 20-Year National Strategy Plan

The main focuses of this research study were to identify all research projects conducted by English for International Communication (EIC) students between 2017-2019 based on the Thailand 20-Year National Strategy Plan; summarize and analyzing; and, suggest the scope of the research projects in the IS course. A total of 109 research projects proceeded by the EIC students were analyzed. The research instruments were the Research Topic Analysis Checklist (RTAC). The statistic used in data analysis was the percentage. Overall, the findings indicated that the most of the research projects were in the strategy of development and strengthening human capital (85%), social cohesion and just society (5.45%), and national competitiveness enhancement (1.09%) respectively whereas there was at 8.21% ungrouped projects. Noticeably, an innovation technology and area base of IS projects gradually increased with the 21st century skills in 2019. Additionally, the understanding of both university mission and Thailand 20-Year National Strategy Plan related to the various research projects. This study can mutually provide a practical guideline for encouraging both teachers and students to explore more diverse interesting topic areas by bridging the gaps between the university mission, provincial policy and strategy, and Thailand 20-Year National Strategy Plan.

Identity, Social Media and Politics: How Young Emirati Women Make Sense of Female Politicians in the UAE

Social media offered new opportunities for politicians to engage with the public. However, little research has explored public perceptions of women politicians and their role in women's empowerment, especially in non-Western contexts. This study used a qualitative methodology to explore how young Emirati women made sense of gender and other identities in their discussions of Emirati women politicians on social media. Drawing from intersectionality theory, the study looked beyond gender, exploring other identities that may play a role in Emirati women's perceptions. The results offered insights into the family and ethnic identity as they interacted with gender. The findings also highlighted the challenges of personalizing messages in a patriarchal society. This study contributes to international political communication research and practice by understanding the complexity of women's sense-making of social media and women politicians in a non-Western context.

Metrology and Computer Visualization Analysis of Taijiquan’s International Communication Research in the Big Data Era

As a traditional Chinese Wushu integrating various functions such as temperament maintenance, physical fitness, and skill of fighting, Taijiquan takes Taiji thought, the dialectical concept of Yin and Yang in traditional Chinese Confucianism and Taoism as its core ideas. Also, its formation combines the theory of Yin and Yang, five elements of thought in Yi Jing, the theory of TCM meridians and collaterals, as well as the ancient physical and breathing exercises. The international communication of Taijiquan has built a bridge of Chinese excellent Wushu culture and the world. Taijiquan is one of the outstanding representatives of Chinese Wushu culture, and the research of its international communication has a vital significance for understanding the status quo and problems of the traditional culture of our country, and promoting correct understanding of westerns in it. In this paper, the method of computer visualization is adopted to carry out statistical analysis of related journal articles collected in CNKI database in China in the past two decades, which aims at finding the hot topics, research status and research methods of Taijiquan’s international communication, and providing references for future research.

Highlights, trends and patterns in Asian international communication research in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT In the context of dominance of Eurocentricity in social science, some scholars call for enquiry into international communication (IC) from an Asian perspective that is invested in abundant cultural heritage with which complementary contributions have been made to IC as an interdisciplinary field derived from Western social theory. This article tries to map the updated topics, trends and patterns of Asian IC research and assay the impetus behind its shaping. This is done through reviewing the key relevant research outputs about Asian IC by Asian IC scholars, including from within Asian diaspora as in the West. The aim is to illustrate the landscape of Asian IC research, including the Asian values that scholars have sorted out, the patterns of Asian scholarly contribution to the Western originated research foci, and the challenges facing the scholarly development of IC research with an Asian perspective. A prospect of the future research direction is provided in the end.

Structural Limits to the De-Westernization of the Communication Field: The Editorial Board in Clarivate's JCR System

AbstractSince the 2000s, calls for de-Westernizing the international communication research have been common, but their practical result has been very modest, as the share of non-western countries remained minimal. This article explores the hypothesis that structural factors hamper the diversity in international media research, based on the analysis of the membership of journals listed in Clarivate's Journal of Citation Reports. The data demonstrate a strong unbalance in favor of the US -- and a particular group of US universities in special -- to the detriment of the non-Western countries. The article discusses these findings in reference to the emergence of academic capitalism and the global rankings logic, which is based on ``universal'' defined from a US (and secondarily Anglophonic) viewpoint. The JCR system plays an important role in this schema, as it artificially introduces scarcity in the international publishing system and, therefore, concentrates symbolic power in the hands of a few.

The Challenging Potential of Local Media: Lessons from China

Instead of conventional conceptualisation of local as a unified national in the discussion of globalization in media study, this paper reveals a decentralised administrative and TV system in China, and further identifies a national-local level of analysis. The research has found that in order to fulfil its political imperatives, the Chinese national government has made a deal with the global media at the expanse of the local TV broadcasters economic interests. This national-local tension has pressed the local television organizations to request for more autonomy, protections and preferential policies and has also pushed the national government to improve the transparency and the quality of its broadcasting policies and policymaking process. On the other hand, the interest disjunction between the national and the local has also resulted in two conflicting stands towards foreign media. This local-national relation has been and will continue to be, one of the most profound dynamics that drive future changes in the television system in China. The findings of the dynamic national-local relationship provide another theoretical approach to understanding of the media in China. More generally, it invites the reconsidering of the existing national-global analytical framework in international communication research. In other words, more than asking how local is local in the global-local nexus, what we need to reconsider, as China‟s case indicates, is the more complex interactive relations among the global, national and different locals: a local-national-global analytical approach.

Four Moments of International Communication Research in the Cold War and Beyond

This article discusses the impact of the Cold War and its legacy on international communication research. Critically reconstructing the history of the Cold War in political-ideological terms, it demonstrates that this research area has been characterised by a battle between liberal internationalist theories and theories of imperialism, which has occurred in two stages. During the Cold War, Western liberal notions of modernisation were challenged by theories of media-cultural imperialism. The end of the Cold War led to a return of liberal notions in international communication research—though they appeared in a less Western-centric form—in association with globalisation theory. The article argues that with the demise of the post-Cold War globalisation zeitgeist and the return of major geopolitical conflicts, theories of “new imperialism”, which focus on the interplay between “capitalist” and “territorial” imperialism, offer a fruitful foundation for understanding the early twenty-first century international media and communication order.

Stretching the boundaries of international and intercultural communication research

The idea for this special issue stemmed from the 2017 New Horizons in the Ethnography of Communication Conference, where the keynote address by Donal Carbaugh encouraged a re-examination of the kin...

다문화와 국제커뮤니케이션

다문화와 국제커뮤니케이션

Fade and Interfade Duration Characteristics in a Slant-Path <italic>Ka</italic>-Band Link

Satellite-to-earth links are subject to several propagation effects in the troposphere, being rain attenuation the impairment that can cause the deepest fades. In this paper, the duration of both fades and the intervals between consecutive fades (interfade intervals) are characterized on the basis of the results of a long-term slant-path Ka -band propagation experiment carried out in Madrid, Spain. The experimental and statistical results included in this paper correspond to seven complete years of measurements, a period large enough to characterize not only the average-year statistics of fade dynamics but also their variability, which is assessed on the basis of annual statistics of durations. The obtained average-year statistics of fade durations are in many cases close to the predictions made by the International Telecommunication Union-Radiocommunications and Communications Research Center Canada models, although the predictions could be improved with a better selection of the parameters of the distributions used in the models. Interfade duration statistics are also presented and related to recent modeling efforts. The interannual variability of statistics, such as the relative number of fades, is quantified and found to be low, except for the higher attenuation thresholds or the highest durations considered in this paper.

Os “usos” da teoria na investigação em comunicação atual

Neste artigo, apresenta-se o valor da construção de teorias nos estudos do sistema comunicacional, surgidos a partir dos anos 90, e como a teoria é operacionalizada em quadros teóricos de referência na investigação internacional. Em primeiro lugar, veremos como evoluiu o contexto da investigação internacional em comunicação desde 1989 à atualidade. Em segundo, descreveremos como se operacionaliza o valor da teoria em tempos de neoliberalismo. Por fim, apresentaremos um estudo de caso: a operacionalização da teoria na pesquisa internacional sobre o framing. Este estudo tem como objetivo observar (i) os usos da teoria na pesquisa sobre o framing, (ii) os temas de investigação, (iii) a operacionalização do framing através das (principais) técnicas de investigação, e (iv) a operacionalização do framing através de técnicas (secundárias) de investigação. Para este fim, procederemos à análise de artigos publicados no Journal of Communication durante o período compreendido entre 2009 e 2013. Desenhamos uma análise de conteúdo específica para a observação da pesquisa empírica, que foi aplicada a um total de 50 artigos originais em 26 edições desta revista.

Introduction to the special issue honoring the intellectual life and legacy of Professor Tamar Liebes, 1942–2015

This issue honors the intellectual legacy of Professor Tamar Liebes of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A leader in the field of international media and communication research, Professor Liebes ...

The surprising value of regional journals in international media and communication research and publishing

What are the current issues facing academic journals, especially those with regional and national identities and bases? This paper reflects on how the opportunities, issues, and challenges for regional journals to make consequential, quality, and widely received contributions to media and communication research and debates. Offering an Australian perspective, this paper discusses the tensions and imperatives of regionally located journals, subtended by situated research cultures, histories, and institutions, as they seek to engage with and publish for an increasingly distributed, networked, and stratified international field of media and communications. If managed successfully, such regional locations offer resources and models for a genuinely cosmopolitan, widely and fairly available academic publishing ecology.

Debate, confrontación y hegemonía en la disciplina de la comunicación. Nuevos tiempos para un paradigma dominante

In many ways communication research reflects the debates, confrontations and times of hegemony that have shaken the social sciences in its institutionalization process during the last century. Looking back to the immediate past of media studies allows us to observe the evolution of contemporary social theory, while the current changes imposed by globalization reposition in the central debate the theoretical and institutional transformations of international communication research. Its multidisciplinary structure, organizational capacity, proximity to knowledge needs applied to the ever expanding industrial and cultural sectors, the centrality of its objects of study and its predictive potential were only possible by means ofa socially agile behaviour, a great capacity for renewal, and a permanent discussion about its disciplinary field. Therefore, the use of theory in communication research occupies a central position in its ability to explain, interpret and understand communication processes. The disputes betweenthe organization of instrumental theories and the development of comprehensive, critical or emancipatory theories have always focused the interest of communication researchers with a common goal: achieving dominance in the discipline. In this paper we analyse the evolution of the so called “dominant paradigm” in three moments of dispute with critical and interpretative theories: the period started with the interventionist and predictive social policies of the New Deal , its renewal process against the balkanization of media research during the sixties, and the formulation of a rejuvenated dominant paradigm in the present times of globalization. We will focus on this last period of new institutionalization and standardization of international communication research.

From propaganda to public diplomacy: Assessing China's international practice and its image, 1950–2009

Since World War II, government-sponsored international propaganda and public diplomacy have become more visible and sophisticated in countries around the world. China is no exception. It is not immune to the compulsion and communication imperative to reach and woo the public, both at home and abroad, for its vested interests. From propaganda to public diplomacy, the practices and activities have taken different forms and scopes, mainly including government-owned media outlets aimed at foreign audiences, state-subsidized media organizations as quasi-governmental instruments, overseas advertising and public relations campaigns designed to sway public opinion to win general support for the nation involved or to repair international relations damaged by terrorist attacks and other man-made crises, and recruiting and bribing journalists as clandestine operatives. Whether such practices have been effective in changing hearts and minds among international audiences, however, is open to debate and remains to be further explored. Within the perspective of sociology of knowledge, the main purpose of this study is to look at how China comes to be viewed as an object in international communication research over the past decades that cast the country through the prism of either propaganda or public diplomacy.

Notes from the semi-periphery

This article argues that small states have a significant contribution to make to international communications research, which is dominated by a large state event-oriented outlook. A study of newspaper reporting on developing countries in Ireland shows significant coverage in genres neglected by research to date, beyond the ‘international news’ pages, which presents a less negative and more nuanced picture of the developing world than usually described in the literature. The discussion is situated within international news flow and world-systems theory and demonstrates the potential for small states to depolarize the event vs context debate on determinants, showing why semi-peripheral perspectives are vital for the future development and application of world-systems theory in international communications research.

Food risk communication: Some of the problems and issues faced by communicators on the Island of Ireland (IOI)

In this paper we consider the findings of a number of interlinked pieces of research, both qualitative and quantitative, that have investigated aspects of food risk communication on the island of Ireland. These findings are set in the context of international risk communication research. The findings are examined using the three basic elements of a simple communications framework: the message sender; the channel through which the message is communicated and the receiver of the message. The barriers to effective communication are examined and special reference is made to the barriers affecting the communication of domestic food safety risk. Barriers identified include personal, infrastructural and message related factors, such as lack of interest, lack of appropriate facilities and conflicting messages. Based on an evaluation of the views of the scientific community and the public, we make suggestions on how future food safety communications could be tackled to better address the identified barriers. Both suggested long and short term policies are considered in the context of a heterogeneous public and scientific community. Short term suggestions provide an opportunity to address the challenges faced by those who are currently exposing themselves to a high level of domestic food safety risk. The long term suggestions reflect on the underlying barriers impacting on public domestic food safety practices.

Psychiatrists, Patients Disagree About Extent of Communication

Psychiatrists, Patients Disagree About Extent of Communication