The Information and Interactions of Communication Scholarship

One of my favorite classes that I teach yearly is “Communication Research Methods.” The course acts as the perfect balance between the abstract quest for understanding the cultural world that surrounds society and the concrete reality of explaining the communal relationships that currently exist. I try to make the concepts around research approachable through a process of lecturing about the traditions of communication and the various categories of communication methodologies. This lecture is often followed up by either an in-class exercise designed to apply the material covered in the lectures and readings or a short proposal of a research project related to the method we were studying during the week. The structure of the course is necessarily the same over the past half-decade.

It seems that students are eager to learn about how to perform communication research but often the language of the academy or scholarly work (a.k.a. The “weenie” words we use to research processes and results) can make discoveries in the various articles opaque or obscure. This language barrier means that students come into the class unsure about doing research. The term has some semantic weight. The first order of business for the course is to try to remove some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt and show that we are already novice researchers in the field of communication. We don’t regularly follow a set of practices to analyze the world around us.

One of the early stories that I tell in class is about my senior capstone at Muskingum. It was my first real research project. It took months of reading journal articles to get a sense of the style of academic writing and a template to use to put together all of the fruits of my research project. I wanted to look at fan culture online, specifically the Tori Amos Usenet group in the late 1990s. The format of the project was to use an online questionnaire to determine how that fan community used the Usenet group and what enjoyment or gratification the fan got from belonging to this group. I wasn’t that concern in the study of online culture, but instead, I was a huge fan of Tori Amos, and I thought this project would allow me to learn more about her. This story helps frame the idea that communication scholarship should be more than the “passions of the scholar,” but typically that passion helps drive the research to a solid conclusion.

Another point that I make clear throughout the course of the class is that communication scholarship is often a game of definitions. Scholarship is merely words on a page or screen supported by data points that a scholar hopes to provide more information and expands the realm of the known of a given discipline. We discuss that research questions and hypotheses are only as strong as the weakest term. A well-crafted review of literature will often lead to a steady series of research questions and/or hypotheses. Great research questions or hypotheses builds towards a clearly defined method to test hypotheses and address research questions. This series is the foundation of high-quality communication research.

I find that the most fundamental area that I need to cover before any of the previous points can be resolved is a good definition of communication research. We first look over all of the interest divisions in the National Communication Association. I find that showing all of the interest divisions and then showing the various papers, presentations, and panel those interest divisions put on during the annual conferences helps spark the intellectual curiosity of the students. I usually end this discussion by giving my description of what makes communication research than other fields.

It comes down to that communication scholars study the information exchanges and interactions patterns between members of a given community and/or society.

The latter part of that description “between members of a given community and/or society” was heavily influenced by Ferdinand Tönnies’ “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” (“Community and Society”). Eric Rothenbuhler gave me that book as basically my last homework assignment in college, and I was blown away by how thorough Tönnies’ analysis was and his thoughtfulness toward why those two primary definitions of everyday life are vital to know and distinguish. Tönnies described communal society (“gemeinschaft”) as the foundations of how towns and cities were formed. The village life history embedded in gemeinschaft means that civilization was built on personal relationship and maintaining social rules to keep harmony in the village. The industrial revolution introduced metropolises and the need for organized social structures with bureaucratic systems to keep order (“gesellschaft”).

I wasn’t sure where the former part of the definition came from (“information exchanges and interactions patterns”). I like it because I could have the students discuss the “two Is” of communication research and it helps frame research questions and hypotheses that the students would create for the various projects they were working on for their modules and final projects. I finally realized after reading a Twitter thread from Jay Rosen that I’m essentially modified James Carey’s “Cultural Approach to Communication.” Those information exchanges that I’m referring to falls in line with Carey’s description of the transmission view of communication which looks at the transportation of knowledge, beliefs, and ideals between members of a society and how these units of information are controlled by the technologies used to deliver this content, the economic system that supports the various platforms and channels of communication, and the political control and regulation related to such communication.

Carey’s ritual view of communication is focused on the dramatic component of communication and how the performances of communication maintain a community through the introduction of cultural artifacts as a means of expressing the human experience and documenting those experiences for others. Those rituals of communication become important as those interactions act as a historical record of the cultural connection that a community has with one another.

Carey used the example of the newspaper (p. 20) to show these two views of communication. The transmission view would look at the newspaper through the lens of an examination of the stories and how the various organizations within society are delivering their messages to citizens and how news and information are disseminated via the mode of communication. The ritual view would look at how the newspaper represents a mode of critical mass in terms of the maintaining of community. It is the blueprint of how to have a “water cooler discussion” at work.

I believe that both the transmission and the ritual views play a role in communication scholarship. It seems that Carey would as well based on what he wrote on pages 21 and 22.

“Neither of these counterposed views of communication necessarily denies what the other affirms. A ritual view does not exclude the processes of information transmission or attitude change. It merely contends that one cannot understand these processes aright except insofar as they are cast within an essentially ritualistic view of communication and social order.”

By looking at communication practices and actions through this holistic lens that scholarship can explore the larger problematic in society and attempt to clarify the realm of the known.