In this introduction for the special section on “Exclusions in the History of Media Studies,” we begin by calling attention to the constituting role that exclusion has played in the historiography of media studies. Exclusions linked to gender, race, language, colonialism, geopolitical location, and institutionally sanctioned privilege play sub…[Read more]

In this introduction for the special section on “Exclusions in the History of Media Studies,” we begin by calling attention to the constituting role that exclusion has played in the historiography of media studies. Exclusions linked to gender, race, language, colonialism, geopolitical location, and institutionally sanctioned privilege play sub…[Read more]

This short essay suggests that John Durham Peters’ Speaking into the Air (1999) re-capitulates its arguments through form. In its written medium, with its hermeneutic mode, and by its promiscuous prose, the book exemplifies its own moral case for dissemination over (in Peters’ chilling phrase) ‘interpersonal mimesis’. The essay positions the boo…[Read more]

An introduction to a new edition of James Rorty’s classic 1934 book Our Master’s Voice. The book presents a coherent and original theory of advertising. Its main tenet holds that the ad business can only be understood within the totality of the country’s economy and culture. The alternative—to treat the business of publicity as a “ca…[Read more]

An introduction to a new edition of James Rorty’s classic 1934 book Our Master’s Voice. The book presents a coherent and original theory of advertising. Its main tenet holds that the ad business can only be understood within the totality of the country’s economy and culture. The alternative—to treat the business of publicity as a “ca…[Read more]

An introduction to a new edition of James Rorty’s classic 1934 book Our Master’s Voice. The book presents a coherent and original theory of advertising. Its main tenet holds that the ad business can only be understood within the totality of the country’s economy and culture. The alternative—to treat the business of publicity as a “ca…[Read more]

The chapter argues that disciplinary memory claims in US American communication research have become smaller, more parochial, and less potent, as their underlying referent—the discipline—has splintered in the wake of the digital in the mid-1990s. For decades after its institutionalization in the 1950s, US communication research had relied on gra…[Read more]

The chapter argues that disciplinary memory claims in US American communication research have become smaller, more parochial, and less potent, as their underlying referent—the discipline—has splintered in the wake of the digital in the mid-1990s. For decades after its institutionalization in the 1950s, US communication research had relied on gra…[Read more]

The article processing charge (APC) is the specter haunting the open access movement. Advocates for open access (OA) face plenty of other obstacles, including tolled journal prestige, researcher inertia, and the life-draining embrace of the publishing oligopolists. But the APC—the fee many publishers charge authors to publish—is a homegrown pro…[Read more]

The article processing charge (APC) is the specter haunting the open access movement. Advocates for open access (OA) face plenty of other obstacles, including tolled journal prestige, researcher inertia, and the life-draining embrace of the publishing oligopolists. But the APC—the fee many publishers charge authors to publish—is a homegrown pro…[Read more]

Media research is a vexing enterprise. Trapped in the borderlands between social science and the humanities, the study of media and communication bears the liabilities of both. We have to contend with all the challenges that sociologists and literary scholars face: the subjective baggage of the analyst, her struggle to interpret unstable meanings,…[Read more]