CALL FOR PAPERS
Research about Communication: History, current situation and prospective
Special issue of DISERTACIONES: Anuario Electrónico de Estudios en Comunicación Social
Edited by Manuel Martínez Nicolás (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain) and Miguel Vicente Mariño (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
Deadline for submitting full articles: 15/10/2015
The scientific research of communication has experienced during the last 25 years a pronounced expansion. During this period, it has not only reinforced its scholarly institutionalization (proliferation of university programmes, strengthening of scientific societies, launching of specialized journals…) but it has also increased its position within Social Sciences and Humanities, as far as it fully deals with one of the key features of current societies: the analysis and comprehension of the digital and communications revolution. Connected to this renewed energy, lately one can perceive a growing interest to address a reflexive approach towards the scholarly community itself, in order to analyse their scientific practices and epistemological options, to reveal its knowledge interests, to evaluate the outcomes it is producing, to account of the institutional devices influencing in research tasks or to highlight the strengthens and weaknesses that define the scientific study of communication.
There is no doubt that the reflexive attitude is an indicator of maturity within a scientific community. Moreover, it is the required path to follow in order to meet your own identity and, even more, to gain a certain degree of recognition in the general scientific field. Communication research has benefitted during the last years from the heuristic value of this reflexive approach, as the proliferation of projects dealing with the analysis of the conducted research, generally labelled as “metha-research” studies, as they synthetize the predominant objects of study, methods and theoretical approaches in the field or in their specific domains. Besides these type of publications, usually focused on the current research, there is a growing interest in renewing the history of studies about communication. Under the International Communication Association (ICA) sponsorship, and in collaboration with the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and the European Communication Reseach and Education Association (ECREA), London hosted the conference New Histories of Communication Studies in June 2013, putting forward an ambitious agenda for a comparative historiography and opening a great scholarly avenue for establishing and consolidating international networks and common projects. The recent joint project between ECREA and ALAIC (Asociación Latinoamericana de Investigadores de la Comunicación) to edit a volume titled Connecting paradigms: Communication studies in Latin America and Europe, where the editors ask for contributions “including a historical perspective, a detailed analysis of the current debates and future proposals”, indicates that this agenda has already started its development in specific actions.
DISERTACIONES proposes this special issue to strengthen this reflexive approach, and invites the scholarly community to send their contributions, preferably as empirical studies, helping to increase the knowledge about the field of Communication Research, and covering, among others, the following aspects:
1. The scientific production in this field, in order to identify the predominant objects of study, topics and problems; the theoretical and methodological approaches; the authors, schools and traditions; the research outputs and the contributions to the progress of the scientific knowledge about communication, etc.
2. The main features and the internal structure of the scientific community of communication researchers: research groups, networks and scholarly relations, institutional and educational profile and background of researchers, epistemological and paradigmatical adscriptions, etc.
3. The socio-institutional context in which the scientific labour is inserted, empashizing the organization of research (universities, specialized centres, companies), the public scientific policies, the funding programmes for research, the regulation to access teaching and researching opportunies (accreditation processes, system of rewards, etc.), the influence of the social and historical contexts in the research practices, etc.
4. The process of secondary institutionalization of Communication Research, particularly referred to the scientific societies (constitution, roles, functions, activities, organization, etc.), scientific journals (procedures, criteria, etc.), publishing companies and book series.
All these features of Communication Research can be approached from diverse disciplinary strategies and perspectives. Hence, within the analysis of the scientific production one can find both quantitative studies (bibliometrics, content analyses) and critical evaluations about results and contributions regarding specific domains and topics (political communication, audience/reception studies, organizational communication, etc.). Additionally, the inquiry about scientific communities, socio-institutional contexts and secondary processes of institutionalization welcome contributions from a wide array of social sciences, such as Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Economy, Etc.). Transversally, all these aspects can be approached from a historical perspective, both in terms of dealing with certain moments or periods in the past and in revisit their evolution across time and space.
El Anuario Electrónico de Estudios en Comunicación Social “Disertaciones” es una publicación arbitrada e indizada, editada conjuntamente entre la Universidad de los Andes de Venezuela (Departamento de Comunicación Social de la ULA Táchira, Grupo de Investigación Comunicación, Cultura y Sociedad y Laboratorio de Investigación Educativa Simón Rodríguez (LIESR)) y la Universidad Complutense de Madrid de España (Grupo Mediación Dialéctica de la Comunicación Social MDCS). En la última evaluación de Latindex, Disertaciones fue indizada cumpliendo un 100% de los criterios de calidad tomados en cuenta por este índice regional.
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