2. Assignment
• Targeting journals: List at least four journals you
should follow to keep up with your potential
topic.
• Choose one journal and summarize trends
among articles and the journal such as:
• the types of research found in the journal,
• background of editorial board
• manuscript instructions
4. Manuscript review process
If revisions, re-review
Acceptance & Publication Reject
Decision
Major Revisions Minor Revisions Reject
Assignment and Review
Submit manuscript
Confirm acceptance
Completion of research & manuscript
5. Acceptance rates
• 15% or less
• JQ, JOB, JOC, JCMC, HCR, NMS, CSMC
• MCS (15.9% ’10 to 18.3% ’11)
• 20% or higher
• NRJ (30-40%)
• Journalism (30%)
• Journalism Practice (30%-40%)
• Journalism Educator (30%)
• JRAM (30%)
• Journalism History (25%)
• These may not be the most current figures.
6. Impact factor
• J Comp-Mediated Communication 2.7
• J of Communication 2.4
• Human Comm Research 1.8
• J of Health Comm 1.6
• Media Pysch, J of Adv Research & New Media & Society 1.4
• J of Advertising .99
• J of Broadcasting .89
• MCS .82
• JQ & Journalism Studies .54
• webofknowledge.com
• Create citation alerts and access citation reports
7. 1. Communicating relevance
• Youth of field
• Establish validity and salience to outside fields
• Nonacademic fields
8. • How? How much?
• Media effects
• U.S.
• Testable
• Predict
• Why? Why not?
• Controls communication
system?
• Europe
• Understand
2. Critical vs. empirical school
10. 3. Qual vs Quant
• Reliability, validity,
generalizability
• Directing attention,
organizing
experiences,
authenticity
11. Two Models of Communication
Transmission Model
• Transportation
• Sender & Receiver
• Sent & Received
• Receiver gets it
(sense of
transmission)
• Influence
Ritual
• Ceremony
• Participants
• Created & Recreated
• Shared experience
(sense of
community)
• Communication
across time
12. Positivism vs. interpretivism
• Truth claims based on only direct observation
and quantification
• Meaningful only if they can be empirically
verified
13. Exercise
• What is the state of the debate between positivist and
interpretivism research philosophies?
• Search Sociological Abstracts for articles that used these
terms. Based on the abstracts, list points that are media in
support and opposition to both perspectives.
14. Primary Research
• Google Scholar
• http://staff.lib.msu.edu/junus/libs/gso.html
• Topic search engines
• http://www.lib.msu.edu/resources/articles.jsp
• PsychINFO, MEDLINE, Comm & Mass Media Complete
• Research journal title
• http://www.lib.msu.edu/
• eBooks
• http://www.lib.msu.edu/research/findbooks.jsp
• Illiad
• http://interlib.lib.msu.edu/illiad.dll
16. 4. Not focused on communication
• Focused on content and effects
• Dance
• “Emphasis is on that which is made common (shared
meanings, cultural symbols, traditions, common ground,
understanding) or on the process of making things common
(the transmission of message from place to place; the
languages in which things are framed; the patterns of action in
which they occur; the things that people actually do and say
to each other.” -Frey, Botan, & Kreps (2000) p.27
17. 5. Lack of theoretical progress
• Increasing attention paid to qualitative and
critical research,
• Focus on teaching of skills rather than research,
• Use of part-time instructors increasing faculty
workload,
• Decrease in funding of research,
• Decrease in number of social scientists from
other fields,
• Intellectual divides,
• Focus on prediction rather than explanation
18. • Bryant & Miron (2004)
• Merely referenced (45%),
• Using it as a framework (23%),
• Constructing it (18%),
• Critiquing it (14%)
• Potter and Riddle (2007)
• Not guided by theory (65%)
Weak theoretical contributions
19. • Females read a large number of magazines each
month.
Variable
21. Examples
• Variable Name Levels (values)
• Gender Male or Female
• Test Scores # correct
• Room Temp. Hot, Warm, Cold
• Room Temp. Degrees Farenheit
22. Manifest vs. latent variables
• Extreme positivists believe that only in manifest
variables.
23. • Psychological tension
• Online loyalty
• News quality
• Social support
• Intelligence
• Social media use
• Communication apprehension
• Source credibility
• Prejudice
• Religiousity
• Disclosure
• Political participation
Example concepts
24. • Test the theory or conceptual relationship
• Contains variables
• “The predictions about the values of the units of
a theory in which empirical indicators are
employed for the named units in each
proposition.” Dubin, 1978
Hypotheses
26. • New areas of research where little is known
about the relationship among variables
• Relational statement
Research Question
27. Relationships Between
Variables
• Is gender related to happiness?
• Do males and females differ in their
happiness?
• Is distraction while studying related to exam
performance?
• Do people perform better when they are not
distracted than when distracted?
29. Positive relationships
• Increases in the values of one variable are
associated with increases in the second variable
• Increasing study time is associated with higher
grades
30. Negative relationships
• Increases in the values of one variable are
associated with decreases in the second variable
• Increasing hours of work are associated with
lower grades
31. Curvilinear Relationships
• Increases in the values of one variable are
associated with both increases and decreases of
the second variable
• Anxiety can help increase performance until it
gets to high – then it decreases performance
33. Are the Following Relationships Positive
or Negative?
• GPA and alcohol consumption
• # of sexual partners and # of STDs
• # hrs TV viewed and # hrs studying
34. • Parsimony vs. Completeness
• Number of concepts and the interrconnections
among them
• Rigor, exactness, logical consistency
• Limitations
Determine boundaries
35. Situations Your Questions Methods of Data
Collection
How would you
recruit a sample
of participants?
Communication
with parents or
grandparents
Communication
with an employer
Communication on
the internet (e.g.,
email, FB, Twitter)
Communication
with romantic
partner
Communication
with professor
Communication
with friends or
roommates
36. Identify concepts that could
relate to your research idea or
keywords list (from last week).
38. List some major topics that
relate to your research
questions or hypotheses.
39. What questions have been
answered related to your
project idea? What remains
unanswered?
40. Next Week
• Concept explication
• Have a list of concepts that interest you
• Think about definitions
• Assignment: IRB training form due
• Proposal Prospectus Due Sept. 20th
• Three- to five-page paper describing the
theory you are interested in exploring for this
class.
Hinweis der Redaktion
What did you find? What did they study? Did the articles give you an idea for new research questions, ideas, or direction?
Review length
Timely review
2-3 readers review it. Only 5% accepted with minor revisions… And 5% editor rejected. Referees are often picked because of methodological experience and references. Asked to review for friends.
Public Opinion Quarterly 50% of the RRs are rejected.
If you see a lot of pages…. Don’t get down… most often there is a relationship between length and promise of manuscript.
Journal of Radio & Audio Media Critical Studies in Media Communication
Assign one journal to each student and tell me what trends you see.
Ask for acceptance rate
249 submitted to MCS
Most frequently cited journals in a field of communication. JIF published yearly by Institute for Scientific Info. Garfield (20060 20% of the articles makeup 80% of the citations
More schools may be relying on the impact factor of a journal. Citation and article counts are indicators of how frequently researchers are using individual journals.
Research shows impact factors do not vary much over time.
Other disciplines have higher ratings because of the lower number of journals in the field and lower number of scholars compared to psychology, so the size of the field affects size of factor according to Feeley and Moon (2011)
Annual JIF
Five-year JIF five previous years are cited dived the number of citable articles in a year
Atwater – communication standing as a field social sciences
Communication scholarship borrowed heavily from sociology, psychology, and political science to buid frameworks… very interdisciplinary field
Do not require research, research methods,
Both are concerned about reality. Reality cannot exist without context, and how can you say it is reality without determining the specific cause. Change is incremental…. Yet what are critical school contributing?
Critical is much broader and contextual and empirical is narrow.
To understand how to control people vs the freeing of people. Encourages the weakening of individuals to corporations while critical is concerned with emanicipating individuals.
Put too much emphasis on commuinication while ignoring context However, bias entering research and using data to confirm their biases.
Disconnect exists – not likely to work at the same programs. Empirical school is larger than the critical. So many journals makes it difficult to master any subject area but your own.
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.[
Collective behavior scientists are interested in how social units evolve to act as a collective.
Leaning more quant or qual? Turnbull: Qual focuses on developing theory from data. How social experience is created and given meaning… observers of behavior. Authencity… social constructivist, ethnography-observing participants and communities… (journalism). Participant observation, case study, interviewing,
People believe that observing people in their natural environment is more accurate
Ethnography Direct observation that leads to thick description of people & culture.
Ethnomethodology Ethnomethodologist do not simply record behavior, but the have to make sense of it. Convict code
Died in 2006 at 71. His own most influential idea was the "ritual theory" of communications, a departure from the traditional "transmission theory,"
he transmission model comes from the traditional social-scientific Sender- Message- Channel- Receiver or S-M-C-R approach whereas the ritual model comes from the social constructionist paradigm. Society not only exists by transmission, by communication
Ritual Model of Communication — communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.
To study communication is to examine the actual social process wherein significant symbolic forms are created, apprehended, and used. “sharing,” “participation,” “association,” “fellowship,” “possession of common faith,” “communion,” and “community.”
TRANSMISSION View of Communication–is the idea that transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control; characterized by the desire to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel in space. defined by terms such as “imparting,” “sending,” “transmitting,” “giving information to others” –ex: traditional classroom. Communication is a process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed in space for distance and people. we devalue process in favor of product
Quantification is the only goal… if you can quanitfy, it is not science..
Empirical "facts" are not proof of fundamental truth but proof of a mode of observation, which is methodology, which is hypothetically value-free. Intterpretation does not reflect observations. Modes of observations are methods. Don’t lead to generalizations of behavior, rather focuses on sample on given point in time, which means knowledge is not abstract.
Generalizations are knowledge… replicable knowledge. Something we know. Beyond descriptive.
Precision paradox,
Most science is concerned with predicition. Two distinct goals of science predication and understanding. In order to predict, you have to exclude certain phenomena to precisely identify that is the cause. Over-simplication is necessary.
It is knowledge about the interaction of unites in a system. Little analysis is on the analysis of the processes that produce that outcomes being studied. Versus a model focus on outcomes. Understanding why certain events have taken place.
Gives rise to paradoxes. The precision paradox: Why can we achieve precision in prediction without any knowledge of how the predicted outcome was produced.
Power paradox: Why can we achieve powerful understanding of social behavior without immersing ourselves in certain situations.
Burelson– Need to take communication more seriously and treat it more broadly. How do we decide what is knowledge? How do we decide what is knowledge in this field?
Assume communication, rather than problematize communication
What is communication? How do people interpret words? How are messages produced? How are they comprehended? Communication focuses on messages? How they are sent? Understanding the communication phenomena.
We don’t engage in philosophical conversations? Philosophy of science/social sciences…philosophies should be used in theory development.
Critical lens does not exist because publish for each other.
How’s people self-esteem changes as they grow older is psychology; however how self-esteem affects communication apprehension (such as public speaking) is a communication problem.
DeFleur
Melvin DeFleur has argued that few mass communication scientists have made significant theoretical contributions since the 1980s.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, and Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
Potter – 16 journals during odd years from 1993 – 2005
Third-person effect, agenda, ug were the three most commonly mentioned.
Sex is the substitute for female. Measured version of the concept, however not every concept is a variable. Female and magazine reading. Females read , it cannot be called a hypothesis because only the latter varies. H
Any concept that can have two or more values.
A variable is a property of a thing that may be present in degree. A variable has attributes. Attribute vs variable
How do they vary in observations?
A variable that can be directly measured or observed. It is the opposite of a latent variable, which can not be directly observed. Manifest variables are used in latent variable statistical models,
Latent variables are unobserved variables that are measured by multiple observed items, also called manifest variables. For instance, to examine substance use onset as a latent variable, multiple observed items measuring behaviors such as alcohol use, cigarettes use, marijuana use, etc. may be used as indicators or manifest variables.
Create a construct made up of directly observation measures. The human is an instrument of observation.
If an increase int this, there will be a decrease in this – associational
Causal
In need of empirical evidence.
No support – hypotheses, some support – empirical generalizations, overwhelming support- laws
Axiomatic can combined to produce new statements or propostiion scope conditions of theory
IV causes changes in DV
Many fear posing hypotheses because What is the nature of communication behavior X? What are the types of interpersonal rituals reported in friendships? What does the supervisor communication occurs during the dismissal process?
Liking cause disclosure or does disclosure liking…
Clarify the domains within which the theory is expected to hold up and apply.
Theories should be as simple as possible while still explaining phenenoma accurately. Logical simplicity. Not all theories testable
Identify a question that you would be think would be interesting. After you have come up with a question, identify how you might collect data (e.g., survey, interview, content analysis, experiment, ) and think about how you might recruit participants for your study.
Share them with your neighbor, have your neighbor contribute. Think communication. Human behavior.
Remember to think in terms of concepts or variables. Ask you’re a new person to contribute ideas.
