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12 - What Is Communication Research For? Wrestling with the Relevance of What We Do

from Part V - The Role of Scholars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Seth C. Lewis
Edited by
Matthew Powers  and
Adrienne Russell
Matthew Powers
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Adrienne Russell
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

This chapter examines the field’s double-sided struggle for relevance: How media studies gets lost among academic disciplines, on one side, and how it fails to connect with publics, on the other. Seth Lewis scrutinizes the disconnect between the field of media studies and people’s deeply mediated lived experience. He approaches the topic three ways: First, conceptually, considering what questions scholars are asking and not asking as a way to explore the assumptions, worldviews, and theories driving the research that does and does not get done. Second, methodologically, delving into how scholars ask questions, to which groups of people, and gathering what kinds of data. Third, communicatively, asking for whom scholars undertake their work, looking particularly at how research is being communicated to multiple audiences and with what normative aims. Lewis highlights sources of disconnection by exploring well-researched media topics of central concern to publics – media bias, information inequality, and religious faith. He demonstrates the field’s failure to provide the public with satisfactory responses.

Keywords

media studiespublic scholarshiprole of intellectualsmedia biasinformation inequalityreligious faith
Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking Media Research for Changing Societies , pp. 171 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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