The National and Cosmopolitan Dimensions of Disciplinarity: Reconsidering the Origins of Communication Studies

Abstract

Using the first five years of the Quarterly Journal of Speech as a record of Communication Studies' founding, I contend that the discipline began with a tension between contrasting sets of affect and reasoning. In the initial volumes of QJS, one reads many recommendations designed to establish the discipline's academic sovereignty and self-determination, but, at the same time, other essays suggest a commitment to cross-disciplinary inquiry and citizenship. I interpret this tension through contemporary theories of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. These concepts highlight the implications of competing visions for the discipline's future, but they also reveal how cosmopolitan and nationalist processes complemented one another in the early years of "Speech." I argue, finally, that this tension provides opportunities for Communication Studies in the twenty-first century.

(Why) Is Misinformation a Problem?

“…From a more historical perspective, Scheufele et al (2021) showed that the worry regarding the current circulation of misinformation neglects examples predating the advent of digitization of information. The emergence of communication studies in the United States in the 1920s is perceived to be the result of concerns over the aberrant influence of the media (Wilson, 2015). New media technologies were seen as responsible for the growing disconnect between what people believed and the real world in that era (Lippman, 1922).…”