Abstract
The January issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry includes an interview, original articles, and book reviews.
Let me begin this introduction with a word of thanks to our outgoing editor, Dr. Mehrnaz Khanjani. Thank you for your work in making the Journal of Communication Inquiry possible.
This issue begins with an interview with Professor Muniz Sodre of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Professor Sodre is a leading figure in the critical/cultural studies in Brazil, where he has published dozens of influential books on communication theory, journalism, and visual culture. While most of his work has been published in Portugese, his most recent contributions are available in English. This interview, conducted by Otávio Daros explores that work and offers a primer on the key contributions of this important thinker. We hope this interview can help to open conversations between scholars in North America, Europe and Australia with those in the global south.
The second article, titled “Climate Knowledge and Community Ritual: Miami Weathercasters as Climate Change Communicators,” Rosalind Margaret Donald investigates the role of weather forecasters in leading discussions about climate change. Donald notes that Miami is a “symbol of climate change's effects in local, national and international imaginations.” Focusing on the case of Miami TV reporters (weathercasters as Donald notes), Donald explores their roles in community rituals. By using James Carey's communication as transmission and ritual in addition to Candis Callison's climate change vernaculars description, Donald notes the importance of studying “the ways that community rituals offer insights into how climate knowledge circulate, as well as the consequences of those processes for understanding and action.”
“There's No Way Abraham Lincoln Could Work at Google”: Fox News and the Politics of Breaking Up Big Tech,” by Ben Medeiros investigates a series of segments from Tucker Carlson Tonight that explore “big tech” (with emphasis on Google). Medeiros notes that while “conservatives have long lamented the so-called liberal bias in media,” they have also supported “business deregulation and an antitrust approach narrowly concerned with consumer welfare.” Through a textual analysis, Medeiros shows how a new facet of the theory of ideological evolution has emerged in which the “Brandeisian” approach to antitrust law changes valence in different material circumstances and thus finds new proponents.”
Next, Kai Jacobsen, Aaron Devor, and Edwin Hodge explore Trans Tumblr posts to see how “online trans communities may re-inscribe hegemonic narratives in addition to disrupting dominant discourses and ideologies” in the article “Who Counts as Trans? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Trans Tumblr Posts.” The authors note how important social media (with emphasis on Tumblr) has been for transgender communities. Critical discourse analysis serves as framework. While prior research shows that Tumblr is a place for both individual and collective identity formation for a number of Trans people, the authors research reveals that Tumblr can also display “intense debate, division, hostility, toxicity, and lateral violence.”
In “Framing the Affordable Healthcare Act: Examining Alternative and Mainstream Media Approaches,” Paromita Pain analyzes how two media outlets reported on the Affordable Healthcare Act for 2012. Pain specifically looks at mainstream source the New York Times and alternative source The Alternet.Org. Pain notes that both sources revealed a dominating conflict frame and “while alternative and mainstream media may have differences in covering the Affordable Healthcare Act, their framing was similar.” Conflict framing focuses on the discord among individuals, and groups. Further, as Pain notes, it can lead to substantive issues receiving diminished focus.
How is the Internet changing the world? How do facts and/or pictures play into historical moments? These are questions explored by Kenneth Cmiel and John Durham Peters in their book Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History. According to reviewer Tyler Solon Williams, “the book seeks to enable communication between siloed-off scholars and professionals by breaking holes into disciplinary walls and providing shared language; devotion to plainly expressed language also clearly represents an indirection to curious readers outside the academy.”
Lastly, Brian Michael Goss reviews Julian E. Zelizer's Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican Party. Goss explains that Zelizer suggests answers to questions such as “what happened to Republicans since the 1980's and “were other forces at work that transformed a right-wing party into an extreme right party?”