Engagement: rhetoric’s tale from the field

‘Engagement’ has since the mid-1990s led to a series of initiatives and campus centers wherein many universities attempt strategies that are primarily administrative and programmatic. By contrast, our tale from the field points to an inherent and original connection between rhetoric and engagement; we propose that the fundamental principles of rhetoric and communication equip scholars to work effectively toward the goal of engaged research and teaching. Our stories from the University of Texas Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium and from the University of Pittsburgh’s Honors College indicate that there is significant value and power in taking to heart the lessons of the discipline for our own actions and lives as educators. Acting on what we know directs us toward such concepts as invention, discovery, argument, deliberation, advocacy, and intervention – the rhetorical instruments needed to change the academic culture and create environments for engaged learning.     

The Discursive (Re)construction of Journalism’s Gatekeeping Role

Through the lens of discursive institutionalism, and drawing on an extensive corpus of metajournalistic discourse dating from 2000 to 2017, this study considers how journalists have defined and (re)constructed their gatekeeping role against the backdrop of seismic changes confronting their field. In so doing, it considers the legitimizing or delegitimizing discourses journalistic actors use when addressing journalism’s gatekeeping role.     

Analysis of broadcast literature: Broadcast Journalism in “education on the air” 1930–1953

During the past six years the Journal of Broadcasting has brought to its readers bibliographies on specific topics (audience measurement techniques, content analysis, etc.) and from publications devoted to a specific field (law, economics, journalism, etc.). The bibliography published below belongs to this second category. Education on the Air, the yearbook of the Institute for Education by Radio‐Television, is a continuous record of the deliberations of a convention devoted to exploring the informative and cultural uses of broadcasting. Under the direction of I. Keith Tyler, the IERT was for many years the only major association devoted exclusively to this subject area, and many of the present organizations now in the field are “spin‐offs” from these annual meetings hosted by the Ohio State University. Within the framework of the IERT, the subject of broadcast journalism has not been neglected. Over a period of almost 30 years, this use of radio for informing the public of the events of the day was discussed in various IERT sessions.

This bibliography was prepared to assist researchers and students interested in the growth and development of broadcast journalism as reflected in the IERT annual meetings. Dr. Heath is professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, and is former chairman of the Council on Radio‐Television Journalism of the Association for Education in Journalism. Mr. Wolfson is working toward his doctorate at Michigan State University. They collaborated on this bibliography while at Iowa State University.     

The Global South’s Participation in the International Community of Communication Scholars: From an Eastern European Point of View

In this paper, we present the Eastern European (EE) region as part of the Global South with all its disadvantages, and we will argue that “Sovietization” of the region is, in many respects, similar to the colonization of different world regions. We also show that the disadvantages of the region still exist after the transition, and EE has an especially low contribution to communication and media studies (CMS). With a brief bibliometric analysis in CMS, the paper demonstrates that a strong bias holds against EE authors and editorial board members in leading periodicals in CMS, and at least 95% of EE research remains unnoticed by international scholars. We further argue that this phenomenon is obviously harmful to the field of CMS. This paper not only points out the general difficulties Eastern European communication scholars might face when trying to make their research internationally visible, but it also snatches at the chance to introduce a novel, a respected but internationally yet unnoticed Easter European (Hungarian) communication theory, namely, the Participation Theory of Communication.     

Amazon’s Day One in China: The Role of Amazon’s Kindle in China

After the long-standing effort and negotiations, Amazon finally released its two Kindle products in China since it entered China 9 years ago. Some say Kindle as it plays as a Catfish would stir up China’s e-book reading market, while the others say Kindle has missed the best timing to enter the market. The article describes the Kindle’s current status in China digital publishing arena, exploring the consistent Amazon strategies in China e-commerce market, and analyzing its threats and opportunities coming from four aspects in the long run, policy, content, willingness-to-pay and competition.     

Features of Islamic Children’s Books in English: A Case Study of Books Published in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the elements of Islamic children’s books that are written in English by focusing on books that are available in the Malaysian market and published in Malaysia. This study applies the content analysis method, by examining the selected books of their subject matter as well as the language. The results of the study reveal that Islamic books written for children in English are distinctive in terms of the content and language features.     

Evaluating Scholarly Book Publishers—A Case Study in the Field of Journalism

By adapting multiple metrics used for journal article evaluation and replicating recent publisher metrics, the authors tested methods for evaluating scholarly book publishers. Using monographs published in journalism between 2007 and 2011 as a test case, results indicate that these methods may be useful to other scholarly disciplines.     

China’s Book Publishing Industry: A Review of 2011

This report provides a brief summary for trends in 2011 China publishing industry in general and the book publishing sector specifically. A general industry review and analysis includes the number of titles, list prices and units as a 5?year overview. The report for 2011 concludes with a summary for two main trends that have emerged over the recent years.     

Through the ‘I’ of the beholder: A rationale for physicalization in performance of narratives

This article presents a rationale for physicalization in performance of narrative prose based on the literary convention of “point of view.” It explores a variety of narrative voices and attempts to illustrate, through example, how narrators rely on both imitation and narration to present story to audience.     

Which New Forms of Television Advertising Are Most Strongly Recalled? A Quantitative Analysis

In recent years the loss of effectiveness of television advertising based on traditional spots has led to the development and consolidation of new forms of advertising. In this article, the authors analyze the recall effectiveness of three new television advertising formats (television billboards, internal telepromotions, and external telepromotions). We use a representative sample of Spanish television audiences to compare the advertising recall generated by each new form of advertising. The empirical analysis, carried out by means of a probit model, shows that television billboards generate better recall than external or internal telepromotions.     

Re-visiting Paul Wasserman’s The New Librarianship: A Challenge for Change

The article offers a retrospective reading of profiled American library educator Paul Wasserman’s seminal work The New Librarianship: A Challenge for Change (1972). The idea was to reevaluate the book’s major message about the urgency of transforming librarianship – the discipline, the profession and the institutional forms – into a field that is “proactive”, client-centered, innovation-conscious, aggressive and well aware of societal needs. Today, a similar change and innovation agenda recurs in R. David Lankes’ redefinition of the role and mission of libraries and librarians in The New Librarianship: A Field Guide (2016). Another contemporary parallel is John Palfrey’s discussion of re-conceptualizing libraries as networked platforms pursued in Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (2015). The paper concludes with a brief comparison of how the three authors frame the issue of change in libraries and librarianship with a focus on basic stylistic and communicative features.     

Diversity’s discontents: in search of an archive of the oppressed

ABSTRACT

Australian and US-based archivists have recently begun to confront their complicity in a documentary landscape that excludes and erases the voices and views of minority, oppressed and poor communities. Archival professional organisations in both countries attempt to confront this issue by focusing on the homogeneity of the profession, specifically through using the discourse of diversity. Thus, this keynote address, delivered at the 2017 conference of the Australian Society of Archivists in Melbourne, explores the following question: how, if at all, does diversity form part of the solution for dismantling the white supremacy of archives? It begins this inquiry by recounting the author’s participation and experience with diversity projects of the Society of American Archivists, before speculating how archivists might transition away from the language of diversity and towards the language of liberation through the concept of an archive of the oppressed. The central argument of the address is that dismantling white supremacy in archives requires archivists abandon the neoliberal discourse of diversity and adopt an archive of the oppressed, or a cooperative approach in which oppressed peoples are positioned as subjects in our own liberation.