Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Communication and media studies matured into an integrated discipline in the years following 1968. Research and education became centralized in independent schools of communication, while at the same time drawing from related disciplines to improve methodology and explore new paradigms. By the early 1960s, communication studies began to move out of departments of sociology, psychology, political science, and research institutes and to build independent departments. Before that, the leaders in communication research came out of other departments in social science and the humanities, who simply explored communication processes as one approach to answering questions in their own discipline. Having such an academically diverse group of scholars contributed to a richness of early scholarship in the field; however, as many of these scholars then moved away from communication research, the field was left with a wide array of theories and methods that couldn't independently answer many communication problems. This “disjointedness” in the field was reflected in Bernard Berelson's (1959) stinging criticism of communication scholarship in the late 1950s. In what is often referred to as Berelson's obituary for communication research, he argued that the field was essentially dying, with no new ideas or directions. In 1983, →  George Gerbner responded to this criticism with a special issue ... log in or subscribe to read full text