bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
History
Authors: Nord David Paul
Published: October 2016

The first communication theorists were historians, writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about the power of print in the age of the Enlightenment. In the twentieth century mass communication research, especially in the United States, moved away from history and toward the social sciences. But then in recent decades history came back into communication research, mainly because of developments in postmodern philosophy. In other words, after abandoning history in the quest for theories unbound by time and space, communication research in the late twentieth century, like most of the social sciences, was rehistoricized. This entry explores that on‐again, off‐again relationship between the discipline of history and mass communication research and theory over the past 200 years.
Information
Authors: Ritchie L. David
Published: October 2016

In the social science of communication, the concept ofinformationis closely related to concepts ofmeaningandrelevancein the study ofsocial interaction. However, the concept of information is often understood in terms of a theory, developed by Claude Shannon in 1948 and further interpreted by Warren Weaver in 1949, to quantifysignal transmission capacityin the field of communications engineering. This entry begins with a brief summary of Shannon's work and the factors that led to confounding social interaction with signal transmission during the decades after 1949. It then summarizes more recent developments in our understanding of human communication, discusses how the concept of information can be understood with respect to meaning and relevance in the context of social science study of messages in social interactions, and distinguishes between information in the social science of communication and information in communications engineering.
Interactivity
Authors: Quiring Oliver
Published: October 2016

Interactivity is one of the core concepts for the analysis of the so‐called “new” media. Basically, it refers to an apparently new quality of digital media: the “ability to speak back.” This entry tries to demystify the concept by showing its origins, giving an account of the academic struggle for a clear‐cut concept, explaining its most important dimensions and characteristics, and presenting relevant research history and methodology.
Distributed Communication
Authors: Ling Rich
Published: October 2016

Distributed communication systems have provided for the coordination and control of large‐scale social organizations. Indeed, it was the need to coordinate and control one such system, the railroads, that led to the wide‐scale deployment of one of the earliest distributed communication systems, the telegraph. Progressive enhancement of distributed communication , as seen in the telephone network and the networking of computers, has facilitated the fundamental restructuring of commercial and public administration without the need for colocated offices. Simultaneously, this has allowed for the centralization of information and control. Beyond administration, the increasing portability and ease of use of distributed communication means that it is being used by smaller groups, families, and individuals in their daily affairs. Future developments include cloud computing and the networking of objects into machine‐to‐machine or person‐to‐machine forms of distributed communication.
Prosumption, Produsage
Authors: Bruns Axel
Published: October 2016

Prosumption and produsage present alternative conceptions of the involvement of end users, or consumers, in production processes, especially in digital and online media environments. These concepts have risen to particular prominence with the emergence of so‐called “Web 2.0” platforms and technologies, which encourage the creation and sharing of user‐generated content.
Memory
Authors: Meyers Oren
Published: October 2016

This entry defines the concept of collective memory and discusses its main characteristics as a social and cultural phenomenon. Next, it focuses on the study of a salient realm of collective recollecting—media memory; that is, the exploration of collective pasts that are narrated by the media, through the media, and about the media. Finally, the entry looks at key research trajectories shaping media memory studies and the current challenges facing this realm of scholarship.
Experience
Authors: Taylor Bryan C. , Munoz Ricardo V.
Published: October 2016

Experience is the distinctive quality of human consciousness in which ongoing existence makes itself available for meaningful reflection and interpretation. Experience commonly denotes a continuous quality of perception, in which embodied human interaction with the environment generates complex sensory information that is filtered by existing cognitive schemata. “Experience” has subsequently generated four connotations: a baseline stratum of perception consisting of fundamental, preorganized awareness; a portion of registered consciousness that is selected as a candidate for the infusion of greater intelligibility; an accumulation of practical and conceptual knowledge that is generated through lived cycles of human sense‐making and action; and a distinctly internal, private realm of knowledge and agency, possessed by both persons and groups, in which their authentic interests and identities are actively cultivated through ongoing reflection and interaction. Six theoretical traditions in communication that significantly elaborate experience are phenomenology, psychoanalysis, ideology critique, mediation, sense‐making, and ritual.
Nonverbal Communication
Authors: Manusov Valerie
Published: October 2016

Nonverbal communication is hard to define but is often said to be all those modes of communicating other than words or a parallel way to process social stimuli alongside language cues. The nonverbal communication system comprises facial expressions, body movements, vocalic or paralinguistic cues, personal and environmental space, objects, time, physical appearance, and smell/odor. These nonverbal modes perform important functions for us, such as sending relational messages, emotional expression, and impression formation. Theories have been developed to explain how some of these functions work, with particular attention given to changes in intimacy or immediacy (forms of relational messages) and deception and its detection.
LGBT
Studies
Authors: Scott D. Travers
Published: October 2016

This entry covers some of the main dimensions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) studies, an area within which scholars seek to understand LGBT subjectivities, identities, histories, and power struggles. Descriptions are provided of areas of particular relevance to communication, and key figures or representative works are noted. The entry is organized around three key concerns of LGBT studies:
visibility
,
experience
, and
power
.
Data
Authors: Krippendorff Klaus
Published: October 2016

In empirical research, data are taken to be facts on the lowest possible level of abstraction. They are the ground for accepting or rejecting hypotheses, establishing theories, and justifying practical decisions. Researchers readily talk about good or bad data, but rarely explore what it takes for some phenomena to be considered data and others not. This entry questions the common conception of data as facts. It elaborates on five constitutive properties of data: durability, artificiality, analyzability, reliability, and ability to inform intended conclusions. Taking these properties seriously may change how data‐based decisions have to be evaluated.
Women in Communication Research
Authors: Dorsten Aimee‐Marie
Published: October 2016

This entry establishes a historical milieu for women in communication. Women's significance to the field has been hard won, progressing over two lengthy stages: (1) in the early mid‐twentieth century, when women worked as part of a research team or couple, and (2) from the mid‐twentieth century until the 1980s, when women “jumped the fence” into stable academic positions. Currently, women have taken up positions of power in the field, but they are still the exception to the rule: More women than men earn PhDs in communication, yet fewer women move into the professoriate. This entry highlights the early history of the field and features interviews with Gertrude J. Robinson, Brenda Dervin, and Sue Curry Jansen, who have been powerful women in the field, yet who also assert that their scholarly legitimacy has still been at times a “challenge” to those defining communication research.
Rhetorical Theory
Authors: Hauser Gerard A.
Published: October 2016

Since its origins, the Western tradition of rhetoric has had a contested status as a subject of instruction and a practice. Its orientation toward a world of radical contingencies has made it leery of truth and at odds with philosophy, which has had an historical quest for eternal truth. Its practice, which seeks to influence thinking on contingent matters, has been a necessary method for civic life in a democracy and made those skilled in the art suspect as deceptive. The entry considers the Western history of rhetoric with an emphasis on its intersections with philosophy.
G
ramsci,
A
ntonio
Authors: Cloud Dana L.
Published: October 2016

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian socialist revolutionary imprisoned under fascist rule. While incarcerated, he composed a series of essays published as the
Prison Notebooks
. Using coded language to evade censors, he discussed the role of culture in maintaining capitalist hegemony. At the same time, he was optimistic about the people's capacity to resist subjugation. To that end, he recommended that intellectuals organic to the working class engage in specifically revolutionary working‐class education. In communication theory, his most significant influence has been on the field of cultural studies. His theory of hegemony is also useful in understanding communication in social movements.
Orality
Authors: Soffer Oren
Published: October 2016

Orality as a term is often used to contrast societies that have no writing technology with literate societies and cultures. Yet the dichotomy of orality and literacy is in many ways artificial. In communication studies, orality more commonly refers to a kind of osmosis between textual and oral spheres. Shifts in the history of communication—such as the rise of writing, print, electronic and digital media—can be analyzed from the perspective of the changing nature and characteristics of oral influences on written texts.
Information Society
Authors: Brennen J. Scott , Kreiss Daniel
Published: October 2016

The “information society” refers to a theory of contemporary Western society in which “information,” broadly construed, is the most important and powerful organizing force behind social, cultural, economic, and political life. This entry details five prevalent ways that scholars describe the information society, before considering three types of explanation for how it developed.
Network Society
Authors: Brennen J. Scott , Kreiss Daniel
Published: October 2016

Across a vast scholarly literature, “the network society” refers most broadly to a changing social structure whose primary mode of organization is social and media networks. This article begins by considering three communication traditions that describe “the network society” by emphasizing mediated and nonmediated social ties. Then, it further marks the broad contours of thought on “the network society” through a close reading of two foundational texts: Jan van Dijk's
The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media
and Manuel Castell's three‐volume
The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture
.
Structuration Theory
Authors: McPhee Robert D. , Canary Heather E.
Published: October 2016

Structuration theory is a general social theory that enjoys significant influence across disciplines. It has guided theorizing and research in communication, especially in organizational and group communication. The theory is distinctive in its devotion to overcoming clashes among empiricist, interpretive, and critical perspectives, and between micro‐ and macro‐oriented scholarship. Its perspective emphasizes concepts of practice, agency, and time‐space.
Williams,Raymond
Authors: Jones Paul K.
Published: October 2016

The communications scholarship of the Welsh‐born Cambridge academic Raymond Williams (1921–1988) sits at the intersection of the fields of communications, cultural sociology, and cultural studies. This entry moves through three phases of his career: his early radical democratic work on communications and policy; his mid‐period, best known for the conceptual innovations of “mobile privatization” and “flow” but equally focused on developing “means of communication” as an alternative to McLuhan's “media”; and his related later work on communications incorporated within his Marxian “social formalist” cultural sociology.
Traditions of Communication Theory
Authors: Craig Robert T.
Published: October 2016

Theories of communication, which originated independently in a wide range of disciplines and fields, often vary so much in content, intellectual style, and underlying assumptions as to seem essentially unrelated. Robert T. Craig has offered an historical and institutional interpretation of this problem and proposed to reconstruct the field on the basis of aconstitutive metamodelin which multiple traditions of thought engage in dialogue and debate on practical communication problems. This entry sketches the origins and development of communication theory, introduces the constitutive metamodel, overviews seven main traditions of communication theory, and discusses criticisms and applications of the metamodel.
Information‐Processing and Cognition
Authors: Greene John O. , Lillie Helen M.
Published: October 2016

The domain of information‐processing and cognition is exceedingly broad and lends itself to analysis from a variety of perspectives. The focus of this entry is upon functionalist approaches to the area. Cognitive functionalism seeks to posit the structures and processes of the mind based upon observed input–output regularities. Three foundational assumptions of functionalist theorizing are discussed, the domain of application of such theories and the data used to construct and test those theories are described, and conceptions of elements of cognitive architecture that have proven most influential in theorizing about communication processes are reviewed.
Organizations—Made by Communication, Makers of Communication
Authors: Mumby Dennis K.
Published: October 2016

This entry explores the evolving relationship between communication and organization, focusing in particular on the development of research in the wake of the so‐called “linguistic turn” in social theory and philosophy. It is argued that the current configuration of organizing processes requires close attention to the emergence of “communicative capitalism” as a defining feature of contemporary organizational life.
Psychology
Authors: Rutledge Pamela B.
Published: October 2016

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior. While it shares considerable overlap with the field of communications, psychology starts with “why” questions. It focuses on primary psychological processes, such as behavior, emotion, and cognition, within multiple contexts and analytical perspectives, including biology, individual differences, environment, and culture. Psychology is a science and, therefore, has established research frameworks and traditions that guide inquiry and interpretation. The purpose of this entry is to highlight some of the areas where psychology's perspective contributes to communications. There are several subfields within psychology whose theories and perspectives have been historically important contributors to communications and media studies research and theory. These include cognitive, developmental, identity and personality, and social psychology. The field of psychology is also being continually expanded and enriched by emerging fields, among them media psychology, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology, environmental psychology, narrative psychology, systems theory, and positive psychology.
Popular Music Studies
Authors: Powers Devon
Published: October 2016

This entry considers the relationship between popular music and communication theory. It charts the role of popular music in early mass communication research; explains the development of popular music studies as a field; and considers what directions popular music studies and communication theory might take together going forward.
Network
Authors: Yew Jude
Published: October 2016

“Network” is a multifaceted term, referring both to an object of study and to a popular method of analysis. This entry covers the history and etymology of networks, some common characteristics of networks, the use of networks as a method of analysis, and, finally, the application and analysis of networks in some areas of communication research and related fields.
Merleau‐Ponty,Maurice
Authors: Lanigan Richard L.
Published: October 2016

The entry consists of an intellectual and personal biography of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, and includes a contextual discussion of his intellectual friends, including Sartre, De Beauvoir, Lévi‐Strauss, and his student, Foucault. Merleau‐Ponty's contributions to the founding of French phenomenology and his conjunction of philosophy and the human sciences (anthropology, linguistics, psychology, sociology) are discussed under three topics: (1) existentialism, (2) semiotic phenomenology, and (3) communicology. A summary table presents a comparison of the concepts of expression and perception as articulated respectively by Saussure, Gusdorf, Jakobson, Merleau‐Ponty, and Foucault.
Myth
Authors: Coman Mihai
Published: October 2016

Myth is an “exotic” presence in media and communication studies. The belief that online, modern societies hold nonmodern aspects and interpret the world through myths has led to studies devoted to its presence. Moreover, such studies have mainly justified themselves by identifying some cultural mediating forms that would explain the “un‐normality” of the presence of myth in modernity. These mythical constructs have been identified in popular culture, as relics of some archaic mentalities (the transformation of stars into cult objects, for example), or in advertising (as a background to invoked archetypes). In news media, studies have approached myth as a sort of “shadow text” that gives meaning to atypical forms of news stories. The presence of myths in media and communication studies has been supported through an appeal to archetypal, functionalist, and cognitive paradigms.
L
azarsfeld,
P
aul
F
.
Authors: Pooley Jefferson D.
Published: October 2016

Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976), often counted among the field's “founders,” made significant contributions to media and communication theory. Some of this work, including the two‐step flow model of mass communication reception, continues to resonate in studies of audience reception. But the full richness of his theorizing about the active, socially embedded audience has been neglected, even by scholars touting viewers' creative media readings in the 1980s and 1990s. Lazarsfeld's second major contribution, his sophisticated theory of action, has rarely surfaced in the communication literature. Nevertheless, his theorizing about action, media, and interpersonal influence is arguably more relevant than ever, as categories like “mass” and “social” are necessarily rethought.
Rhetoric
Authors: Schiappa Edward
Published: October 2016

“Rhetoric” is a word possibly coined by Plato to designate an educational agenda aimed at producing successful political speakers with which his own educational agenda was contrasted as “philosophy.” Throughout its 2,400‐year history, the idea of rhetoric is understood as the study and teaching of the art of persuasive communication. The scope and function of rhetorical education, and the range of human activity described as “rhetorical,” has varied over time and depends on a constellation of beliefs and practices concerning language, education, and knowledge.
Information Theory
Authors: Grant Colin B.
Published: October 2016

This article provides an overview of the origins of information theory in the work of Claude Shannon. While he was not concerned with questions of meaning, or semantics, subsequent discussions sought to extend the concept of entropy, or uncertainty, to offer a stronger account of semantic dimensions. Both Donald Mackay, from within engineering, and Fred Dretske, from a truth‐theoretic philosophical tradition, offer particularly constructive insights into the semantics of information. Finally, the chapter covers concepts of information from social‐theoretical perspectives set out by systems theorists.
Media Sociology
Authors: Waisbord Silvio
Published: October 2016

Media sociology is fragmented in myriad lines of research anchored in analytical and theoretical concerns from across sociological thought and other social sciences. It is not a coherent, well‐defined field of study with shared questions, ontological center, or common institutional roof. It is disaggregated in parallel questions about “the media” soaked in sociological thinking. This shapes a vibrant, chaotic, layered academic space grounded in the sociological tradition with significant overlaps with other disciplines and postdisciplines—from cultural studies to the social study of science and technology. This entry assesses the state of media sociology and shows why sociological thinking matters to media studies. A sociological focus on large‐scale social forces interrogates the significance of supraindividual processes and collective phenomena in the media and mediated processes. It brings a sensitivity to social context, social forces, social history, and social problems that expands the analytical horizons of media studies by placing media questions in a web of social relations.
Pragmatics
Authors: Senft Gunter
Published: October 2016

This entry takes an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic pragmatics. It discusses how the meaning of utterances can only be understood in relation to overall cultural, social, and interpersonal contexts, as well as to culture‐specific conventions and the speech events in which they are embedded. The entry discusses core issues of pragmatics such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, deixis, gesture, interaction strategies, ritual communication, phatic communion, linguistic relativity, ethnography of speaking, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. It takes a transdisciplinary view of the field, showing that linguistic pragmatics has its predecessors in other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, ethology, ethnology, and sociology.
Narrative
Authors: Bamberg Michael
Published: October 2016

This entry reviews the recent turn to narrative in the social and life sciences as having evolved from a widely shared interest and hope to find new answers to longstanding questions of lived experience, subjectivity, identity, and sense of self. The review enters narrative and storytelling from two ends: The first places narrative in the context of theories that approach it as an authoritative text that was borrowed and expanded to cover the general domain of how to live a meaningful life and to make sense of self–other relationships. The second starts off from narrating and storytelling practices in everyday, mundane communicative interactions, and highlights the interactive functions of storytelling as crucial for doing relational identity work. Both general orientations are reviewed in terms of their potential and shortcomings with regard to the original goal of an innovative contribution to human sense‐making and identity work.
Technology
Authors: Slack Jennifer Daryl
Published: October 2016

This entry explores the conception of technology as having four elements: a particular kind of knowledge, a process of transformation, a particular kind of embodied knowledge, and a particular kind of object. Over time, shifts in the meanings of these individual elements have contributed both to better ways of understanding technology “in context” and to inconsistent and confused, but powerful ways of using the term in contemporary culture.
Literary Studies
Authors: Murray Simone
Published: October 2016

The relationship between literary studies and communication has been distant since cultural studies split off from literary studies in the mid‐twentieth century. Nevertheless, literary studies has left its mark on communications in both disciplines' preference for textual analysis, as well as in productive research fields that have sprung up between the two disciplines—such as book history, studies of reading, and adaptation studies. As digitization increasingly affects all aspects of literary production, circulation, and consumption, the relationship between literary studies and communications looks likely to become closer, as both come under the increasing gravitational pull of digital humanities.
Medium
Authors: Soukup Paul A.
Published: October 2016

The term
medium
refers to a middle place, a physical connection between two places, an analogical connection through communication technologies, a representative, an environment in which cultures or individuals dwell, and an instrument to accomplish some purpose. Each meaning results in an approach to communication research. More specific applications appear in media studies, medium theory, media ecology, and mediatization.
Evolutionary Theory and Models
Authors: Monge Peter , Oh Poong
Published: October 2016

This entry introduces the theory and models of evolution by natural selection as a powerful tool for examining changes that occur naturally in a wide range of complex and dynamic communication systems. The first section provides a brief overview of the development of evolution theory and discusses the difference between Darwinian evolution and other evolutionary ideas. The second section discusses the three fundamental mechanisms of Darwinian evolution—replication, mutation, and selection—and other relevant concepts on the basis of the key literature in modern evolutionary theory. The third section reviews evolutionary game theory and the debates over human rationality it triggered. The fourth section discusses the application of evolutionary models to communication systems, including symbolic and signaling systems and communication networks.
S
chütz,
A
lfred
Authors: Lanigan Richard L.
Published: October 2016

The entry offers a brief biographical sketch of Schütz's life and career, both as an investment banker and as a philosopher who focused on the sociology of communication. His relationship to his friend and mentor, Edmund Husserl, is discussed with reference to both phenomenological philosophy and its application in human sciences as a logic of qualitative methodology. Separate sections are devoted respectively to economics, sociology, semiotics, and communicology. A particular focus of the entry is the use of semiotic phenomenology as a methodological approach to the kind of communication research known today as communicology. Brief mention is made of a connection to Harold Lasswell and mass communication research.
Human–Computer Interaction
Authors: Cockton Gilbert
Published: October 2016

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is the study of human interactions with computers across a wide range of behaviors, experiences, outcomes, and contexts. It results in knowledge on the impact of interactions on users and usage contexts. This can be related to specific design features, and thus provide guidance to interaction designers on favorable or adverse design practices. Timespans of interaction studied range from subseconds to several years and apply knowledge, perspectives, and methods from the human sciences, humanities, and creative arts. The study of subsecond interactions draws on perceptual and motor psychology. The study of subminute interactions draws on cognitive and affective psychology. Studies of longer interactions draw on ethnography, social and cultural anthropology, cultural theory, human geography, and potentially any discipline that researches and theorizes human behaviors and competences. Overall, HCI is a broad and ever expanding multidisciplinary field with theoretical and practical foci.
Ecology
Authors: Clark Lynn Schofield
Published: October 2016

This entry explores the use of the wordecologywithin approaches to the study of media and communication, focusing primarily on a review of the school of thought known as media ecology. As media ecology is primarily recognized for its association with theories of technology's role in social change, the entry offers clarification on the relevance of media ecology and differing theoretical approaches to media and social and cultural change. The entry also observes points of incommensurability between media ecology and other theoretical approaches within communication and media studies. It concludes with a review of secondary and tertiary uses of the termecology, noting the critique of the media ecology school of thought—a critique embedded in what has been termed materialist media ecology.
Feminism
Authors: Buzzanell Patrice M.
Published: October 2016

In 2015 it is difficult to imagine the discipline of communication without gender and feminist studies. Yet these studies are fairly recent developments and, more importantly, have changed the nature, content, and means by which communication phenomena are conceived and studied. In this entry, feminism in communication is presented in an overview that describes its emergence in the discipline and its contemporary status. Second, what it means to take a feminist lens is explicated. Finally, key tensions in feminist communication are discussed.
Game Studies
Authors: Raessens Joost
Published: October 2016

This entry describes game studies as a dynamic interdisciplinary field of academic study and research that focuses on digital games and play in a wide variety of social and cultural contexts. It examines the history of game studies from its prehistory, when games were looked at as part of other disciplines, to the period when game studies became a discipline or field of its own, and then to the period when interdisciplinarity became dominant. Although game studies is traditionally concerned exclusively with digital games, it increasingly uses its theoretical perspective and concepts (e.g., game, play, and playfulness) to interpret society and culture at large. This not only offers new opportunities for the study of human communication and interaction, but also challenges the core identity of game studies.
Presence
Authors: Lee Kwan Min , Park Namkee
Published: October 2016

Presence refers to the psychological state in which the virtuality of experience is unnoticed. It occurs when technology users do not recognize the technology‐mediated nature of experiencing or the artificiality of experienced objects such as computer agents or social robots. There are three types of presence: physical presence, social presence, and self‐presence. Three factors that affect feelings of presence—the objective quality of technologies, technology users' individual differences, and the social characteristics of technologies—have been examined. The effects of presence have been studied in the areas of computer games, advertising and e‐commerce contexts, educational and learning contexts, and online or virtual collaboration.
Digital Humanities
Authors: Brügger Niels
Published: October 2016

Digital humanities is an umbrella term for theories, methodologies, and practices related to humanities scholarship that uses the digital computer as an integrated and essential part of its research and teaching activities. The computer can be used for establishing, finding, collecting, and preserving material to study, as an object of study in its own right, as an analytical tool, or for collaborating and for disseminating results. The term “digital humanities” was coined around 2001 and gained currency within academia in the following years. However, computers had been used within the humanities for decades, starting with research fields such as humanities computing or computational linguistics in the 1950s and, later, new media studies and Internet studies. The historical development of digital humanities has been characterized by a focus on three successive but coexisting types of digital material: digitized, born‐digital, and reborn‐digital material.
Semantics
Authors: Rocci Andrea
Published: October 2016

The present entry provides an overview of the linguistic subdiscipline of semantics, which focuses on the study of the meaning of signs. Starting from the definition of semantics as the study of the correspondence between expressions and meanings, four basic options on the nature of meaning are introduced. Then semantics is presented as the most distinctive part of semiotics, due to the fact that the proper distinguishing trait of signs is that of carrying meaning. The much debated issue of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics is then discussed, highlighting the importance of considering idiomaticity and contextual factors in determining meaning compositionality. The entry concludes with an empirical application of semantics in the field of cross‐linguistic and cross‐cultural research, which demonstrates the importance of semantic investigations for researchers outside the circle of specialists in this subdiscipline.
T
uring,
A
lan
M
Authors: Barry Cooper S.
Published: October 2016

What is known today as the Turing machine model captures the character of everyday computation. On the one hand, Alan Turing's design for a universal machine adumbrated the stored‐program computer—the “wheel” of the impending computer revolution and of the new information age. On the other hand, he described the unsolvable “halting problem” of this machine: there is an “incomputability,” observable by us, but not by the machine. Turing seems to have seen still a role for human intelligence, even in today's computationally and socially complex world. And he gave us the mathematics to put the failures of mathematics into context. As for the computers on our desks, Turing proclaimed throughout his later career the complementary roles of computing machine and human being.
Expert System
Authors: Hildebrandt Thomas T. , Cattani Gian Luca
Published: October 2016

An expert system is a computer system for inferring knowledge from a knowledge base, typically by using a set of inference rules. When the concept of expert systems was introduced at Stanford University in the early 1970s, the knowledge base was an unstructured set of facts. Today the knowledge base of expert systems is often given in terms of an ontology, extracted and built from various data sources by employing natural language‐processing and statistics. To emphasize such capabilities, the term “expert” is now often replaced by “cognitive,” “knowledge,” “knowledge‐based,” or “intelligent” system. With very few exceptions, general‐purpose expert systems have failed to emerge so far. However, expert systems are applied in specialized domains, particularly in healthcare. The increasing availability of large quantities of data to organizations today provides a valuable opportunity for the application of expert systems, but also raises issues regarding privacy and legal liability.
Political Science
Authors: Tworzecki Hubert , Semetko Holli A.
Published: October 2016

This entry provides an overview of how political science approaches the study of communication. Starting with the premise that for most people politics is a mediated experience, political science asks: mediated how, by whom, and with what consequences for individuals and for political systems?
Positivism
Authors: Bergman Mats
Published: October 2016

The term “positivism” designates a broad family of philosophical and social scientific views according to which knowledge must be grounded in the observation of experiential data. Both classical and later positivists have advocated programmes of unified science with far‐reaching implications for social inquiry. In the field of media and communication studies, positivism has often been associated with the endeavor to develop a rigorous scientific discipline of communication, but the term is also used more liberally to designate a widely censured “paradigm” that requires the use of quantitative and statistical methods as well as a strict separation of fact and value in research. In many respects, the original programmes of positivism have been supplanted by so‐called “postpositivistic” approaches.
Psychoanalysis
Authors: Ivanova Mina , Restivo Angelo
Published: October 2016

This entry traces the diverse routes via which psychoanalysis, particularly Lacan's oeuvre, entered rhetorical theory and film/media theory—arguably the two most prominent subfields of communication studies. Media scholars in the mid‐1960s, followed by rhetoricians in the 1980s, engaged, in different ways, with Lacan's theory to address questions of identification and ideology, power and agency. By the 1990s, the two traditions began to come together through the combined work of Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau, both of whom forced a critical shift in focus toward what Lacan called theReal.
Globalization
Authors: Buhari‐Gulmez Didem
Published: October 2016

This entry provides a critical summary of the main debates about globalization with a special focus on (1) the definitional and conceptual issues that are particularly associated with “conceptual stretching,” reductionism and dichotomous thinking; (2) the general context and theories which offer different accounts of globalization as a historical continuity and/or change; and (3) the main normative approaches to globalization that consist of such trends as antiglobalization, alterglobalization, hyperglobalism, and “managing globalization.” The entry concludes with a discussion about the possible future directions of globalization research, including multiple modernities, post‐Westernization, world society/culture, and glocalization.
Design
Authors: Krippendorff Klaus
Published: October 2016

Designing is fundamental to being human. This entry focuses on the professional design of artifacts for the benefit of diverse stakeholder communities. It sketches the emergence of the design profession from its original preoccupation with crafts and industrial products, through its embrace of larger, more complex and abstract challenges, to efforts of designing and redesigning its own design discourses. In the course of this development, designers became increasingly cognizant of their larger objective of rendering technological developments individually and culturally meaningful. Successful designs not only energize supportive stakeholder networks; they also intervene in the dynamics of existing cultural ecologies of interacting artifacts. While designing is always intentional to begin with, the consequences of different ecologies of artifacts are not easily, if at all, predictable. The latter point is exemplified by the design of artifacts that grew out of human conversations and gave birth to other forms of human communication.
Dewey,John
Authors: Danisch Robert
Published: October 2016

John Dewey was an influential American philosopher and educational theorist, closely associated with the tradition of American pragmatism. InThe Public and Its Problems,Experience and Nature, and elsewhere he provides us with significant intellectual insight into the aesthetics of communication and the ways in which community life is defined through communication. These insights have served as a rich resource for a range of theoretical works within communication studies over the last hundred years; they also justify Dewey's call for broad‐based participatory democracy, in which a community of inquirers seeks to collaboratively solve problems in and through communication with one another.
Queer Theory
Authors: Calafell Bernadette Marie , Nakayama Thomas K.
Published: October 2016

This entry offers an overview of the history and key aspects of queer theory, as well as of its use in communication studies. Additionally, both critiques of queer theory, which are grounded in intersectionality, and the resulting outgrowths of queer of color‐centered perspectives are reviewed. Emerging areas of research, such as transgender studies, are also addressed.
Theory and Practice
Authors: Craig Robert T.
Published: October 2016

The social psychologist Kurt Lewin's oft‐quoted dictum that there is nothing so practical as a good theory should make us wonder what specific qualities, if any, would (in theory) make a theory good in that way and whether any such theory actually exists (in practice). But any answer to these questions must depend on particular conceptions of theory, practice, and the ideal or possible relations between them; and these are as debatable as they are various, ranging from views in which theory can have nothing to do with practice to ones in which theory can be nothing if not deeply practical. This entry sketches a history of the problem of theory and practice in Western thought, surveys current transdisciplinary approaches, and concludes with a discussion of practical theory in the communication field and a brief reflection on theory and practice as a conceptual, normative, and empirical problem.
Social Epistemology
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: October 2016

Social epistemology is the normative study of the organization of inquiry: What makes for better and worse practices in the production and distribution of knowledge? Answers to this question require taking into account the arrangement of people and things. The entry begins by observing social epistemology's dual origins in philosophy and library science. It then considers a precursor, critical rationalism, which was explicitly concerned with the facilitation of inquiry among fallible yet corrigible individuals who acted so as to render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Next, the centrality of expertise to social epistemology is discussed: Should expertise be seen as a liability or as an asset? Finally, the most general challenge facing social epistemology is how to square moral and epistemic value, which is interpreted as a difference in temporal horizons and attitudes toward risk.
Are Foot and Ankle Characteristics Associated With Falls in People With Rheumatoid Arthritis? A Prospective Study
Authors: Brenton‐Rule Angela , Dalbeth Nicola , Menz Hylton B. , Bassett Sandra , Rome Keith
Published: October 2016

Objective

To determine whether foot and ankle characteristics are associated with falls in people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods

A total of 201 adults with RA were recruited from rheumatology outpatient clinics in Auckland, New Zealand. Clinical characteristics, common fall risk factors, and foot and ankle variables were measured. Participants were prospectively studied for 12 months to record the occurrence of falls using falls diaries. Logistic regression analysis identified baseline variables that were independent predictors of falls over the 12 months.

Results

Eighty‐four participants (42%) fell at least once and 39 (19%) experienced multiple (>1) falls over the 12‐month followup period. In logistic regression analysis, including age and significant baseline variables in bivariate analysis but not baseline fall history, presence of foot or ankle tender joints (odds ratio [OR] 1.95, P = 0.034) and psychotropic medication (OR 2.35, P = 0.025) were independent predictors of prospective falls. However, when baseline fall history was included in the analysis, psychotropic medication (OR 2.34, P = 0.025) and baseline fall history (over the preceding 12 months) (OR 2.27, P = 0.008) were independent predictors of prospective falls.

Conclusion

Foot and ankle characteristics are not associated with falls in people with RA, independent of prior falls. Inquiry about prior falls and psychotropic medications may assist in identifying patients with RA who are at high risk of future falls.
Epidemiology of Polymyalgia Rheumatica 2000–2014 and Examination of Incidence and Survival Trends Over 45 Years: A Population‐Based Study
Authors: Raheel Shafay , Shbeeb Izzat , Crowson Cynthia S. , Matteson Eric L.
Published: October 2016

Objective

To determine time trends in the incidence and survival of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) over a 15‐year period in Olmsted County, Minnesota, and to examine trends in incidence of PMR in the population by comparing this time period to a previous incidence cohort from the same population base.

Methods

All cases of incident PMR among Olmsted County, Minnesota residents in 2000–2014 were identified to extend the previous 1970–1999 cohort. Detailed review of all individual medical records was performed. Incidence rates were age‐ and sex‐adjusted to the US white 2010 population. Survival rates were compared with the expected rates in the population of Minnesota.

Results

There were 377 incident cases of PMR during the 15‐year study period. Of these, 64% were female and the mean age at incidence was 74.1 years. The overall age‐ and sex‐adjusted annual incidence of PMR was 63.9 (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 57.4–70.4) per 100,000 population ages ≥50 years. Incidence rates increased with age in both sexes, but incidence fell after age 80 years. There was a slight increase in incidence of PMR in the recent time period compared to 1970–1999 (P = 0.063). Mortality among individuals with PMR was not significantly worse than that expected in the general population (standardized mortality ratio 0.70 [95% CI 0.57–0.85]).

Conclusion

The incidence of PMR has increased slightly in the past 15 years compared to previous decades. Survivorship in patients with PMR is not worse than in the general population.
A gain‐switched self‐optimizer for braking controller
Authors: Dincmen Erkin
Published: October 2016

An emergency braking controller is developed with improved operation characteristics near the maximum friction zone. The methodology is based on self‐seeking a‐priori unknown optimum operation point to maximize a performance function representing the optimal behavior of the considered dynamic system. Sliding mode with uncertain direction of control vector approach is utilized in the algorithm. An adaptive variable gain is utilized in the algorithm to improve its performance. Via the variable gain, both fast convergence to the a‐priori unknown optimum operation point and reduced magnitude of oscillations in the braking moment inputs resulting less aggressive control action are achieved. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Orientation Control of Selected Organic Semiconductor Crystals Achieved by Monolayer Graphene Templates
Authors: Zhang Lushuai , Roy Susmit Singha , Safron Nathaniel S. , Shearer Melinda J. , Jacobberger Robert M. , Saraswat Vivek , Hamers Robert J. , Arnold Michael S. , Andrew Trisha L.
Published: October 2016

Crystal orientation in organic thin films is one of the key parameters that determine absorption cross‐section, interfacial energetics and excitonic states, and free charge properties. In this work, monolayer graphene is used to direct the crystal orientation of selected planar organic molecules. Lying‐down orientation with π‐stacking normal to the surface is achieved with graphene templating. The absorption spectra of the graphene‐templated films are correlated to molecular orientation. The same set of absorption features with or without graphene suggests that no vibronic states are forbidden or newly introduced. However, the light absorption with graphene templating is enhanced due to the altered relative orientation between the transition dipole moment of the constituent molecules and the electric field of incident light. The energy level of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of graphene templated p‐type films is observed at a deeper‐lying value (relative to vacuum) compared to untemplated diindenoperylene films grown on indium tin oxide. In contrast, the HOMO energy levels of graphene templated n‐type films are observed at higher‐lying energy levels (relative to vacuum) compared to the respective untemplated films due to surface dipoles. Such a change can potentially increase the theoretical V
oc expected for photovoltaic devices incorporating these templated films.