The Handbook of Communication Science

Charles R. Berger, Michael E. Roloff, David R. Ewoldsen

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781412918138
• eBook ISBN: 9781483342603
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This revision of a classic volume presents state-of-the-art reviews of established and emerging areas of communication science and provides an intellectual compass that points the way to future theorizing about communication processes.

In this Second Edition of The Handbook of Communication Science, editors Charles R. Berger, Michael E. Roloff, and David Roskos-Ewoldsen bring together an impressive array of communication scholars to explore and synthesize the varying perspectives and approaches within the dynamic field of communication science. After first addressing the methods of research and the history of the field, the Handbook then examines the levels of analysis in communication (individual to macro-social), the functions of communication (such as socialization and persuasion), and the contexts in which communication occurs (such as couples, families, organizations, and mass media).

Key Features:

• Draws on the scholarship and expertise of leading communication scholars who explore different aspects of the field
• Covers all facets of communication science, from the historical and theoretical to the practical and applied
• Covers the latest theoretical developments in the field, as well as alternative methodologies and levels of analysis
• Explores key communication contexts of the 21st century, including interpersonal dimensions of health communication, the scientific investigation of marital and family communication, and computer-mediated communication
• Includes incisive analyses, literature reviews, bibliographies, and suggestions for future research

The Handbook of Communication Science, Second Edition, is an essential reference resource for scholars, practitioners, and students. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses in Communication and Media Studies and Mass Communication.

PART 1

OVERVIEW

1

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION SCIENCE?

♦ Charles R. Berger, Michael E. Roloff, and David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen

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We provide both simple and complex answers to the question posed in this chapter’s title. Before attempting to answer the question, however, it is necessary to consider briefly the historical context within which communication emerged as a social scientific discipline. Detailed treatments of the development of communication research are provided in the present volume (Bryant & Pribanic-Smith, Chapter 2, this volume) and elsewhere (Delia, 1987). Our extremely abbreviated excursion into this history is meant to provide a framework that offers a partial explanation for the shape of contemporary communication science as well as some tentative answers to the “What is communication science?” question.

♦ Historical Perspective

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The social scientific study of human communication is a relatively recent development, one that emerged in the years following World War II (Bryant & Pribanic-Smith, Chapter 2, this volume; Delia, 1987). At that time, there was a great deal of optimism about the future of the social sciences in general, especially with regard to their relevance for improving the conditions of society (Lewin, 1945). Many social sciences already had been established early in the 20th century; however, although studies of communication were conducted during this pre–World War II period, they were carried out by researchers who called psychology, sociology, and political science their disciplinary homes (Schramm, 1964). It was not until the late 1950s and early 1960s that cadres of communication researchers, educated in such communication-related departments as speech and journalism, began to appear on the scene. Thus, in relation to other social science disciplines, communication as a social science was a relatively late arrival to the social science family (McLeod, Chapter 11, Kosicki, & McLeod, this volume).

Because the social scientific study of communication took hold in speech and journalism departments that were then, and still are, dedicated to the inculcation of various communication skills—for example, oratorical and argumentation skills in the case of speech departments and writing and editing skills in the case of journalism departments—from the beginning there was a strong impetus to undertake research addressing practical aims. By using the rapidly developing arsenal of quantitative methods to attack important practical research questions, not only could communication skills be better taught to students, but pressing social problems also could be solved by improving communication effectiveness.

A case in point is the work done on communication and national development. During the 1950s and 1960s, considerable faith was vested in the proposition that the development of mass media systems in Third World countries would create a climate in which individuals would become better educated, less fatalistic, and more civically engaged, thus creating conditions favorable to political and economic development (Lerner, 1958, 1967; Rogers, 1962). Moreover, in these early decades of the cold war, when there was great fear of a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, communication was seen by some as a key element in the amelioration of conflict (Bowers, 1974; see Ellis, Chapter 17, this volume; Sillars, Chapter 16, this volume) and the prevention of such a conflagration.

At the same time, there were increasing concerns about the potential deleterious effects of the then-new medium of television on members of its mass audiences, especially children (Himmelweit, Oppenheim, & Vince, 1958; Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961). The role of violent television content in promoting aggressive and antisocial behavior, the degree to which soap opera viewing encourages negative views of married life, and the extent to which television consumption promotes escapism were presented as potential toxic effects of media exposure. These concerns about television’s effects echoed those voiced almost three decades earlier in the Payne Fund studies of the effects of movies (Charters, 1933). The primary motivation of these inquires was to demonstrate that such undesirable effects occurred among those exposed to particular media content. By using the tools of quantitative social science to document these negative effects, steps could be taken to modify or eliminate such noxious content.

These applied research foci were further buttressed by Paul Lazarsfeld’s extensive research program conducted during the 1940s and 1950s that was dedicated to demonstrating a variety of mass media effects within such domains as politics and marketing (Benoit & Holbert, Chapter 25, this volume; Bryant & Pribanic-Smith, Chapter 2, this volume; Delia, 1987; McLeod et al., Chapter 11, this volume). Rather than being aimed at providing ammunition for public policy arguments concerning harmful media content, a substantial amount of this research was motivated by commercial interests, although such notions as the two-step flow hypothesis and opinion leadership that emerged from this research corpus (Benoit & Holbert, Chapter 25, this volume; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) assumed center stage in other lines of applied communication research (Rogers, 1962).

In view of past alarmist responses to the introduction of new communication technologies, quite predictably, the potential negative effects of “new media” such as the Internet on their users have recently become a focus of concern. These effects include Internet addiction (Young, 1998) and the possibility that excessive Internet use potentiates social loneliness (Kraut et al., 1998), although evidence suggests that social loneliness may not necessarily be associated with extensive Internet use (Kraut et al., 2002). Still others have noted that the cloak of anonymity surrounding Internet use may embolden individuals to insult others or to “flame” them—behaviors they would not normally display in most face-to-face encounters (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1983). Thus, the tradition of revealing potential noxious effects of extensive media use continues to preoccupy researchers to the present.

As these developments unfolded within the mass communication domain, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the first generation of communication researchers concerned with the study of face-to-face interaction emerged from graduate programs. Among this vanguard were Robert N. Bostrom, John Waite Bowers, and Gerald R. Miller from the University of Iowa and David K. Berlo, Erwin Bettinghaus, and Hideya Kumata from the University of Illinois. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, four of these early figures—Berlo, Bettinghaus, Kumata, and Miller—found their way to the newly formed Department of Communication at Michigan State University. Partially because of the rhetorical background from which some of the researchers emerged, they were interested in communication and persuasion and language behavior. Important touchstone works for them were the monographs that emerged from psychologist Carl Hovland’s research program concerning the role communication plays in promoting attitude and behavior change (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953), social psychologist Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957, 1964), and psychologist Charles Osgood’s research in the emerging area of psycholinguistics (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). In addition, Kumata had abiding research interests in the then-fledgling area of intercultural communication.

This highly abbreviated overview of communication science’s roots suggests at least three important antecedent conditions that continue to influence the ways in which social scientifically oriented communication research has evolved over the ensuing years. First, within the mass communication domain, the research formula identify a potential toxic media effect → document the effect with research findings → ameliorate the noxious effect through media literacy programs, legal intervention, or suasive discourse aimed at media industry decision makers continues to enjoy considerable cachet and financial support. Within this paradigm, theory may be invoked as a way of rationalizing the inquiry and provides it with the appearance of theoretical motivation, with social learning theory frequently being the theory of choice (Bandura, 1977, 1986), but the primary research purpose is to demonstrate that increasing exposure to the undesirable content potentiates socially undesirable attitudes or behaviors and to use the successful demonstration as evidence in advocacy efforts aimed at eliminating the offending content. Rarely does research with this primary motivation directly test theory in general or, even when it is invoked, social learning theory in particular (see Nabi & Oliver, Chapter 15, this volume). Demonstrating the robustness of the bivariate relationship between exposure to toxic content and its noxious effects, while controlling for possible “third variables,” is key. The formulation outlined here is not confined solely to mass communication research; however, several researchers have noted the need for increased theoretical elaboration within this domain (Nabi & Oliver, Chapter 15, this volume; McLeod et al., Chapter 11, this volume; Pfau, 2008).

Second, the confluence of interests in communication and social influence processes, increased methodological sophistication, and external funding opportunities have encouraged communication researchers to attack applied communication problems in such contexts as disease prevention and health maintenance. Much of this applied work within the health communication domain has not been motivated by explicit theoretical concerns (see Atkin & Salmon, Chapter 24, this volume; Cegala & Street, Chapter 23, this volume), although again, “theory”—for example, psychological reactance theory (Brehm, 1966)—may sometimes be invoked in a speculative, post hoc fashion to account for communication campaign failures (see Dillard, Chapter 12, this volume). In addition, although establishing that certain “message features” may potentiate desired persuasive outcomes may have important implications for communication praxis, merely demonstrating such effects does not explain why they occur (Dillard, Chapter 12, this volume). Of course, producing successful practical outcomes can motivate theory development efforts; several persuasion theories that appeared during the 1950s and 1960s grew out of the applied persuasion research undertaken during World War II.

Third, because the frames of reference of early mass communication and interpersonal communication researchers emerged from such cognate areas as sociology, social psychology, and political science, when their research was informed by theory, the theory was frequently imported from the cognate discipline. For example, communication research concerning counterattitudinal advocacy (Miller & Burgoon, 1973) was driven primarily by dissonance theory (Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Festinger, 1957, 1964) and incentive theory (Janis & Gilmore, 1965), both of which were imported from social psychology. These borrowing proclivities persist today. For example, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999), a model that is frequently invoked by communication researchers, originated in social psychology (see Dillard, Chapter 12, this volume). In general, then, these three antecedent conditions and others created a climate that attenuated theory development within the communication science domain and precipitated a theoretical trade deficit in which communication became the debtor discipline (Berger, 1991), although broader purviews of the communication discipline that include humanistic approaches may provide more evidence of original theory development efforts (Craig, 1993). In addition, we recognize that in a few instances, theories imported from other disciplines have been extensively elaborated and extended by communication scientists (Lang, 2000).

The first two of these three antecedent conditions propelled communication researchers in the direction of increased methodological sophistication. From the great expectations surrounding the introduction in the 1960s of high-speed, mainframe computing that enabled re-searchers to analyze ever-increasing numbers of variables, to contemporary fascinations with structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling that are now the stuff of laptop computers, there has been an abiding faith in the notion that sophisticated methodological tools will yield large increments in our understanding of communication processes. Although we certainly agree that such tools are critical in plying the communication research trade, absent theory, they are, after all, merely tools. It is only when theory animates their use that these tools become truly powerful. In short, “Data without theory are like babies without parents: Their life expectancy is low” (Gigerenzer, 2000, p. 296). Communication science, then, is all about explanation, and explanation is all about theory development (see Pavitt, Chapter 3, this volume).

In providing this short answer to the question of what communication science is, we do not mean to imply that applied communication research should be relegated to second-class status. To the contrary, for those who persist in bifurcating theory and application, we would remind them that the understanding theory provides is more likely to yield successful interventions in practical affairs than are intuitively driven interventions and campaigns based on trial and error (see Atkin & Salmon, Chapter 24, this volume; Dillard, Chapter 12, this volume; Lewin, 1945), even when the trial-and-error-based programs are evaluated with highly sophisticated research methods. Engineering advances based on applications of basic physical science principles provide ample evidence of the synergistic relationship between theory and application. Of course, theory-based interventions presuppose theory on which to predicate desired interventions. We remain somewhat skeptical that contemporary communication theories yet provide stable enough launching pads for such applied efforts (see Cegala & Street, Chapter 23, this volume; Dillard, Chapter 12, this volume). However, we are optimistic about prospects for remedying this lack through increased attention to theory construction within the communication science community (Pfau, 2008). Ultimately, we are reminded of Kurt Lewin, a “founding father” of both social psychology and communication research (Schramm, 1964), who once observed, “Nothing is as practical as a good theory” (Lewin, 1945, p. 129). Now that we have provided some tentative answers to the query, “What is communication science?” we now consider more complex issues.

♦ Regularities in Communicative Conduct

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As we have already observed, communication science involves something more than using sophisticated and powerful research methods and statistical techniques to assay hypotheses and something more than trying to solve various practical communication problems, for example, devising persuasive messages to encourage people older than 40 years of age to have yearly physical examinations. Communication science practitioners not only wish to identify regularities with respect to communication and its effects but also fundamentally seek to explain why such regularities occur (see Pavitt, Chapter 3, this volume). For communication scientists, the problem to be solved is one of identifying and then explaining regularities by constructing and testing theories.

In the physical world, observing that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and that its path through the sky changes in a highly predictable way with the changes of the seasons permits generalizations about the sun’s behavior; however, by themselves, these generalizations do not explain why the sun behaves in this fashion. Indeed, alternative explanations for these observed regularities precipitated heated conflict between Galileo, an advocate of Copernican explanation, and the Roman Catholic Church concerning the center of the universe. Does the earth rotate around the sun or is the earth at the center of the universe, with all other celestial bodies rotating around it? These theoretical debates almost cost Galileo his life. In this case, the observed regularities were not in doubt—indeed, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west—but their explanation most certainly was.

Although examples of regularities in the physical world readily come to mind, some might argue that in the domain of social action and communication, such regularities are rare, thus raising the issu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• PART 1: OVERVIEW
• PART 2: COMMUNICATION CODES
• PART 3: FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES
• PART 4: FUNCTIONS
• PART 5: COMMUNICATION CONTEXTS
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors