Responds to six articles in the same issue on images in retrospect. Deals collectively rather than individually with ideas that underlie the work of the respective authors and attempts to provide a critical interpretation guided by the maxim "always historicize!" (SR)

Asserts that there is a need for research and scholarship in journalism, but that it must be important rather than filled with gobbledygook. Discusses the need for a more critical analysis of media performance. (MS)

Develops an interpretation of contemporary social and cultural life which conceives of "the religious" as radically located within "the secular." Notes that such a situation implicates some received understandings, particularly in the area of secularization. Explores implications for media theory and research, along with…

Introduces a symposium in this journal issue: "Technology through a Retrospective Eye: Imaging Practices between the World Wars and Beyond." Notes that each article of the symposium keys into a central moment of expansion of imaging practice and focuses on the debates that accompanied that expansion. (SR)

Argues that production should be treated seriously as a form of research. Asserts that such research contributes to production theory and to an overall understanding of the media. Presents a new idea about what kind of knowledge comes from production and what kind of written research typically results from this knowledge. (PRA)

Argues that scholars from other communication disciplines could learn much from public relations research. Discusses public relations research at the micro level (individual public relations programs), the meso level (managerial), and the macro level (what makes excellent public relations possible). Offers an integrative theory explaining the…

Argues that the discipline of communication has not progressed for two reasons: because scholars talk more to each other than to those outside the field, and because they have not clearly defined what they are about to themselves, their colleagues, their students, and the general public. (SR)

Argues for a multidimensional approach in the study of telecommunications, one that combines critical, historical, and social scientific research and methods. (PD)

This study examines textual analysis methodology as applied to mass communication studies. It focuses particularly on the theoretical basis of textual analysis, the analytical process, and congruent theoretical perspectives. Although the term "textual analysis" is often used generically, this study differentiates textual analysis as…

What mass communication effects are possible that have not yet occurred because no effort has been made to achieve them? Why has there been only limited success in mass communication efforts attempted already? For people to be communicatively affected, they have to be behaviorally affected. People are generally weak behaviorally, especially in the…

Responds to contentions that accommodation media ethnographies are incapable of addressing matters of ideology or significant social-historical variables. Explores the theoretical sources to which many accommodation ethnographers turn, sources which suggest that the theoretical bases of accommodation approaches make provisions for studying…

Suggests that contemporary rhetorical theory and research can use important insights into the nature of mass media language that representation and commodity theories cannot incorporate. Suggests that, by recognizing the rhetorical aspects of media language, scholars can legitimize the research and the dialogue that are required for the…

Argues that communication research needs to move toward better integration of observations on the microlevel with systemic generalizations about macrolevel phenomena, and reorient research away from the media behavior and responses of individuals and toward the cumulative consequences of media behavior over time. (SR)

Claims that the field of communication is moving beyond theorizing that treats communication as a process, to what might be called "multiple-process theory." Examines views of message-processing modes and effects, enlarges the scope of inquiry by considering a multiplicity of levels of analysis, and discusses a philosophical orientation compatible…

Discuses three developmental stages of the information society: the electrification of communication, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century; converging technologies and awareness of information, beginning in the late middle twentieth century; and, beginning in the 1990s, the harmonization of information systems with each other.…