Argues that scholars in communication studies, rather than engaging questions about "the field" or "the divide," should instead ask questions about who they are, and who they become, when they engage in certain kinds of communication inquiry--ontological questions about epistemological consequences. (SR)

Uses a typology to characterize the situation in communication research in 1993 as compared to the situation in 1983. Compares previous predictions to the present situation and makes new predictions. Argues that a cause for the fragmentation in communication studies is the lack of a basic precondition for cumulative growth--formal models. (SR)

Defines the "worship of p" as the current phenomenon of attaching major significance to statistical analysis, and contends that such statistical analysis and precision are useful only when viewed as secondary tools in scientific research. (MH)

Argues that, to make itself more central to studies in its own field, American communication should embrace its traditional, albeit now greatly expanded, subject matter (communication), while at the same time abandoning all institutional vestiges of its narrow and long outmoded approaches to the field. (SR)

Attributes the lack of disciplinary status accorded communication to the lack of ontological status granted the very idea of communication in modernity. Argues that the field should deny modernity's bifurcation by asserting that communication is foundational and attempt to forward a unique communication ontology. (SR)

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…

Discusses particular tensions within the area of interpersonal communication theory and research surrounding the study of social and personal relationships. Argues that important issues have been ignored as scholars pursue a spurious conflict between communication science and communication hermeneutics. (SR)

Uses three quotations from Gregory Bateson to inform the author's comments on the discipline of communication. Argues that communication teachers and scholars must aim for a curriculum and a mode of study, research, and teaching that leads to means of recognizing, addressing, and responding to truly significant questions, rather than disciplinary,…

Argues for the importance of the classical tradition (broad, speculative, and historically informed writing and research) in public opinion research. Argues that asking large, normative questions about public opinion processes, trying to build grand theory, and taking history seriously will enrich the field and command the attention of scholars in…

Suggests that much of communication scholarship has been message driven and that this dominant form of explaining what communication is or does is slowly being challenged by reflexive explanations, which see humans as cognitively autonomous beings, reflexive practitioners of communication with others, and morally responsible interveners in the…

Argues that the issue of difference is at the root of the problems in the field of communication. Maintains that it is how the differences that characterize human beings, their symbolic lives, and their symbolic products are treated that confounds the field. Discusses the methodological moves involved in locating something defined as difference.…

Suggests an alternative design for formulating research questions and stresses the need to relate actual messages to specific outcomes rather than to assumptions about possible outcomes. (MH)

Comments on the attempt to construct a coherent intellectual viewpoint to span the disparate projects of interpersonal and mass communication research. Considers how the discipline of communication can construct functional representations of itself despite diversity. (SR)

Argues that both the increased theoretical productivity in the field of communication as well as the increased confusion about theory are best explained by the influence of a third variable: a general transformation of the human sciences characterized by blurred genres. (SR)