The New Agendas Series
Series Editors: Roderick P. Hart and Stephen D. Reese, University of Texas at Austin
Lawrence Erlbaum/Taylor & Francis Publishers
Communication and Authenticity: New Agendas
Edited by Matt McGlone and Mark Knapp (Communication Studies)
Scheduled for October 4-6, 2007
A significant subfield in communication studies has examined the nature of deception, but beyond a simple distinction between truth and lies are a variety of messages more difficult to classify. These include spin, hype, doublespeak and equivocation, and these complex message systems have particular relevance to advertising, journalism, and political life. This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to the nature of truth to discover who and what can be believed, and why, in an age filled with both hopefulness and skepticism.
Science Communication: New Agendas
Edited by LeeAnn Kahlor and Pat Stout (Advertising)
Scheduled for February 22-24, 2008
The importance of science communication has grown with the politicization of science issues in government and the press. Disputes over the validity of key understandings of global warming and evolution have underscored the relevance of this project, which will examine emerging research in the public understanding of science and how people come to know the natural world around them. While some may think that “popular science” is a contradiction in terms, it is of great importance in the policy domain, in the business world, and in what ordinary people come to believe.
Pat Stout and LeeAnn Kahlor are planning an academic conference on the topic of science communication for the spring of 2008. The conference, “New Agendas in Science Communication,” is part of the College of Communication’s New Agendas series. The purpose of the series is to provide a venue for promising junior scholars from around the globe to come together, share their research, and, within a year, have that research published in an edited volume. Series volumes will be published by Lawrence Earlbaum. Stout and Kahlor will edit the New Agendas in Science Communication volume. Roderick Hart (Dean of the College of Communication) and Stephen Reese (Associate Dean for the College) are the series’ editors. In addition to offering a networking and publishing outlet to junior scholars, the series will provide financial support to fund the scholars’ travel expenses. The conference will be held February 22-24 on the UT-Austin campus, and the scholarly presentations will be open to the public. Sharon Dunwoody, a science communication scholar and Associate Dean for Social Studies in the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin, has tentatively agreed to serve as guest speaker to help kick off the conference. (Dunwoody is former head of the section on General Interest in Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, past president of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, and past president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. As part of a lengthy involvement with The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, she currently serves on the Board on Radiation Effects Research and on the advisory committee of The Academies’ Office on Public Understanding of Science.)
Kahlor and Stout will be accepting 500-word conference proposals through September 5, 2007. Proposals can be emailed to Kahlor at kahlor@mail.utexas.edu. Topics of particular interest to the editors include: public understanding of science, communication of science, science journalism, science-related public relations and issue/advocacy advertising, technology communication, risk communication, science-related interpersonal communication, communicating science in a healthcare setting, public health and science communication, and environmental communication.
Check back periodically for updated information about the conference and read more below about other New Agendas offerings coming up in the next year.
Media Emotions: New Agendas
Edited by Janet Staiger (Radio-TV-Film), Ann Cvetkovich (English), and Ann Reynolds (Fine Arts)
Scheduled for October 2-4, 2008
This project examines the problematic divisions between public and private spheres and the traditional relegation of feelings and emotional life to the domain of the personal and private. The study of public feelings can focus on sentimentality, trauma, intimacy, sexuality, memory, and much else. What new cultural formations are being established these days and how are people’s daily habits and affective lives being changed by the media products they consume? This project focuses on new feelings for a new era and how people are negotiating their lives in that environment.
Media Literacy: New Agendas
Edited by Kathleen Tyner (Radio-TV-Film)
Scheduled for late Spring or Summer, 2008
New forms of digital communication are being introduced into schools designed for an industrial age. This project explores how schools can leverage student proficiency with new "literacies" for learning. It also investigates critical literacy practices that can best respond to the proliferation of new media in society. What sorts of media education are needed to deal with these matters and how are media professionals, educational theorists, and literacy scholars helping youth understand the possibilities inherent in such an era?
Health Communication: New Agendas
Edited by Jerome Williams and Pat Stout (Advertising)
Scheduled for Spring 2009
Obesity is a growing health issue in the U.S. and how media can enhance and ameliorate this problem warrants our attention. Rates of childhood obesity are alarmingly high and increasing each year. Studies have shown that obese children are more likely to become obese adults and are likely to suffer with numerous health consequences like coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type II diabetes, among others. Studies also indicate that television viewing and exposure to advertising for food products influences children's attitudes toward, food preferences and food purchase requests for foods with low nutritional value. It is important to better understand the role of media in childhood obesity and to learn how media may be used to address this issue in a positive way.
This conference focuses on how the media communicate health-related messages about food, nutrition and diet that influence childhood obesity. Emphasis is placed on the new media, given the fact that media now have more central roles in socializing today’s children and youth than ever before. Advertising and marketing messages reach young consumers through a variety of vehicles – broadcast and cable television, radio, magazines, computers through the Internet, music, cell phones – and in many different venues – homes, schools, child-care settings, grocery stores, shopping malls, theaters, sporting events, and even airports. In addition, given the disparity in obesity rates between children of color and the general population, special attention is given to media targeting these populations.
The audience for this conference and the subsequent book to be published by Erlbaum extends beyond the academy to those in health-care practice. Communicators in media studies, message design, communication intervention design and policy setting; health care researchers and health care providers in nursing, social work, public health departments, and elsewhere should find this conference valuable.
Check back periodically for updated information about the conference.
Language and Learning: New Agendas
Edited by Lisa Bedore and Elizabeth Peña (Communication Sciences and Disorders)
To be scheduled
In the U.S., bilingualism is increasingly the rule rather than the exception. Given the debates over immigration and “official” languages, this project examines how people learn to speak in a dual-language culture. The perspectives of education, sociolinguistics, psychology, anthropology, and communication sciences are needed to understand such phenomena. How these matters impact public policy require the perspectives of political science as well.
International Communication: New Agendas
Edited by Karin Wilkins and Joe Straubhaar (Radio-TV-Film)
To be scheduled
Modern life is being transformed by the way globalization is redrawing the boundaries and flows of communication. Issues of diasporic communities, contra-flows, and shifting ethnic identities must be reexamined in light of these changes. These phenomena are found with special force in the Middle East with the emergence of Al-Jazeera, as well as in Latin America, where communication has played a vital role in emerging democracies. These are complex matters that must be understood by all contemporary citizens.
Media Convergence: New Agendas
Edited by Bruce Pennycook and Sharon Strover (Radio-TV-Film)
To be scheduled
With the increasing convergence of media practices–newspapers are now online and television shows appear on our computer screens–the world is being changed by new, digital technologies. Entertainment forms, learning techniques, and policy deliberations are changing apace because of these “intermedia” phenomena. How will people adapt to such changes? What creative enterprises will be needed in the new economy they are fostering? How will our aesthetic lives be altered by them?
Ethnicity and Media: New Agendas
Edited by America Rodriguez (Radio-TV-Film) and Nick Lasorsa (Journalism)
To be scheduled
Historically, mass communication research has dealt with mainstream media representations to a mass audience, but with the emergence of a more heterogeneous audience and a narrowcasted environment, new, ethnically based media are springing up and changing how people deal with their cultural environment. Whether in English or Spanish, Mandarin or Armenian, these media are becoming the social glue that holds many American communities together and yet we know precious little about what is being said by them and why.