Concept analysis of gender, feminist, and women's studies research in the communication literature

Abstract

In recent decades a distinctive literature has accumulated discussing the role of gender, feminism, and women's studies‐related research (GFWS) in the communication field; however, questions have persisted about how this research is represented in the field's publications. Contributing to the literature on the sociology of the field's scholarship, the history of the GFWS literature was sketched in a field test of a concept mapping technique that tracks patterns of publication and isolates conceptual associations within the titles of GFWS articles. The data for the study were significant concepts extracted from titles of 31,500 articles appearing in 70 communication journals and annuals within the period 1970 to 1997. The study accomplished several goals. First, it examined the accuracy of historical arguments about GFWS scholarship, arguments that bear on the issue of fair treatment of GFWS scholarship within the field. Second, it examined GFWS articles by publication source to assess patterns of representation by journal. Third, it provided a response to requests by some scholars working in the area for a thorough survey of the dimensions of the GFWS literature. Findings support the idea that GFWS scholarship is represented by a unique constellation of conceptual relationships. Feminist scholarship is found to have a history unto itself separate from that of studies of gender or sex differences, and has entered the literature in two distinctive eras. As well, feminist research was found to have a unique and uneven pattern of representation in the field's literature. By identifying threads of theoretical connection between articles in a widely dispersed literature, the concept mapping methodology is argued to provide one means for offsetting the fragmentation of the discipline's scholarship that has occurred throughout the last three decades as a result of the rapid proliferation of new specialized communication journals.