It is indeed an honor to be serving as editor of Communication Monographs, a flagship journal in the communication discipline. Since its inception many decades ago as Speech Monographs, the journal has served as a clearinghouse and discussion site for important ideas that have animated communication scholarship. The pages of CM have been a home for the introduction and development of theoretical frameworks, for empirical investigations that have enhanced our knowledge, for innovation in methodological approaches, and for critique that has questioned received wisdom. I am excited to have the opportunity to extend the journey of CM as a venue publishing excellent original scholarship that contributes to our understanding of human communication processes. I am also pleased that 59 thoughtful and active scholars in our discipline have agreed to join me on this journey as a part of my initial editorial board. I anticipate that there may be additions to the board as my editorial tenure continues, but these “charter members” have already been invaluable in providing the expertise and context necessary to make decisions about scholarship across the wide spectrum of the communication discipline.
As I outlined in my editorial statement as I began accepting manuscripts for review at CM, I see scholarship as a process of asking important questions and then approaching the answering of those questions with care, thoughtfulness, and rigor. I am encouraging submissions from scholars asking questions across a wide array of areas in communication—media studies, interpersonal and relational communication, organizational and group communication, health and family communication, rhetoric, language and social interaction, intercultural communication and cultural studies, and others. During my time as editor, I especially hope to publish work posing questions that bridge the subdisciplinary, metatheoretical, or methodological boundaries that have sometimes separated scholars. My editorial statement also addresses my expectations regarding the answering of questions posed. First and foremost, I approach scholarship with the understanding that we will always confront answers that are tentative and partial. Further, posing a wide range of questions invites an equally diverse set of approaches to answering those questions, including theoretical argument, quantitative and qualitative empirical research, and rhetorical and textual analysis. What matters in all of these approaches is the appropriateness of the method employed, rigor in both argument and method, contextualization in the wide body of scholarship, and openness to alternative interpretations and understandings.
As I begin my editorial tenure, I have been asked frequently about whether CM will include any special issues or special features during the next three volumes. I am still mulling over the possibility of special issues, but I knew from the start that I wanted to include some kind of feature that would encourage scholarly interchange. In my experience with many journals, I've found that these “forum” sections often serve as a fascinating site in which scholars can debate about current challenges and opportunities facing a discipline (or interdisciplinary area) and encourage more interplay among writers than is typically available during the typical peer-review process. Thus, these sections often include position pieces and responses or a set of scholars providing thoughts on a specific question posed by the editor.
However, today's media landscape provides many more opportunities for integrated conversation among scholars. On dedicated web pages, in blog conversations, on YouTube, and on social media sites, people are now able to engage each other in dialogue in far more interactive ways. During my editorial tenure of Volumes 78–80 of Communication Monographs, I plan to take advantage of this new kind of “forum” for scholarly exchange, and host a series of conversations in the CM Café.
These coffee shop conversations will be facilitated via Facebook. For each Café discussion, scholars will be invited to a dedicated page and presented with a series of questions and discussion prompts revolving around a central issue of interest to communication scholars. The coffee shop attendees will be asked to comment on the questions, pose their own, engage others in conversation and debate, and suggest links to inform the discussion. At the end of several weeks of discussion, we'll close down the shop—but hope that the conversation will continue outside of its boundaries! I will take the material generated during the Café discussion and weave it together into a piece for publication in Communication Monographs.
The first CM Café event will appear in Volume 78, Issue 2 of Communication Monographs. The discussion will revolve around the role of communication scholars in public debate, community engagement, and social justice. Participants in the first Café event will include Sarah Dempsey (University of North Carolina), Mohan Dutta (Purdue University), Larry Frey (University of Colorado and Trinity University), Bud Goodall (Arizona State University), Soyini Madison (Northwestern University), Jennifer Mercieca (Texas A&M University), and Tom Nakayama (Northeastern University). If you have ideas about future topics for the Communication Café, I'd love to hear about them. Just drop me a note at [email protected]. And also feel free to get in touch with me if you have comments about the journal's direction, have an idea for a special issue, or have questions about a possible submission. I want to do what I can to make the next three years of Communication Monograph issues as relevant and informative as possible.