Volume 30 Issue 2 of 2024 will be the final issue of The Journal of International Communication. Following a long performance of thirty years it is time to bow deeply to our readership on behalf of JIC’s Editorial Advisory Board (EAB), Editorial Associates, and Editorial and Production Teams.
JIC was launched in August 1994 at an event at the Seoul Scientific Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) by Professor Emeritus Cees Hamelink and Professor Emeritus Hamid Mowlana, outgoing and incoming presidents of IAMCR respectively. Professor Mowlana recalled in his speech what I had said during my Advancement to Candidacy interview (circa 1985) in the PhD program at the School of International Service of American University in Washington DC. The interview was conducted by Professor Gary Weaver and himself. He reminded me at the launch of JIC that he asked me during the interview ‘what do you hope to contribute to the field of international communication?’ My response had been ‘I will set up a Journal of International Communication’.
I set up JIC together with Professor McKenzie Wark, the cultural theorist now at the New School in New York. The journal sought to be a venue for conversation between a multitude of perspectives, particularly in the fields of international communication and cultural studies, and other cognate fields. In its first ten years JIC was published by the International Communication Program (ICP) of the Media and Communication Discipline in the School of English, Linguistics and Media at Macquarie University, Australia. ICP grew into the Department of International Communication which was absorbed into a larger department in 2008 in a new Faculty of Arts. Taylor and Francis took on the publication of JIC in 2009 with the editing continuing in the care of the Faculty of Arts. I served as Founding Editor-in-Chief for the three decades of JIC’s existence. With my relinquishing of editorial duties Macquarie University (the owner of JIC) and Taylor & Francis (JIC’s publisher) decided to rest JIC as well.
JIC sported different livery in the first and second halves of its life. It did not carry university or publisher branding on its pictorial covers in the first half. Also, in this period JIC offered annual Special Issues co-edited by leading scholars. The following issues are noteworthy for reasons mentioned. The Special Issue on ‘Olympic Communication’ had a piece by Juan Samaranch, then president of the International Olympic Committee. Another on the ‘UN at 60’ featured a piece by Secretary General Kofi Annan. A Special Issue guest edited by the late Professor Gary Weaver was on ‘Intercultural Relations’, a term we discussed and used to subsume intercultural communication and cross-cultural communication. The term has since become popular in the parlance of practitioners of cultural diplomacy.
A variety of fields of study, including International Communication, International Relations, International Development, International Political Economy, Global Sociology, Media Anthropology, Media and Cultural Studies, and Post-colonial Studies nourished JIC. The titles of JIC’s Special Issues are a testament to the journal’s trans-disciplinarity and breadth of scope: These are: South–North conversations (Volume 19, Issue 1, 2013); Making the ‘net’ work (Volume 16, Issue 2, 2010); International Crises (Volume 15, Issue 2, 2009); International Political Communication (Volume 14, Issue 2, 2008); Intercultural Communication (Volume 13, Issue 2, 2007); Diasporic Communication (Volume 12, Issue 2, 2006); UN at 60 (Volume 11, Issue 2, 2005); Future of IC Research (Volume 10, Issue 2, 2004); Intercultural Relations (Volume 9, Issue 2, 2003); Viewing Asia (Volume 8, Issue 2, 2002); Participatory Communication (Volume 7, Issue 2, 2001); Political Economy (Volume 6, Issue 1, 1999); Human Rights (Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 1998); Communication and Development: Beyond Panaceas (Volume 4, Issue 2, 1997); News Media and Foreign policy (Volume 4, Issue 1, 1997); Olympic Communication (Volume 2, Issue 1, 1995); Local Visions of the Global (Volume 1, Issue 2, 1994); Gulf & Beyond: Broadcasting International Crises (Volume 1, Issue 1, 1994).
The late Professor Roland Robertson’s earliest article on Glocalization appeared in the first Issue of JIC. Among other world leaders in their fields who have contributed articles to JIC are the late Professor George Gerbner, Professor Emeritus Hamid Mowlana, Professor Emeritus Joseph Nye, and Professor Emeritus Nicholas Onuf.
JIC was made the official journal of the International Communication Section of IAMCR by the General Assembly of IAMCR at its meeting in Glasgow in 1998. Speaking to me on 13 May 2024, the week in which it was decided to retire JIC, Professor Sujatha Sosale (a former Head of the International Communication Section of IAMCR) remarked that the closure of JIC would mean that many scholars outside of North America, Europe, and Australia, would be disadvantaged. IAMCR President-elect Professor Daya Thussu too regretted the closure in a missive on 15 May 2024: ‘It is a pity that this important space for international communication research will cease to exist’. A contributor from the Global South wrote the following to me when he heard of the resting of JIC: ‘Your journal is the first journal I happen to know in international communication. I have made a plan to grow with your journal since I am a newcomer to this field. It is really a pity for me’. Before JIC was launched articles on international communication from outside of the United States and United Kingdom were barely seen in journals of communication and media. Gazette, now International Communication Gazette, was perhaps an exception. There are many journals that today use international communication in their title. An analysis of the representation of scholars from different parts of the world would be a useful exercise.
Between JIC’s first and penultimate volumes approximately 50 of 200 (25%) accepted articles were from scholars working in the Global South. The largest number of acceptances were from the US (61), Australia (22), UK (11); China (11); Israel (10). Contributions from the following other countries were also published: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Unted Arab Emirates. The overall acceptance rate was 28% in the past year.
JIC has encouraged submissions from across the world, but much work remains.
My thanks go out to Editorial and Production Teams, Reviewers, Authors and Readers, and the journal Owner and Publisher.