Writing the Conceptual Article: A Practical Guide

Abstract

The conceptual article can make a valuable contribution to the scholarly conversation but presents its own special challenges compared to the traditional article that reports empirical findings or interpretive analysis with a familiar organizational structure. This article provides a guide to this task, organized around the process of concept explication—the development of theoretical concepts with careful attention to the interplay between their definition and measurement. From ideation to the final writing stage, one must carefully specify how these concepts are connected together in a broader theoretical argument. Examples of this kind of conceptual work are drawn from the field of journalism studies and communication to guide writers in moving beyond an essay that summarizes literature to an article that makes an original contribution, writing in such a way that the key argument is communicated effectively.

Keywords:

• Concept explication
• conceptual articles
• journalism studies
• writing
• theory construction

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 I’m not aware of a formal comparison of citation metrics, but base this observation on the reception of my own work and what editors have reported, that they value important conceptual articles for their wide appeal and driving traffic to a journal.

2 My insights reported here have been developed over several years of my own research across multiple methods, encouraging concept explication in graduate seminars, and observing the challenges faced by students in writing research papers and dissertations. These skills are difficult to coach, and I find myself writing the same comments regardless of methodological choice: “How so,” “So what,” and “What’s the communication question?”

3 This template picks up on a previous one I prepared many years ago but formalized at the suggestion of former student Seth Lewis and circulated widely online as a “Research paper organization guide.” I appreciate the opportunity to prepare a more extended version for the present essay focused on the conceptual article, and thank the editor Oscar Westlund for his encouragement, the anonymous reviewers, and the many students in seminars over the years who have helped me develop these thoughts.

4 Attributed to famous and academically irreverent University of Texas folklore specialist J. Frank Dobie.

5 Mills himself was faulted for being vague and un-sociological, but that’s part of his “poetic” appeal with, for example, his definition of “Celebrities”:

The Names that need no further identification. Those who know them so far exceed those of whom they know as to require no exact computation. Wherever the celebrities go, they are recognized, and more-over, recognized with some excitement and awe.  Whatever they do has publicity value…. (Mills 1959, p. 72).