This general issue of Communication Research and Practice contains a stimulating collection of articles that highlight the value of looking closely at communication practices, where they are enacted, and how we understand what we find at a theoretical level.
Merryn Sherwood, Matthew Nicholson and Timothy Majoribanks’ article opens this issue with the results of a survey and interviews with women in public relations, communications, and media relations roles in Australian sports organisations. The study found that while the Australian sport public relations workforce is almost equally male and female the sports media workforce is largely male. This means women working in sports public relations operate in a very gendered inter-organisational space. The authors provide some rather sobering statistics and a literature review to build their case that discrimination is a reality for women working in this space. This was subsequently confirmed by their study. The authors propose that their findings highlight the importance of employing a gender analysis when studying women communications professionals working in and between sports organisations in Australia because they continue to be sites of gender contestation where even apparently positive changes (e.g., an improved gender balance) can mask more fundamental gender inequalities.
Erika Pearson’s intriguingly titled article, Shoefies and Huis: crafting community participation from the ground up shows how a playful Twitter activity at a HuiFootnote1-style conference in New Zealand provides a way for participants to build trust and weak tie bonds. Pearson argues that not only did the playfulness of the shoefies (i.e., photographs of shoes) and the informality of the Hui perform a range of communicative and networking functions, they combined to allow the goals of community engagement and equality among participants to be achieved. The article proves an interesting example of how a traditional cultural communication event can be combined with a contemporary digital activity in a harmonious and meaningful way.
In his instructive article, Revisiting paradigm talk in 1980s communication studies in Australia: the case of Robyn Penman, Steven Maras revisits the 1980s and three influential rhetorical tropes that were shaping the field of communication at that time. He then explores the case of the Australian scholar Robyn Penman, a scholar who questioned the appropriateness of these dominant tropes and used her critique to frame an alternative vision for reconstructing the field.
In many ways Penman’s work aligned with and even pre-empted the development of the contemporary perspectives of CCO (Communicative Constitution of Organisation) (see Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, Citation2009; Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen, & Clark, Citation2011; Putnam & Nicotera, Citation2008; Taylor & Van Every, Citation2000) and sociomateriality (Ashcraft et al., Citation2009; Jarzabkowski & Pinch, Citation2013; Orlikowski, Citation2007, Citation2010); two perspectives that are increasingly holding sway in organisational communication today. She proposed that communication is not simply an instrument for achieving interactional control and manipulation but is also constructive of the very relationships and processes upon which these outcomes rely. Maras draws attention to this by pointing out how, by construing communication as relational and reciprocal, Penman advanced the view that communication is not simply what allows things to happen; it is the primary concern. In doing so, Maras concludes that Penman’s work continues to offer a useful foundation for those seeking to take communication seriously and explore how communicating matters in this age of burgeoning communication technologies.
Danielle Couch, Adam Fried, and Paul Komesaroff’s use an Australian obesity prevention campaign as a case study to explore the implications of using fear, risk, stigma, disgust, and personal responsibility in public health and obesity campaigns. They conclude that by promoting certain images of body weight while problematizing other body types these campaigns operate as forms of social control that have costs and unplanned impacts inextricably linked to the political environment. This alerts us to how communication constructs the environment that it must then confront. The authors also point out how recommended health strategies in public health programmes focus on individuals while ignoring structural influences, such as the social, cultural, economic, physical, and geographic environments. This means that a communication campaign constitutes public engagement by what it addresses but also by what is overlooked. This has important implications for all stakeholders.
In his article The #tay4hottest100 new media event: discourse, publics and celebrity fandom as connective action Glen Fuller examines a 2015 media-led fan Twitter campaign that sought to get Taylor Swift’s track Shake it off into the Hottest 100 music poll. The campaign engaged a range of separate publics with different investments in Swifts fame and provided an opportunity for the authors to explore the relation between the personalised action frame of participatory practice in ‘connective action’ (Bennett & Segerberg, Citation2013) and the reflexive circulation of discourse characteristic of networked publics.
In the final article in this issue, Hilary Hughes, Marcus Foth, Michael Dezuanni, Kerry Mallan, and Cherie Allan present a qualitative case study examining the ability of social living lab events to promote digital participation and communication in regional and rural communities. This study, set in Townsville in North Queensland, showcases a novel type of approach to social living labs that focuses on learning rather technology or products in order to support digital capacity building that will allow residents to make effective use of available digital resources. It is a timely exemplar of how social living labs can be used to overcome the digital divide that can persist in regional and rural communities even when digital resources are provided.
There are two remaining issues of Communication Research and Practice this year. Issue 4-03 is the special issue Food and Media edited by Michelle Phillipov (University of Adelaide) and Tania Lewis (RMIT University) and issue 4-04 which will be a general issue. In 2019 issue 5-01 will be the 2018 ANZCA conference issue Multiple realities: Fluidity, hybridity, and stability in global communication. Issue 5-02 will be the special issue Digital inequalities and inclusion edited by Justine Humphries (University of Sydney). The remaining two issues for 2019 will be a general issue and a special issue that has yet to be confirmed.
The Editorial Team looks forward to receiving stimulating empirical and conceptual submissions that address contemporary communication themes in ways that will extend our readers understanding of the complex, paradoxical and at times confronting nature of communication in practice.
Notes
1. A Hui is a cultural form of meeting practiced by the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. While often used interchangeably with the English word ‘meeting’, a Hui’ has attributes that distinguish it from a Western-style meetings. (O’Sullivan & Mills, Citation2009).
References
- Ashcraft, K. L., Kuhn, T. R., & Cooren, F (2009). Constitutional amendments: Materializing organizational communication. Academy of Management Annals, 3(1), 1–64.
- Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Cooren, F., Kuhn, T. R., Cornelissen, J. P., & Clark, T. (2011). Communication, organizing and organization: An overview and introduction to the special issue. Organization Studies, 32(9), 1149–1170.
- Jarzabkowski, P., & Pinch, T. (2013). Sociomateriality is ‘the New Black’: accomplishing repurposing, reinscripting and repairing in context. M@n@gement, 16(5), 579–592.
- Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work. Organizational Studies, 28(9), 1435–1448.
- Orlikowski, W. J. (2010). The sociomateriality of organizational life: Considering technology in management research. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34, 125–141.
- Putnam, L. L., & Cooren, F. (2004). Alternative perspectives on the role of text and agency in constituting organizations. Organization, 11(3), 323–333.
- O’Sullivan, J., & Mills, C. E. (2009). The Maori cultural institution of hui: When meeting means more than a meeting. Communication Journal of New Zealand, 10(2), 18–39.
- Putnam, L.L., & Nicotera, A.M. (Eds.). (2008). Building theories of organization: The constitutive role of communication. Oxford, UK: Routledge.
- Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2000). The emergent organization : communication as its site and surface. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.