Inequality : the blind spot of Western communication studies

Mance, Boris (author), Slaček Brlek, Aleksander Sašo (author)

Our study focuses on the prevalence of conceptualizations of communicative inequality in the field of communication studies after the end of World War II. While communication studies has adopted and been influenced by conceptualizations of inequality from related disciplines and fields, conceptualizations of communicative inequality seem to have played only a marginal role. By means of a network analysis conducted on a corpus of more than fifteen thousand articles published in eight prominent international journals in the field between 1945 and 2018, this study aims to map the prominence and adoption of different conceptualizations of communication inequality. With the tools of network analysis, the study identifies particular conceptualizations by tracing the most co-occuring cited authors associated with a particular conceptualization across time. We identify four distinct clusters of conceptualizations: modernization theory, cultural imperialism, knowledge gap, and digital divide. Historically, approaches to communication inequality have been divided either along ideological lines—largely defined by support for (modernization theory) or opposition to (cultural imperialism) US foreign policy—or in terms of different levels of communication inequality. While both modernization and cultural imperialism focus on international communication inequality, the knowledge gap tradition focuses on interpersonal differences. We argue that the dominant approaches and paradigmatic shifts in conceptualizations of communication inequality have largely been driven by forces outside of communication studies. Modernization, which dominated the period until the late 1970s, grew from US interests in securing hegemony in the third world. Critiques of cultural imperialism emerged during the 1970s as a direct challenge to modernization theory, connected strongly to third-world opposition to US hegemony. The notion of a digital divide, which has become the predominant conceptualization of communication inequality since 2000, stems largely from the concerns of the US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration for providing “universal service” to US citizens, while the knowledge gap tradition relates to the effectiveness of top-down communication campaigns.

• Language: English
• Keywords: communication studies, communicative inequality, conceptualizations of inequality, articles, network analysis
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 03.07.2022
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: Str. 1-45
• Numbering: Vol. 2.
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-137873
• UDC: 303:316.77
• ISSN on article: 2637-6091
• DOI: 10.32376/d895a0ea.dd047f5b
• COBISS.SI-ID: 113797891
• Publication date in RUL: 05.07.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: History of media studies
• Publisher: Mediastudies.press
• ISSN: 2637-6091
• COBISS.SI-ID: 113792515

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
• Licensing start date: 05.07.2022

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: J5-1793-2019
• Name: The role of communication inequalities in disintegration of a multinational society