mass communication research and the invisible college revisited: the changing landscape and emerging...

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2005 82: 672Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyTsan-Kuo Chang, Professor and Zixue Tai, Assistant Professor

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MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE REVISITED: THE CHANG~VG LANDSCAPE

IN JOURNALISM-RELATED STUDIES AND EMERGING FRONTS

By Tsan-Kuo Chang and Zixue Tai

The purpose of this study is twofold:first, to chart the changing landscape of mass communication research in journalism-related studies over the past two decades and, second, to determine the contemporary form and content of the invisible college in the field through its intellectual configuration and structural interaction. A simple citation count is inadequate; the analysis of co-citation networks should be a better indication of thefield‘s effort to build on its theoretical foundation. Thefind- ings suggest that there is some sort of theoretical and methodological convergence in contempora ry journalism-related studies.

To paraphrase Karl Mannheim, it is incorrect to say that the single researcher thinks. Rather, the researcher participates in thinking further what others have thought before.’ Although Mannheim‘s idea mainly deals with modes of thought and their social origins, the thesis of a sociology of knowledge is highly relevant to journalism and mass communication research. For one thing, students of journalism and mass communication often find in research situations “preformed patterns of thought and of conduct.”* This raises intriguing ontological and epistemological questions: How does the single researcher come to know what other researchers have thought before? Who are these “other researchers” who constitute intellectual groups that have developed a specific way of thinking and doing research? What is the network of informal communication among these researchers?

Implicit in such questions is the notion of “the invisible college” that has long guided research on the sociology of science, especially the diffusion of knowledge in scientific communication as a sub-field of sociological investigation. In journalism and mass communication research, the idea of “other researchers” as ”the invisible college” has less often been empirically examined. Notwithstanding, since the early years of the “founding father^,"^ the field of mass communication has

Tsan-Kuo Chang is a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Zixue Tai is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communications at Southern Zllinois University-Edwardsville. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their usefil comments and suggestions.

JBMc Qua*erlY Vol. 82, No. 3 Autumn 2005 672-694 02005 AEIMC

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increasingly become a research community in its own right with its own disciplinary histories and collegial relationships? These, both at the indi- vidual and collective levels, have for years been driving forces that advance the field‘s knowledge through such venues as graduate semi- nars, paper presentations, and publications. Given its influences on theory and methodology in the field, this disciplinary-like community5 and its intellectual and scholarly practices deserve attention. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, through a replication of a co-citation network- study, to chart the changing landscape of mass communication research in journalism-related studies over the past two decades and, second, to determine the contemporary form and content of the invisible college in the field.

Although the concept of the invisible college could be traced back to the Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century,6 its systematic application to the empirical study of communication in science is more recent. Lievrouw wrote: “An invisible college is a set of informal communication relations among scientists or other scholars who share a specific common interest or goal.”7 The invisible college is a ”community of scholars” that has collegial relevance and potential for its members. As such, it is closely related to the central premise of the sociology of knowledge perspective: social relationships influence modes of conceiving and doing things.

At the risk of oversimplification, the essence of the sociology of knowledge as a theoretical framework, according to Mannheim, centers on the ideas of ”collective knowing” and “a community of experience.”8 It seeks to uncover the devices of thinking and perceiving that individu- als or groups use to ”accumulate, preserve, reformulate, and disseminate” their intellectual heritage in society and their connections to the social conditions or structures in which they occur? In other words, the idea of an occupational group or an academic community engaged in knowledge production implies that its members take up certain social positions, embrace specific epistemological interests in the world, and exhibit mutual dependence in the organizations of mental practices and material resources.

Why is the invisible college imperative in the production and dissemination of knowledge in all fields of intellectual activities? Theoretically, the existence of the invisible college entails processes of “socialization, communication and interaction” among participants with a ”shared cognitive content.”1° Members are ”core groups in a specialty” that “often define where the larger field as a whole is moving”” or how the scientific information might be transferred.I2 As theory group^,'^ they are strongly tied to Kuhn‘s conception of paradigm.14 Practically, the invisible college represents a distinct mode of organization among scientists and scholars in a research area or front.15 Identification of the informal means of communication in the invisible college helps locate those studies that may provide the body of knowledge and research methods shaping the fields. As Crane noted, ”No research area is completely isolated from other areas.”I6

The Invisible College, Sociology

Know ledge, and Citation

of

Analysis

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This does not mean researchers in any specialty are physically closer to one another; the invisible college is no longer bound by geo- graphical closeness. A network of scholars “transcends place and dis- tance.”17 What holds the invisible college together as a group is therefore not necessarily any formal, direct linkage through personal or work relationships, but rather different forms of informal or indirect communication such as publications (e.g., books and journal articles), confer- ences (eg , papers), meetings (e.g., conversations and discussions), and correspondence (e.g., request for reprints or comments). Underlying these processes is, of course, the notion of communication that is essen- tial in knowledge production and dissemination. The question is, how can the invisible college be identified?

Over the years, scholars in sociology and other disciplines have attempted to measure and locate social ties and scholarly structures within their respective invisible colleges. The most-often-used approach is either a “content” examination of publications or a survey of authors, or both. The rationale is simple: what researchers write and where they publish “may be taken as signals” of who they are and what they think.lS An investigation of publications usually means determination of citation patterns, while a survey of authors seeks reasons why they cite other authors and the relations among them.

The importance of citation analysis is rooted in the assumption that each published scholarly text contains some explicit knowledge ~1aims.l~ When a text is frequently cited by other texts, the relationshp between such texts and the citation counts could mean different things, however. Such relationships have served as evidence of integration of shared knowledge or a structure of knowledge,2O as a sign of cumulative scholarship or specialty growth,21 as a means of assessing research performance,” as a means of a conferring as an impression of intellectual structurez5 or influences,26 as an expres- sion of concept symbols,27 and as a gauge of formal communication

Regardless of purpose, a text must be authored; in the citation analysis, linkages between text / author and other texts / authors underline the relations between the cognitive and social aspects of sci- e n ~ e . ~ ~

However, citation counts alone do not indicate the quality of articles cited or their scholarly contribution.30 In an extensive analysis in sociology, Clemens and her colleagues concluded that citations are not “an unproblematic indicator [of quality or novelty], because they vary in systematic ways by genre, subfield, and institutional location,”31 Gleditsch agreed, indicating that “the number of citations is not a measure of Surveying authors of citing articles, Leydesdorff and Amstgerdamsk also concluded that “citations are not a valid indicator of the quality of cited papers at the moment they are published.”% According to Gordon and Purvis, citation count ”ordinarily reveals nothing about why someone is cited, just how often.” Although there are often positive reasons why an article is there are also self-citations and negative citations.% For example, an article might be cited because of its flaws!

as a measure of

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Citation analysis, especially co-citation research, in the natural sciences tends to help pinpoint the research thus providing an "alerting service" to scientists who need to keep pace with cutting- edge research.38 Because of ontological and epistemological differences between natural and social sciences, the function and interpreta- tion of citation analysis in the latter are usually less precise and often cannot be used to determine the "scientific" status of social science disci- p l ine~?~ Nevertheless, co-citation analysis has become a practical tool in establishing the communication network structure or intellectual cluster- ing in social science research, particularly in sociology and political science.

Although there has been no shortage of empirical studies docu- Mass menting the shape and size of mass communication scholarly activities, most have focused on productivity40 or trends.41 Based on number of publications, the rankings of the most productive institutions or individ- uals tend to be presented as indicating research quality, thus resulting in debates in the 1980s over how to do better counting of research output?* Lost in arguments about allocating credit among multiple authors is the fact that "the number of a scholar's publications is not a reliable indicator of quality."43 It is not a gauge of accumulation of knowledge, either. As Crane pointed out, growth in gross numbers of publications is not a good indicator of the progress of knowledge because "only a few publications are heavily utilized in later scientific work and most are seldom referred to in later publications.""

Other than general topic areas and methodological approaches, trend studies do not reveal much about the structural specialty and conceptual relations of journalism and mass communication research over time. We may learn, for example, that qualitative research methods were less common than quantitative methods during a certain period of time, or that explicit linkage to theory was uncommon in either quantitative or qualitative research. While absence of explicitness in most studies may indicate the lack of a theoretical framework or hypothesis testing in mass communication research, it does not inevitably lead to the conclusion, as Kamhawi and Weaver implied, that there is little effort to build theories in the fieldj5

Theory building or construction is a complex task that may require concerted efforts among members of a scholarly community?6 Absence of theory in any study may convey conceptual deficiency or disconnec- tion to the body of knowledge. A simple count of the presence or absence of theory in published works, however, cannot sufficiently demonstrate whether theory attracts other researchers to pursue similar inquiry or to build on the current theoretical foundation. As noted, a published study may never be cited. "In the absence of a reader," as Clemens and her colleagues convincingly argued, "a published idea has no scholarly conse- quence~."~~ An un-cited paper, in which some theory or perspective is provided, does not contribute to the amount and trajectory of cumulative knowledge, not to mention theory building. When "no theoretical trail"

COmmuni- cation Research and the Invisible College

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is being followed in journalism and mass communication research, theory building

A more functional and enlightening approach is to determine the patterns of highly cited publications as symbols “for standardized pro- cedural tools and theories.”49 Such frequently cited publications can be regarded as exemplars. In the mass communication research scholarly community, little empirical work has been done on the major foci of intellectual activity among members. Only a few studies used citation analysis, including citation networks, to ascertain significant areas of mass communication Except for the works by Pasadeos and his colleagues:1 these studies generally look at the sources of cited journals and their networks, not the networks of cited articles or connections between and among the authors.

Although not conceiving their work in the context of the invisible college, Tankard, Chang, and Tsang presented in the early 1980s the first co-citation networks to identify the research fronts and ”the classics” in journalism Because of the “constantly changing innovative problems,”53 the temporary nature of research problem areas or the transitory elements that might dissolve ”after one or several decades,”= or the variation of citation clusters over it is worth revisiting that study in terms of an invisible college in journalism research.

Tankard, Chang, and Tsang collected data from articles published between 1978 and 1980 in Journalism Quarterly (JQ, and later, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, or JMCQ). Although the sample would be insufficient to represent mass communication research as a whole, articles published in the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication constitute a general single intellectual specialty-journalism-related studies. This has methodological and analytical implications for the citation analysis because ”citation rates can be meaningfully compared only among groups working in the same areas.”%

The present study replicates the work conducted by Tankard, Chang, and Tsang (hereafter, ”the 1980 study”). It is difficult, if not impossible, to hypothesize what theoretical shift or structural development underlying the scholarly network might have occurred since the 1980s. The study seeks to determine the specialty structure and advances of knowledge in journalism-related mass communication research. It attempts to assess the role of the invisible college in the generation of theory and methods in the field through the analysis of co- citation networks.

Method Following the exact procedure57 outlined in the 1980 study citations in articles from three volumes of JMCQ-2000, 2001, and 2002- were recorded. Each unique source within the same article was regis- tered as a citation. As in the 1980 study the recording was straightfor- ward, involving no coding decision. Using a spreadsheet program, all citations were grouped according to the cited authors to assess frequency of citation. Cawkell’s method was used to construct the co-citation networks for the most-cited sources.58 Intellectually, a co-citation net-

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TABLE 1 Comparison of Frequency and References Cited, 1978-1 980 and 2000-2002 *

Times Cited Percentage *

1978-198Q 2000-2007 1978-1984

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 19

88.16 7.38 2.13 0.82 0.64 0.50 0.14 0.00 0.11 0.07 0.08

2000-2002

88.22 8.21 2.04 0.61 0.25 0.37 0.07 0.10 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.02 0.02

Total 2,821 4,067

Percentages do not add up to 100 due to rounding error. The total indicates the number of unique items cited by the articles published in the journal.

work is ”more precise and provides more complete information” about the specialty structure than a simple citation It shows the con- nection between any two texts if they are cited together by another text. The strength of co-citation could vary, depending on the number or frequency of texts that cite both texts. Through a structural and spatial rep- resentation, authors of highly co-cited papers exhibit certain inherent relationslups, forming “coherent social groups.”6o The co-citation network also reflects changes in linkages over time while the analysis of direct citation cannot.

In the 1980 study, the total number of citations examined was 3,446, with an average of about 11 references per article for both the full-length articles (12.4) and ”research in brief” articles (7.3). Twenty years later, total citations stood at 4,855, an increase of nearly 41% in citation counts, with an average of 37 references per article. This growth apparently results from the journal’s decision to discontinue the “research in brief” in the late 1980s and expand article length in the mid-1990s. The references cited in any given article might suggest, as Small argued, the authors’ ”device for persuading readers of the validity” of their arguments.6l It does not, however, necessarily indicate the extent to which those citations might reach a particular community of scholars.

Table 1 compares the two study periods, in terms of what percentages of articles were cited once, twice, etc. Remarkably, over a time span of twenty years the citation frequency remains essentially the same.

Results



TABLE 2 Comparison of Age of Cited References, 1978-1980 and 2000-2002*

Age Percentage

Before 1900 1900-1909 1910-1919 1920-1929 1930-1939 1940-1949 1950-1959 1960-1969 1970-1979 1980-1989* 1990-1999 2000-2002 No Date

1978-1980

0.93 0.37 0.32 0.58 1.59 3.31 7.60

25.04 59.43

0.09 - -

0.73

2000-2002

0.08 0.02 0.12 0.49 0.62 0.64 1.98 3.69

10.30 21.01 52.89 7.48 0.68

Total 3,446 4,855

* For the 1978-1980 study, entries include data in 1980 only. The total indicates the number of items cited by different articles published in the journal.

More than 95% of the references were cited one time (88.16% vs. 88.22%) or two times (7.38% vs. 8.21%). This pattern is similar to that in other social science journals where most articles were never cited or cited no more than once or twice a few years after their publications.62 “If getting cited is a sign of life,” as Gleditsch put it, ”many articles are still- born and most age fairly quickly,”63 a statement applicable to publications in journalism-related studies.

The distribution of citations by age for the two periods also shows a striking similarity (see Table 2). A majority of the citations came from sources published within the ten years preceding the studies (59.43% vs. 52.89%), suggesting an ”immediacy factor”bP in the diffusion of knowledge. However, in both studies, almost 40% of the citations were published before the ten years preceding the studies, indicating that journalism-related mass communication studies continue to cite an older body of literature.

The ”half-life” or ”median age” of citations should be more telling. The half-life measures “the speed with which scholars in a field find it necessary to read, integrate, communicate (and discard) the literature and knowledge in that field.”65 In the 1980 study, the citations showed an average half-life of 7.4 years, meaning that half disappeared after 7 years. Twenty years later, the average was 9.1 years. Although no com- parable data during the same study periods from other fields are avail- able for comparison, in general the physical and natural sciences have a



TABLE 3 Comparison of Types of Sources Cited, 1978-1980 and 2000-2002 *

Source Percentage

Journal Article Book Book Chapter or

Article in Book Convention Paper Thesis Dissertation Web * Others li

1978-198Q

46.17 31.18

9.32

3.23 1.45 2.73

5.92 -

2000-2002

50.67 30.34 12.34

3.17 0.27 0.54 1.89 0.74

Total 2,822 4,067

* This type of source was added in the present study to determine whether the Internet has become a tool in mass communication research. The Internet as we know it today, especially the World Wide Web, did not exist in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

# Others include almanac, dictionary, directory, lecture, report, unpublished papers, working papers, and yearbook.

shorter citation half-life than humanities and social sciences. Given the number of references cited in this study that were at least 10 years or older, it seems that the advance of knowledge in journalism-related mass communication research is not as rapid as in other fields. It also may means there is less pressure for members of this scholarly community to update their knowledge by keeping abreast with the most recent progress.

Types of citation sources can be regarded as scholarly genres that designate ”the set of expectations” associated with a particular publication form.& As shown in Table 3, a consistent pattern again emerges from the two periods. The most frequently cited publication is the journal article (46.17% vs. 50.67%), followed by the book (31.18% vs. 30.34%), with book chapter or article a distant third. This duo of dominant genres is similar to the two distinct literatures found in sociology-books and journals.67 Unlike physical and natural sciences that rely on a single genre-journal articles-to disseminate new results and knowledge,@ the use of multiple genres in social sciences has implications for members of the scholarly community. Books and journals may produce different kinds of knowledge in terms of theory, method, and evidence; may follow separate standards of review; and may reach diverse audience^.^^

While the number of World Wide Web citations is relatively small (1.89%), it is worth noting that the Web was cited more frequent-



TABLE 4 Comparison of Most-cited Journals, 1978-1980 and 2000-2002*

1978-1980 Times Cited 2000-2002 Times Cited

Journalism Quarterly Public Opinion Quarterly Journal of Broadcasting Journal of Communication Columbia Journalism Review American Sociological Review Gazette American Journal of Sociology Broadcasting Journal of Marketing Research American Political Science Review Communication Research

416 85 69 41 30 19 18 16 16 16 15 15

Journalism 6 Mass Communication Quarterly Journal of Communication Journal of Broadcasting 6 Electronic Media Public Opinion Quarterly Communication Research Newspaper Research Journal Public Relations Review Political Communication Journalism Monographs American Journalism Review Columbia Journalism Review American Political Science Review Journal of Marketing Journal of Advertising Research

511 142 100 95 81 70 67 47 28 27 26 25 25 25

Critical Studies in Mass Communication International Journal of Public Opinion Research

24 23 21

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 19 American Behavioral Scientist 19 Gazette 19 Journal of Public Relations Research . 17 American Journal of Sociology 17 Human Communication Research 16 Sex Roles 16 Public Relations Quarterly 15 Public Relations Journal 15

International Journal of Eating Disorders Media Studies Journal 21

* Entries include the most-cited journals that were cited at least 15 times. In the 1980 study, only the 12 most-cited journals were reported.

ly than either the thesis or dissertation, a sign that the Internet has become a useful research tool. Some sociologists expect that such tech- nological changes as online catalogs and archives that allow for retrieval of texts will soon affect citation networks created among sources.7o

With a citation threshold set at 15 cites, the 1980 study found 12 journals cited most frequently. Consistent with previous findings,7l the most-dominant journal cited in the JMCQ is JMCQ (see Table 4). The other three most-cited journals are the same in both studies: Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Public Opinion Quarterly. The growth of intra-disciplinary journal citations might be attributed to the proliferation of research topics in the field, the journal’s expansion, and growth of membership in the sub-fields. For example, the ”most cited journals” in the 1980 study did not include any of the 2000-2002 journals in public relations: Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Quarterly, and Public Relations Journal.

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TABLE 5

Times Cited The Thirty-Seven Mos t-cited References, 2000-2002

19 Newsweek and Time. New York Vintage Books.

12 Lefr. Berkeley, C A University of California Press.

11

10

10 News People at the End of an Era. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erbaum.

8 Communication, 43, 51-58.

8* Addison-Wesley.

8 on Mass Media Content. NY Longman.

8 Journalism Quarterly, 24, 383-90.

7 Public Good. New York Oxford University Press.

7

7 Quantitative Content Analysis in Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

6 knowledge level. Communication Research, 13, 579-602.

6

6

6 Quarterly Press.

6 and Winston.

6 the Mass Media. New York Pantheon.

Gans, Herbert J. (1980). Deciding What’s News: A Study ofCBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News,

Gitlin, Todd. (1980). The Whole World is Watching: Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New

Tuchman, Gaye. (1978). Making News: A Study in the Construction ofReality. NY The Free Press.

Lippmann, Walter. (1922). Public Opinion. New York: Mcmillan.

Weaver, David H. & Wilhoit, G. Cleveland. (1996). The American Journalist in the 1990s: US.

Entman, Robert M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm,” Journal of

Holsti, Ole R. (1969). Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Reading, MA:

Shoemaker, Pamela, J. & Reese, Stephen D. (1996). Mediating the Message: Theories oflnfluences

White, David Manning. (1950). The ‘gate keeper’: A case study in the selection of news,”

Cappella, Joseph N. & Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. (1997). Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the

Iyengar, Shanto. (1991). Is Anyone Responsible? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Riffe, Daniel; Lacy, Stephen; & Fico, Frederick. (1998). Analyzing Media Messages: Using

Culbertson, Hugh M. & Stempel, Guido H., 111. (1986). How media use and reliance affect

Dearing, James W. & Rogers, Everett M. (1996). Agenda Setting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fishman, Mark. (1980). Manufacturing the News. Austin, TX The University of Texas Press.

Graber, Doris. (1997). Mass Media and American Politics, 5th ed. Washington, DC: Congressional

Grunig, James E. & Hunt, Todd. (1984). Managing Public Relations. New York Hold, Reinhart

Herman, Edward S. & Chomsky, Noam. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of

6 Iyengar, Shanto & Kinder, Donald. (1987). News that Matters. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Table 5 cont. next page

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Table 5 cont. 6 Johnson, Thomas J. & Kaye, Barbara K. (1998). Cruising is believing? Comparing Internet and traditional sources on media credibility measures. Journalism 6 Muss Communication Quarterly, 75, 325-40.

6

6 C A Sage.

6* media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36, 167-87.

6 Communication, 46,39-50.

6

6

6

6 York Basic Books Inc..

Kaniss, Phyllis. (1991). Making Local News. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McManus, John H. (1994). Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? Thousand Oaks:

McCombs, Maxwell E. & Shaw, Donald L. (1972). The agenda setting function of the mass

Morris, Merrill & Ogan, Christine. (1996). The Internet as mass medium. Journal of

Patterson, Thomas E. (1993). Out of Order. New York Alfred a. Knopf.

Rogers, Everett M. (1995). Diffusion oflnnovations, 4th ed. New York The Free Press.

Rosen, Jay. (1999). What Are Journalists For? New Haven, CT Yale University Press.

Schudson, Michael. (1978). Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New

5

5 Sage.

5 Communication Quarterly, 75, 353-65.

5 McLeod, Jack M.; Scheufele, Dietram A.; & Moy, Patricia. (1999). Community, communication and participation: The role of mass media and interpersonal discussion in local political participation. Political Communication, 16,315-36.

Carey, James. (1989). Communication as Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Krippendorff, Klaus. (1980). Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Beverly Hills:

Li, Xigen. (1998). Web page design and graphic use of three US. newspapers. Journalism 6 Muss

5 Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

5 course. Political Communication, 19, 55-76.

5 Journalism 6 Muss Communication Quarterly, 76, 373-86.

5 Tewksbury, David & Althaus, Scott L. (2000). Differences in knowledge acquisition among readers of the paper and online versions of a national newspaper. Journalism 6 Muss Communication Quarterly, 77, 457-79.

5 Wadsworth, 1999.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. (1993). The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion - Our Social Skin, 2d ed.

Pan, Zhongdang & Kosicki, Gerald M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news dis-

Sundar, S. Shyam. (1999). Exploring receivers’ criteria for perception of print and online news.

Wimmer, Roger D. & Dominick, Joseph R. (1999). Muss media research. Belmont, CA:

* These references also appeared in the 1980 study.



"Most-cited journals" in the 1980 study included three mainstream sociological and political science outlets: American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and American Political Science Review. In the present study, the 27 most-cited journals included six from other fields: American Political Science Review, International Journal of Eating Disorders, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Behavioral Scientist, American Journal of Sociology, and Sex Roles. Without further exploration, it is difficult to determine whether the increase in the utility of noncom- munication-related journals suggests that the field has become more interdisciplinary or less self-contained. The simple citation count does not reveal the scope and depth of their utility, but is indicative of their intellectual relevance and influence.

Less-cited references are less likely to embody the core cluster of central ideas, specialty structure, or shared knowledge of a field. It is the more-cited publications that have the potential to establish the research fronts or to shape the body of literature. During the two study periods, a small number of sources were cited at least 4 times (2.36% vs. 1.51%, as in Table 1). In the 1980 study, 43 references were cited as many as 5 times each and no source was cited more than 11 times. The present study found 37 references at the 5-citation threshold, with 3 publications receiving 11 or more citations (see Table 5). The references most cited are almost completely different, the 2 lists exhibiting almost incomparable intellectual landscapes. Only 2 sources most cited in the 1980 study appeared 20 years later: Holsti's Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (1969) and McCombs and Shaw's "The Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media" in Public Opinion Quarterly (1972). The citation status for Holsti's book jumped from a low ranking in 1980 to the top-ten most-cited in the early 2000s, while the McCombs and Shaw article dropped from a top-ten ranking to a lower one.

Although books are not the dominant source of total citations, they represent the majority source among the most frequently cited publications. In the 1980 study, 26 of the 43 most-cited references were books, with 10 books appearing in the top 11 sources. An identical number of books turned up in the 37 most-cited sources in the present study, of which 10 of the top 12 were books. Nine of the most cited books- Deciding What's News, The Whole World Is Watching, Making News, Public Opinion, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities, Mediating the Message, News that Matters, Out of Order, and DiBsion of lnnovations- were among 35 books identified by Poindexter and Folkerts in 1999 as "significant journalism and communication books of the twentieth century." That only 9 of those 35 were among the most cited, however, ren- ders questionable the claim that the 35 books "have advanced mass communication as a discipline by providing unique insights, creative thinking, exhaustive and original research, and critical analysis and synthe- sis."n

The heavy presence of books as most-cited references in the two studies confirms "the greater prominence of books in citation patterns" in social sciences and h~mani t ies .~~ In the field of journalism and mass communication, books can be categorized as textbooks on research



methods, books that present original research and data, and introducto- ry texts that offer conclusions with no new data or information. Books written as texts in undergraduate and graduate courses may provide a supporting context in research, even though they represent “a piecemeal accumulation in the literature.”74 They might be cited for ideas, insights, research designs, or general references.

Citation counts do not characterize the structural relationship between sources that are cited together in the same article. An analysis of co-citation networks, however, provides constructive indicators of the dominant foci of intellectual activities. In the present analysis of co-citation networks, the threshold was set at 2 so that a most-cited source must be co-cited at least twice with another most-cited source to be included. Based on how frequently the 43 most-cited sources were co- cited by all the articles, the 1980 study found 6 distinct areas of journalism research: television and politics, sociological studies of journalists, agenda setting, effects of mass communication, media credibility, and characteristics of users and non-users of the mass media. Most of these sources came from the fields of sociology and political science, especially the works by the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University.

The 1980 study concluded that “the three strongest candidates for classics” were Klapper’s The Effects of Muss Communication (1960); Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet‘s The People’s Choice (1944); and Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee’s Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (1954). It indicated that “the emergence of these 3 as classics supports Gitlin’s argument that the work of Lazarsfeld and his students came to represent the ‘dominant paradigm’ in communication research.”75 Although co-citation networks could help designate the most-cited publications as “the classics,”76 the identification of 3 in the 1980 study as ”emerging classics” might be premature and perhaps even incorrect. A classic work is a significant source that researchers keep returning to for intellectual inspiration, conceptual guidance, or reflexive discourse. As reported in Table 5, none of the ”3 classics” was among the most cited in the most recent study. In fact, all but 2 of the 43 most-cited sources in the 1980 study disappeared from the groupings of research activities in journalism-related areas 20 years later.

Further, Lowery and DeFleur have identified 14 studies that they called “milestones” of mass communication research covering a 60-year time span from the late 1920s to the early 1980s, and providing ”the reader with a scholarly roadmap of the path taken by mass communication research.”” In a bolder attempt, Katz et al. selected 13 papers as “nominees for canonization” in media studies, 11 of which were published some 40 to 60 years ago. They regarded these canons as shortcuts, establishing “standards and starting points” in the field.78 A compelling question to ask is: How often have these milestones and canons been used by journalism and mass communication researchers to inform others of where they have been and where they are going?

In the 1980 citation study, none of the canonic textsm and only 3 of the 14 milestones appeared in the 43 most-cited references: McCombs

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FIGURE 1 Co-citation Network for the Thirty-Seven Most-cited Sources as They Are Co-Cited by Articles

in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2000-2002 *

* The line between two sources indicated that they were co-cited by the articles in Journalism b Muss Communication Quarterly at least two times during the three years.

and Shaw‘s agenda-setting piece (1972); Schramm, Lyle, and Parker’s Television in the Lives o four Children (1961); and Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet’s The People’s Choice (1944). The first two publications were ranked among the top ten of the most-cited sources while the last one was near the bottom of the list. None of the remaining 11 milestones received the necessary 5 citations in the database that contained 310 full- length and research-in-brief articles.

Twenty years later, the 37 most-cited references included none from the canonic texts and a lone study from the 14 milestones (i.e., McCombs and Shaw’s study on agenda setting). It barely “made the cut,” however, getting 6 citations from a pool of 131 articles in 3 volumes.

Lowery and DeFleur argued that their milestones book answers the following questions about media effects: Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where are we? Where are we going? On the other hand, Katz et al. posed fascinating questions as subtitles of their book Are there any? Should there be? How about these?

Shouldn‘t the two books then serve as handy resources for researchers to draw ideas, insights, or even hypotheses?8o Apparently not. The Milestones did not make the list of most-cited references in the present study. If the shortcut itself is not being trailed, it might be more difficult to follow the long road. Milestones mark not only progress, but

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also continuity. And to be canonized may take more than just the pas- sage of time. The community of scholars will have to demonstrate through their citations that a specific work published a long time ago continues to have theoretical or intellectual relevance today.

Milestones, canons, and classics notwithstanding, the co-citation network should be useful in mapping the social and cognitive dimensions of the invisible college in contemporary journalism and mass communication research. Figure 1 presents the co-citation network for the 37 most-cited sources. Unlike the 1980 study’s six discrete and small clusters (not shown), the present study identifies one large cluster (26 of the 37 most-cited sources), with two smaller ones linked directly to it. Compared to the largest cluster in the 1980 study (11 of the 43 most-cited sources), the main cluster in Figure 1 is far bigger. The configuration suggests the field’s cognitive convergence in research activities. As Sullivan, White, and Barboni argued, clusters of articles would ”tend to be larger, and to be larger fraction of the population of articles whose reference created the clusters” when intellectual activity in a specialty is more focused.81

The core in the co-citation network appears to be associated with perspectives on social construction of reality and framing, two closely related concepts. In the center of the co-citation network, Gans’ book, Deciding What’s News, emerges as the most heavily co-cited, with Gitlin’s The Whole World Is Watching, Tuchman’s Making the News, Lippmann‘s Public Opinion, Entman’s article on framing, and Pan and Kosicki’s article on framing. Although McCombs and Shaw’s 1972 agenda-setting article remains on the list of most-cited references, it does not occupy a central location in the two study periods.

For varying degrees and at different levels, most studies in the main cluster focus on the content, its production and its implications for the interplay between mass media and society. As such, the structure and process of the message stand as the underlying thread tying those works together. White‘s 1950 article on gatekeeping and Shoemaker and Reese‘s book, Mediating the Messages (1996), serve as the ”gateway” connecting the two smaller clusters to the big one. Both works deal with how media content may be affected by a variety of factors at the micro and macro levels. Except for Holsti’s methodology book, the other five linked publications clearly form a cluster that can be best described as a research front, looking at the Internet as a new mass medium in terms of its content and comparisons with traditional media. Finally, the smallest cluster (Krippendorff; Riffe, Lacy, and Fico; and Wimmer and Dominick) involves research methods, particularly the approach to studying media messages.

Conclusions and Disassion

When researchers publish their work in various forms, they com- Pete for the scholarly attention of their peers. The invisible college in any field therefore consists of researchers who are cited by other researchers. Because of the centrality of heavily cited sources in the specialty structure, the sociology of science posits, the core of informal com-

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munication networks among members of the invisible college defines areas of intellectual activity and shapes the kind of knowledge that may be diffused.

Although studying Journalism t? Mass Communication Quarterly alone could not adequately reveal the overall picture of the invisible college of mass communication researchers and scholars as a whole, this study sought to identify the specific discipline-like community that strives to advance both theoretical and methodological knowledge in the field over a 20-year time span. Several conclusions can be drawn.

First, most references cited in the sampled JMCQ articles appear only once. This may suggest that many journalism-related studies attract little scholarly attention in the community of journalism and mass communication researchers after being published (or at least within the sampled years). The absence of frequent citations may suggest only piecemeal contributions to the generation of knowledge or theory building. Like those in other fields in social sciences, these studies might be criticized as “a self-indulgent enterprise with little object beyond narrow careerism.”8z Such criticism is often leveled by critics of social sciences against what is perceived to be non-scientific fields with low levels of conceptualization and weak methods.

Second, although the majority of cited sources in journalism-related studies are published within ten years, the field as a whole still relies significantly on relatively older sources, but not necessarily on specific classics, milestones, or candidates for canonization. The half-life of cited sources suggests that the progress of knowledge and scholarly development in the joumalism-related field does not grow as rapidly as that of other more established fields. A slow-changing field may indicate lack of innovative ideas or novel ways of doing research. While a research front focusing on the Internet has emerged, the general practices in its early stage of investigation seem to be applications of existing concepts and methods to the new phenomenon.

Third, as in sociology and political science, the field of journalism and mass communication research presents two distinctive literatures, using both journal articles and books to distribute theories, method, and cumulative knowledge. On the one hand, the fact that journal articles are cited more frequently suggests the use of recent research references that can be taken as a sign of disciplinary progress. To some extent, it may imply, as Kuhn pointed out, a structure of knowledge and a unified community of On the other hand, there is evidence of significant reliance on books for informal communication and interaction among members of the invisible college. For some collegial or intellectual community, books may be cited when no journal article exists or those published are not as clear or theoretical as books because journals tend to be limited by space. The high visibility of books as most-cited references in joumalism-related studies raises stimulating questions: Do these books endure because they validate knowledge? Are they cited because they serve as ”charismatic document~”?~~ Are they indicative of the field as preparadigmatic in the Kuhnian sense?



Fourth, the co-citation network identified in the present study strongly suggests some sort of theoretical and methodological convergence in contemporary journalism-related studies. The borrowed concepts and methods from sociology aside, there seems to be scholarly effort to merge the social construction of reality perspective with framing analysis through a variety of approaches. This intellectual and collegial enterprise is important because in social sciences ”lack of consen- sus on theory and method may greatly reduce the role of research areas in process of the disciplinary de~elopment .”~~ Without a detailed examination of all the sources involved, however, it is difficult to ascertain theory building in the core area of the network. Equally difficult is to determine whether these researchers constitute a theory group with unwavering theoretical commitments and continuing collegial influences. A decade or two from now, a new crop of researchers and scholars may replace many of the most co-cited authors. In its current form, the intellectual structure of journalism-related research does not appear to provide any “cognitive competition“ or distinct positions86 to describe and explain the same phenomenon.

Fifth, the citation analysis of a single journal certainly is inadequate to round up the classics in the field of mass communication research. A classic, as Alexander put it, “establishesfundamental criteria” from which other researchers are likely to draw a common point of reference in their theoretical discussion because of its privileged status vis- 8-vis contemporary explorations in the same fie1d.g Since the 1980 study, the field has changed significantly as more journals, such as Newspaper Research Journal, Mass Communication & Society, New Media & Society, Journal of Media Economics, and Journal of Media Ethics, have com- peted with Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly for manuscripts. If the co-citation network is any indication, over the past 20 years, little common point of reference seems to have endured the test of time. The field apparently has moved beyond what the founding fathers and pio- neers had studied before.

Although the evidence is limited, to answer DeFleur’s 1998 question lamenting the demise of the classics, it is likely that the milestones have been either abandoned or buried in the paths less traveled by researchers since the late 1980s. For whatever reasons,% the milestones do not constitute the standard symbols of concepts, representing instead research traditions that have mostly faded out of the horizon in journalism-related studies. The same can be said of the canonic texts that Katz and his colleagues argued to be ”foundational for media studies.” As far as the invisible college in mass communication research is con- cerned, the footprints left behind by the milestones or canonic texts are no longer traced by new groups of pathfinders in journalism-related studies. An expanded sample that includes all journals related to mass communication research should reveal whether this pattern holds up across the field. What is evident is that, regardless of its size, a vibrant intellectual and collegial community has evolved over time that continues to advance relevant theories, methods, and knowledge in the field.

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NOTES

1. Karl Mannheim, Ideology b Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1936), 3.

2. Mannheim, Ideology b Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 3.

3. Wilbur Schramm, with Steven H. Chaffee and Everett M. Rogers, eds., The Beginnings of Communication Study in America: A Personal Memoir (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997).

4. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, ”Rebellion and Ritual in Disciplinary His- tories of U.S. Mass Communication Study: Looking for ‘The Reflexive Turn,”‘ Mass Communication & Society 3 (2000): 87-115.

5. The notion of disciplinary-like community and its academic practices were pointed out by an anonymous reviewer.

6. Leah A. Lievrouw, ”The Invisible College Reconsidered: Biblio- metrics and the Development of Scientific Communication Theory,” Communication Research 16 (October 1989): 615-28.

7. Lievrouw, “The Invisible College,” 622, emphasis added. 8. Mannheim, Ideology b Utopia: A n Introduction to the Sociology of

Knowledge, 31. 9. Louis Wirth, “Preface,” in Mannheim, Ideology 6 Utopia: A n

Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, xxix. See, also, Stephan Fuchs, “A Sociological Theory of Scientific Change,” Social Forces 71 (June 1993): 933-53.

10. Edward Nadel, ”Commitment and Co-citation: An Indicator of Incommensurability in Patterns of Formal Communication,” Social Studies of Science 13 (May 1983): 255-82.

11. Fuchs, “A Sociological Theory of Scientific Change,” 939. 12. William J. Paisley, ”The Role of Invisible Colleges in Scientific

Information Transfer,” Educational Researchers 1 (1972): 5-19. 13. James G. Ennis, “The Social Organization of Sociological Know-

ledge: Modeling the Intersection of Specialties,” American Sociological Review 57 (April 1992): 259-65; Nicholas C. Mullins, “Theories and Theory Groups Revisited,” Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 319-37.

14. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientijic Revolutions, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

15. Diana Crane, ”Transnational Networks in Basic Science,” In- ternational Organization 25 (summer 1971): 585-601; Lowell Hargens, Nicholas C. Mullins, and Pamela K. Hecht, “Research Areas and Strati- fication Processes in Science,” Social Studies of Science 10 (February 1980): 55-74.

16. Diana Crane, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scient$c Communities (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972), 13.

17. Elisabeth S. Clemens, Walter W. Powell, Kris McIlwaine, and Dina Okamoto, ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly Reputation,” The American Journal of Sociology 101 (September 1995): 433-94.

18. Clemens et al., “Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly Reputation,” 433.

19. Loet Leydesdorff, ”In Search of Epistemic Networks,” Social

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Studies of Science 21 (February 1991): 75-110; Loet Leydesdorff and Olga Amsterdamska, ”Dimensions of Citation Analysis,” Science, Technology, G. Human Values 15 (summer 1990): 305-335.

20. William C. Baum, G. N. Griffiths, Robert Matthews, and Daniel Scherruble, ”American Political Science before the Mirror: What Our Journals Reveal about the Profession,” The Journal of Politics 38 (November 1976): 895-917.

21. Stephane Baldi and Howell L. Hargens, ”Re-examining Price’s Conjectures on the Structure of Reference Networks: Results from the Special Relativity, Spatial Diffusion Modeling and Role Analysis Literatures,” Social Studies of Science 27 (August 1997): 669-87; Daniel Sullivan, D. Hywel White, and Edward J. Barboni, ”Co-citation Analyses of Science: An Evaluation,” Social Studies of Science 7 (May

22. Michael E. Gordon and Julia E. Purvis, ”Journal Publication Records as a Measure of Research Performance in Industrial Relations,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 45 (October 1991): 194-201.

23. Diana Hicks and Jonathan Potter, “Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: A Reflexive Citation Analysis or Science Disciplines and Disciplining Science,” Social Studies of Science 21 (August 1991): 459-501.

24. Nils Petter Gleditsch, ”The Most-cited Articles in JPR,” Journal of Peace Research 30 (November 1993): 445-49.

25. Lowell L. Hargens, “Impressions and Misimpressions about Sociology Journals,” Contemporary Sociology 20 (May 1991): 343-49.

26. Diana Crane, ”Social Structure in a Group of Scientists: A Test of the ’Invisible College’ Hypothesis,” American Sociological Review 34 (June

27. Henry G. Small, ”Cited Documents as Concept Symbols,” Social Studies of Science 8 (August 1978): 327-40.

28. Dary E. Chubin and Soumyo D. Moitra, “Content Analysis of References: Adjunct or Alternative to Citation Counting,” Social Studies of Science 5 (1975): 423-41.

29. Leydesdorff and Amsterdamska, “Dimensions of Citation Analy- sis,” 305-335.

30. Leydesdorff and Amsterdamska, “Dimensions of Citation Analy- sis,” 326.

31. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly Reputation,” 482-83.

32. Gleditsch, ”The Most-cited Articles,” 445. 33. Leydesdorff and Amsterdamska, ”Dimensions of Citation Analy-

34. Gordon and Purvis, ”Journal Publication Records,” 200. 35. Leydesdorff and Amsterdamska, ”Dimensions of Citation Analy-

36. Hicks and Potter, “Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,” 459-501. 37. Eugene Garfield, ”Citation Analysis as a Tool in Journal Evalua-

tion,” Science 178 (November 1972): 471-79; Eugene Garfield, Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology and Humanities (New York John Wiley, 1979).

1977): 223-40.

1969): 335-52.

sis,“ 326.

sis,“ 305-335.

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38. Derek J. de Solla Price, “Networks of Scientific Papers,” Science

39. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 40. Richard R. Cole and Thomas A. Bowers, ”Research Article Pro-

ductivity of U.S. Journalism Faculties,” Journalism Quarterly 50 (summer 1973): 246-54; Bradley S. Greenberg and John C. Schweitzer, ”’Mass Communication Scholars’ Revisited and Revised,” Journalism Quarterly 66 (summer 1989): 473-75; J. Thomas Russell and Charles H. Martin, ”Sources of Scholarly Publications in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations,” Journal of Advertising 5 (1976): 29-34; John C. Schweitzer, “Research Article Productivity by Mass Communication Scholars,” Journalism Quarterly 65 (summer 1988): 479-84, Lawrence C. Soley and Leonard N. Reid, “Advertising Article Productivity of the U.S. Academic Community,” Journalism Quarterly 60 (autumn 1983): 464-69,542; Richard C. Vincent, ”Broadcast Research Productivity of US. Communications Programs, 1976-83,“ Journalism Quarterly 61 (winter 1984): 841-46.

41. Lawrence J. Chase and Stanley J. Baran, “An Assessment of Quantitative Research in Mass Communication,” lournalism Quarterly 53 (summer 1976): 308-311; Rasha Kamhawi and David Weaver, “Mass Communication Research Trends from 1980-1999,“ Journalism 6 Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (spring 2003): 7-27; Stephen Lacy and Daniel Riffe, ”Sins of Omission and Commission in Mass Communication Quantitative Research,” Journalism Quarterly 70 (spring 1993): 133-39; Dennis T. Lowry, “An Evaluation of Empirical Studies Reported in Seven Journals in the ’ ~ O S , ” Journalism Quarterly 56 (summer 1979): 262-68,288; Kurt M. Miller and Oscar H. Gandy Jr., ”Paradigmatic Drift: A Bibliographic Review of the Spread of Economic Analysis in the Literature of Communication,” Journalism Quarterly 68 (winter 1991): 663-72; Daniel Riffe and Alan Freitag, “A Content Analysis of Content Analysis: Twenty-five Years of Journalism Quarterly,” Journalism 8 Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (winter 1997): 873-82; Wilbur Schramm, ”Twenty Years of Journalism Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (spring 1957): 91-107; Tami K. Tomasello, “The Status of Internet-based Research in Five Leading Communication Journals, 1994-1999,” Journalism 6 Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (winter 2001): 659-74.

42. Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, and Frederick Fico, Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erbaum, 1998), 15.

43. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly Reputation,” 482.

44. Crane, Invisible Colleges, 19. 45. Rasha Kamhawi and David Weaver, ”Mass Communication

Research Trends from 1980-1999,“ Journalism 8 Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (spring 2003): 7-27.

46. Jerald Hage, Techniques and Problems of Theory Construction in Sociology (New York John Wiley & Sons, 1972); Pamela J. Shoemaker, James William Tankard, Jr., and Dominic L. Lasorsa, How to Build Social Science Theories (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004).

47. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly

149 (July 1965): 510-15.



Reputation,“ 447. 48. Melvin L. DeFleur, ”Where Have All the Milestones Gone? The

Decline of Significant Research on the Process and Effects of Mass Communication,” Mass Communication & Society 1 (winter / spring 1998): 85-98.

49. Small, “Cited Documents,” 338. 50. K. E. M. Kent and Ramona R. Rush, “International Commu-

nication as a Field: A Study of Journalism Quarterly Citations,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (autumn 1977): 580-83; Byron Reeves and Christine L. Borgman, “A Bibliometric Evaluation of Core Journals in Communication Research,” Human Communication Research 10 (fall 1983): 119-36; Donald E. Rice, Christine L. Borgman, and Byron Reeves, ”Citation Networks of Communication Journals, 1977-1985: Cliques and Positions, Citations Made and Citations Received,” Human Communication Research 15 (winter 1988): 256-83; Percy H. Tannenbaum and Bradley S. Greenberg, ”’JQ References: A Study of Professional Change,” Journalism Quarterly 38 (spring 1961): 203-207.

51. Yorgo Pasadeos, Matt Bunker, and Kyun-Soo Kim, ”Influences on the Media Law Literature: A Divergence of Mass Communication Scholars and Legal Scholars?” Communication Law 6 Policy (in press); Yorgo Pasadeos, Joe Phelps, and Bong-Hyun Kim, “Disciplinary Impact of Advertising Scholars: Temporal Comparisons of Influential Authors, Works and Research Networks,” Journal of Advertising 27 (winter 1998): 53-70; Yorgo Pasadeos, R. Bruce Renfro, and Mary Lynn Hanily, ”Influential Authors and Works of the Public Relations Scholarly Literature: A Network of Recent Research,” Journal of Public Relations Research 11 (1999): 29-52;

52. James. W., Tankard, Jr., Tsan-Kuo Chang, and Kuo-Jen Tsang, ”Citation Networks as Indicators of Journalism Research Activity,” Journalism Quarterly 61 (spring 1984): 89-96, 124.

53. Fuchs, “A Sociological Theory of Scientific Change.” 54. Crane, ”Social Structure,” 439. 55. Diana Hicks, “Limitations of Co-citation Analysis as a Tool. for

Science Policy,” Social Studies of Science 17 (May 1987): 295-316. 56. Leydesdorff and Amsterdamska, ”Dimensions of Citation Analy-

sis,” 324. 57. For each citation, these elements were recorded: author name(s),

year of publication, title of the cited work, type of publication (journal article, book, book chapter or article in book, convention paper, thesis, dissertation, others), journal title if the cited work was a journal article, year of Journalism 6 Mass Communication Quarterly for citing article, vol- ume number for citing article, page number at which citing article began, and author name(s) for citing article. This study added ”the Web as a type of publication for the cited work. References to the following kinds of sources were excluded on the assumption that they would not be heavily cited or be likely to cite other references: newspaper articles, popular magazine articles, law cases, speeches, letters, and minor government reports.

58. A. E. Cawkell, ”Understanding Science by Analyzing Its Litera-



ture,“ in Essays of an Information Scientist, vol. 2, ed. Eugene Garfield (Philadelphia: IS1 Press, 1977), 543-49.

59. Crane, ”Social Structure,” 336. 60. Hargens, Mullins, and Hecht, “Research Areas,” 58. 61. Small, ”Cited Documents,” 337. 62. Gleditsch, “The Most-cited Articles”; Alan L. Porter, ”Citation

Analysis: Queries and Caveats,” Social Studies of Science 7 (May 1977): 257-67.

63. Gleditsch, ”The Most-cited Articles,” 446. 64. de Solla Price, ”Networks of Scientific Papers,” 510-15. 65. Baum et al., ”American Political Science,” 905. 66. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly

67. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly

68. Hicks and Potter, ”Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,” 459-501. 69. Clemens et al., ”Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly

Reputation,” 433-94. 70. Clemens et al., “Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholarly

Reputation,” 433-94. 71. Clement Y. K. So, ”Citation Patterns of Core Communication

Journals: An Assessment of the Developmental Status of Communication,” Human Communication Research 15 (winter 1988): 236- 55.

72. Paula M. Poindexter and Jean Folkerts, ”Significant Journalism and Communication Books of the Twentieth Century,“ Journalism 6 Mass Communication Quarterly 76 (winter 1999): 627-30. Poindexter and Folkerts never reported the size of the sample in their non-systematic survey on books nominated for ”the most important books,“ nor the standards of selection for the final list.

73. Richard Heinzkill, “Characteristics of References in Selected Scholarly English Literary Journals,” Library Quarterly 50 (July 1980): 352- 65.

74. We benefit from the comments made by an anonymous reviewer. 75. Tankard, Chang, and Tsang, ”Citation Networks,” 94, emphasis

added. 76. Michael J. Moravcsik, ”Citation Context Classification of a Cita-

tion Classic Concerning Citation Context Classification,” Social Studies of Science 18 (August 1988): 515-21.

77. Shearon A. Lowery and Melvin L. DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Efects, 3d ed. (New York Longman, 1995), viii.

78. Elihu Katz, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff, eds., Canonic Texts in Media Research: Are There Any? Should There Be? How about These? (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003), 5.

79. Five of the papers grouped under the Columbia School and the Chicago School and to some extent two papers under the Toronto School are more directly related to the American tradition of mainstream mass communication research than the other papers categorized under the

Reputation,” 435.

Reputation,” 433-94.



Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies. 80. The 1983 edition of the Milestones in Mass Communication Research

was listed as one of the ”significant journalism and communication books of the twentieth century” by Poindexter and Folkerts in 1999.

81. Sullivan, White, and Barboni, “Co-citation Analyses of Science: An Evaluation.“

82. Hargens, ”Impressions and Misimpressions,” 345. 83. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 20. 84. Hargens, ”Impressions and Misimpressions,” 347. 85. Hargens, Mullins, and Hecht, ”Research Areas,” 69. 86. Nadel, ”Commitment and Co-citation,” 258. 87. Jeffrey C. Alexander, ”The Centrality of the Classics,” in Social

Theory Today, ed. Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 11-57, emphasis added.

88. DeFleur, ”Where Have All the Milestones Gone?” 85-98.

694 JOURNALISM b MASS COMMUNICAT~ON QUARTERLY