Community Structure Approach

Abstract

Any annotated bibliography on community structure scholarship must pay homage to an early US founder of both sociology and communication studies disciplines, the University of Chicago’s Robert Park, who in The Immigrant Press and its Control (Park 1922, cited under Core Texts) argued that scholars should pay attention not only to the impact of media on public opinion, but also to the impact of public opinion on media. Although most scholars working in the community structure tradition turn from the traditional perspective of examining the impact of media on society to a reverse perspective of exploring the impact of society on media, all appear convinced that reporting on critical social and political issues mirrors “macro” constructs (such as community characteristics) more closely than “micro” constructs, such as psychological differences among journalists or newsroom organizational differences. Several features of community structure scholarship deserve special attention. First, very few books have been written on community structure theory and empirics. Second, a considerable amount of community structure scholarship has been generated by relatively few scholars and their graduate student progeny at the universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington State, with additional contributions from the universities of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio State. As a result, many names repeat themselves in any annotated bibliography, not because of omissions, but rather because most active scholars are deeply committed and productive. Third, a noticeable shift has occurred in the community structure field, from an initial emphasis on media functioning within a broader social system as a mechanism of “social control” reinforcing the interests of elites as social system “guard dogs,” to a view of media functioning as an agent of “social change,” reinforcing community “ties,” participation, and civic engagement, often interacting with vibrant volunteer efforts organized collectively under the umbrella concept “social capital.” Although substantial numbers of researchers traditionally explored community structure at the “institutional” level, focusing on the pluralism or diversity of institutions and organizations, many modern scholars drill into demographic and aggregate indicators to inquire how much media are shaped by the interests of emerging groups, whether African Americans, Latinos, or “vulnerable” groups generally (e.g., those with a significant percentage unemployed or below the poverty level), or “protest” groups such as activists for gay rights. Today’s community structure scholars also pursue myriad methodologies and statistical techniques, reaching beyond a few cities to nationwide, even cross-national, samples of newspapers, creating sophisticated indices measuring “structure” (including, for example, a “gay market index”) as well as multiple media channels, including modern, new media public affairs place blogging.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.