Communication Studies

This article considers the future of our discipline. The author imagines how emerging media artifacts, discourses, and environments will affect the practices of communication scholarship and change the shape of our scholarly community. By tracing and reflecting upon some of the key disciplinary debates over object, method, and purpose, the author argues that the future of our field is moving toward more relational, locally-inflected “texts,” more ethnographically-minded methods, and more social-justice-oriented goals.

The recent popularity of ‘surprise military homecomings’ on YouTube offers an opportunity to revisit debates about the role of online spectatorship in performances of citizenship, particularly during times of war. This article argues that these videos position spectatorship as a civic duty and allow for a mediated form of affective participation, which the author refers to as vicarious sacrifice.

This article explores the ambient affect of contemporary nihilism through a conjunctural analysis
of key image macros from the ‘nihilist meme’ stash. Drawing from Berlant’s theory of cruel
optimism, the author identifies an active form of nihilism unique to the present moment that
suggests a loosening of traditional American cruel attachments to open new possibilities for what
it means to live a good life.

Post 9/11 wars have been mediated more than any other conflict in history. Just as television defined Vietnam and the first Gulf war, the internet is defining what we know, see, and remember about Iraq and Afghanistan. A handful of communication scholars have begun to pay attention to the way personnel represent themselves online, arguing that warrior-produced videos offer an alternative to the military–media control over information. This article takes up internet meme videos as mediated forms of cultural participation, arguing that the compulsion for US troops to create meme videos is fueled in part by the technology and in part by the popular culture they still interact with.

From ancient Greece through Alexis de Tocqueville and on through today, democracy has meant a lot of different things to many different people. The ambivalence surrounding the meaning of democracy and all of the ‘adjectives’ used to ‘precise’ the concept (i.e. constitutional, constitutive, direct, republican representative, deliberative, fugitive, pluralist, parliamentary, multiracial, and electronic) suggests that democracy is a rich discursive site for the study of these competing discourses. Through contrapuntal analysis, a form of social text analysis informed by Mikhail Bakhtin’s work in dialogism, this study provides a method for discussing ideological conceptions of democracy in fluid tension within the discursive activity of a U.S. Congressional meeting.

The recent popularity of ‘surprise military homecomings’ on YouTube offers an opportunity to revisit debates about the role of online spectatorship in performances of citizenship, particularly during times of war. This article argues that these videos position spectatorship as a civic duty and allow for a mediated form of affective participation, which the author refers to as vicarious sacrifice.

This article explores the rhetorical function of Internet memes as memory actants. It contributes to an ongoing conversation about the ways in which digital communication has transformed the relationship between media, memory, and the archive by disrupting predicable “decay times” and emphasizing memory as a “connective” process rather than a “collective” product. Through an analysis of memetic responses to affective flashpoints in the collective US experience, namely, the 9/11 constellation, this article explores the potential for memes to influence not only the content of public memory but also the attitudes with which we remember that content.

This article explores the ambient affect of contemporary nihilism through a conjunctural analysis of key image macros from the ‘nihilist meme’ stash. Drawing from Berlant’s theory of cruel optimism, the author identifies an active form of nihilism unique to the present moment that suggests a loosening of traditional American cruel attachments to open new possibilities for what it means to live a good life.

To better characterize on-again/off-again (on-off) relationships, the current study examined variations in these relationships using a dimensional approach. Based on a five-typology of on-off relationships, corresponding dimensions were developed and assessed in relation to breakup and renewal negotiations as well as relational quality characteristics. Canonical correlation analyses with 299 participants currently or previously in an on-off relationship revealed two major patterns: (1) positive on-off dynamics (e.g., relationship improvement, maintained interest) were associated with more successful transitions and greater relational quality, and (2) a combination of positive and negative on-off dynamics was related to positive change but also waning interest in the relationship and a greater difficulty negotiating relational transitions. Overall, the current findings suggest certain dimensions play stronger roles in characterizing on-off relationships, and assessing the dimensions in combination (i.e., those that covary in predicting relational characteristics) can reveal insights beyond those provided by categorical classifications of on-off relationships.

The study of popular music developed in part to correct the elitist dismissal of the popular and to validate popular music as a legitimate object of inquiry. Despite this, there is little popular music research that focuses on the most mainstream popular music. In this study we call for a return to the examination of the most mainstream popular songs and music videos through a preliminary investigation of two concurrent hits from the Adult Contemporary (AC) format: Martina McBride's “This One's for the Girls” and Five for Fighting's “100 Years.” Although both similarly focus on images and issues of life for American women and men during a century of living, they present dramatically different images of women's and men's lives in the lyrics and videos. Through examination of these songs and their accompanying videos, we call attention to the neglect of the most mainstream popular music and reiterate the importance of examining important aspects of U.S. culture, in this case gender, through its most mainstream, and seemingly mundane texts.