It Takes a Village: Taking Greater Advantage of Our Scholarly Diversity

As I suspect is true for most media studies scholars, there are many things on my “wish list” for our field: a greater appreciation of the political relevance of what, at least in most quantitative studies of political communication, is too quickly dismissed as “mere” entertainment or popular culture; a more sophisticated conceptualization of politics and power within cultural studies approaches to media; a more critical sensibility to how we approach our research; a greater emphasis on the larger economic, cultural, political, and technological environments within which communication occurs; more comparative and global research; a better understanding of how new media technologies are fundamentally changing communicative relationships; more research that finds its way into larger public, policy maker, and advocacy discourse about the role of the media in a democratic society; and so on.