Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Dr. Daniel Riffe at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Riffe’s teaching and research areas include mass communication theory and research methodology, mass communication and environmental risk, international news, government-press relations, citizen journalism, and the treatment of women and minorities in the media.

His articles include:

Analyzing media messages: Using quantitative content analysis in research (2005)
A content analysis of content analyses: Twenty-five years of Journalism Quarterly (1997)
The effectiveness of random, consecutive day and constructed week sampling in newspaper content analysis. (1993)

Class discussion or assignments for papers at three levels:

Flashlight: Can you find Dr. Riffe’s articles in a research database or elsewhere online? Do you think they are examples of useful pieces of journalism and mass communications research? Why or why not?

Spotlight: Why did the author’s original blog post contain the questions Dr. Riffe did not answer? Was that fair? Should editors of major journals answer such questions?

Searchlight: How should scholarly research be judged? The author says one measurement should be whether or not the scholarship is cited by others. Do you agree? Should “cited by others” include media reports, or only cites from other scholars? What are the dangers of relying on the current popularity of a piece of research as a guide to its worth?

Extra credit: The University of Pennsylvania has a helpful list of communications and media related associations and journals. In addition, review this summary of new digital research articles. Are you familiar with any of the journals on following list? One scholar said they were useful for digital media ethics: Communication and Society; Communication Quarterly; Computers and Society; Contemporary Sociology; Convergence; Ethics and Information Technology; First Monday; Information; Information, Communication and Society; International Journal of Communication; International Journal of Gaming and Computer Mediated Simulations; International Journal of Interest Research Ethics; Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Journal of Communication; Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; Journal of Information Ethics; Journal of Information Technology; Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in Society; Journal of Mass Media Ethics; New Media & Society; Qualitative Inquiry; Technology and Society, and The Information Society. Realistically, how is a scholar to follow all these journals? Design a plan for determining which journals, if any, you would want to follow and consider the most relevant.