Abstract
After two years of preparation, the first issue of Communication and the Public (CAP) has finally come out.
CAP is an international peer-reviewed scholarly journal. By focusing on the intersections between communication and the public, the journal highlights intellectual and practical problems of great consequence in today’s world. It provides a new forum for analyzing the ramifications of the communication revolution for the public or, perhaps more appropriately, for things public. The title of the journal is intentionally open and broad in order to spur debate.
One challenge in the analysis of either communication or things public is that these terms may mean different things in different societies and cultures. Within the same society, in fact, they may mean different things in different historical periods and across different social groups and collectivities. This journal is committed to reflecting such difference by encouraging diverse standpoints.
We publish scholarship in both social scientific and humanistic traditions and with diverse methods of inquiry. As an international journal, CAP aims to be truly global in scope. While we welcome articles from and about any part of the world, we want to issue a special call for submissions of research from those parts of the world whose experiences have been under-considered in current social and cultural theories or communication studies. We encourage submissions of research that highlights the significance of social, political, and historical contexts.
For this inaugural issue, we invited several leading scholars to share their insights on the directions of the journal or on critical issues related to the journal’s mission. We hope to continue to publish such reflective essays in the future. In addition, this issue includes six research articles and two book reviews. Together, these three categories of articles represent the regular features of the journal. Finally, this issue contains a review essay on critical communication research in China. We hope to publish similar review essays on different regions of the world periodically. Future issues will also publish guest-edited symposia of research articles or commentaries on selected topics. We invite interested scholars to propose guest-edited special issues.
CAP is the product of a partnership between the College of Media and International Culture (CMIC) at Zhejiang University, China, and SAGE Publications. We want to express our admiration and gratitude to James Tattle at SAGE and Dean Fei Wu and Associate Dean Lu Wei of the CMIC for their vision and commitment. We are grateful to our home institutions, the Department of Communication Arts of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Sociology of the University of Pennsylvania, for enthusiastically supporting our endeavor. We thank the editorial and production teams at SAGE, managing editor Lu Wei, and editorial assistant Rosemary Clark for months of hard work testing the journal’s manuscript submission system and making it work. Last but not least, we are profoundly indebted to the scholars who have graciously lent their support by serving on our editorial board, contributing their work, or reviewing manuscripts for the journal.