The Evolution of Research in Journalism and Communication: An Analysis of Scholarly CIOS-Indexed Journals From 1915 to Present

Abstract

Assessments of programmatic research remain important in the current higher education landscape, as the field of Journalism & Mass Communication (JMC) enters its second century. This study profiles scholarly productivity across the larger discipline’s first century, focusing on scholarly output for institutions in referred journals indexed by the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS) database since 1915. The 30 most prolific scholars all have at least a decade of experience and typically publish with a coauthor. All but four of the 30 most prolific units grant doctoral degrees. Implications of converging research areas wrought by emerging digital media—and their erasure of the field’s sub-domains—are discussed.