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A bibliometric analysis of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Communication’s Methodological Evolution

Por: Karla Ramírez
Número 67

Many researchers argue that journal articles are a barometer of research trends and reflect the evolution of communication research. Moreover, for most mass communication scholars, journal articles are the main channel for reporting current research after convention and conference papers.

Research journals provide a good data source to answer questions such as which methods are used most and least often? Which areas have been more or less studied? How does funding for research compare with that of other fields, and what kinds of studies are more or less likely to receive funding?

But, one problem with generalizing from published journal articles to the whole mass communication field is that books, monographs, book chapters, and convention papers are excluded. Despite this drawback, several systematic reviews of mass communication journal articles have already been carried out since 1970s in the United States. This monitoring has been important in finding new insights for future research directions.

Additionally, Christine Borgman (1989) pointed out that “in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest both in scholarly communication as a research area and in the application of bibliometrics as a research method. (...) We consider scholarly communication to be the study of how scholars in any field use and disseminate information through formal and informal channels, whereas bibliometrics is the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media of communication” (Borgman, 1989: 583).

However, there is not any research journal on the Canadian mass communication field. Thus, this study presents a bibliometric analysis of the articles published in the Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) and Communication from 1974 to 2005. Its purpose is to trace the methodological, contributions the journals have made to the Canadian communication field since its inception. More specifically, this analysis’ purpose is to provide a narrative summary supported by descriptive statistics of the methodological trends in CJC and Communication articles.

Method

The objective of the present study is to investigate trends in published mass communication research between the 1974 and 2005 in the Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) and Communication. We were particularly interested in the use of methods and data gathering across time.

We have analyzed mass communication research published in the thirty years between 1974 and 2005 in these Canadian journals. “Research in brief” articles were also included. We have excluded book reviews, essays, and commentaries.

These journals were chosen because they are the oldest publications of the Canadian communication field. The thirty-year time period covered by the present study was chosen to provide a long enough span to observe trends. The Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) founded by Earl Beattie in 1974 at Atkinson College, York University, named Media Probe, become CJC in 1979 ; and Communication, edited by Roger de la Garde and Lyne Ross since 1975 at the Communication department of the Université Laval, journal entitled Communication- Information form 1975 to 1984.

Both journals were born of individual initiatives and their publication was independent in their origin, but in the Eighties, they became journals associated with the Canadian Communication Association, because they represented an ideal space for the publication of the English and French Canadian communication researchers. In fact, they welcomed the members affiliated to this association during the first two years of the association. Moreover, as time went by, they acquired a remarkable notoriety and published articles of Graham Spry, Dallas W. Smythe, Liora Salter, Gertrude Robinson, Roger de la Garde, Gaëtan Tremblay, James Taylor, Vicent Mosco, Marc Raboy, Rowland Lorimer, Robert Babe, Gregory Fouts, and Serge Proulx, among others.

For these reasons, we were interested in doing a bibliometric analysis of mass communication research published in the Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) and Communication, although they do not embrace all the research done in Canadian communication field, they have accompanied its development for the last thirty years. In fact, our findings can only be generalized to these journals.  

A total of 1073 research articles related to mass communication published in the two journals between 1974 and 2005 were included in this analysis. Table 1 shows the distribution of articles analyzed from each journal.

Table 1 Articles analyzed 

Variables coded for each article included the general method of research (qualitative, quantitative, or a mix of both).   If the method by which the results were determined involved numerical or counting procedures and statistics used to report data, the article was classified as quantitative. Quantitative research included mostly content analyses, surveys, and experiments. Qualitative research involves being closely involved with the subjects to increase depth of understanding. It does not cover what is observed into numerical form in order to perform mathematical procedures. It often includes focus groups, direct observation, in-depth interviews, and case studies, as well as legal, policy, and historical research. If more than one data gathering procedure was used, the method was coded as a mixture of qualitative if all were qualitative, a mixture of quantitative if all the methods were quantitative, or a combination of both qualitative and quantitative when both kinds of methods were used. For example, a survey in addition to in-depth interviews would be coded as a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

We also coded the data gathering procedure: survey, content analysis, observation, interviews, ethnography, semantic and semiotic analysis, focus group, archival research, etc.

Findings

The bibliometric analysis of the articles published in Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) and Communication made it possible to locate a total of 1073 articles of which 68,50% use the qualitative method, 18.08% quantitative, 6.06% mixed, while 79 articles do not present any methodological approach. Table 2 shows the dominance of the qualitative methods in both journals from their origin to 2005.  

Table 2 Research Methods during three decades 

Table 3 data reveals that the use of quantitative methods is higher in the articles published in Canadian Journal of Communication than in Communication. Most of these articles come from Windsor University, University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, Université Laval and Université de Montreal.  

Table 3
Method Distributions in CJC and Communication

Table 4 shows that the use of quantitative methods seems to have increase from 1985 to 1995. In fact, most of the articles that uses this method was published in 1991 in Canadian Journal of Communication and Communication, maybe because of the special issue published in CJC: « Canadian Newspapers and International Reporting » (CJC, Vol.16 No.1 1991), in which several articles analyzed newspapers from an economical perspective; and because of cultural industry studies published in Communication. Even in this period, qualitative studies clearly dominated in the two journals we analyzed.

The use of both methods jointly in single studies has been rare, especially from 1996 to 2005. Of the 1073 articles, only 6.06% (65) use it and most of them (35) were published in Communication by researchers from Université Laval, Carleton University and Concordia University and most of them focused in print medias.

Looking only at the first and last time period, it is clear that articles do not present any methodological approach decreased notably in the 1990s and almost disappeared in the last period analyzed.

Table 4 Research Method in CJC and Communication during Three Decades

Table 5 shows the procedures and data sources used. Content analysis far exceeded any other method of data gathering during the three decades. It remains the predominant approach in quantitative and qualitative works. Interviewing and survey increased in frequency from 1985 to 2005, while quantitative data analysis, ranked fifth, and levelled off during this period.

Table 5
The data gathering procedure

The other data gatherings are dispersed throughout the three decades analyzed. But in the last period, we can see a small concentration in the uses of archival research, due to the special issue published in CJC « Archival Documents and Records » (Vol. 26, No.2, 2001) where the main subject is the analyses and application of this approach.

Conclusion

This study sought to analyze trends in mass communication research published in Canadian Journal of Communication and Communication during three decades, with special attention to methods and the data sources used across time.

One notable finding is the lack of quantitative research articles in the journals and the emphasis on qualitative studies. The reasons why quantitative research is not more prominent in these journals could be further investigated. Is this due to the perceived orientation of these journals or to the actual orientation of these journals? In other words, is there a “bias” amongst the journal editors in favour of qualitative research, or do quantitative researchers not submit to these journals because of a perceived bias? These questions could be further examined in surveys of journal editors and quantitative researchers.

On the other hand, a great number of the articles published (68.46%) in both journals belongs to the researchers attached to Canadian universities and most of them use qualitative methods. We could speculate that the Canadian research in communication has been humanities oriented, more qualitative than quantitative.

In fact, several researchers identified the dominance of the qualitative research approach in Canadian Communication field in the 1980s ((Salter, 1981; 1983; 1987; Lacroix & Levesque (1985a, 1985b); Tate (1982)). At that time, Canadian researchers in communications studies seem,   to combine a strongly theoretical orientation with pragmatic goals tied to policy issues; to emphasize organic ties between the private and public sectors; are more interested in the media as a system than its particular contents, more interested in the regulatory apparatus than the particular effects of the media; Are more interested in specific events or in cultural issues and are more inclined to take historical and cultural characteristics into account; whereby the real – although implicit – object of communication studies is none other than Canada/or Quebec(De la Garde, 1987: 15).

However, these generalizations can be applied only to the journals studied here. Our findings may create the impression that relatively little quantitative and mixed research are conducted in the Canadian communication field, but it seems likely that more quantitative and mixed research are published in other more specialized journals, book chapters, monographs, and books.

Another major finding of this study is the dominance of content analysis. In this respect, several researchers identified the dominance of qualitative content analysis in Canadian communication research in the Eighties, especially in Québec (Lacroix & Levesque, 1985a, 1985b). While, the use of textual analysis was dominant especially in the English Canadian communication research (Salter, 1981; 1988).

In addition, several studies on scientific communication published in American journals also show a notable increase in the use of content analysis in journalism and mass communication research since the 1970s. The growth in content analysis, for Daniel Riffe and Alan Freitang (1997) may reflect, (…), growth in the number of scholars in journalism and mass communication, growth in graduate programs, and broadening of the field to include broader definitions of content. Easier access to content through databases or archives may contribute to use of the method. Computerized content analysis, as old as the General Inquirer and as new as free Web site programs, may signal continued growth (Riffe & Freitang, 1997: 874).

Moreover, the centrality of content analysis in communication research published in the Canadian Journal of Communication and Communication is consistent with the interest in the study of print media.

Finally, we find that funding for research was relatively rare and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) becomes the main source.

References
BORGMAN, Chistine L. (1989), “Bibliometrics and scholarly communication”, en Communication Research, Vol. 16, núm. 5, pp. 583 – 599.

DE LA Garde, Roger. (1987, winter), “Mr. Innis, is there life after the ‘American Empire’?” (The 1987 Southam Lecture), Canadian Journal of Communication, pp. 7 – 21.

SALTER, Liora. (1981), “Editor’s introduction”, in Liora Salter (Ed.), Communication studies in Canada, Toronto: Butterworths, pp. xi –xiii.

SALTER, Liora. (1983), «L’étude de la communication : évolution d’une discipline au Canada», Communication Information, vol.5, no.2/3, hiver/été, p.37-62.

SALTER, Liora. (1987), “Taking Stock: Communication Studies in 1987”, in Canadian Journal of Communication, Winter 1987, 23 -45.

LACROIX, Jean-Guy & Benoît LÉVESQUE (1985a), « L’émergence et l’Institutionnalisation de la recherche en communication au Québec », Communication Information, vol.5, no.2, printemps, p.7-31.

LACROIX, Jean-Guy & Benoît LÉVESQUE (1985b), « Principaux thèmes et courants théoriques dans la littérature scientifique en communication Québec », Communication Information, vol.7, no.3, automne p.153-211.

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Aurora González Turnbull

Centro de investigación Cultura popular, conocimiento y crítica. Universidad de Montreal