TY - JOUR
AU - Bajnok, Andrea
AB - Communication Theory and Application in Post-Socialist Contexts is an extension of a previously edited volume by the same authors (Minielli et al., 2021). The book offers a comprehensive reflection on a wide range of communication theories and applications from post-Socialist societies in eight countries. The contributing authors are either scholars or practitioners living in this region or have an established tenure studying, teaching, and collaborating with these countries. This latest edition addressed one of the main limitations of the previous volume—an issue that characterizes many studies on East European media—applying a Western theoretical framework to the analysis of post-Socialist communication scholarship (Demeter, 2022). In this present volume, the authors introduce concepts and perspectives that take into consideration the regional context, its history, and its specific development of media culture. With this, the book helps readers deepen their knowledge on how post-Socialist countries apply the concept of communication, how they relate media culture to societal institutions such as politics or economy, and how they theorize both the phenomena and the operation of the media in a wider social context. In the current state of war between Russia and Ukraine, this edition also serves as a historical document. Although the manuscript was published just before the Russian invasion, the text gives layers of insights into how to interpret the relationship between post-Socialist countries and the West, especially with the United States. The authors tell us that communication buzzwords such as disinformation or fake news that are presumed to be universal concepts are subject to different interpretations that are related to different cultures in general, and different media cultures in particular. The most important contribution of the book is that it is not about post-Socialist media and communication scholarship, but instead offers a space for post-Socialist communication and media theories, giving communication scholars from post-Socialist countries the opportunity to share their scholarship with an international audience. Readers with a general interest in communication theory and applications can follow the thematic organization of the four parts of the book, which offer 14 scholarly, applied, and pedagogical chapters for those who would like to dig deeper in various communication phenomena in the post-socialist region. The first part of the book presents five chapters with different fields that range from contemplations of intercultural communication, features of post-Soviet media, urban communication, and organizational and business communication to the presentation of a film study about Ukraine. The geopolitical focus is obvious, but it is difficult to link together the loosely interconnected chapters that indicate the complexity and heterogeneity of the region. However, the science- and reality-shaping power of the echoed past and new generations can be found in all writings. The first chapter of Part 1 considers intercultural communication in Russia. The popularity of intercultural communication in Western countries acted as a catalyst for its development in Russia, but it took its own way as a discipline whose antecedents were created by great Russian scholars, mainly linguists, like Roman Jakobson, Jurij Lotman or Lev Vygotsky. In contemporary Russian linguistics, the concepts of the linguopersonology and linguistic conceptology are popular. Research from these perspectives aims to identify correlation of language and culture and contribute to the development of intercultural communication as a discipline. Chapters two and three deal with unique features of post-Soviet media, the examples of modern day trends include online platforms and digital technologies. Chapter two examines three case studies that illustrate rising interest toward grassroots science communication in Russia: Biomolecula (online), Science Slam events and the SciOne video channel. Reading this chapter in peacetime, we might have been amazed at the use of new digital technologies and online platforms and developed communication sub-fields in modern Russia. However, the war puts Chapter two in a different context. These initiatives are illustrative of the revival of Russian science communication after its dissolution by private stakeholders who grew up in post-Soviet times. The chapter argues that the Russian media system plays a uniquely central role in shaping these projects which are historically linked to the Soviet Union era while featuring a fusion of older socialist and newer capitalist media logics. The challenges mentioned by the authors have never been more relevant than they are today. In the context of the Ukrainian–Russian war, descriptions of the relationship between the media and the state, information flows and media consumption have gained new meaning. The power of a new generation play an important role in producing content and science communication. As the authors of the chapter say: “Such case studies give hope for a future where new generations of Russians would understand, value, and benefit from the liberating power of knowledge” (p. 41). Chapter three is based on the analysis of 20 of the most popular Russian urban media outlets, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Voronezh or Volgograd. Since 2011, independent urban media began to grow across the country driven by political and social factors. Some local media have branches in other regions, for example Sobaka.ru (from Saint Petersburg) is represented in 20 regions. Urban communication is another developed subarea of communication driven by a younger generation of Russians who are actively involved in the social transformations of public space. Chapter four is an exploratory study about workplace documentation in Post-Soviet Belarus and Russia and demonstrates the legacy of Soviet heritage. The study contributes to internal and professional communication pedagogy by raising awareness of organizational documentation and regulatory practices in Belarus and Russia. Throughout the chapter, the focus is on identifying changes in workplace documentation that have occurred in Belarus and Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union when American and European companies conducted business in the new independent states. After the dissolution of Soviet Union, several American and European companies conducted business in the new independent states. Thus business cultures were developed by U.S. and European business practices and they have also preserved administrative mechanisms of the former USSR. The exploratory study contributes to internal/organizational communication pedagogy and its practice. The history of the target countries and functioning of their organizations provide better understanding of internal communication and help contextualize the role of written communication and bureaucracies in these countries. In chapter five, Michael R. Finch analyses Julia Blue’s film directed by Ukrainian-American Roxy Toporowych. The methodology and philosophical framework provided by Ricoeur, who had a direct connection to the post-Socialist Ukrainian Academe, was used to analyze the film. With the help of Ricoeur's methodology, metaphors and symbols are uncovered from this culturally rich text. According to Toporowych, the two main characters, Julia and English are the two sides of Ukraine, light and dark, peace and war, the dialectical interaction of new and old: So, while the war is never directly included in the film, memory and other tools are utilized to illustrate the dialectical tension that is reality in this film. Even when there is peace there is war, as it is not war or peace, it is war and peace simultaneously. (p. 92) The second part of the book provides a complex picture of how communication theory and the application of communication technology contribute to the nation building of different post-Socialist countries. This framework is important nowadays as it delves into the regional struggle where past traumas, Soviet legacy, path dependency, and the fight for independence meet in a constant intellectual, cultural—and now even physical—war for autonomy. The sixth chapter of the book introduces nuances between Public Relations (PR), strategic communication, government communication and propaganda. When it comes to the latter two, the concepts are sometimes less differentiated in Western communication theory as the separation between the state and the media is historically more developed in the West than it is in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. The seventh chapter argues that Slovakia is a promising setting for expanding the existing body of literature on framing theory based on the supranational European identity as the far right’s referent object in the country. Beyond this, the chapter defines the multilevel role of cultural congruence in impacting frame shifts, and it expands our understanding of securitization as influenced by both strategic political alliances and ideologies. Chapter eight is an attempt to show how right-wing Polish political communication tries to manipulate collective memory in the context of nation building. The authors understand this phenomenon as “part of a wider context for (re)establishing national identity in post-socialist societies with regard to the processes of social construction through language and communication and the role of the past as a group-forming factor” (p. 157). The third part of the book deals with the most important agents of the international visibility of post-Socialist communication theory, namely publishing platforms that provide places for theoretical discussions. It is well documented that global imbalances in communication studies are the most significant in theorization, as there are more empirical studies from peripheral world regions and countries than theories. In fact, even studies from the Global South that are authored by non-western scholars are based on Western—typically American—communication theories. Thus, establishing international, English language and indexed journals in peripheral regions, in this case, in the post-Socialist countries, might offer better chances for regional scholars to express and discuss their theoretical perspectives, and to distribute them to an international audience. The first two chapters of this section introduce the foundation, development and mission of the Central European Journal of Communication and the Russian Journal of Communication. These chapters provide content analysis of the works they publish, showing the most important theoretical and empirical questions of regional communication scholarship. They also demonstrate the ways in which a post-Socialist journal can cross national boundaries to disseminate knowledge exchange on an international scale. The last chapter of this section introduces another crucial aspect of communication theorization: the usage of academic textbooks in communication courses. The authors call for sensitivity to the dominance of Western Europe and the US in producing theory and empirical data about social problems particular to these regions which might not be applicable to the cultural contexts of Post-Socialist countries. The last part of the book presents three chapters. Chapter 12 discusses the practical problem of intercultural communication raised by scholars in philology and linguistics by introducing a classroom activity at a university in the Baltics. Authors argue for the importance of recognizing the medium of intercultural communication and the art of listening as significant factors in improving intercultural communication pedagogy. In chapter 13, the author reflects on and analyzes her teaching experience from the perspective of an international scholar. The knowledge-transmission model is still alive in Eastern countries—the mono-logical mode—where the teacher is viewed as an authority figure and students play a passive role in the learning process. In a country where students’ cultural tradition is to defer to authority, critical questioning is becoming more common. This is demonstrated by greater comfort in questioning Vladimir Putin’s communication competence and shows a new generation of learners with higher expectations and critical attitudes. In Russian communication literature, communication is an information exchange and there is little familiarity with Western theoretical discourse, where communication is treated as a social construction. The author describes how Kazakh and Russian students respond to this social-constructivist approach. The last chapter is an analytical data-based study about how research and classroom practices help to identify and address biases between the United States and Russia. The process of perception, stereotyping, and the lack of cultural knowledge can pose barriers to interpersonal communication even in peacetime. The deterioration of international relations has only gotten worse since this chapter was finished. Teaching of intercultural communication will face more serious challenges than before due to increasing ethnocentrism. In present days where intercultural misunderstanding could have a fatal effect on international stability, where the narratives of the Cold War seem to be reborn, an edition like this can help promote a more productive dialogue based on common understanding that is extremely important for not just communication scholars but for all citizens alike. References Demeter M. ( 2022 ). Book review: Media and public relations research in post-socialist societies, by Maureen C. Minielli, Marta N. Lukacovic, Sergei A. Samoilenko, Michael R. Finch, & Deborrah Uecker (Eds.) . Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly , 99 ( 1 ), 318 – 320 . https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211019002 Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Minielli M. , Lukacovic M. N., Samoilenko S. A., Finch M., Uecker D. (Eds.) ( 2021 ). Media and public relations research in post-socialist societies . Lexington Books – Rowman & Littlefield . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Communication Theory and Application in Post-Socialist Context
JF - Communication Theory
DO - 10.1093/ct/qtac015
DA - 2022-08-10
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/communication-theory-and-application-in-post-socialist-context-HGLdoeh0Kj
SP - 509
EP - 511
VL - 32
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -