Who are you citing? In communication studies, the most cited authors are skewed even more white and male than previously thought.
Principal researcher Deen Freelon, and coauthors Meredith Pruden, Kirsten Eddy, and Rachel Kuo published a study detailing the degree to which race, gender, and location affect who gets cited in the top journals in the communication field. “Inequities of race, place, and gender among the communication citation elite, 2000–2019,” published in Journal of Communication, identifies a group of 1,675 highly cited communication scholars. As people cited the most often in the top communication journals, these scholars are the discipline’s “power elite;” their work disproportionately shapes what theories and research questions are considered valuable significant to the discipline. Building on previous work documenting serious inequalities in the field, Freelon and his collaborators show that these disparities are even more pronounced among top citations.
These “Elite” are 91.5% white, 74.3 male, and 78.6% located in the United States. These percentages are even more skewed white and male than general citation statistics found in previous work. And it gets worse when you apply an intersectional lens: among the 23 elite communication scholars who are Hispanic or Latine, only five are women. Of the 14 Black scholars in this elite group, only one is a woman (and she is employed by a department outside of communication studies).
Every single citation can “reify or resist” these inequities. For scholars seeking to resist these trends, the authors offer a series of recommendations:
- Review the reference lists for your recent publications, presentations, course syllabi, and teaching pedagogy. Take note of how many citations claim to represent “universal” or “generalizable” theory and ask whether they apply only to Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries and people.
- Prioritize diversity in your reading lists. When searching for new scholarship, always begin with those written by scholars from underrepresented groups. Follow other work by these scholars, take note of whom they are citing, and read those publications too.
- Seek out responses to and critiques of longstanding or foundational work in the field, particularly those approaching this work through the lens of equity or diversity, and include these perspectives in your work.
- Diversify the locations you cite. What are the origins of the literature you most frequently cite? Are they mostly WEIRD? Consider the broader global applicability (or lack thereof) of your work. Cite examples of similar issues occurring in other countries beyond your geographic region, or reconsider how your work can be more globally applicable and engage with scholarship that supports that endeavor.
- Draw from existing resources aimed at equitable citation practices, such as AEJMC’s Inclusive Citation (iCite) Project, Women Also Know Stuff, People of Color Also Know Stuff, #CiteASista, Rockefeller Inclusive Science Initiative, Community of Online Research Assignments (Project CORA), Communication Scholars for Transformation, and The University of British Columbia’s Decolonization and Anti-Racism guide.
- If you are active on social media, diversify your academic following to be exposed to new arguments and research.
- Structural steps to increase citational justice include adding citation diversity statements to journal “About” pages; for journals to include the race and gender proportions of cited authors (aided by software that automatically detects these quantities [e.g., Alcantara Castillo et al., 2020]); diversifying journal editorial boards, associate editor teams, and referee invitations; and providing journal authors the option of submitting and publicizing their own demographic information in their articles.
As Stewart Coles added in sharing the study, “The striking thing about this study is not that whites, men, & USians are overrepresented among the communication citation elites—we been knew that. Rather, it's the startling degree to which this overrepresentation exists and persists. May this move the conversation forward.”
An essay in syllabus form, this critical disinformation studies syllabus expands our definition of what counts as disinformation
To demonstrate how these principles play out in practice, we created a Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus as a provocation to disinformation researchers to rethink many of the assumptions of our nascent field. While the syllabus is fully-functional as is—it could be implemented in its current form for a graduate level seminar—it is also an essay in syllabus form. We draw from a very broad range of scholarship, much which falls outside of conventional studies of “disinformation,” to expand our understanding of what “counts” as disinformation.
We provide five case studies—crime and anti-Blackness; Japanese incarceration; Black liberation; the AIDS crisis; and the trope of the Welfare Queen—to demonstrate the historical complicity of media, the state, and the political establishment in strategically spreading inaccurate information to maintain structural inequality. We argue that disinformation is a key way in which whiteness in the United States has been reinforced and reproduced, in addition to heteronormativity and class privilege.
Each section includes recommended readings. Some sections include audiovisual material and primary sources. The intended audience for this syllabus is graduate students, faculty, and researchers interested in “disinformation” writ large. It can be adapted for undergraduate audiences as well.
While this is an interdisciplinary syllabus, its contributors are primarily from Communication and Media Studies. This syllabus is open-source and may be used by anyone for any scholarly or educational purpose without attribution. Please drop us a line if you have suggestions for readings or topics.
Three caveats:
- This syllabus focuses primarily on the United States, reflecting the state of the field. We recognize the limitations of this and encourage scholars to think through how false information is conceptualized across different political, social, and cultural contexts. Further, disinformation as it spreads in the U.S. is also connected to broader geopolitical and transnational dynamics.
- The cases, examples, and sources included in this syllabus represent a range of approaches and perspectives. We recognize that citations, information, and knowledge production are political acts and inclusion does not necessarily entail endorsement of ideas and sources. Rather, we make this offering as a means to encourage ongoing critical and multi-faceted reflections of power and history in the study of disinformation.
- Foregrounding history and context does not imply that contemporary social platforms are blameless. We support scholarly and activist efforts to hold large technology companies accountable. However, we wish to recognize that social platforms are but one part of a larger ecosystem, and to see state, politician, and legacy media companies equally taken to task for their roles in spreading disinformation.
Exploiting white fear continues to galvanize voters
In a new opinion piece in Scientific American, CITAP faculty Daniel Kreiss, Alice Marwick, and Francesca Tripodi describe how political campaigns against critical race theory (CRT) continue a long tradition of linking racial justice movements to communism as a form of fearmongering. They conclude that effectively countering this disinformation campaign requires going beyond dismissals anti-CRT rhetoric as inaccurate to affirmatively supporting racial justice lessons in classrooms as a matter of equality and justice.