Dear all, We – LSE Department of Media and Communications – and Penn State are co-sponsoring this Pre-Conference.

We will welcome abstracts by 19 December 2014 at the email address -  [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Best wishes,  Robin and Bingchun

Professor Robin Mansell and Dr. Bingchun Meng
Department of Media and Communications
London School of Economics
Email: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]

ADMINISTRATIVE V. CRITICAL RESEARCH: IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY INFORMATION POLICY STUDIES: An ICA PRE-CONFERENCE

Co-hosted by:
The Journal of Information Policy
The Institute for Information Policy at Penn State
The Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science The LINKS-ICORE project at the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
and the ICA Communication Law and Policy Division

Tensions, disagreements, differences and disputes of both a methodological and theoretical nature have always been an attribute of communication policy studies. One of the major contributions to this debate is Paul Lazarsfeld’s seminal piece “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communication Research.”* The Journal of Information Policy (www.jip-online.org<http://www.jip-online.org>), the Institute for Information Policy at Penn State, the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the LINKS-ICORE project at the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the ICA Communication Law and Policy Division are holding a pre-conference in which the relevance of the distinction between “administrative” and “critical” scholarship in light of Lazarsfeld’s analysis will be tested when applied to today’s information society and the research questions contemporary information policy raises. The Journal will publish a special issue dedicated to the 75th anniversary of this essay in 2016.

The pre-conference will be held on May 21, 2015 at one of the two ICA hotels in San Juan.

Administrative research, according to Lazarsfeld, which takes its name from the corporate or government funding that supports it, emanates from the notion that the media are “tools handled by people or agencies for given purposes” and therefore the studies themselves focus on making the “tool(s) better known, and thus to facilitate (their) use.” Critical research, on the other hand, is guided by the notion that “the general role of our media of communication in the present social order should be studied.” Lazarsfeld saw “administrative” research as being focused on questions such as “Who are the people exposed to different media? What are their specific preferences? What are the effects of different methods of presentation?” and “critical” research as asking a different set of questions, such as “How are these media organized and controlled? How, in their institutional set-up is the trend toward centralization, standardization and promotional pressure expressed? In what form, however disguised, are they threatening human values?” Administrative research, explains Lazarsfeld, is criticized for solving only “little problems, generally of a business character, when the same methods could be used to improve the life of the community if only they were applied to forward looking projects related to the pressing economic and social problems of our time.” Critical research, however, is opposed by those who believe “that so much of its effort is spent on what might be called ‘showing up’ things, rather than fact-finding or constructive suggestions.”

Self-described as one “whose interests and occupational duties are in the field of administrative research,” Lazarsfeld called for the development of critical policy research, since he believed it could “contribute much in terms of challenging problems and new concepts.”

Contemporary society stands, 75 years later, at the same crossroads. The media may have changed, they have assumed new names, they are “digital” and “social”, interactive and mobile; however, the social challenges they raise are similar. While media are accessible as never before, the divide among their users is more complex, and on many more levels, than could have been fathomed three quarters of a century ago. The increased pace of technological change also implies that it has become more difficult to undertake the sort of anticipatory “reimagining” of media potentialities with which critical research was tasked. Instead, many of the most radical innovations capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies are taking place in entrepreneurial contexts. Governments, ideologically disinclined or unable to undertake regulation preemptively (as witnessed in the net neutrality debates), are allowing greater play for market forces in media environments. Is there a role for critical research in this new scenario? Further, many policy issues now go well beyond the boundary of nation-states and need to be addressed at the international, the regional or even the global levels. Would a debate originated in the U.S. context shed light on those issues in the age of networked power and global governance?

What direction is communication policy research taking? Is it driven by researchers focused on the “tools” or on the context in which the tools are used? What kinds of research should drive policy? How can media researchers, who now have access to vastly improved sources of data and research methods, compared to those in Lazarsfeld’s time, most effectively conduct administrative research? What ethical questions are raised by the use of consumer data for administrative research? Should research focus on understanding the media of communications, what they are capable of doing and what their effects may be, or should it focus on the social implications of access or lack of access to these media?

This Call for Papers invites submissions that identify the tension between administrative and critical research as it pertains to information and communication policy studies in both national and global contexts. Submissions may focus on, but are not limited to, addressing the following questions:

·       What are the normative foundations of administrative research?
·       Can administrative research ethically inform information policy?
·       How can policy research be made more democratic?
·       What, if any, is the role of the moral imagination in policy research?
·       Can empiricism/positivism engage ethical/moral values?
·       How can scholarly policy researchers (of any kind) avoid being compromised by the dominant agents of influence?
·       Should critical research have a greater presence in forums directed to administrative research?
·       Can critical scholarship inform policy?
·       Is critical scholarship utilized enough by policymakers?
·       What is and what should be the relationship of social activism to scholarship?
·       What current policy issues heighten the tension between administrative and critical research?


Case studies, which combine these questions with specific examples of contemporary policy issues, are encouraged as well.

Abstracts of between 400-500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be sent to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by December 19, 2014. Please write IIPCLAPWS: YOUR NAME in the subject line. Abstracts not sent according to the above instructions will not be reviewed. Authors will be notified of their acceptance before January 14, 2015.  Up to 8 abstracts will be accepted to the workshop and full papers are expected by May 14, 2015. Each paper will be assigned a respondent, and discussed at length at the workshop in order to help the author develop a paper to be submitted to the Journal of Information Policy.

Authors presenting at the pre-conference will be invited to submit their completed papers for review in a special issue of the Journal of Information Policy (www.jip-online.org<http://www.jip-online.org/>) to be published in 2016 highlighting the 75th anniversary of Lazarfeld’s essay. Now in its 5th year, the JIP is an open-access peer-reviewed journal dedicated to timely policy research that addresses contemporary challenges and connects researchers to policymakers. This pre-conference is the 10th workshop of the “Making Policy Research Accessible,” project organized by the Institute for Information Policy at Penn State.

* Lazarsfeld, P. (1941). Remarks on administrative and critical research. Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9, 2-16.


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