Anointments and Prestige: Reflecting on #CommunicationSoWhite with Herman Gray and Oscar Gandy

Oscar Gandy, Jr. is a Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and a political economist. He is the author of four books, including Communication and Race: A Structural Perspective (1998), as well as numerous publications. Herman Gray is Professor Emeritus of sociology at UC Santa Cruz. He is the author of the books Watching Race and Cultural Moves, and many other scholarly writings. I spoke with both of them together about #CommunicationSoWhite, asking them as senior black scholars to reflect on contemporary discussions and suggest ways forward in the field of communication and media studies. 1 The interview is edited for brevity and clarity.

Oral History of Charles R. Wright (1927-2017)

A distinguished sociologist of mass communication, Charles (Charlie) Wright was noted for his functionalist analysis of media as codified in the 1959 book Mass Communication. Wright joined the Annenberg School faculty in 1969. Over the span of 45 years, and well after his formal retirement in 1996, Wright taught generations of Annenberg students--notably his signature graduate course, Sociology of Mass Communications. That course--and indeed Wright’s career-long project to instill a sociological sensibility into communication research--had its roots in his mid–1950s teaching as a Columbia University graduate student and instructor.

Stress, Survival, and Success in Academia 2.0: Lessons from Working Inside and Outside of the Academy

As graduate students writing our dissertations between 2009 and 2010 at the University of California Irvine, we began to feel the first ripples of a shrinking job market for tenuretrack academic positions in anthropology. There were questions, in hushed whispers as well as anxious and frantic outbursts, about how long the recession would last, whether we should "wait and see" before graduating, or apply now and just cast a wider net in terms of schools and searches. The 2009 Anthropology Faculty Job Market Report opens up with, "AAA has been increasingly concerned with the academic job market. Anecdotal evidence suggests that faculty lines are being lost and searches cancelled" (Terry-Sharp 2009). Given uncertainty, we both chose the latter option and had the good fortune to find employment in academic institutions— Cortney Hughes Rinker at the Arlington Innovation Center for Health Research (Virginia Tech) and Sheena Nahm at the Norman Lear Center (University of California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism). Interestingly enough, neither of us entered these institutions through the traditional route of the tenure-track position. Although our jobs were quite unique and different from each other, they both were in research centers focused on contracts and grants and were not solely situated in the realm of cultural anthropology, the field in which we are trained. Since then, we both went on to publish, teach, work in applied fields, and often engage with academic and nonacademic interlocutors.

Vulnerability to Internet Crime and Gender Issues

A tremendous growth in the use of the Internet has been observed in the past two decades. More than 75% of Americans participate in online activities (University of Southern California Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, 2004) such as e-mail, Web browsing, working from home, accessing news stories, seeking information, instant messaging, using the Internet in lieu of the library for school work, playing games, and managing personal finance. For professionals, the Internet is an important medium for networking and building social capital. However, along with all positive impacts, there are also negative outcomes. One such negative outcome includes Internet crimes. Dowland, Furnell, Illingworth, and Reynolds (1999) state that “with society’s widespread use of and, in some cases, reliance upon technology, significant opportunities now exist for both mischievous and malicious abuse via IT systems” (p. 715). Internet crimes (cyber crimes) consist of specific crimes dealing with computers and networks (such as hacking, spreading of viruses, and worms) and the facilitation of traditional crime through the use of computers on the Internet (such as child pornography, hate crimes, telemarketing/Internet fraud). This article focuses on Internet crimes, especially those affecting individual users, and offers a discussion of issues regarding Internet crimes and gender.

Digital Asset Management Concepts

“DAM. Looks like something you might say if you couldn’t find a photograph you needed for a front-page story. But DAM—digital asset management—is actually designed to preempt such frustrated outbursts. In an age when oodles of media, including print, images, video and audio, are stored in computers rather than file cabinets, newspapers and other groups need a way to organize, manipulate and share those media quickly and easily.” (Grimes, 1998) Dramatic changes have occurred on the corporate front in the last few years, as more and more businesses have started to conduct commerce on the Internet. New business concepts and products are being developed on a daily basis. The accent is on speed, and changes occur quickly – daily, hourly or even minute-to-minute. Two major facets of these changes are: 1. Large amounts of data are created and stored in digitized forms in organizations, and 2. New “digital products” are created. As more and more information is created in electronic form, organizations are faced with the following problems: • The volume of digital data has become cumbersome to manage and reuse (Sharples, 1999). • Organizations have struggled to reduce cycle time, maintain brand consistency, and coordinate crossmedia publishing as well as one-to-one marketing efforts. • The number of digital assets that an organization may manage has exploded. • Gistics, a California-based research firm that has studied media asset management for several years, estimates that approximately 30% of all media assets in organizations are misplaced, and then reworked or duplicated. A 2001 Frost and Sullivan market indicator report by Subha Vivek forecasts tremendous future growth in the U.S. digital media management market (Vivek, 2001). The three market segments that will be affected represent the capture, storage and access, and distribution of digital media, respectively. The promise of digital asset management has attracted a lot of commercial enterprises and software research laboratories, and several products have been introduced commercially in the last few years. However, due to the “newness” of the field, there is not much academic research literature in the field. A good source of academic thought in this field can be found in the online proceedings of the Annenberg DAM Conference, held at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California in 1998 (Annenberg DAM Conference, 1998).

FORECASTING AND PREDICTING THE ELECTION OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Beginning with the 1972 presidential election and for each election thereafter Harvard University's Institute of Politics in the John F. Kennedy School of Government has held a post-election symposium where all of the campaign managers, pollsters, political consultants and media advisors for all of the primary and general election candidates come together with leading journalists, electronic and print, and political commentators and pundits to discuss and dialogue about what occurred during the election among the candidates, nominees, and the winner and losers. The symposia have allowed campaign managers to describe what happened and forecast for the forthcoming presidential election. After the multi-day symposium a book length transcript is published. In 1992 the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania launched its own symposia where the campaign managers of the Democratic and Republican nominees in the general election are invited to discuss what happened and forecast for the next presidential election. The ten books in the Harvard series and the three books in the Pennsylvania series are used as data sources in this article to determine if any of the campaign managers forecasted and/or predicted an African American presidential candidate, even when such candidates had appeared in previous years. While our findings uncover some of the interests and concerns of presidential campaign managers and advisors since 1972, the overriding focus of the symposia has been on the nature, scope, and significance of the African American electorate.

Policy Challenges with the Retirement of the Baby Boom Generation: An Interview with Mr. Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP

On March 23, 2007, Jessica A. Defenderfer and Scott A. Olson had the opportunity to sit down with AARP's CEO, Bill Novelli, to discuss the upcoming policy challenges associated with the retirement of the baby boom generation, the role of the U.S. government in addressing these policy needs, and the responsibility of AARP in crafting effective public policy. Bill Novelli joined AARP in January 2000 and currently serves as CEO. Prior to joining AARP, Mr. Novelli was President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and, before that, was the Executive Vice President of CARE, the world's largest private relief and development organization. Earlier, Mr. Novelli co-founded and was President of Porter Novelli, now one of the world's largest public relations agencies and part of the Omnicom Group. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. from Penn's Annenberg School for Communication. Mr. Novelli also pursued doctoral studies at New York University.