传播学者休梅克谈研究往事,“回溯历史和跨学科是新思考产生的好方式”
2019-03-25 19:42:45
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原创: 我们是 新闻周报 昨天

2019年3月21日下午,国际著名传播学者、媒介社会学(Media Sociology)主要代表人帕梅拉·休梅克(Pamela J. Shoemaker)在中国人民大学新闻学院作了以“社交媒体时代的把关”为主题的讲座,分享了她最新的研究方向与研究内容,并受聘为中国人民大学“双一流”建设国际顾问委员会。

讲座结束后,《新闻周报》社记者采访了休梅克教授,结合当下本科生的学习科研情况,向休梅克教授请教了研究方向的寻找和传播学的学习方法这两方面的问题。

Q&A

“您是如何找到您的研究方向的呢?”

这其实是一个很有趣的故事。在我刚刚完成博士学位之后,我的博士导师,也是为我指引研究方向的人,他告诉我他准备在加利福利亚的SAGE出版社(SAGE是世界领先的独立学术及专业出版集团)出版一些书,并且想让我完成其中一本,当时我告诉他我想要去做新闻研究。他说:“新闻研究已经有很多人在做了,你去研究“把关”吧。”“把关”在当时更多的只是一个概念,直到十九世纪六十年代甚至七十年代才有人开始做相关的研究,我在想我到底能从对“把关”的探索中得到什么?不过他是一位非常杰出的老师,在他的指导下,我在1991年发表了《Gatekeeping》这本书。这本书中列出了相关的重要研究者以及“把关”理论的发展脉络。

在老师的帮助下,我打开思路,开始思考边界理论,即组织边缘的人们与其他组织边缘的人进行交流。公关人员是具有代表性的处在边界上的人,因为他们需要试着出去与其他组织的人交流。我的老师启发我去思考“群体思维”。我们有一个庞大的大众媒体,在各个组织的边缘上有边界人,他们收集信息并向外传递信息。在这中间,会有一群报纸编辑,他们不停地讨论,每天还有编辑部会议,他们会决定报上的内容。长此以往,这群人有了相同的思维方式,会做出相同的决定,事实上这个群体变成了一位“把关人”,这就是一种“群体思维”。他还敦促我去学习“决策理论”,这对我帮助很大,因为“把关”其实就是一个做决策的过程。我的博士项目并不是准备一本关于“把关”的书,我要做去很多研究,不仅是了解“把关”这个过程中发生了什么,还要收集各种理论、观点和信息,以帮助我在“把关”领域中建立一个新的理论。

“对大学生学习传播学有什么建议呢?”

只要我能找到和媒体把关、议程设置或者其他任何我想要了解的领域有关的书籍,我就会去读。我当学生的时候学到一个阅读技巧:比如说,遇到一篇内容和你感兴趣的话题有关的期刊文章,你得看看文章结尾的参考文献部分,并且到图书馆去找参考文献里的书籍来读。这个“读”不是精读,而是浏览,要是一个学生逐字逐句地看每一本书,他/她恐怕就没办法在大学里生存了。你要浏览的部分是对你的研究来说很重要的内容,浏览完之后,再从这些书的参考文献里找更早的研究成果,以此类推,不断往前追溯。这样一来,你就可以接触到在你一开始看到的那篇期刊之外的多种角度。我会这样去了解媒体把关、议程设置等研究的历史。

除此之外,我还会阅读其他学科的文章。如果我读的书和哲学有关,我就还会去读一些它引用的社会学、人类学、经济学或者政治科学的书籍、文献。在阅读的过程中,我会思考为什么作者会引用其他学科的研究,以及其他学科的文献对这个学科的研究有什么作用。

以上说到的回溯历史和跨学科这两种阅读方式能很好地促进新思考的产生,而产生新思考正是学者最应该做的事。传播学本身就是跨学科的,它与生活的方方面面都有关联。作为学生,如果没办法广泛选课,那至少应该广泛阅读。

附:采访原稿

Q:How did you decide on your research direction?

A:It’s a funny story actually. Just after I finished my Ph.D, The professor who was my director of my Ph.D came to me and said,“ I am going to edit a series of short books for SAGE Publishing Company in California. And I want you to write one of them”. And I said, “I want news, I want to do news”. He said,“News is already taken, somebody else has news. I want you to do gatekeeping”. And I said, “Gatekeeping?” Gatekeeping is more about concept. No one has done much about gatekeeping since the 1960s or even 1970s. And I’m thinking what in the world can I get out of gatekeeping? But he was a very brilliant person and with his help for suggestions, I produced a small book called Gatekeeping in 1991 perhaps. And yet it lays out the history of gatekeeping and some of the middle figures were in that book.

He helped to expand my thinking to consider boundary theories that people on the edges of the organizations communicate with people on the edges of other organizations. Public relations people are typically boundary people because they are going out and trying to talk to people another organizations. And he also introduced me to the group think. Let’s say we have a large mass media and there are boundary people on the edges with information being collected and information being sent out. But in the middle, there is a group of editors. Everyday they have an editorial meeting and they decide what’s to be in the newspaper and overtime they come to all think in the same way. And they call the same decisions and in fact they are one gatekeeper. That’s group think. That’s the group thinking as one. He urged me to read into decision making theories. That was very helpful because gatekeeping is decision making. And there are many theories of decision making. My doctor program had not prepared me to write this book about gatekeeping. I had to do much research in order to not only learn what happened on gatekeeping but to gather theories and perspectives and information to help me build a new theory in gatekeeping. That’s what I try to do.

Q:Do you have any suggestions for undergraduates to learn communication theory, make initial attempts to apply it and do relevant research?

A:I would read whatever I could find on gatekeeping or agenda setting or whatever it is you want to study. Here is a technique that I learned as a student. You have in front of you a journal article on the topic you are interested in. Go to the back to the list of references; look at the older references; go to the library and get those books; and read them. By read I mean skim. One cannot read every word of a book and survive in school or in academia. But you must skim through and look through the parts that are important to your work. You take that book and then you go to the references, and you go backwards in time. If you continue to go backwards in time, you are exposed to a wide range of perspectives on this topic that never made their way to this present article. So, I would do papers on the history of gatekeeping or agenda setting.

If not the history of, I would also look for articles that are in other disciplines. If I’m reading something that is about psychology, I would read something about sociology, or anthropology, or economics, or political science, to see why this person cited this article here, and how the literature of other disciplines can inform the study of this topic. Those are the two different ways, the historical approach and the going to other disciplines, that I think could really stir up new thinking, and stirring up new thinking is the most important thing that scholars should do. Always think about new thinking.

Communication is interdisciplinary. It involves every part of life. Communication had to be invented for everything else to be invented. If not take classes widely, you should read widely in other disciplines.

文字:段江含 马靖仪

图片:邓海滢

编辑:黄思琪

 
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