The Many-Sided Franklin Ford and the History of a Post-Discipline

Abstract

Building on recent works emphasizing the “post-disciplinary” status of communication research, this article explores the implications of this thesis for the history of communication studies. While a portion of the existing historiography fits the disciplinary framework, the post-disciplinary thesis raises theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges. In order to meet those challenges, we argue that historical research should also be directed toward intellectual and institutional projects that predated or transcended the institutionalization of communication as a discipline. To this end, we revisit the contribution of American journalist Franklin Ford (1849–1918) as an entry point into a historical moment when the study of communication was considered intellectually, socially, and institutionally relevant—for reasons that differ from the post-World War II institutionalization of communication as a discipline. Based on archival research, our approach emphasizes how Ford’s project diverges from the conventional disciplinary histories.

Introduction to Special Issue: Educating Global Communicators: How Communication Scholars Create Value in Challenging Environments

“…Implicitly or explicitly, communication is widely seen as weaker when it seeks to make such strong claims. Beniger's (1993) argument that the search for disciplinarity is a “debilitating affliction” (p. 21) which should be replaced by interdisciplinary pursuits that together will provide a coherent account of communication, is echoed by others who see disciplinarity as a “straitjacket” (Trudel & De Maeyer, 2022, p. 440). It is important to add that here communication scholars are echoing debates in other fields, where interdisciplinarity is sometimes regarded as occupying an intellectually privileged position, one held by leading scholars with greater research impact (Okamura, 2019) who are able to perceive the interconnections and relationships through which knowledge is constructed and freed from dogma (Dickinson, 2019).…”