What is the point of scholarly research that explores
real-world problems if the research findings are never implemented?
In the New York Times article, the author
states that there are plenty of theories that were never empirically tested and
aren’t necessarily completely true. The “Gray Matter” story states that these
theories are still put into practice, in some way or another, and are still
valuable even though they buck the way traditional science works. I disagree.
I find myself more aligned with the thinking in the Knight Foundation blog and Professor Robert Jensen. Clearly, the SSCI rankings of mass
communication journals are irrelevant, unless you’re trying to get research
published outside of the U.S. I also don’t believe that an article’s validity
lies in the number of times that it’s cited, for reasons that we discussed in
class – access to SSCI, access to articles, the implied expectation to cite
other articles from the journal you are sending your proposal to.
I also share some of Jensen’s concerns about how humankind
is on a treacherous path and that our system of using the world’s resources is
completely unsustainable, and understand how that seems discordant with
academic scholars doing research for academia’s sake.
As a professional journalist, I never thought about the
hordes of scholars conducting research on the industry and rarely heard about
(and definitely never read) research articles or journals. This has all encouraged
me to conduct research that will be beneficial to the industry and will propel it
forward, in some regard. I would like for my research to be something that
professionals can use and implement, at least on the managerial level.
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