Communications: Job Market and Professional Life

[swazibound]

I'm wondering if you kind people have found any good resources for understanding the professional life of Communications scholars. Job market reports are fine, but I'm also looking for more qualitative accounts of what being a Communications professor is like. For instance, what is the culture around publications and conference attendance? I'm especially interested in the impressions of people who have completed/are completing an MA, or are going through their PhD programs right now. There's a lot of ambiguity in this field, which makes this a harder task than say, Sociology, where a plethora of such resources exist. 

I'm particularly interested in Rhetoric and Media Studies subfields, as opposed to say, communication sciences or journalism. So, your thoughts on these fields are especially appreciated

[whitmanifesto]

Most programs you would teach 3-4 courses a semester, including public speaking since its the backbone of most Communications departments (funding is funneled into program through course enrollment and that's a major undergrad requirement). Then rotate between 200-400 level courses, probably shifting between quantitative or qualitative research methods with another few professors and the 300 and 400 level courses that are your research area. Some fields do a lot of consulting type research, my area is more media representations and community focused research. There's also a lot of investigation type research in the media industry (this is what my current adviser does) such as who owns what and how does that effect democratic participation?

I know more about Media Studies. The large conferences include ICA, NCA (holds the PhD guides) and local regional Communications Associations (Midwest is CSCA). Internet Researchers Association is big with media people as well, I'm in the steering committee for Union for Democratic Communications conference which is a critical theory focused conference, and then many also attend sociology, anthropology and literature (rhetoric) conference (interdisciplinary is almost standard in our field). I am in a department that is split between PR, Media Studies and Performance theory so some of the graduate students also attend Popular Culture. I do cross-disciplinary work with History and Anthropology (my first field) so I will and have applied to their conferences as well. I do work on environmental justice and media representations, so I attended ASLE.

Some big journals are house in the conferences above but also New Media and Society  (housed at UIC) is important to the field. H-Net Commons is a very good resource for looking for conferences by subject and location (subject is good for communications since it's such a large field) as is EasyChair. You will mostly likely join conferences to be on the steering and planning committees, edit or review for conferences and journals, and spend a LOT of time in meetings. Plus the service that is required at the university level (teach, research, service mantra).

Each department will have a set of conferences their members regularly attend and encourage their students to apply (mine applies to UDC, NCA, CSCA, PC/AC, primarily). You will submit work to conferences in hopes to build onto it and edit it that will lead to a publication, but also to network. Based on your research, you will develop your own list of conference, journals and associations that are best to your specific interests and peer group. Thats one of the most important part of your graduate school experience if you decide to stay in academia. Because there is such variety, it's hard to create a guide for the entire field ( I didn't include any of the major ones for Health or Organizational Communications, and I know nothing about PR and Marketing associations.) Communications is a spin-off social science and humanities field, so the professional life greatly reflects that.

[swazibound]

@whitmanifesto, This is pretty rad! Thanks! I'm wondering also if you or anyone else knows how well interdisciplinary translates into the job market. Like, could someone trained in communications professor get a professorship in Anthropology?

[whitmanifesto]

I don't know how common it is, but I would imagine you would have to have a one degree in the field or your dissertation would have to be very indepth in ethnography and a committee member that was an athropologist. I've seen many communication people in library science and sociology and English PhDs in communication department. It really depends on the job posting and the requirements in the job posting. It's all so varied.

[deshypothequiez]

Any idea about prospects for nonacademic jobs? A grad student I spoke to said she decided to go into Media Studies because she felt it had more options outside of academia, but not sure how true that is.

[whitmanifesto]

9 minutes ago, deshypothequiez said:

Any idea about prospects for nonacademic jobs? A grad student I spoke to said she decided to go into Media Studies because she felt it had more options outside of academia, but not sure how true that is.

I have a friend that recently was forced to leave academia with a Media Studies PhD, and it seems the best chances are for those with technical skills (video editing, audio, etc) but that means you're in the same boat as the MFA people (super competitive). There it would be even more based on you're specific research. I imagine it would be much easier if you were focused on telecom law or on connections between cultural studies and D&R for companies. A lot of the big schools have heavy data focused research to work at places like Google or Yahoo. If you're focused on non-academia, I would make sure you have "hard" skills: stats, computer, engineering, and law. I'm focused on labor organizing as my backup and large advocacy organizations because I don't have the patients for "hard" skills. I have considered law school if I don't get into a program with good funding opportunities.