Reflecting on Forty Years of Sociology, Media Studies, and Journalism: An Interview with Todd Gitlin and Michael Schudson

Jiang Chang; Todd Gitlin; Michael Schudson

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11515

Authors

Jiang Chang Shenzhen University http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8992-5410
Jiang Chang, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Shenzhen University, China. He's currently working on the politics of digital countercultures in contemporary China, and the theorization of digital journalism. He has published three books and over eighty research papers in Chinese, English and French, and won several awards for his academic achievements, including Outstanding Young Scholar of the China Communication Academy Awards and the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship. He could be reached via e-mail: criver@protonmail.ch.
Todd Gitlin The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Chair of the Ph.D Program in Communications
Todd Gitlin has written eighteen books, including history from the last century (The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage) and contemporary (Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street), sociology (The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left); communications theory (Media Unlimited); and four novels, including Sacrifice, which won the Harold Ribalow Award for fiction on Jewish themes, and The Opposition, to be published in 2021 by Guernica Editions. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and other periodicals.
Michael Schudson The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Michael Schudson received a B.A. from Swarthmore College and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1976 to 1980 and at the University of California, San Diego from 1980 to 2009. From 2005 on, he split his teaching between UCSD and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, becoming a full-time member of the Columbia faculty in 2009. He is the author of eight books and co-editor of four others concerning the history and sociology of the American news media, advertising, popular culture, Watergate and cultural memory. He is the recipient of a number of honors; he has been a Guggenheim fellow, a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellow, and has received honorary degrees from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and Hong Kong Baptist University. His most recent books are Journalism: Why It Matters (Polity, 2020), The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency 1945-1975 (Harvard, 2015) and (with C.W. Anderson and Leonard Downie, Jr.), The News Media: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2016).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11515

Keywords:

American Sociological Association, China, Culture, Fox News, Journalism Studies, Sociology

Abstract

Reflecting on more than four decades in dual scholarly careers that cut across the boundaries between communication, the sociology of culture, and journalism studies, Professor Todd Gitlin and Professor Michael Schudson discuss the growth, evolution, and strengths and weaknesses of the media studies field with Professor Jiang Chang. The three reflect on the origins of the research, the gap between the field of journalism studies and the field of sociology, the role played by journalism in the growing conflict between China and the United States, the relationship between media and political protest, and whether there ought be any cause for optimism regarding the state of democracy in the twenty-first century.

Reflecting on Forty Years of Sociology, Media Studies, and Journalism: An Interview with Todd Gitlin and Michael Schudson

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