Professor Stephen Coleman publishes tribute to Jay G. Blumler in the European Journal of Communication

The article is an analytical celebration of Jay’s work, centred around the project of Political Communication as “an inescapably normative domain” confronting the crisis of media’s role in democracy.

Professor Stephen Coleman has this week published a tribute to Jay G. Blumler in the European Journal of Communication, titled ‘Jay G. Blumler – An intellectual legacy: Wanting better’.

Professor Coleman states:

In the current era, marked more than any since the 1930s by profound uncertainty about the values that hold us together, scholars cannot afford to take norms for granted. We need to be explicit about the values that we draw upon in determining what matters, who counts and the relative significance of variables. How can we respond to the pathologies of ‘post-truth’ without having clear ideas about what constitutes truth and why it matters? How can we study ideologically polarised communities and deeply fragmented audiences without having a notion of the prerequisites for social cohesion?

Professor Coleman along with Professor Chris Paterson, Dr Katy Parry, Dr Julie Firmstone, and Professor Frank Esser of the University of Zurich are organising a half day preconference for the International Communication Association entitled ‘Is there still a crisis of public communication? A tribute to Jay Blumler’. 

The preconference has been approved by ICA to take place on the 25th of May, 2022, at Science Po Paris (The Paris Institute of Political Studies).  A call for papers will circulate in November, and will be posted to ICA’s pre and post conference page. The School of Media and Communication is a co-sponsor of the preconference and will support travel bursaries to enable participation by developing country scholars.