Igor E. Klyukanov

Nation branding and Russia: prospects and pitfalls

(2008). Nation Branding and Russia: Prospects and Pitfalls. Russian Journal of Communication: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 192-222.

Modernization, Sociological Theories of

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by R. Inglehart, volume 15, pp. 9965–9971,

A Communicology of Culture: Handle With Care

This article presents a human(istic) view of the (inter)cultural level of communication that overcomes such limitations of the traditional social scientific approach as essentializing and reifying culture that do insufficient justice to (inter)subjective agency. Communicology is taken as a methodology for the analysis of culture as embodiment in the public domain, demonstrating the nondiscursive, spiritual, and constitutive nature of its agency. The process of formation of (inter)cultural consciousness is discussed as moving from the experienced to the experiencing to the experiencer to the experience, as such. The biosemiotic character of this process is highlighted. From this perspective, effective communication is conceptualized in terms of efficacy, viewed as the ability to take interactions with the Other as ones own cure, thus accomplishing a balancing act of signification. Finally, the role of culture and communicology is emphasized as the common ground of inter(cultural) communication—ontological and epistemological, respectfully.

Russian Journal of Communication: A New Journal on the Block

This article introduces the Russian Journal of Communication to a broad English-speaking audience. It is shown how the journal, through theoretical and empirical papers and book reviews, advances our understanding of communication in, with, and about Russia. The article starts by presenting a short history of the journal; then, its philosophic and pragmatic makeup is discussed in more detail. It is demonstrated how the journal contributes to the study of communication, including the international collaboration of its authors and guest editors. The article concludes by outlining the journals future plans.

A Centennial Celebration: Benchmarks for Philosophy of Communication

In 2013, leadership in the National Communication Association (NCA) released a call for Centennial Panel submissions designed to explore specific aspects of the communication discipline in depth cover the last 100 years. The intention of this call was to focus on various pasts within the discipline in order to demonstrate how these pasts continue to shape, guide, and impact our present scholarship, teaching, and various other engagements. The call explicitly stated that the Centennial Series would provide a textured landscape responsive to the varying ways that its historical terrain could be divided up instead of trying to fit everything into one common theme. In this way, the centennial celebration would be representative of the diverse and complex voices that have come to shape the communication discipline over the last 100 years. The NCA membership was called to take a look at itself from a divisional, interest group, caucus lens and reflect upon its own growth, contribution, and impact that it has had on the larger discipline of communication. The task of this essay is to document the Philosophy of Communication Division’s centennial panel that gathered to reflect upon the evolution of philosophy of communication as a field of study within the communication discipline. The Philosophy of Communication Division (hereafter referred to as “the Division”) of the NCA recently evolved from the Semiotic Division. The Division was formed in 1992, which, at that time in the history of the NCA (then named the Speech Communication Association, SCA), was referred to as commission. The initial name was the Semiotics and Communication Commission until the NCA later changed commission to division. Many communication scholars recognize and understand the conception of semiotics and its value to studying communication in a broader sense, though the Semiotics and Communication Division was not fully

Editor's forum: Russia and Ukraine: crossed communications

At the present moment, Ukraine’s relations with Russia can be described as difficult and strained, at best. Since last November, people in Kiev have been protesting Ukraine’s course toward closer ties with Russia and Ukraine’s prospective membership in the Customs Union while calling for greater integration with the European Union. These protests have also spread across other Ukrainian cities and towns. Any attempts to understand these events only in political and economic terms will offer a partial view. For that reasons we are calling for studies which explore these events from a communication perspective. As Maksym Khylko writes in his article published in New Eastern Europe: A Quarterly Journal of Central and Eastern European Affairs (17 January 2014), ‘the deficit of effective communication, both in the international arena and inside the state, is among the main problems facing contemporary Ukraine’. This view is echoed by others who emphasize the need for a better dialogue between the government and the opposition, as well as within the government and opposition themselves. Scholarly analyses of these events from communication perspectives, however, have been scarce, which is understandable: the events are still ongoing and very complex. Yet the critical importance of such analyses cannot be denied. This Forum is aimed at providing just such analyses by presenting communication perspectives on the recent and ongoing events in Ukraine and at the crossroads of Ukrainian and Russian relations. While the Russian president assured both domestic and international audiences that the future of Ukraine must be decided by its people themselves and that Russia would respect that decision, ‘the Russian factor’ in these events is indisputable and makes up the focus of the present Forum. And, while communications between these (and other) actors has undoubtedly at times been mutually intelligible, it has also been full of mixed signals, misjudgment, mutual accusations, propaganda, etc. To help the readers of our journal understand the dynamics of such ‘crossed communication’, I invited a number of scholars to share their views and sent them a number of possible questions to address. Everyone was free to answer the question/s they felt best fit/s their area/s of interest and expertise; everyone was also free to add any other information they felt pertinent; finally, everyone was free to present their analyses of ‘crossed communications’ between Russia and Ukraine (and others) in any format they chose, not necessarily as answers to the suggested questions. I thank all the Forum contributors for their responses – sometimes emotional and always sincere, thoughtful and thought provoking.

Editor's forum: text network analysis of presidential rhetoric

I invited a number of scholars to share their ideas about the methodology and findings reported in Dmitry Paranyushkin’s text Addresses to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation by Russian Presidents, 2008–2012. Comparative analysis. I asked them to address, in a short contribution, all or some of the questions provided as ‘prompts’ below. I wish to thank Dmitry Paranyushkin for letting us use his text in our Forum rubric and all the experts for their insightful responses.

Philosophy of Communication

Again, perfection is a notion which haunts human imagination. It cannot be ignored. But its naive attachment to the realm of forms is entirely without justification.1 —Alfred North Whitehead The theory of which I aim to sketch a basic outline here has to be understood as a philosophical theory of communication. Our first task, then, will be to clarify what sets a philosophical theory of communication apart from other communication theories. It is here that the contemporary scholar feels deep gratitude towards the work of Richard Lanigan. For he has, over many years and in many publications, drawn our attention like few others to the specifically philosophical aspects of communication as a concept and as a phenomenon. In particular, I wish to refer here to his seminal explorations in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty.2 Any reading of Merleau-Ponty’s mature philosophical writings cannot fail to give us the strong impression that questions of communication were central to his investigations, but it is the contribution of Lanigan, and others, to have shown just how central the theme of communication is to Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology of relationality and expression are; and more so to have begun to make this phenomenological approach fruitful for the whole field of communication studies. In an early publication on this topic, Lanigan highlighted the dialectical relation that exists between perception and expression in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.3 These functions...