ABSTRACT
Our contribution to this book engages the same challenge-commentary on “the future of communication theory and research”—requested of Friedrich for his contribution to the 1996, fi rst edition of this book. His comments identifi ed two problematic features of communication’s disciplinary climate, whose consequences he examined in relation to the discipline’s approach to doctoral education, namely the preparation of its future professoriate. The discipline’s traditional partitioning of its subject matter into two fi elds of study, and distinction in approach to theory and research in the study of each was the fi rst of these problematic features. Referred to as the mass-human communication bifurcation by Stacks and Salwen, the book’s editors, they also recognized the bifurcation as problematic. It contributed to the creation and perpetuation of a climate of difference and polarization among communication’s members, even though the bifurcation oft times proved arbitrary in relation to theory and research. Nevertheless, then available communication theory and research textbooks focused on either mass or human communication but not an integration of both approaches. The 1996 publication of An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research, the fi rst edition of this book, introduced an alternative approach, one that offered an integration of mass and human communication approaches to theory and research.
