ABSTRACT
This large and comprehensive paper by Harwood, Hewstone, Amichai-Hamburger, and Tausch, is a very welcome addition to the literature on intergroup communication. The contact hypothesis has been around and actively researched (in recent years, particularly by these researchers and their many colleagues) for more than 50 years in social psychology. Even so, the groundbreaking idea that there are conditions for intergroup contact that ameliorate perceptions across race, gender, generation, and the like, has only recently come under systematic enquiry in communication. Yet intergroup contact is i rst and foremost a communication phenomenon, and should be studied through the lens of communication. As the authors note, the social-psychological emphasis has inevitably meant that the research focus has been on antecedent conditions for positive contact and the consequences of contact, with far less attention paid to the dynamics of the contact itself (cf. Hornsey, Gallois, & Duck, 2008). There is an opportunity for communication scholars, in both interpersonal and mediated communication, to contribute greatly to our understanding of intergroup contact in terms of the contact hypothesis, an opportunity that has only begun to be realized.
