Looking at History Through the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)

Histories of the emerging field of mass communication (e.g. Hardt, 2001; Pietilä, 2005) —in continental Europe from the late seventeenth century onward and in the United States from the early nineteenth century onward—lead one to notice how little and how late international institutions have played a role in shaping communication research. Although the roots of the field go back to the classics of sociology and political science, it is only in the twentieth century that we can find any systematic international networking of research, built through particular structures such as international meetings or associations among relevant scholars. Journalists and other “press people” had their first international congress in 1894, followed by their own international association(s) in the first half of the twentieth century (Nordenstreng et al, 2016). Global media policies began to take shape in the League of Nations in the 1920s—at a time when communication research was not only established but already being divided into various traditions. But communication research remained conspicuously remiss on its own international platforms and structures until the end of World War II.