Disagreement About the Therapy, Not the Diagnosis : A Reply to the Rejoinders

The article engages with the criticism of my suggestion to work towards synthesis and consilience (i.e., compatibility with natural science, especially cognitive science and evolutionary psychology) in strategic communication research. It notes that there seems to be agreement about the field’s unsatisfactory state, yet disagreement about the way forward. I attempt to demonstrate that none of the arguments developed by the critics breaks the case for synthesis and consilience, but I acknowledge that there is a pragmatic issue, namely a deeply rooted distrust of the natural sciences

A Framework for Strategic Communication Research : A Call for Synthesis and Consilience

This essay suggests that the conceptualization of strategic communication as a field uniting several disciplines was an important step forward, but progress in absolute terms has been disappointing so far. Individual researchers open up new avenues of exploration and regularly arrive at answers to questions internally consistent with their respective perspectives. But the body of reasonably verified scientific knowledge that goes substantially beyond common sense remains underdeveloped. The author argues that biologist Edward O. Wilson identified the key characteristic of progressing fields correctly as consilience, i.e., the commitment to the unity of knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology and beyond: “a seamless web of cause and effect.” The article proposes that strategic communications research follow Wilson’s program, as other disciplines have done. For the field to mature, leading researchers need to work towards a consilient synthesis, i.e., a theoretical framework that contains nonrelativistic conjectures about the world which form a nucleus for research to accumulate around. It is furthermore necessary to reconnect strategic communication research to the rapidly progressing and highly relevant hybrid disciplines such as cognitive science and evolutionary psychology

Cues der Authentizität. Authentizität als Attribution – Analyse eines Bauchgefühls

Abstract in German Cues der Authentizität. Authentizität als Attribution – Analyse eines Bauchgefühls