Editorial

Before we introduce the articles collected in this issue, we want to reflect on practices and publication patterns of the last six years. We thereby take up ongoing debates in our field on gender diversity and inequalities in the representation of women in science (Wang et al., 2021). While female authors were strongly underrepresented in journal publications for several decades (Brosius & Haas, 2009), journals in communication and media research recently have seen a trend towards closing the gender gap, with some now showing an equal distribution of female and male authors (Beck, Domahidi, Eilders, Engelmann, & Pentzold, 2023, pp. 2, 5; Trepte & Loths, 2020). The Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SACM), and with it SComS, appreciates and supports the recently founded “Working Group Publication Diversity”, led by Sabine Trepte and Michael Scharkow (2023). We contribute to this discussion by reporting the distribution of male and female authorship in all SComS publications from 2017 to 2022, i. e., all available issues since SComS is published open access (Table 1)

Editorial

While our journal enjoys increasing recognition by international readers and authors, it also remains a vital forum for Swiss communication and media studies. The current issue testifies to this attachment, as it includes research from universities in Switzerland’s German-, French-, and Italian-speaking parts. The General Section opens with two articles addressing the micro level of in-person communication and the macro level of mass-mediated discourses in the public sphere. In the first article, Jonathan Gruber, Eszter Hargittai, and Minh Hao Nguyen from the University of Zurich investigate the value of face-to-face communication in a world where digital communication technologies are omnipresent. The researchers draw on survey data collected in the U.S. when the first COVID-19-related lockdown limited in-person interactions. They use this opportunity to study what people value in face-to-face interactions, as this likely becomes more salient to people when in-person interactions are less available. Their results show that most people missed elements of face-to-face interaction, such as the special value of spontaneous conversation and physical closeness. The study also sheds light on which modes of digital communication seem to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interactions better than others

Editorial

We are pleased to introduce the first issue of 2024’s Studies in Communication Sciences (SComS). Following a two-year trial period, the thrice-yearly publication rhythm is now firmly established. Thanks to our reviewers and additional efforts of the whole editorial team, it permits us to accommodate the growing number of submissions. The General Section includes an article by Konstantin Schätz and Susanne Kirchhoff from the University of Salzburg. Combining conceptual metaphor analysis and qualitative frame analysis, they explore how Austrian newspapers portrayed the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020. Building on the distinction between rhetorical and technical devices of journalistic framing, the article suggests considering metaphors as an additional “reasoning device.” Thus, ontological metaphors emphasized the fragility of the collective “we,” needing to stand together while guarding the distance. The analysis reveals a consistent journalistic framing in a neutral tone that may have favored a responsible public discussion during the crisis

Editorial

While our journal enjoys increasing recognition by international readers and authors, it also remains a vital forum for Swiss communication and media studies. The current issue testifies to this attachment, as it includes research from universities in Switzerland’s German-, French-, and Italian-speaking parts. The General Section opens with two articles addressing the micro level of in-person communication and the macro level of mass-mediated discourses in the public sphere. In the first article, Jonathan Gruber, Eszter Hargittai, and Minh Hao Nguyen from the University of Zurich investigate the value of face-to-face communication in a world where digital communication technologies are omnipresent. The researchers draw on survey data collected in the U.S. when the first COVID-19-related lockdown limited in-person interactions. They use this opportunity to study what people value in face-to-face interactions, as this likely becomes more salient to people when in-person interactions are less available. Their results show that most people missed elements of face-to-face interaction, such as the special value of spontaneous conversation and physical closeness. The study also sheds light on which modes of digital communication seem to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interactions better than others