Architects of Communication Scholarship

Ellen Wartella 0:02
ICA presents.

Shina Aladé 0:06
Welcome to this episode of the Architects of Communication Scholarship podcast series, a production of the ICA Podcast Network. This is a very special episode of Architects of Communication as our usual host, Ellen Wartella, is today's architect. Dr. Wartella is the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Communication as well as a Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Dr. Wartella is also the Director of Northwestern's Center on Media and Human Development. I'm Dr. Fashina Aladé and Assistant Professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. And in addition to introducing today's architect, I have the great pleasure of being in conversation with Dr. Wartella, who was my Doctoral Advisor at Northwestern and has remained a close friend and mentor. I'm so honored to be able to speak with her today as we learn a little bit more about her and her role in the field of communication. Ellen, thank you so much for joining us.

Ellen Wartella 1:06
It's great to see you, Shina.

Shina Aladé 1:08
Let's just start off by talking, you know, about the early days of you getting into this field. Where were you at in school? And when did you first learn about the field of communication?

Ellen Wartella 1:18
I didn't start out wanting to be a communication major. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh. So when I got to Pitt, I was interested in interdisciplinary program in communication. I really didn't have much of a major. I think the most informative course I had was a course my senior year. I was kind of an activist on campus. So I was active in a women's movement there and the Head of the History Department, Sam Hayes, pulled together six of us who are active on campus and we all were assigned some institution to study during the early part of the 20th century, and I chose communication industries. That was the most amazing course I had as an undergraduate. And so I became very interested in communication. But I really wanted to be much more community involved. So I applied to be the first community organizer in the city of Pittsburgh. They kept dragging their feet so I had odd jobs around Pittsburgh that summer. And I thought, "Well, I'm interested in communication." So I applied to two graduate schools and I thought if I got a Master's degree in Journalism, I'd learned better how to manipulate the press when I became a community organizer. And Minnesota said, "Well, we'd love to have you but you have to agree to get a PhD that way we'll give you a full scholarship." So I had an NDEA scholarship thinking I'll just go there for a year, I'll have my masters and I'll go back to Pittsburgh and be a community organizer. Two months after I arrived at Minnesota, I actually was offered the job as a community organizer. But I'd already taken the position. And at that point, I had met this more senior student named David Charles Whitney and I also met a new assistant professor there by the name of Dan Wackman, who just had gotten a grant from the old Health, Education and Welfare, HEW, to study children and advertising. And I was in his research methods class and at the end of that class, he said to me, "I'd like you to be my research assistant on this project." That whole first year was a year in which I became committed to communication research, doing research on children, and advertising. So I got into communication sort of through the back door, but once I got involved with children and media research, I was really hooked.

Shina Aladé 3:15
Tell us a little more about that. What was it that really drew you?

Ellen Wartella 3:18
The project that we were doing on children and advertising was in the early 70s, but there had already been some public policy questions about whether advertising on television was appropriate for children under the age of five and six. We were looking at kindergarten, third, and sixth grade children and what they understood about advertising and consumer behavior. It was clear that our data was really quite relevant to the public policy discussions. By the second year, I was going around to speak to different groups about children and advertising research. The book "How Children Learn to Buy" - Ward, Wackman and Wartella came out, actually, before I did my dissertation. Scott Ward and Dan Wackman, my advisor, had the contract to do this book based on that research. Dan turned to me and said, "Well you know all the data, so you write up the data chapters, you do the first draft." Okay. And then Scott's chapters came in, the theoretical chapters, and he said, "Oh, why don't you rewrite the chapters?" And he didn't have to do this but he made an argument to Dan that I needed to be on as a co-author. And in those days, people didn't do that. So I'm eternally grateful to Dan. And indeed, that book came out before I finished my dissertation so that by the time I came out, I had a book, lots of articles and I had testified at that point. In my first year as an assistant professor at Ohio State, the Federal Trade Commission was looking at the advertising issues with kids. I was adamant that we shouldn't represent the industry. So we went there as independent researchers. Dan and Scott said to me, "We'll do all the important stuff, but Ellen you know the data so why don't you talk about the data first." I was on for almost two hours because Judge Morton Needleman asked me all the questions. And then Dan and Scott didn't have as much to say. For the rest of my career, I focused primarily on questions about children and media that were relevant to public policy discussions. I got involved in the TV Violence Project and had grants in that. So, I think of my work as being important because that very first year at Minnesota set me off on a career path to study public policy questions about children. And so my work has been at the nexus of public policy, developmental psychology, and communication studies. Really most important to me is that I've contributed to policy discussions and policy changes that have affected children's lives. If I were to say what I care most about, it's having an impact in the real world. I've been really lucky that I've been around studying things that have had policy interests and had influences in actually affecting policies.

Shina Aladé 5:34
I share that passion. That's one of the reasons why I loved having you as an advisor and a mentor.

Ellen Wartella 5:39
All of the students who've gone through the lab seem to have a very public conscious, social conscious about why they do what they do. I'm really very proud of that.

Shina Aladé 5:47
Are there other mentors or role models that shaped those early years of your career?

Ellen Wartella 5:52
Dan Wackman was very crucial. I ended up taking classes in the Institute of Child Development, and I had some wonderful people that I was able to take courses with there. That was when Minnesota's Institute of Child Development was just incomparable. And also someone who I became very close to and that's Aletha Houston and her late husband, John Wright. I had some students who were very interested in postdocs and I had gone to a conference where John and Aletha were and I had never met them before. This is a children's conference. I went up to John Wright very boldly and said, "Hello, I know you're John Wright, I'm Ellen Wartella. I was wondering, I have a grad student who might be interested in a postdoc with you." And he looked at me and he said, "Well, why don't you come and do a postdoc with us?" In those days, people in communication didn't do postdocs, that wasn't very popular. He said, "If you say yes, you have it." And so I went back to Illinois, Chuck was teaching there and I said, "What would you think if I went off to Kansas for a year?" And he said, "No." We agreed that I would live there four days a week and drive back and forth between Kansas and Illinois. And that was really formative to be part of a developmental psych group. And that's really where I learned how to run a research team. They had a fabulous lab. There was another postdoc, Mabel Rice, who's a very well-known language researcher, child's language researcher at [The University of] Kansas. And it was just an incredible experience to be part of a research team like that. The whole year solidified my interest in continuing to apply developmental psych principles and child development principles to the study of media.

Shina Aladé 7:18
I couldn't help but notice that most of the mentors, role models you were mentioning at the time were men. And I happen to know that you were one of the first prominent women in the field of communication scholarship. We could talk more about what it was like to be a woman in the field in those early days of your career. And did you feel like you had women professor role models to get advice from? To look up to?

Ellen Wartella 7:39
There weren't a whole lot. Aletha certainly was one, she was just remarkable. But in communication, Brenda Dervin was president of ICA. Sandra Ball-Rokeach was another one who I remember looking up and hearing her give lectures and speeches. I frequently found myself the only woman on a program. I always found myself at meetings the only woman at the meetings. I never found that difficult. But I did notice that I sort of internally suggested that I would do everything I can and could to help other women and to support women through that. It's not that I wasn't supported. In fact, I had a lot of men mentors who supported me who would say things like we think you could do X, Y, or Z. I had friends who are somewhat contemporaries, who also looked out for me. Larry Grossberg, who's now at North Carolina was a friend that I met at the University of Illinois and Larry would look out for me. I wasn't strident but I was quite clear that I was a woman at those things, I wanted other women at those things, and I would do what I could about that.

Shina Aladé 8:35
Is there a moment that stands out to you where you felt like communication as a field has really had an impact on the world?

Ellen Wartella 8:42
I had been part of a team that had the National TV Violence Study between '94 and '98. And I think that project was really important. Coming out of that project were the rating system that are on the front of every television show, as a consequence of what we know about violence. So that's one very clear example. I know for a fact that the research that was done on children and advertising led to the Federal Trade Commission and FCC saying that it's inappropriate to advertise directly to children under the age of five who can't understand advertising persuasive intent. That comes right out of communication research in the area of children and media. Communication researchers and scholars definitely had an influence in affecting policy changes and affecting children's lives as a consequence of that.

Shina Aladé 9:24
I'll ask you now to maybe think about, you know, our next couple of decades for our field. Whether it's the children and media fields specifically or communication at large. What do you feel are the next big questions that we should be addressing?

Ellen Wartella 9:35
I think we have, to a large extent, theories about child development and certainly children media that's rooted in Western industrialized societies and we really need to expand to other cultures and other socioeconomic groups and other parts of the world to understand the nature of development, the relationships between children and families and children and technologies. We have to broaden the research population in order to broaden the theoretical perspectives that we talk about. ICA in particular has really internationalized over the time that I've been a member; we have many more international, non-American, non-Western European members. I think that communication in that sense is much better poised in the future to understand practices from multiple perspectives. So, over time we've become more adept as a field and how we study and who we study. My expectation is that in the area of children and media, that will happen as well. I think we all benefit from the wider perspective.

Shina Aladé 10:37
In our area of studying children and media, what do you see as big societal challenges but also opportunities where communication scholarship can make a major contribution?

Ellen Wartella 10:48
There are policy issues coming up around social media and online environments on how one protects children. Certainly in the last year, Congress has looked at some of those issues, not just adolescents and social media, but generally protecting children online. At what age do kids understand that when they give out information about themselves, people can use that information? The online environment has raised questions that are different from the questions in the television era and the film era. The whole online environment is raising a bunch of new questions that challenges the safety protocols that we need for children. One of the things that I do believe has happened over the time that I've been studying in the field is to recognize that children are not miniature adults, that they have separate needs, understandings, proclivities, and that we need different kinds of theoretical explanations for how they act. Albert Bandura's social behavior theory was applicable to all ages. Now we recognize that children are different. And in that sense, I think the online environment for children poses particular risks that we haven't seen in earlier technologies. The other thing that I think is interesting, living in a virtual world, what kind of impact does that have on children's social, cognitive and behavioral development? A phrase that I've heard several times in the last few months is "COVID babies"; children who have been born during the pandemic, who may not have been able to go to nursery schools, may not have been able to have friends over. What is the impact of that kind of early socialization? And what kind of impact is there, since we really don't know what the post-pandemic world's really going to be like? We know that the environment has an influence on the nature of child development, as well as the family and the community that they're involved in. Here is a good test of the Vygotskian theory of how important environment might be to children's development. So I think there are some real challenging questions and interesting areas for us to do research to help families and policymakers provide the best environment for children growing up. There are going to be changes that are going to be a consequence of why we've learned to live online and not just interpersonally.

Shina Aladé 12:56
One of the first papers of yours that I ever read was about the cyclical nature of technology and of the moral panics that come about with every new technology. Is social media just yet another iteration? Or is there something that's really inherently different?

Ellen Wartella 13:13
That paper was with Byron Reeves. We looked at the recurring questions about children and media. And we did a joint seminar between Wisconsin and Illinois, going back and looking at the history of other early big panics: the rise of books in the 1880s, and film in the 1920s, radio in the 40s, television in the 50s. And indeed, there were recurring questions. People asked, "Who's using it?" They always found that children were early adopters. Then, what effects was it having on their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors? There were recurring studies and typically, the researchers didn't make reference to an earlier era but the questions were the same. When computers came along, it appeared to be that they were going through the same route. Now, is social media different? I'll tell you why I think it's different. In earlier eras, the technologies or the media that were used are part and parcel of a much larger set of activities in life. They didn't colonize people's time and behavior. Massive amounts of TV would be four hours a day. But think about how kids are around technology constantly. As they get older, who they are, how they present themselves, who they meet, who their friends are, is involved in social media. And so in that sense, I think it is different from earlier meeting earlier technologies. I think it's really a question of what impact it's having on young children.

Shina Aladé 14:30
When I say that I study children and media, there's this sort of predictable response that someone says, "Oh, yeah, kids these days, they don't know how to socialize, right? Social media is ruining them." And there are moments where I push back a little bit. I say, "You know, we have seen this happen before."

Ellen Wartella 14:43
It isn't all bad by any means. Not all television was bad. Not all radio is bad. Not all films are bad. You know, it depends on the content and the context, and the child. I don't remember if you were part of the interview that I did with some adolescents talking about social media. The last question was, "Is there anything that you think adults get wrong when they talk about social media and teenagers?" And this 13-year-old girl who was very tiny, never said a word, said, "Well, you see, I'm really shy. And I haven't talked too much here. But I think you should know that if I meet somebody online first, oftentimes from my school or friends of friends, it is so much easier for me to talk to them when I meet them in person afterwards. So I really like being on social media, it helps me make new friends who I then know in real life." And that's a comment that you don't hear. And I suspect there are other examples.

Shina Aladé 15:34
The title of this podcast series is Architects of Communication Scholarship. And with that, I want to ask what would you say you have built in this field?

Ellen Wartella 15:45
I think that I've been an advocate in the area of media studies to study children, to know something about developmental psychology, and to bring child development into it. But I think more than that, I'm very proud of all the students that I've had. Out of the lab here and my time at Ohio State, my time in California, and at Illinois, and Texas, there's a whole cadre of wonderful children and media researchers. The students I've had, like you, have passed it on to create community of people interested in children and media and public policy questions. I'm proud of that.

Shina Aladé 16:14
There were so many wonderful things about the lab model that I had as a graduate student that I now try to emulate as a professor. And I think you really built a wonderful network, a wonderful community of children and media scholars who feel very connected.

Ellen Wartella 16:28
The whole point is to pass that tradition on. It's a wonderful way to be a scholar to be part of a lab where you work with others on common problems.

Shina Aladé 16:34
What are maybe some lessons or new areas of growth that you had maybe in the middle parts of your career, or later in your career?

Ellen Wartella 16:40
I really wanted to be a university president. I was Dean at Texas. And then I went off to be Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at University of California Riverside, and started interviewing for jobs to be a president. A lot of the places didn't believe that I could be serious as a president because I was so committed to my research. And then it sort of dawned on me, well maybe I never stopped doing research because that's really what I love to do. I have had a wonderful time. How long have I been at Northwestern, 12 years or 13 years, where I've been able to run the kind of lab that I want and have great students and do research that I find of interest and policy-oriented work. Sometimes the failures are gifts that you don't realize.

Shina Aladé 17:25
What sort of advice would you give to early career communication scholars who are hoping to really have an impact on the field in the way that you have or similar ways?

Ellen Wartella 17:36
I usually get my research questions from the New York Times. What are people saying are there concerns about children and media? And what are they writing about? Then I form research questions around that. So I think looking out into the world, what is the world concerned about? What are parents concerned about? What are caregivers concerned about? What are schools concerned about? What are policymakers- what are people talking about that they don't understand? Can you inform them about that? That's always the way I sort of have approached my research.

Shina Aladé 17:36
I think that's a unique strategy that not many are taking but it makes sense when you circle back to what we were talking about earlier with really doing research that has an impact.

Ellen Wartella 18:13
Absolutely. I think that's important. Yes.

Shina Aladé 18:16
I am always so glad to get a chance to chat with you and hear about your history of your career. And it's extra fun that I now get to help others hear these great stories and the ways that you've shaped our field. So, thank you for your time. Thank you for all that you've done as a communication scholar.

Ellen Wartella 18:32
Thank you, Shina. It's been lovely.

Shina Aladé 18:37
This episode of Architects of Communication Scholarship is a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. This series is sponsored by the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. Our producer is Sharlene Burgos. Our executive producer is DeVante Brown. The theme music is by Humans Win. For more information about this episode's host and architect, as well as our sponsor, be sure to check the episode description. Thanks for listening!