Understanding Foreign Correspondence: A Euro-American Perspective of Concepts, Methodologies, and Theories

There are as many as 3,400 correspondents covering the United States, among them approximately 600 print and broadcast correspondents from European countries. The importance of the foreign correspondents corps stationed in the United States and of their work has increased commensurate with the world preeminence gained by the U.S. after World War II. This book examines the state of research on European foreign correspondence from the United States and on the corps of journalists that produces it. Contributions from both European and American authors examine the varied conceptual issues regarding foreign correspondence, the methodologies that have been employed in studies carried out on both sides of the Atlantic, and the theories that were and could be tested when studying the subject. The book serves as a prolegomena to future studies on foreign correspondence and correspondents.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Peter W. Gross/Gerd G. Kopper: Preface – Peter Gross: The Starting Point: Studies on European Foreign Correspondents and Correspondence – Charles C. Self: Theoretical Perspectives and Research Methods in Studies of Foreign Correspondence – Gerd G. Kopper/Benjamin J. Bates: Political Economy of Foreign Correspondents – Ralph Beliveau/Julia Lönnendonker: Foreign Correspondents and Ethnography: Research Practices, Methods, and Texts – Peter J. Gade/Dave Ferman: Theoretical Frameworks Guiding the Study of International News: Gatekeeping, Agenda Setting and Framing – Meta G. Carstarphen/Mihai Coman: Foreign Correspondents: Necessary Mythmakers – Ralph Beliveau/Oliver Hahn/Guido Ipsen: Foreign Correspondents as Mediators and Translators Between Cultures: Perspectives From Intercultural Communication Research in Anthropology, Semiotics, and Cultural Studies – Katerina Tsetsura/David Craig/Olivier Baisnée: Professional Values, Ethics, and Norms of Foreign Correspondents – Rolland Schroeder/Jim Stovall: The Impact of the Internet on Foreign Correspondents’ Work Routines.

About the Author :
Peter Gross is Director of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee, and a professor specializing in international communication, with a particular focus on East-Central Europe. The author/co-author of eight books and dozens of scholarly articles published in the U.S. and Europe, he was instrumental in establishing a new journalism program at the University of Timisoara West, Romania, and has been the workshop leader and administrator of numerous training programs for foreign journalists in the U.S. and in East-Central Europe over the last 20 years. He was a Research Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and has won numerous research grants and other awards, including one from the Joan Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics at Harvard University. He has taught at universities in China, Hungary, Romania and Spain. Gerd G. Kopper is a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and served as Visiting Scholar of Waseda University in Tokyo. From 1978 to 2006 he was chair for policy, economics and the law of mass media at the Journalism Institute of the University of Dortmund. He initiated and directed the first Centre for Advanced Study in International Journalism (CAS) in Europe at Dortmund, sponsored by the non-profit Erich-Brost-Institute. He has worked as a journalist, editor, foreign correspondent (in Japan), permanent consultant (OECD, Paris), and is author and editor of more than twenty-five books and numerous articles in his fields of expertise. He has served as counselor on a number of government committees in his country and in Europe.