Nobody Notices It? Qualitative Inequalities of Leading Publications in Communication and Media Research

Abstract

This article examines the publication practices in the field of communication and media studies (CMS) by analyzing the main patterns and features of Scopus-indexed journals. I generated randomly selected samples from Q1 to Q4 quartiles and investigated the connections between the publisher and the content of a given periodical, the internationality and center-periphery indexes, and coauthor networks. Using the results to test the paradigm of dependency theory in CMS, I find that the publisher’s location eminently affects the content of a journal. Authors from dependent countries are underrepresented in the most prestigious journals, and, although authors from developed countries frequently collaborate with one another, their coauthorship with authors from dependent countries is idiosyncratic; therefore, authors from dependent countries tend to look for alternative ways to produce noticeable publications.