Professions

Professions are one of the main forms of institutionalizing expertise in western societies (Giddens 1991). The term “profession” is a curious one. It immediately conjures up images drawn from television shows featuring lawyers or medical doctors. Such representations point to the hold that certain professions have on our imagination. In Bleak House, Charles Dickens’s celebrated

Communication Professions and Academic Research

Despite a common interest in communicative activity, mass communication professionals and communication scholars have long been at odds with each other. Scholars argue that media performance can only be enhanced by professionalization of the workforce and the self-knowledge generated from systematic, criteria-based analysis and assessment. They have also systematically criticized a great deal of mass