Call Number:

ICA.01

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives

Extent:

25.0 linear feet (60 boxes)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

International Communication Association records, 1946-2016, ICA.01, Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1946-2016 (inclusive)

Creator:

International Communication Association.

Form:

Administrative records, Agendas (administrative records), Annual reports, Bylaws (administrative records), Clippings (information artifacts), Correspondence, Financial records, Minutes (administrative records), Newsletters, and Photographs

Abstract:

Originally established in 1950 as the National Society for the Study of Communication, the International Communication Association (ICA) has grown to be the largest worldwide academic organization devoted to the systematic study of communication. The collection is composed primarily of administrative records created and/or collected by various officers from 1946 to 2016, and serves to document the association’s development over the years. Materials include correspondence, board meeting minutes and reports, bylaws and constitutions, conference proceedings, division records, financial records, membership records, and publication records.

The International Communication Association (ICA) is the largest worldwide academic organization devoted to the systematic study of communication. Conceived in 1950 as the National Society for the Study of Communication (NSSC), the association was originally constituted as an offshoot of the Speech Association of America (SAA). The modern form of institutionalized communication study was at the time in its early stages of development. Increased specialization at colleges and universities, which encouraged the formation of “speech” and “journalism” programs, as well as higher demand for social scientific scholarship concerning the effects of new communication technologies and mass media, were the primary currents that led to the discipline’s official establishment. The formation of NSSC/ICA itself was considered an important milestone for the field, as it brought together scholars of both mass communication and interpersonal communication backgrounds, and provided a forum where they could present their research and shape the young discipline’s identity.

In the beginning, early communication scholars recognized the increasing diversity of academic interests within societies like the SAA and sought to create their own association that would encapsulate the new field of communication. In December 1949, professors Elwood Murray, Paul Bagwell, Wesley Wiksell, and Ralph Nichols proposed, before the SAA executive council, to form an affiliate association, and in January of 1950 the NSSC was officially founded. A constitution was subsequently drafted, and the first officers were chosen. The administration of the society was comprised of a national council (later the board of directors), an executive committee (initially composed of the president, two vice presidents, executive secretary, and six members at large), and several other standing committees for finance, membership, nominations, and publications. The purpose of the association as stated in the 1949 constitution was “…to study the nature of communication and its place in our society; to aid and encourage those individuals or groups attempting to improve the communicating process; to evaluate specific courses of training already existent; and to disseminate the results of our studies.” By the end of 1950 the NSSC had enrolled ninety-one members.

In order to fulfill its stated purpose, the fledgling league of communication scholars embarked on an array of societal activities. Various “study and research” committees, such as the Listening Committee and the Committee on Propaganda, were soon organized to function as working units that would produce original research. However, complications with logistics, and a lack of resources and interest, left many of the fifteen study and research committees inactive. Despite sustained discussion of restructuring, the research committee provision in the constitution remained unchanged for seventeen years, and continued to be widely regarded as the core of NSSC.

Other activities conducted by the NSSC included publishing and the organization of conference programs. Concerning the former, the society began putting out a quarterly newsletter, and its Journal of Communication was first published in 1951. While the Journal eventually became, and remains, the most prominent academic periodical for communication studies, acquiring articles proved difficult in its early years, and this prevented the publication from developing beyond a house organ. It was not until the mid-1960s that submissions increased and readership began to exceed direct membership. In addition to its print endeavors, a slew of NSSC-sponsored conferences and events were organized, such as the annual summer conventions and interdisciplinary conferences. These events were integral to NSSC’s early development, as they provided a venue where communication scholars could define the discipline and forge professional connections with researchers of other disciplines and associations.

Even as its programs burgeoned, membership and income during the 1950s to the mid-1960s remained fairly static, despite the dedicated efforts of many of the officers to promote the society. Reports from 1951 to 1963 show membership fluctuating between three hundred and five hundred. Starting in 1964, however, membership levels rose exponentially. The increase was in part due to greater advertising revenue from the Journal, and its growing prestige among university libraries. By 1971 there were nearly sixteen hundred members from the United States and forty-three foreign countries.

The rise in membership introduced an unprecedented measure of stability and diversity, and the NSSC’s increasingly broad academic orientation led to a number of administrative developments. In 1967, the organizational structure of the NSSC was changed with the adoption of new bylaws. These changes abolished the nearly defunct study and research committees, and in their place created a still extant interest group-division system. In contrast to the earlier research committees, interest groups could only be created if adequate enrollment were provided, and if an interest group expanded to represent 5% of ICA membership, it could acquire division status. Over time, the number of divisions has increased, and today there are more than thirty divisions and special interest groups, such as the Mass Communication division, the Intercultural Communication division, and the Feminist Scholarship division. Another important shift came in 1967, when the NSSC officially separated from its parent organization, the SAA. To reflect this new identity, the NSSC was officially renamed the International Communication Association in 1969.

ICA continued growing its operations throughout the 1970s. In 1973, Human Communication Research was introduced to the ICA publication catalog, and in 1977 Communication Yearbook, which included conference proceedings and literature reviews, was also launched. The first divisions began publishing their own newsletters, and organized sessions and workshops at annual conferences. To promote the increasingly global character of the association, the first international annual conference was held in Berlin in 1977. And the ICA Fellowship Program was inaugurated in 1979 with the aim of recognizing influential communication scholars from the association’s own membership.

In 1975, ICA settled into a permanent office in Austin, Texas. It was managed by the executive secretary (later the executive director), whose term and purview had recently been expanded. Previously, the secretary’s tenure had been limited to three years and he or she was responsible for keeping records relating to the annual conventions, business and board meetings, and membership; distributing official publications and notices; and submitting annual financial reports. In addition to these duties, he or she was now charged with maintaining the continuity of the association’s operations more generally, and was given a renewable three-year term to do just that. The secretary’s office would go on to become the point of constancy in an otherwise purposefully protean administration. Robert L. Cox retained the mantle of executive secretary director from 1974 to 2000, and was succeeded by Michael L. Haley in 2000. Laura Sawyer took over from Haley in 2016.

To commemorate the ICA’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the board of directors approved funding for the publication of a history of the organization in 1971. The board contracted Carl Weaver, who served as executive secretary from 1959 to 1961, to write the history, which was to be promoted at the 1975 annual conference. Weaver relied on oral histories and administrative records collected from past officers as sources for the project. While Weaver finished the history 1974, it was shelved later that year, largely due to shifts in board member composition and vision. The records Weaver used for the history, which include many of the NSSC’s foundational documents, were subsequently moved to the ICA office.

ICA membership and institutional activities remained relatively constant during the 1980s, before expanding throughout in the 1990s. From 1980 to 1990, membership hovered around two thousand, but by the turn of the century it had grown to include around three thousand individuals in total. Enrollment, however, tended to fluctuate during conference season, so to provide a more stable membership base throughout the year, the board altered the bylaws to align the membership year with the fiscal year. As of 2017, ICA is comprised of nearly 4,500 communication scholars with myriad research interests. Along with its increasing constituency, ICA’s publications also proliferated during the 1990s and 2000s. Communication Theory was introduced in 1991; the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication in 1994; and Communication, Culture, and Critique in 2005. Meanwhile, the newsletter switched from quarterly to monthly release—a schedule it maintains to this day.

While always a point of concern, the ‘International-ness’ of ICA had become an increasingly salient issue within the association throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, leading to changes in its administration and activities. It was decided that conferences would be held in locations outside the United States every other year. Since the mid-1990s, events have been hosted in Jerusalem, Acapulco, and Seoul, among others. In 2000, ICA established five regional-at-large board seats in an effort to promote a more global makeup to the administration, and in 2001, ICA moved its headquarters from a rented office in Texas to one in Washington D.C. to nurture a more international institutional orientation. The association purchased an office building in the same city in 2006 to serve as a permanent base of operations.

In many ways ICA’s development mirrors that of the discipline it was organized to explore and promote. As the association became more confident in its activities, the lineaments of academic communication programs and research agendas were also becoming more defined. Today, through its global event programs, varied publications, and division group structure, ICA continues to evolve along with its field—providing a network and platform for communication scholars the world over.

Works Consulted:

“ICA History.” International Communication Association. Accessed October 31, 2017. https://www.icahdq.org/page/History.

National Society for the Study of Communication, Constitution and Bylaws, article II. 1949. Box 29, Folder 5.

Weaver, Carl. A History of the International Communication Association. Unpublished manuscript, 1973. Box 27, Folder 6 and Box 28, Folder 1-5.

The records of the International Communication Association (ICA) were transferred from the association’s headquarters in Washington D.C. to the Annenberg School for Communication Library in 2016. The collection is composed primarily of administrative documents spanning from 1946 to 2016, which were accumulated under the auspices of the executive secretary (later known as executive director) of the association. These documents include correspondence, board meeting materials, constitutions and bylaws, committee records, conference proceedings, division records, financial records, membership records, and publication records. Overall, this collection represents the history of ICA through the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. While changes to the association’s organizational structure—specifically those made to the term of the executive director in 1967—and the founding of a central office helped to consolidate the association’s records, the annual rotation of most major officers has contributed to the somewhat irregular maintenance of the association’s documents throughout its history.

Most of the collection was amassed during Robert Cox’s tenure as executive director from 1974 to 2000, while the remaining documents originate from the time of Michael Haley’s term (2000-2015). The majority of the association’s historical records, while ultimately centralized at ICA headquarters by Cox, were initially acquired from past officers of the National Society of the Study of Communication (NSSC)/ICA by Carl Weaver in order to write a history of the association. Other historical records from the 1940s to the 1970s were most likely either given to Cox at later dates or were inherited from previous secretaries. The records of Sam Luna, who served as the ICA’s director of member services from 2001 to 2016, are also present, although fewer in number than those described above.

In an effort to preserve the records’ original order and contexts of creation, the collection has been organized primarily by officer, and is therefore divided into three series: I. Robert L. Cox, II. Michael Haley, and III. Sam Luna. A more detailed description of materials can be found at the series level.

The ICA records possess enormous historical value for researchers interested in the history of ICA, academic associations, and communication studies in general.