joc-literature-positioning

Literature Positioning (joc-literature-positioning)

JoC is read across communication's subfields, and a frequent reason strong-looking submissions stall is that they engage only one narrow literature and miss the broader conversation. Positioning is not throat-clearing — it places the paper where a field-wide communication audience can see the gap and the move.

When to trigger

• Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
• A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate"
• Your platform/topic literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to communication broadly
• You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior papers

How JoC wants the literature engaged

1. Engage the debate, not a pile of citations. Identify the live disagreement or open question your paper speaks to. Cite the works that define it, including across subfields where relevant.
2. Two audiences at once. Satisfy specialists (you know the frontier) and generalists (why it matters). The intro should make a media-effects reader care about a computational-comm paper and vice versa.
3. Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismeasured, under-theorized, or untested, and why resolving it advances communication research.
4. Position the contribution as a move in the debate. "Prior work argues X via mechanism M; we show M fails / is conditional on C / is better explained by M′."
5. Theory over platform. Frame around the communication process or concept, not the specific medium or dataset — platforms change; mechanisms travel.

Cross-subfield engagement (a distinctive JoC demand)

If your paper is…	also engage…
an effects experiment on one platform	the general persuasion/attention/emotion theory it tests
a computational text-as-data study	the substantive communication literature it speaks to
a single-context qualitative study	the broader interpretive/critical conversation it advances
a measurement contribution	the substantive literatures that will use the measure

Anti-patterns

• A "literature dump" with no organizing debate
• Engaging only your platform or topic niche (a common JoC rejection reason)
• Strawmanning prior work, or hiding the closest competitor paper
• Self-citation that breaks anonymity — write self-citations in the third person (see joc-submission)
• Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental

Positioning pass for Journal of Communication

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the communication process, platform/media setting, construct measurement, and study design; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: communication reviewers who balance theory, media context, measurement, and social implications.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against Communication Research for quantitative communication, New Media & Society for platform focus, Human Communication Research for theory testing; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Debate】the live disagreement / open question
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it (incl. cross-subfield)
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / untested
【Move】how this paper changes the debate
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Next】joc-theory-building

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — JoC scope and double-anonymous / third-person self-citation rules