The utility of presence in communication scholarship

Matthew Klein (Grady PhD student) and Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn (2023). “The utility of presence in communication scholarship,” in Bowman, N. (Ed.), Emerging issues for emerging technologies: Informed provocations for theorizing media futures. Peter Lang.

Abstract: Presence, or the experience of “being there” in mediated environments, has been vital for understanding how virtual experiences impact communication. However, after preliminary explorations of presence in the 1990s, there has been a decreased focus on communication centric theory building and instead a prioritization of technology comparisons that are unlikely to withstand the accelerated speed of technological advancement. To understand how the presence literature can move toward a foundation for theory building in communication, a systematic review of presence scholarship in nine flagship communication journals was conducted, examining: 1) how presence is incorporated into theoretical models as either a mediator/moderator or result, and 2) how communication studies and theories that incorporate presence have changed over time. Results showed that, over the last 30 years, 77% of studies examining presence were published in the last 12 years, and that 51% of those analyzed presence as a mediator or moderator compared to 39% the decade prior. The chapter concludes with observations about the current utility of presence in communication scholarship that can guide more robust theory building for future scholars.