Gertrude Joch Robinson

Gertrude Joch Robinson (born November 15, 1927 in Hamburg ) is a German-Canadian communication scientist . She emigrated to America after World War II and has lived in Canada since 1970. She further developed the gatekeeper research initiated by David Manning White . One focus of her research is journalism research under the aspect of gender studies . She was one of the first women at McGill University and one of the pioneers in gender studies.

Life

National Socialism and Emigration

Gertrude Joch Robinson (née Joch) was born in Hamburg between the First and Second World Wars as the daughter of the American Sarah Blaisdel and the German Friedrich Joch . Gertrude Joch Robinson grew up bilingual. The school that Gertrude Joch Robinson attended was converted into a military hospital during the Second World War, so she and other students were no longer able to attend classes. Her parents, who were Social Democrats , still wanted Gertrude Joch Robinson to go to school, so together with other parents they organized a philosophy professor who was far removed from the National Socialist regime. Thus, the lessons could be continued on the non-official side, while the school was finally shut down. Her father's shipping company had lost all ships by 1945 due to torpedo attacks by the Allies . In 1946 the family emigrated to America. She had the opportunity to get from Bremerhaven to New York on a ship that had recently transported American soldiers to Germany for military service.

academic career

From 1947 Gertrude Joch Robinson studied philosophy and political science at the renowned Swarthmore College , near Philadelphia, and graduated with honors. She wrote her master's thesis in philosophy at the University of Chicago on "The Concept of Verification in Bertrand and Russell". She then received a doctoral position at the University of Illinois and wrote her doctoral thesis on news selection in the TANJUG news agency in what was then Yugoslavia . In 1970 she began her thirty year career as a professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There she was on the board of the “graduate program in communications” and chaired the program four times.

When she began her academic career at McGill University , the circumstances were extremely difficult for women, as there were only five women out of 100 scientists and the gender pay gap was standard in academic circles. In addition, women were often ignored or not taken seriously in academic circles. Gertrude Joch Robinson and her colleagues succeeded in creating awareness of these problems and thereby improving the situation in the long term. In 1983 she became the first female chairman of the Canadian Communication Association and in 1987 the first female editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication. In addition, she was Vice President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research from 1982 to 1992 . In 1999 she retired from McGill University, but continued her research.

Research priorities

Gatekeeper research

The Gatekeeper research was in 1950 by David Manning White initiated. It is about the news selection and what role the publisher plays in it. During her stay in what was then Yugoslavia, Gertrude Joch Robinson researched news selection in the media agency TANJUG . In her work "25 Years of Gatekeeper Research: A Critical Review and Assessment", Gertrude Joch Robinson criticizes White's assumption that gatekeepers only act individually and therefore only have to be analyzed on the individual level. In her work, she distinguished three different types of gatekeeper research: the individualistic approach, the institutional approach and the cybernetic approach. According to Gertrude Joch Robinson Robinson, the individualistic and institutional approaches are insufficient to conduct meaningful gatekeeper research. In her research, she prefers the cybernetic approach, which unites the various levels into a system in which gatekeepers select messages and information unconsciously rather than consciously, which are then published.

Gender studies

Gertrude Joch Robinson conducted research on gender studies at McGill University in Montreal . She put a focus on journalism research in Canada . In the 1960s and 1970s, during the second wave of feminism , the beginning of feminist communication research, which she co-founded.

In her work "Feminist Approaches to Journalism Studies: Canadian Perspectives" she tries to refute the assumption that female experiences in editorial offices are due to purely demographic circumstances. In the course of this research, two surveys were carried out 20 years apart, 1975 and 1995. The study found that structural discrimination decreased over time. However, the constant presence of sexualized assumptions about how family and work can be ideally reconciled was also evident in the second round. In the course of this study, Gertrude Joch Robinson divided the meaning of gender into three levels: gender as a classifying system, gender as a structuring structure and gender as ideology.

In the article “The Study of Women and Journalism: From Positivist to Feminist Approaches”, Gertrude Joch Robinson prepares the development of gender studies. First of all, the positivist gender research is described, which recognizes and researches unjust and unequal conditions in society, but in which the social gender (gender) depends on the biological one. It was not until 1980 that research into the question of what gender could mean was started. Gender is explained in the article by Gertrude Joch Robinson with four possible meanings. Assuming that gender is something that finds expression in thoughts and actions, it comes into play as “gender assignment”, “gender attribution”, “gender role practices” or “gender identity”. It describes these four categories as follows:

"Among these are gender assignment, which classifies an individual into a gender at birth; gender attribution, which assigns an individual to a gender classification in a social interaction; gender role practices, which refers to behaving like a female and gender identity, which identifies the feelings one has as male or as female. "

In this article, Gertrude Joch Robinson emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinarity in the subject of communication studies. Feminism should be taken seriously there as a theoretical framework and included in research. According to Gertrude Joch Robinson , gender plays a role in the discipline and its development , especially since individuals are themselves social actors and “gendered individuals” and should rethink their own behavior from the aforementioned points of view.

In general, Gertrude Joch Robinson criticizes the fact that communication research has often ignored feminist research because it was assumed that gender is an innate attribute and not a societal and social construct.

Public response

Gertrude Joch Robinson published a total of 42 works, including 7 monographs, and was the editor of 120 publications. The works and publications appeared in German, English and French and can be found in 1,500 library collections. There is also a mentoring program run by the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies , which bears her name and serves to promote young talent in these disciplines. The first round of the mentoring program took place in 2011.

Publications

Articles in journals (selection)

• 1970: Foreign news selection is non-linear in Yugoslavia's Tanjug agency. In: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 47 (2)
• 1977: Tito's maverick media: the politics of mass communications in Yugoslavia. In: Canadian Journal of Communication, 4 (3)
• 1983: Communication Studies in Canada. In: Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 8 (4)
• 1988: "Here be dragons". Problems in charting the US history of communication studies. In: Communication, 10 (2)
• 1995: Women Politicians in Canadian Reporting: Different Gender Discourses? In: Jahrbuch Arbeit, Bildung, Kultur, Vol. 13

Articles in anthologies (selection)

• 1973: 25 years of gatekeeper research. In: Social communication and information
• 1998: Canadian women journalists: The "other half" of the equation (with Armande Saint-Jean). In: The Global Journalist. News People around the World
• 2008: Journalism as a symbolic practice: The gender approach in journalism research. In: Global journalism research: theories, methods, findings, future
• 2001: Media research from the perspective of the social sciences with a special focus on gender research. In: Research subject public communication: functions, tasks and structures of media research.

Monographs (selection)

• 1977: Tito's Maverick Media: Te Politics of Mass Communications in Yugoslavia
• 1980: Women, communication, and careers (with Marianne Grewe-Partsch)
• 1998: Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices
• 2005: Gender, journalism, and equity: Canadian, US, and European experiences

literature

• Jamie Stiehm: A Life in Full
• Aimee-Marie Dorsten: Women in Communication Research

Web links

• http://www.dgpuk.de/nachwuchs/endung/gjr-mentoring-programm/ , accessed on January 23, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Jamie Stiehm: A Life in Full. 2014, accessed November 29, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Aimee-Marie Dorsten: Women in Communication Research . In: Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Robert T. Craig (Eds.): The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy . John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2016.
3. ^ Gertrude Joch Robinson: Foreign New Selection is Non-linear in Yugoslavia's Tanjug Agency . Ed .: Journalism Quarterly. tape 47 , no. 2 , 1970, p. 340 .
4. ↑ Gertrude Joch Robinson: 25 years of "gatekeeper" research. A critical review and evaluation . In: Jörg Auermann, Bohrmann Hans, Sülzer Rolf (eds.): Social communication and information. Research directions and problems - A workbook for mass communication . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973, p. 344 -356 .
5. ^ Gertrude Joch Robinson: Feminist Approaches to Journalism Studies: Canadian Perspectives . Ed .: Global Media Journal- Canadian Edition. tape 1 , no. 1 , 2008, p. 123-136 .
6. ^ ^{A b} Gertrude Joch Robinson: The study of women and journalism: From positivist to feminist approaches . In: Cees J. Hamelink, Olga Linné (eds.): Mass Communications Research: On Problems and Policies . Ablex Publishing, Norwood, New Jersey 1994, pp. 196 .
7. ^ Aimee-Marie Dorsten: Women in Communication Research . In: Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Robert T. Craig (Eds.): The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy . John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2016.
8. ↑ WorldCat Identities: Gertrude Joch Robinson. Retrieved December 1, 2016 . 
9. ^ Gertrude J. Robinson mentoring program. (No longer available online.) 2016, archived from the original on December 3, 2016 ; accessed on December 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.