This week, I read the Chakravarrty article about the lack of representation for the BIPOC community in Journal articles and research. While I found the article interesting it was disappointing to see the low percentages that represented BIPOC contributions to journals. The majority of these numbers were less than 20% which is less than ideal. I feel that this issue of underrepresentation goes hand in hand with the issue of inaccessibility of journal articles due to the language they use (Chakravartty 2018).
Because most research journals do not feature articles that describe their research in the vernacular, it becomes inaccessible to most of the population. As a student, I have struggled through many peer reviewed research articles with Google up in the next tab so I can look up the definition of every other word. Research is meant to advance our society and we will not be able to advance if we keep it on a pedestal where only certain people can read and understand it.
Chakravartty, P., Kuo, R., Grubbs, V., & McIlwain, C. (2018). #communicationsowhite. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003
It is generally accepted that academia itself has been largely established and influenced by Westernized, white, and male voices, although in today's academia we find voices from more diverse perspectives, cultures, and worldviews. However, the roots of white supremacy in academia influence today's academy in multiple ways, and white male voices continue to dominate the academic conversation. While an author's gender, race, and ethnicity may not always be immediately identifiable, in a landmark paper, #CommunicationSoWhite, the authors found that white male scholars were more likely to be cited than other scholars (Chakravatty et al.) Other studies have found that self-citation also leads to differences in citation rates, although the main difference is gender, with men self-citing more frequently than women in the field of anthropology also found to be underestimated for Black women.
ReplyDeleteHey Iris,
ReplyDeleteI ended up writing about the same journal article for this weeks blog post. I really liked how you brought up the idea that research is made advance society, not hold us back. I can not agree with this sentiment more, and hopefully changes will be made to fix the current problem with research.
To build off your idea I wanted to bring up an idea that one of my friends brought to my attention a well. It a little different from what the main article was but still similar. The problem is that representation is being stifled in other fields as well. In my blog post I mentioned that the patents of black inventors and scholars have been either stolen or just denied. I would argue that this is a problem that runs deep in many other fields and needs to be examined further.