If Political Communication is Western in all but name, why not just rename it? The case for provincialising the field

The field of political communication remains narrowly focused on so-called WEIRD societies — Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic — depite sincere and strenous efforts to diversify it. Rather than continuing to struggle to globalise polcomm and settle for incremental gains, I suggest that it may be time to respect the fact that there are many scholars doing good work within in this field as currently constituted. They are, not unreasonably, happy with polcomm the way it is. But respect should be mutual. And respect for scholars of the non-West requires that polcomm give up the pretence that it covers political communication in some generic or universal sense. De facto, it represents Western political communication. It should rebrand itself accordingly. Paradodically, the field as a whole will become more global when its most dominant regional grouping becomes more aware of its provincialism.