Literature Positioning (commres-literature-positioning)

CR is a cumulative, social-scientific journal: reviewers ask how your hypotheses extend, qualify, or adjudicate the prior empirical communication literature. Positioning is not throat-clearing — it places the paper where a quantitative communication scientist can see the open question, the rival accounts, and the move your tests make.

When to trigger

• Drafting or revising the introduction and the "present study / hypotheses" paragraph
• A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate"
• You need to distinguish your hypotheses from the closest prior empirical papers
• Your effect is solid but the contribution to communication theory is unclear

How CR wants the literature engaged

1. Engage the empirical debate, not a pile of citations. Identify the live disagreement or open question your hypotheses speak to, and cite the studies that define it — including the strongest prior tests.
2. Build to hypotheses. CR introductions march from theory and prior findings to explicit, numbered hypotheses (and research questions); positioning sets up exactly those predictions.
3. Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismeasured, under-tested, or confounded in prior work, and why resolving it advances communication science.
4. Position against rivals. "Prior work argues X via mechanism M; we test whether M holds, is conditional on C, or is better explained by M′." The rival becomes a tested alternative, not a foil.
5. Theory over platform. Frame around the communication process or construct, not the medium or dataset — platforms change; tested mechanisms accumulate.

Cross-area engagement (CR is read across communication science)

If your paper is…	also engage…
a media-effects experiment	the general processing/persuasion theory it tests, not one stimulus literature
a survey of new-media use	the use→effect process literature, not just platform descriptions
a content analysis	the substantive effects/processing literature the coded features speak to
a health/political communication study	the message/audience mechanism literature beyond one topic

Anti-patterns

• A "literature dump" with no organizing empirical debate
• Engaging only one platform or topic niche (a common CR rejection reason)
• Hypotheses that do not follow from the cited theory and prior findings (HARKing risk)
• Strawmanning prior work, or hiding the closest competing study
• Self-citation that breaks anonymity — write self-citations in the third person (see commres-submission)

Positioning pass for Communication Research

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the communication process, the measured constructs, the study design, and the inferential claim; then judge whether the manuscript answers CR's real reader: a quantitatively trained communication scientist who weighs theory, measurement validity, identification, and effect interpretation.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map — incumbent finding/account, unresolved tension, this paper's tested delta; include one rival account the design must rule out and one sibling-venue omission a referee would flag.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows so the next agent edits rather than rediscovers the issue.
• Sibling guard: Journal of Communication (all-paradigm), Human Communication Research (interpersonal), New Media & Society (digital). If a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until resources/official-source-map.md has been checked and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Debate】the live empirical disagreement / open question
【Key works】the 3-6 prior tests that define it
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / confounded / untested
【Hypotheses】how H1…Hk follow from the positioned theory
【Strongest rival】the account the design will adjudicate
【Next】commres-theory-building

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — measurement and effects literatures by area
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — CR scope and double-anonymized / third-person self-citation rules