Robert M. Shuter

This research was later featured in the Chicago Tribune and highlighted in the National Communication Association’s Comm365 Project, a publication which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the NCA.

Dr. Robert Martin Shuter (July 14, 1946 New York - May 4, 2021 Chicago) was an American author, academic, and consultant specializing in intercultural communication.

He was Research Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University and Professor Emeritus at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University, where he taught for 41 years and chaired the Department of Communication Studies for 29 years.

Shuter commenced collegiate studies at Loyola University, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in communication in 1969.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Shuter established an international reputation as an expert in nonverbal communication and culture, particularly in the ways proxemics, tactility, and gesticulation function in different countries.

To enhance his research, he interacted with the cultures at the heart of his investigations, traveling extensively throughout Europe, East Asia, and Latin America.

Shuter founded the Center for Intercultural Communication in the 1970s and served as its director through the 1970s and 1980s.

He earned his master's degree and doctoral degrees in communication from Northwestern University in 1971 and 1973, respectively, and after completing his doctorate began what would be a 41-year-long professorial career at Marquette University.

He became Chairperson of the Department of Communication Studies after just one year at Marquette, a position he held for a total of 29 years between 1974–1980 and 1987–2010.

He helped bolster the department's reputation through several key methods, including recruitment of outstanding scholars, improvement of the curriculum, and expansion of the graduate program.

His Marquette colleague Dr. Lynn Turner credits him for “the very existence of the communication studies program.”

Shuter also taught a wide variety of highly popular courses at Marquette which, according to Dr. Steve Goldzwig, “challenged his students to learn deeply,” as well as improve “their understanding, empathy and care for others.”

During his career at Marquette, Shuter also served as Visiting Professor and Visiting Lecturer at several research universities, including the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, Uppsala University School of Business in Sweden, the Stern School of Business at New York University, the International Academy of Business in Denmark, and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Now Research Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, he is also Professor Emeritus at Marquette.

He presented more than seventy papers at juried conferences.

Additionally, he authored or co-authored over eighty publications, including books, book chapters, and scholarly articles in major peer-reviewed journals, and his work has been widely cited in both popular and scholarly publications.

He served on the editorial board of a dozen national and international journals, was a guest editor for multiple national and international journals, and held leadership positions in major national and international academic associations such as the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association and the Intercultural Communication Division of the International Communication Association.

Shuter was an early contributor to the field of intercultural communication (ICC).

He published articles in leading communication and psychology journals, including the Journal of Communication, Communication Monographs, Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Management Communication Quarterly. One of his most cited articles, “Proxemics and tactility in Latin America,” was published in the Journal of Communication in 1976.

An early leader in academic associations in communication, Dr. Shuter served in 1979 as Chair of the Commission on International and Intercultural Communication (IIC) for the National Communication Association (NCA) and helped transition the field of Intercultural Communication from a commission within the National Communication Association to a full division.

He was also a leader in the Intercultural Communication Division of the International Communication Association.

The center produced the first compendium of worldwide researchers and research in intercultural communication, titled World Researchers and Research in Intercultural Communication, which was published in 1985.

During this time period, he also contributed to the scholarship of “subculture,” later coining the term "co-culture" as a replacement for “subculture” in his 1990 article “The Centrality of Culture.” This substitution of “co-culture” for “sub-culture” helped ensure that cultural groups within societies were viewed as co-equals.

He published a number of articles on race and communication in major journals such as the Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Communication, and Management Communication Quarterly, which established his position as a scholar on race, ethnicity, and communication.

Shuter created intracultural communication theory in 1990, presenting it in his article “The Centrality of Culture” in the Southern Communication Journal. His work intersected and built upon research and theories from noted scholars such as Edward T. Hall and Robert T. Oliver.

Later communication theories such as Asiacentrism drew in part from Shuter's research.

Dr. Yoshitaka Miike, a scholar in intercultural communication and creator of the term Asiacentricity, called Shuter's writings on intracultural communication “extremely important,” and commented that they “urge the discipline of communication in general, and the field of intercultural communication in particular, to reconsider the place and role of culture in human communication research and proposes a new and alternative model of theorizing communication from cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives.”

Shuter's investigations helped develop multinational organizational communication as a research perspective and theoretical framework, one which explores how national culture and co-culture impact internal and external organizational communication.

His earliest research in this area was presented in his article "The International Marketplace" (which appeared in the Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication) in which he articulated a framework for investigating and theorizing about the role of national culture and co-culture in organizational communication studies.

His articles on race and workplace communication, with Lynn Turner, continued this line of research.

He edited a book in this area with Richard Wiseman, Communicating in Multinational Organizations (1994, Sage).

Between 2008 and 2011, he served as Vice Chair Elect, Vice Chair and Chair of the International Communication Division of the National Communication Association.

Shuter founded intercultural new media studies (INMS), a communication sub-discipline which explores how new media technologies affect intercultural communication and “investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world.” As part of this sub-discipline, he led a study on “textiquettes,” the results of which were published in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research.

He also edited a special 2011 forum on new media across cultures for the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication as well as a special 2012 issue on Intercultural New Media Studies for the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research.

These special issues and articles are among the most viewed issues and articles in the history of these two leading communication journals.

To generate research on culture and new media, Shuter developed the independent Center for Intercultural New Media Research in 2011, which he has directed since its inception.

He published his 2012 article on INMS—“Intercultural New Media Studies: The Next Frontier in Intercultural Communication”—in the Journal Intercultural Communication Research.

The article is the most read in the journal's history, with over 7800 views.

The article established INMS as a field which “refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world” and challenged communication researchers to investigate the impact of new media on intercultural communication.

Intercultural new media studies provides a theoretical framework for exploring (1) the influence of culture on the social uses of new media, (2) how new media changes culture, and (3) how new media affects extant intercultural communication theories, most of which were developed in the twentieth century and grounded in a face-to-face paradigm.