The Communication Privacy Management of Adopted Individuals in Their Social Networks: Disclosure Decisions in Light of the Discourse of Biological Normativity

Although adoptees are often stigmatized for their nonnormative identity, adopted individuals must communicate with nonfamily members to integrate their adoptive identity into their definition of self. In the current study, adult adoptees (n = 25) were interviewed about their processes for disclosing their adoptive status in their social networks. Drawing upon communication privacy management (CPM) theory, inductive analyses demonstrated that adoptees created motivational and contextual criteria to enact privacy rules surrounding adoption. Adoptees maintained privacy to avoid messages of “difference,” insensitive comments, imperviousness, and negative opinions about adoption. Adoptees disclosed about their adoption to build relational closeness and to educate/advocate for adoption. These privacy decisions were undergirded by the societal assumption that families are biologically linked or the discourse of biological normativity (Suter et al., 2014).     

Topic Valence and Ambiguity in Parent-Emerging Adult Child Postdivorce Discussions

Communication privacy management theory maintains permeability rules manifest as communication strategies used during conversation. Although postdivorce families tend to privilege openness, this conclusion is based on recalled reports and single discussions about negatively valenced topics. To determine whether ambiguity functions as a manifestation of permeability rules and its effects on relational satisfaction and psychological well-being, 39 parent-emerging adult child dyads discussed one negatively valenced and one positively valenced postdivorce topic. Results indicated parents were ambiguous while discussing negatively and positively valenced topics, and children were perceptive of parents' ambiguity during the conversations. No differences were found between parents' use and children's perceptions of parents' ambiguity. Further, children's relational satisfaction and psychological well-being were affected by ambiguity in both discussions.     

“You can't tell anyone but …”: Exploring the Use of Privacy Rules and Revealing Behaviors

This three-part study examines how privacy rules function to protect shared information from further revelation. Communication Privacy Management served as a theoretical framework to investigate issues related to boundary management. In the pilot study, college students (N = 409) described privacy rules and their use, and participants reported not further revealing the information when privacy rules were expressed by disclosers. In Study 1, participants (N = 167) reported on disclosing health-related information, and participants did not anticipate that recipients would further reveal especially when they used a privacy rule. In Study 2, dyads (dyad N = 257) reported on shared disclosure experiences, including both anticipated and actual boundary management. Study 2 findings include that privacy rules have limited effectiveness. The article discusses implications of privacy rule use when sharing private information.     

An Examination of Privacy Rules for Academic Advisors and College Student-Athletes: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

HOW TO MAKE BETTER SPEECHES. By William G. Hoffman. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1948; pp. 266. $3.00.

YOU AND YOUR SPEECHES. By E. C. Buehler. (Revised edition) . Lawrence, Kansas: Allen Press, 1949; pp. 266. $3.00.

ESSENTIALS OF COMMUNICATIVE SPEECH. By Robert T. Oliver, Dallas C. Dickey, and Harold P. Zelko. New York: The Dryden Press, 1949.

FUNDAMENTALS OF SPEECH. A Text‐Handbook of Principles and Methods. By Roy C. McCall. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949; pp. 240. $12.50.

PRACTICAL DEBATING. By Luther W. Courtney and Glenn R. Capp. New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1949; pp. xii: 308.

THE ART OF ACTING. By John Dolman, Jr. New York: Harper &; Brothers, 1949; pp. xx + 313. $3.50.

LIVING LITERATURE FOR ORAL INTERPRETATION. By Moiree Compere. New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc., 1949; pp. xii + 451. $3.00.

HANDBOOK OF RADIO PRODUCTION. By Erik Barnouw. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1949; pp. xii + 324. $3.25.

VOICE AND DICTION. By Victor A. Fields and James F. Bender. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949; pp. ix + 368. $4.00.

SPEECH METHODS IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. By Carrie Rasmussen. New York: The Ronald Press, 1949; pp. 340. $3.50.

SPEECH IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. By Lorna Shogren Werner. Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson and Co., 1947; pp. 222. $2.00.     

Adult Children's Experiences with their Parent's Infidelity: Communicative Protection and Access Rules in the Absence of Divorce

Guided by Communication Privacy Management (CPM), the goal of the current study was to examine parental infidelity and to learn what, if any, rules were enacted by participants to either provide access to or protect the information of their parent's infidelity. Rules used by participants to manage this information inside their family were labeled as internal, while rules used to manage this information outside their family were labeled as external. Participants included 13 adult children whose still married parents' relationship involved infidelity. Results indicated that participants created protection rules including two internal (maintenance and cultural) rules and one external (protecting the family from outside scrutiny) rule. Five access rules (context, sex, age, physical environment, and code terms), all internal, were also identified. The results of this study highlight the usefulness of CPM when examining how the knowledge of a parent's infidelity is managed by their children.     

College Drinkers’ Privacy Management of Alcohol Content on Social-Networking Sites

Alcohol-related posts on social-networking sites (SNS) can damage college students’ reputations and relationships and contribute to risky behavior. However, little is known about how college drinkers engage in privacy management involving alcohol content. Through 48 interviews and a Communication Privacy Management lens, this study uncovered criteria on which students relied to develop relatively impermeable boundaries around alcohol posts, the ways they collectively negotiated privacy with peers, and how participants implicitly and explicitly communicatively negotiated privacy turbulence. Findings suggest important connections between the co-occurrence of online privacy management and identity management, including how facework is involved in remediating privacy breaches and the co-opting of privacy. Findings also inform efforts to educate college drinkers about on-and-offline strategies to manage alcohol-related SNS content.     

Communicating About Chronic Caregiving in the Workplace: Employees’ Disclosure Preferences,Intentions, and Behaviors

A growing number of Americans are living with chronic health conditions that require informal, ongoing care from family members who are also in the paid labor force. In this exploratory study, communication privacy management is used to make sense of chronic caregiving (N = 48–64) and noncaregiving (N = 174–178) employees’ disclosure preferences, intentions, and behaviors in the workplace. We find that workers in general anticipate that they would disclose to many individuals at work about their caregiving, but employees actually disclose much less information to far fewer people at work when they occupy the chronic caregiver role. For chronic caregivers, positive perceptions about coworker supportiveness predict increased disclosure behaviors. Finally, future research directions as employers, workers, and policy makers prepare for the complex challenges associated with negotiating paid work and unpaid chronic caregiving are provided.     

The Rules-Based Process of Revealing/Concealing the Family Planning Decisions of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

Critical literature has largely ignored the element of purpose in Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad, along with its attendant philosophy of mysticism. Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech presents rhetorical critics with a valuable opportunity to observe in practice the features of a rhetoric of purpose, as Burke has disseminated them. In fact, analysis of Lubich's speech according to Burke's criteria of purposive rhetoric suggests the existence of a discrete sub‐class of purposive rhetoric identified here as the mystical narrative.     

Co-ownership of Private Information in the Miscarriage Context

Pregnancy loss due to miscarriage is a pervasive health issue. Although talking about the miscarriage experience with friends and family members has been linked to better adjustment, revealing this loss can be difficult because discussing a miscarriage often makes people uncomfortable. Moreover, couples often manage this information jointly as they decide whether to share the miscarriage with people outside the dyad. We conducted in-depth interviews with couples to explore the nature of co-ownership in the miscarriage context and to identify the privacy rules that couples develop to manage this information. We found that couples frame miscarriage as a shared but distinct experience and that both members exert rights of ownership over the information. Couples' privacy rules centered on issues of social support and others' need to know about the loss. Even though couples described their privacy rules as implicitly understood, they also recalled having explicit conversations to develop rules. We discuss how the management of co-owned information can improve communication and maintain relationships.     

Exploring Survivor Experiences and Emotions Expressed about Loss and Responsibility Following a Thrombosis Event

We explored the experiences and emotions women expressed about having a blood clot, including revelations about family members' decision to avoid disclosing inherited risk for clotting. We do this through analysis of in-depth life reflection interviews (N = 20) of women who experienced a first venous blood clot between the ages of 18 and 50 years. Selective coding reduced the data to an overarching story associated with thrombosis survivorship and loss across multiple life domains. The themes identified include participant revelations about living in the shadow of genetic susceptibility for thrombosis. Participants manage changes associated with lingering health effects, and daily routines for work and life, adapting their lives to manage coagulability. A second theme reveals the fallout linked to the severity of thrombosis encompassed in haunting psychological scenarios, persistent emotional concerns, and social discrimination. Participants assumed responsibility to disclose inherited risk, with the women expressing empowerment in knowing risks and acknowledging possible genetic testing mistakes. The overarching perspective was one of hope through proactive actions in occupational, recreational, and relational realms. We offer our findings as a theoretical depiction of thrombosis survivor identity and the need for public health and clinical communication to support disclosing family history for clotting.     

Military Wives' Stressful Disclosures to Their Deployed Husbands: The Role of Protective Buffering

This study combines the fever model with communication privacy management to examine the conditions under which military wives are likely to disclose their family stressors or engage in protective buffering with their deployed husbands. Military wives (N =105) whose husbands were deployed and who had at least one child completed a web-based survey about the communication of family stressors during deployment. Protective buffering was associated with negative health symptoms, and disclosure was related to marital satisfaction. Wives' perceptions that their husbands were in dangerous situations as well as their perceptions that husbands were supportive of their disclosures were both related to protective buffering and disclosure.     

Females’ (Non)Disclosure of Minority Sexual Identities in the Workplace From a Communication Privacy Management Perspective

In this study, communication privacy management theory (CPM) provides a theoretical framework for investigating the development of privacy rules and strategies for females disclosing a minority sexual identity (MSI) in the workplace. Analysis of in-depth interviews indicated that participants’ rules were influenced primarily by role and relational risk evaluations. Findings nuance CPM’s conceptualization of role risk to identify 3 variations: risk to employment status, professional image, and ability to complete tasks. In addition, connections between workplace relational and role risks and how gender identities influence risk assessments and disclosure are demonstrated. Despite risk, participants disclosed personal information at work and often did so utilizing implicit disclosure strategies in everyday interactions to test confidants’ reactions and normalize their MSI in the workplace.     

Factors that Predict Married Partners' Disclosures about Infertility to Social Network Members

This study draws upon the revelation risk model and the disclosure decision-making model to deduce hypotheses linking perceived stigma, communication efficacy, and relational closeness to married partners’ tendencies to disclose information about their infertility experiences to members of the couple's social network. Data from 50 couples reporting on disclosures to a total of 250 social network members were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Results indicated that aspects of stigma, communication efficacy, and closeness impact infertility-related disclosures. The discussion highlights how the application of these theories sheds light on the multiple factors that influence the extent to which husbands and wives engage their social network when coping with infertility.     

The Effects of Multimodal Communication Frequency,Geographic Distance,and Coresidence on Parent-Child Relationship Quality During Emerging Adulthood

The present study examined the role of three interrelated factors—multimodal communication frequency, geographic distance, and coresidence—in relation to emerging adult college students’ perceptions of parental relationship quality. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that emerging adults’ perceptions of relational closeness and communication satisfaction were related to lower levels of face-to-face interaction and higher levels of phone call interaction with their parents. Controlling for communication frequencies, students who lived separate from their parents reported greater communication satisfaction than those who coresided, yet coresidence was unassociated with relational closeness. Finally, geographic distance was unrelated to emerging adults’ perceptions of parental relationship quality.     

Readability and Basic Course Hybrid Textbooks in Human Communication: A Disparity of Reading Difficulty

Parents play a pivotal role in the gender development and sex-typing of children. It is important to discover whether gender role communication differences exist based on the sex of the child or parent. The present study aimed to discover differences in gender role messages communicated between mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son dyads. Participants (n = 630) completed a modified version of Bem's Sex Role Inventory. Two key results were discovered: mothers communicate significantly more feminine messages to children, regardless of child sex; and the modified BSRI identifies respondents as weak vs. strong gender identity rather than masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated.     

The Emotional,Behavioral, and Cognitive Experience of Boundary Turbulence

Key to understanding the process of privacy management is examining how boundary turbulence is individually experienced. Building on the principles of communication privacy management, I considered how the amount of dissemination beyond the dyadic boundary corresponds to the automatic emotional reactions, behavioral responses, and higher-order cognitions reported in response to boundary turbulence. Two hundred sixteen college-aged students described recent privacy breaches and reported their individual emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses to the betrayal of confidence. Results revealed that the amount of dissemination of private information was positively associated with anger, fear, and sadness. Furthermore, anger incited the use of distributive tactics, and this association was stronger for individuals who ruminated. Congruently, sadness prompted withdrawal behaviors, and this relationship increased as cognitive avoidance increased.     

A U.S.-Chinese Comparison of Affectionate Communication in Parent-Child Relationships

Affectionate communication is central to the maintenance of relational closeness, but it is also subject to relational, contextual, and cultural factors. This study was designed to examine the cultural effects on affectionate communication in parent-child relationships in the United States and China. Results indicated that Chinese fathers and mothers expressed less verbal, nonverbal, and supportive affection to their children than American parents. Both Chinese and American parents expressed affection to their children more through supportive behaviors than through verbal and nonverbal behaviors. In both cultures, mothers engaged in more verbal, nonverbal, and supportive affection with their children than fathers.     

Communication Privacy Management: A Thematic Analysis of Revealing and Concealing Eating Disorders in an Online Community

This study analyzed the discourse of a pro-anorexia website, prettythin.com. Narratives and posts were thematically analyzed using communication privacy management as a framework to understand the tension between revealing and concealing an eating disorder. Two themes were constructed during data analysis: (a) personal ownership and control, with the subtheme strategies for maintaining control and (b) communication choices surrounding disclosure and two subthemes, (i) seeking to fulfill needs face-to-face and (ii) positive fulfillment of needs online. Theoretical and practical contributions are addressed in terms of how communication theory can help understand people living with eating disorders. Specifically, how these individuals manage their personal information online and face-to-face and how prettythin.com provides support to men and women with eating disorders.     

Comparing Physically Abused,Neglected, and Nonmaltreated Children During Interactions with their Parents: A Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

A meta-analysis of 30 observational studies compares abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated children's behavior during interactions with their parents. Drawing on the relational communication literature, children's behaviors from various coding schemes were grouped into those communicating positivity (e.g., affection, approval), aversiveness (e.g., anger, resistance), and involvement (e.g., attention, interest). Results reveal that abused and neglected children are distinguished from nonmaltreated children on all three behavioral clusters, with overall mean weighted effect sizes ranging from d=.29 to .55. Several moderators qualify the magnitude though not the direction of these differences, including maltreatment type, child/parent age, and observation length and setting. These findings have implications for understanding the etiology and outcomes of child maltreatment as well as for intervention and prevention efforts.