Disposition versus situation: Neurocommunlcology and the influence of trait apprehension versus situational factors on state public speaking anxiety

Research indicates that individuals with elevated levels of public speaking anxiety report significantly different mental representations of the public speaking context, when compared to individuals with lower levels of anxiety. To examine the effect of the differences in mental representations, narratives for three public speaking contexts were developed. Results indicated that disposition (i.e., trait apprehension) was a better predictor of state anxiety when giving an impromptu speech. Situational factors (i.e., importance, skills, impression), however, were better predictors of state anxiety when either giving a speech to a 5^th grade class or giving a speech to friends.     

浅析美国出版言论审查的特点

分析美国出版的言论审查史,总结其出版言论审查的特点:1)其审查多通过立法实施,并由法院定谳,但美国各法院并非立国之初便支持出版言论自由,期间多有反复;2)美国各行政机关极少赤裸裸地干涉出版言论活动,但善于利用民意压制出版言论自由;3)美国战时的出版言论审查明显严于和平时期。     

Eisenhower's ‘atoms for peace’ speech: A case study in the strategic use of language

This article examines the speech “Atoms for Peace,”; delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 8, 1953. The author demonstrates how a complex rhetorical situation resulted in the crafting and exploitation of a public policy address. Far from serving as a precursor to nuclear disarmament, the speech functioned to bolster the international image of the United States as a peacemaker, to warn the Soviets against a preemptive nuclear strike, and to alert the American public to the dangers of a nuclear exchange.     

Protecting the Ladies: Benevolent Sexism,Heteronormativity, and Partisanship in Online Discussions of Gender-Neutral Bathrooms

The recent adoption of bathroom bills restricting trans* people’s access to public bathrooms of their choice in the United States has elicited a vigorous public debate invoking benevolent sexism, heteronormativity, and partisanship. This analysis includes 9,764 online comments posted on the 13 most-shared articles or blog posts about trans* bathroom accommodation from September 2015 to September 2016. The common themes in such discussions were arguments promoting benevolent sexism, including that women and girls need protection by men and from men and that sex differences are natural. Results showed that support for trans* access to public bathrooms was most prevalent in discussions on left-leaning sites, whereas opposition was most prevalent in discussions on right-leaning sites. Most, but not all, benevolent-sexism themes were prevalent in comments on right-leaning sites. The results are discussed in the context of their theoretical implications for the literature of benevolent sexism and heteronormativity.     

Online speech and democratic culture: a comparison of freedom of online speech between South Korea and the United States

Civil libertarian doctrine which was dominant during the twentieth century argued that the main goal of freedom of speech was to ensure that the public would be well-informed and actively engage in public deliberation. A literal extension of this claim to the Internet age often justifies the regulation of online speech under the assumption that harmful communication undermines the public interest. This study challenges civil libertarianism and proposes a new thesis of freedom of online speech, which posits that online speech should be understood in terms of a democratic culture where every individual participates freely and without restraints in the process of meaning making that constitute her/him as an autonomous individual. Based on such a theoretical concept, this study identifies three important aspects of online speech freedom – unfettered speech, anonymous speech, and participatory speech – and then compares the status of online speech between South Korea and the United States. This research suggests that a society should understand the unique nature of online speech and then arrange the legal system to fit into it.     

Myth or reality: The absence of evangelical Christian fiction titles in the public libraries of the United States

With the emergence of evangelical Christian popular culture, debate persists about whether public libraries in the United States are purchasing evangelical Christian fiction. This study examines the presence or absence of best-selling evangelical Christian fiction titles from 1990 to 1999 in public libraries in comparison with the presence or absence of mainstream fiction bestsellers from the same period. Public libraries of some states purchase more evangelical fiction titles than others, and the proportion of evangelical fiction titles relative to total fiction titles also varies widely from state to state, and from census region to census region. Using data on the percentage of total religious adherents and evangelical adherents, variously defined, in states and census regions of the United States, a series of indexes was developed to rank states according to the proportion of their evangelical fiction titles in public libraries relative to the percentage of their evangelical population. In addition, there was a statistically significant relationship between the proportion of evangelical adherents in a state and the proportion of evangelical fiction titles held as a percentage of total fiction titles in public libraries, even when total expenditures for books and per capita expenditures were controlled for.     

How Six Religious Pedagogies Can Inform ACRL Threshold Concepts for IL Instruction Training

Due to a lack of formal pedagogical training in Library Science graduate programs, early career librarians are often unprepared to teach information literacy courses. This is problematic for those whose responsibilities include library instruction, creating a need for librarians to develop the skill of identifying and applying pedagogy to their information literacy courses. We argue that librarians can benefit from looking at specialized educational contexts, as those contexts make use of unique pedagogies that students are exposed to on a regular basis. By looking at six different pedagogies found within the context of religious education, and then by aligning those pedagogies with the six threshold concepts of the ACRL Framework, we seek to model the type of pedagogical identification and application that can benefit librarians in any given context.     

For the Public Good or Just Good Publicity? Celebrity Diplomacy and the Ethics of Representation

Celebrities in recent years have taken on a more active role in communicating global humanitarian crises to the American public. This role at times shifts between journalist, advocate, philanthropist, and personal publicist. This article evaluates how three of the most well-known celebrities in this genre in the United States—Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Bono—differ in their method of speaking about these issues, focusing on how their public discourse adds to, or detracts from, citizens' abilities to understand, discuss, and respond to the issues presented in the public sphere. Through critical discourse analysis, similarities and differences are teased out and placed within the context of previous research on celebrity diplomacy and humanitarian crises, in order to evaluate the usefulness of such performances for the U.S. public as democratic citizens and for the victims of foreign suffering the celebrities purport to represent.     

Friends from Afar?

This research characterizes American media coverage of China’s Confucius Institutes and their related activities in the United States since their emergence more than 12 years ago. Although there are now more than 100 Confucius Institutes and 300 associated classrooms in the country, to date there has been no systematic study of how these Chinese government-sponsored organizations are portrayed in the American press. This study presents a content analysis of 426 articles mentioning these efforts at the heart of China’s public diplomacy endeavors since 2003. Determining that fewer than half of the articles did more than mention these organizations, we dedicate particular attention to the 183 examples that do focus specifically on Confucius Institute and classroom activities across the country. While results point to some differences in tone, framing and sources across university, local, state, national and international news outlets, we find that the majority of coverage focuses uncritically on these Chinese institutions without providing broader context about China’s rationale for engaging in such activities. The implications for China’s public diplomacy efforts in the United States are considered.     

Student Perceptions of the Instructor's Relational Characteristics,the Classroom Communication Experience,and the Interaction Involvement in Face-to-Face versus Video Conference Instruction

The present study examined student perceptions of the instructor's relational characteristics, classroom communication experience, and interaction involvement in courses taken face-to-face and in a video conference context. MANCOVA results showed significant differences between these contexts, with more negative student ratings of instructor immediacy and receptivity; classroom communication connectedness/mutuality, satisfaction, and quality; and interaction involvement occurring in the video conference classroom context than in the face-to-face context. A path analysis modeled the relationships among these perceptions of instructor characteristics, classroom communication experience, and interaction involvement. Based on this model, suggestions for improving student perceptions of the instructor, classroom communication, and interaction involvement in video conference courses are offered.     

PUBLIC APPROVAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND OTHER NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT GOALS IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

The environmental movement is one of the most successful socialmovements of the twentieth century, and a key reason for itssuccess has been strong public approval of the movement's goalof environmental protection. This paper reports cross-nationaldata on public approval of environmental protection relativeto approval of the goals of other major ‘new social movements’—theanti-nuclear power movement, the nuclear disarmament movement,the women's movement, the human rights movement and the animalrights movement—in Western Europe and the United States.The data come from a 1990 ‘lifestyles and attitudes’survey conducted by Gallup for Reader's Digest, based on nationallyrepresentative samples in the United States and seventeen Europeannations, and show higher public approval for environmental protectionthan for the goals of other new social movements.     

Willingness to communicate,communication apprehension,introversion, and self‐reported communication competence: Finnish and American comparisons

The purpose of this research was to make comparisons between Finnish persons and persons from other populations, particularly those from the United States, on a variety of common measures of communication orientations. The results of the study indicated that differences between Finnish and United States samples do exist, but the differences are primarily restricted to willingness to communicate and introversion. Data relating to communication apprehension and self‐perceived communication competence for the two cultures are remarkably similar. However, these two variables appear to be much less predictive of willingness to communicate for Finns than they are for Americans.     

Spicing Up Information Literacy Tutorials: Interactive Class Activities That Worked

The Future Voices in Public Services column is a forum for students in graduate library and information science programs to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to tell us of their visions for the profession, or to tell us of research that is going on in library schools. We hope to provide fresh perspectives from those entering our field, both in the United States and other countries. Interested faculty of graduate library and information science programs, who would like their students' ideas represented in these pages, are invited to contact Nancy H. Dewald at nxd7@psu.edu.

Neda Zdravkovic is studying at The School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Here she describes the student-centered and activity-based teaching approach used in some information literacy courses, including analysis of the student feedback received.

The School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington teaches the only postgraduate library studies program in New Zealand. Students take courses on campus and by distance learning, using CD-ROM and Web-based materials, as well as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) conferencing. The School is a member of the WISE (Web-based Information Science Education) consortium, sharing online courses with similar programs worldwide. From 2010, the current MLIS qualification will be replaced by postgraduate Certificate, Diploma and Master's degrees in Information Studies. The broad-based program allows students to specialize in Library Studies or in Archives and Records. Students come to the school from Asia, the United States, and New Zealand.     

Protecting personal data in E-government: A cross-country study

This paper presents the findings of a comparative study of laws and policies employed to protect personal data processed in the context of e-government in three countries (the United States, Germany, and China) with rather different approaches. Drawing on governance theory, the paper seeks to document the mechanisms utilized and to understand the factors that shape the governance modes adopted. The cases reveal that national government regulations have not kept pace with technological change and with the current information practices of the public sector. Nonetheless, traditional government regulation remains the major governance mode for the issue under discussion. Self-regulation and code-based regulation serve supplementary roles to traditional government regulation. National context is found to impact the form and level of data protection and the choice of governance modes.     

美国公共图书馆网站社会责任内容的调查与分析——基于网络内容分析法

文章通过对美国10所公共图书馆开展的社会责任服务进行调查与分析,从不同角度阐述了美国公共图书馆履行社会责任的实际情况。根据统计数据所反映出的问题,本人提供了一些可行性的参考意见。     

Context matters: Multilingual learners on public speaking courses

This study assessed whether L1 (English as first language), L2 (English as second language, recent transition to the United States), and Generation 1.5 (English as second language, years of United States–based education) students are able to grow and perform similarly in a public speaking course on measures of public speaking anxiety, information literacy, and several types of learning assessments. Results show no differences between L1, L2, and Generation 1.5 students. This study also assessed whether L2 students are more successful in integrated or protected section, and had mixed findings.     

Public Service Broadcasting in Four Countries: Overview

The structure, funding, and audience size of public service broadcasting (PSB) revealed in the four countries examined in the articles in this issue of The Journal of Media Economics differ markedly from one another but exhibit few surprises. PSB in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada is highly centralized, but relatively decentralized in the United States. The United Kingdom devotes the largest proportion of its gross national product to PSB, and the United States devotes the smallest. Similarly, PSB in the United Kingdom attracts the largest share of the television audience among the four countries, and U.S. public television attracts the smallest. Although the future relevance of PSB in Canada may be at risk, the provision of PSB in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States seems likely to continue in its present form for the foreseeable future.     

海峡两岸信息管理专业本科课程设置研究

从大陆地区和台湾地区共选取8所不同层次高校的信息资讯学或信息管理与信息系统专业为案例,以台湾大学和武汉大学为重点案例,对该专业的学分分配、课程模块、课程性质、专业课程等进行详细分析,从通识教育、专业核心课程和专业选修课程三个方面探讨海峡两岸该专业的办学特点和差异,认为应适应环境,毋需过度纠结于专业核心能力的培养,应注重课程之间逻辑与层次的更新,理性对待多学科融合类课程,努力缩小与欧美国家的差距。     

美国公共图书馆服务体系研究

论文从服务原则、服务内容、服务方式等方面对美国公共图书馆服务体系做了介绍,并且重点总结了美国社区图书馆的运作方式。最后,在借鉴美国公共图书馆服务经验的基础上,对我国公共图书馆服务体系的建设提出了发展建议。参考文献5。