Profiling Younger Adults’ Communication About Aging

According to the Communicative Ecology Model of Successful Aging (CEMSA), how people talk about age can have implications for how they cope with aging later in life. However, most research on communication and successful aging has focused on older adults. In this study, we use latent class analysis to profile how younger adults (age 18–39) communicate about aging and examine how these profiles relate to their attitudes toward aging (affect, efficacy, anxiety, and perceptions of successful aging). Consistent with past research on older adults, we found three distinct profiles of communication behavior (disengaged, engaged, and bantering). An engaged profile was clearly associated with the most positive attitudes toward aging, while a disengaged profile was associated with the least positive attitudes. These findings suggest that patterns of talk about aging may start early in life, underscoring the importance of studying communication about aging across the lifespan.     

Young adults’ contact experiences and attitudes toward aging: age salience and intergroup anxiety in South Korea*

From the theoretical perspectives of communication accommodation and intergroup contact, this study examined South Korean young adults’ (N?=?301) perceptions of their communication experiences with a frequently-contacted grandparent, as well as attitudes toward older adults and own aging. Findings from structural equation modeling indicated that the participants’ attitudes towards older adults were positively predicted by contact frequency with the grandparent and negatively predicted by perceptions of the grandparent’s non-accommodative communication. Analyses of indirect effects revealed that young adults’ intergroup anxiety explained these associations. Although the direct effects of contact frequency and the grandparent’s non-accommodation on attitudes toward own aging were nonsignificant, the indirect effects through intergroup anxiety were significant. Moderation analysis indicated that these direct and indirect associations between non-accommodation and aging attitudes were significant only when age salience was low – a finding contrary to existing theory and research. Results are discussed in terms of intergenerational communication and culture, and theories of intergroup contact.     

“I thought I’d have more trouble with white people!”: Exploring racial microaggressions between West African immigrants and African Americans

Racial tensions continue in 21st-century United States through the communication of racial microaggressions. We are interested in the communication of racial microaggressions directed towards West African immigrants by people with whom they expected to be allied, African Americans. Sixteen people who identified as West African immigrants were interviewed about communication struggles with African Americans in this qualitative, interpretive analysis. Owen’s thematic analysis was employed to analyze interview data. Results suggest the communicative impact of racial microaggressions on recipients is far-reaching and consequential. Narratives illustrate microaggressive communication occurs daily through invalidating, dismissive lines of questioning as well as targeted name calling and pejorative dialogue.     

Investigating the influence of student–teacher Facebook interaction in Thailand

ABSTRACT

In Thailand, older individuals or ‘Phu Yai’ are people with higher social status and power as compared to younger people or ‘Phu Noi’ (Komolsevin &; Knutson, 2010). In the realm of education, teachers are considered Phu Yai while students are considered Phu Noi. This concept reinforces Hofstede’s (1991) major finding on Thailand being categorized as a high power-distance culture. The current study examines students’ perspective of the effect of student–teacher Facebook interactions on intercultural communication concepts such as power distance and submission to authority within the Thai student–teacher relationship. Questionnaires were administered to 353 students (N?=?353) at a large international university in Thailand. The study found that social media use between Thai students and teachers influence how students view the face-to-face power dynamics between them and their teachers. Specifically, the more students and teachers interact on Facebook, the lower students perceive the power distance between them and their teachers.     

Fear of Isolation and Perceived Affordances: The Spiral of Silence on Social Networking Sites Regarding Police Discrimination

The spiral of silence (SoS) framework elaborates the factors that determine whether individuals are willing to express their opinions in public. Although previous scholarship has examined differences in between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication, research studies have rarely tested how perceived affordances of the channel influence whether individuals express opinions or self-censor. In this study (N = 399), we examine several propositions of SoS within the context of discussing police discrimination on Facebook. To extend the theory’s relevance to social networking sites, we examined how users’ perceptions of network association, social presence, anonymity, and persistence related to opinion expression. Findings indicate support for some of the theory’s original tenets, as well as the role of multiple perceived affordances in determining whether people will express an opinion to their online social network. We discuss the implications for measuring and understanding political expression and silencing on social media as well as offline.     

How does patient-centered communication improve emotional health? An exploratory study in China

In China, people’s emotional health is concerning. The patient-centered communication during medical consultations may play an important role in improving people’s emotional well-being. However, the relationship between communication and health is one of the least developed areas in communication research. This study empirically tested a pathway linking communication to health. Based on survey data collected from 483 Chinese patients, the results showed that patient-centered communication directly improved emotional health. Also, patient-centered communication had an indirect effect on emotional health through uncertainty management skill. In addition, patient trust positively moderated the effects of patient-centered communication on uncertainty management skill and emotional health. Also, one’s Internet health information seeking positively moderated the effect of communication on health. The findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for health education and promotion in the context of China.     

Star gazing: Transing gender communication

ABSTRACT

This activity implores students and pedagogues to engage intrapersonal gender subjectivity through the analytic practice of transing gender communication. Specifically, Yep, Russo, and Allen (Pushing boundaries: Toward the development of a model for transing communication in (inter)cultural contexts. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 69–89) suggest gender is best understood as: (1) intersectional, (2) a performative and administrative accomplishment, (3) multiple, and (4) self-determined. Students are asked to analyze their gender sense of self through each of the pillars in a hands-on creative activity. The end result is a means of narrating one’s own gender in relational tension with other gender subjectivities.

Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Intercultural Communication, Gender and Communication, Performance Studies

Objectives: Designed to accompany a sustained conversation on questions of gender and communication, this unit- or semester-long activity imparts a critical approach to gender understanding through one’s own subjective gender experience by engaging the analytic work of “transing” (Stryker, Currah, & Moore, Introduction: Trans-, trans, or transgender? WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 2008;36(3–4):13). Further, the activity equips students with a working understanding of trans-affirming discourse including the critical capacity to de-center normative gender through lived experience. Finally, students are provided a space in which to explore and voice, through creative means, their own gender “galaxy” (Yep, Russo, & Allen, Pushing boundaries: Toward the development of a model for transing communication in (inter)cultural contexts. In L. G. Spencer & J. C. Capuzza (Eds.), Transgender communication studies: Histories, trends, and trajectories. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015, p. 70).     

Supporting Mexican immigrants’ resettlement in the United States: an ethnography of communication approach to building allies’ communication competence

This research explores interactions among Mexican immigrants and their U.S.- and Mexican-born allies at an immigrant support center (ISC) in the U.S. Southwest. I propose that to support Mexican immigrants in resettling, allies who work at this ISC must apply cultural knowledge about competent communication for Mexican speakers to structure their strategic actions (Sprain & Boromisza-Habashi, 2013). Taking an ethnography of communication (EOC) approach, I investigate the means and meanings of communication (Hymes, 1972) for speakers that point to cultural knowledge about competent communication. Data for this study include 7 months of observation, interviews with 37 community and staff members, and public documents collected during fieldwork. Findings reveal five means of communication that are meaningful for speakers at ISC. This research demonstrates the practical utility of the EOC in understanding how cultural expectations for communication may both assist and limit ISC’s efforts to support resettlement.     

Need for Orientation,Selective Exposure,and Attribute Agenda-Setting Effects

This study explores the ability of an interaction between need for orientation (NFO) and selective exposure to explain citizen's motivations to seek information from specific media sources and the consequences of this behavior for attribute agenda-setting effects. It draws important conceptual distinctions between the two moderate NFO categories, distinguishing active involvement NFO (high relevance and low uncertainty) from passive involvement NFO (low relevance and high uncertainty). The results suggest that in a political context, people with active involvement NFO are more likely to seek ideologically congruent media sources and more likely to adopt the media's attribute agenda. This study implies that at the second-level agenda setting, the salience of issue or object attributes on the media agenda is more likely to strengthen preexisting attitudes for people with high political interest and strong partisan identity.     

Message fatigue: Conceptual definition,operationalization, and correlates

Despite growing concern over the public’s fatigue toward inundated health messages, communication research has largely neglected such ramifications of prolonged, real-life campaign exposure. This paper offers an initial conceptual and empirical treatment of message fatigue, an important, but understudied, side effect of campaigns. Specifically, it proposes conceptual and operational definitions of the construct and examines psychometric characteristics of a proposed message fatigue scale. The findings from two studies concerning safe sex (N?=?412) and anti-obesity messages (N?=?396) demonstrated solid support for the scale’s unidimensionality. In support of construct validity, the scale exhibited significant associations with message avoidance, annoyance, information seeking, and desensitization. Moreover, in an experimental setting in Study 2, message fatigue negatively predicted attention and message elaboration, while positively predicting counterargument.     

The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis

We propose a communication analogue to Allport's () Contact Hypothesis called the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis (PCH). If people process mass-mediated parasocial interaction in a manner similar to interpersonal interaction, then the socially beneficial functions of intergroup contact may result from parasocial contact. We describe and test the PCH with respect to majority group members' level of prejudice in three studies, two involving parasocial contact with gay men (Six Feet Under and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and one involving parasocial contact with comedian and male transvestite Eddie Izzard. In all three studies, parasocial contact was associated with lower levels of prejudice. Moreover, tests of the underlying mechanisms of PCH were generally supported, suggesting that parasocial contact facilitates positive parasocial responses and changes in beliefs about the attributes of minority group categories.     

Integrating critical and trans-affirming pedagogies in argumentation and debate: A heuristic narrative

Courses: Storytelling, persuasion, gender and communication, argumentation and debate.

Objectives: In this essay, I map a unit-specific activity for an undergraduate class in argumentation and debate. I argue for the integration of a trans-affirming pedagogy as a key rhetorical frame in communication studies courses. Such pedagogical commitments push instructors to integrate a critical communication methodology while challenging structures that continue mitigating trans experiences, embedding critical interrogation of systemic injustice. Borrowing from LeMaster (Discontents of being and becoming fabulous on: Queer criticism in neoliberal times. Women’s Studies in Communication 2015;32:167–186. DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2014.988776), I use trans heuristically, whereby “trans and transgender are not necessarily intended exclusively as identities?… In this way, trans and transgender have two functions: as heuristics and as identities” (p. 169). Thus, as a pedagogical approach, a trans sensibility extends instruction methods to consider, criticize, and analyze binaries of thought, mundane performances of identity, and unlikely communicative phenomena that “get at gender in unsuspecting ways” (LeMaster, B., & Mapes, M. Transing priestly performances: Re-reading gender potentiality in Erdrich’s the last report on the miracles at little no horse. In S. Howard (Ed.), Critical articulations of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014, pp. 161–177). Using an activity from the unit “Argumentation with and as Narrative,” I draw on Enke (Enke responds to Nakamura. In V. Muñoz & E. K. Garrison (Eds), Transpedagogies: A roundtable discussion. Women’s Studies Quarterly 2008;36:288–308. DOI: 10.1353/wsq.0.0093) to ask, “How do we engage with the privileged spaces we occupy as trans and nontrans educators as a way to build alliances that are liberatory rather than oppressive to one another?” (p. 303).     

Books in the News in Cromwellian England

This article offers detailed analysis of the patterns of book advertising in Marchamont Nedham’s government-sponsored newsbook, Mercurius Politicus. It contends that, for a brief period, Politicus was the nearest thing that the mid-seventeenth century had to a literary periodical and contests standard accounts that Politicus was only successful because government monopoly made it so. Instead I show that Politicus was instrumental in creating an image of the Commonwealth and Protectorate as a Republic of Letters; the cheap print of its small advertisements insisted that the publication of a book was an event, that London was a city of the book, and that its inhabitants might respond to the uncertainty of political revolution by eagerly imagining a future comprised of new books as yet unread.     

Television reviewing: A search for criteria

New communication technologies have increased Europe's importation of foreign, especially U.S., broadcasting programs. This essay addresses the question and protection of cultural identity from a European perspective. Four subgoals of diversity are outlined as yardsticks for the appropriateness of protection. Various activities designed to deregulate European broadcasting may potentially increase or reduce diversity. The economic and political pressure to weaken the European trusteeship model of broadcasting is likely to be successful.     

Refining a theory of cross-cultural adaptation: an exploration of a new methodological approach to institutional completeness

The current study explored a whole-network approach to measure the impact of institutional completeness at an individual-level with regards to [Kim, Y. (2001). Becoming intercultural: An integrative theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.] a theoretical model of cross-cultural adaptation. A new construct of ‘ethnic entrainment’ was proposed as a way to bridge the different levels of theoretical constructs in the model. The analytical challenge of verifying the influence of institutional completeness (a group-level construct in the model) on individuals’ communication patterns was partially overcome in this study by measuring the degree of one's structural embeddedness in various ethnic community networks (i.e. information, emotional support, and tangible help exchange networks). A community member survey (N?=?172) was utilized to construct social networks of a Korean immigrant community. The research tested hypotheses generated from Kim's theorems on the relationships between ethnic group strength and host/ethnic interpersonal/mass communication. Three out of five hypotheses were supported through hierarchical regression analyses.     

The Relationship between Self- and Other-Perceptions of Communication Competence and Friendship Quality

This study explored dyadic effects of communication competence, assessed through self-perceptions and other-perceptions, on relationship quality in same-sex platonic friendships. Undergraduate students recruited a same-sex platonic friend to participate in this study along with them. Participants (N = 310; dyads = 155) completed an online questionnaire assessing their own and their partner's communication competence as well as their own relationship satisfaction and commitment. Results from actor-partner interdependence model analyses revealed both actor and partner effects for self-perceptions and other-perceptions of communication competence on relationship satisfaction and commitment. Additionally, partners’ other-perceptions of communication competence moderated the relationship between actors’ other-perceptions of communication competence and relationship commitment.     

Identifying Criminal Justice Faculty Research Interests Using Voyant and NVivo

Abstract

Inspired by Gao’s text analysis of communication studies faculty, this study looks at the trends from 176 faculty publications from the criminal justice department at the University of Nevada, Reno. Criminal justice faculty publications are missing from library science text analysis literature. This study uses Voyant and NVivo 12 to analyze words and phrases from titles and abstracts to identify research interests. Voyant itself was found to be sufficient and identified specific research trends such as organizational commitment, amber alerts, and death qualification. This study can assist liaison librarians in selecting between these two tools based on their needs.     

Beyond “Woodstein”: Narratives of Investigative Journalism

ABSTRACT

Using a methodology inspired by structural narratology and by James Hamilton’s [2016. Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism. Cambridge: Harvard] economic analysis of investigative journalism, this paper identifies a set of 14 recurring structural and formal elements (plot events, character types and functions, visual iconography) that constitute a fable about investigative journalism. The fable structure is applied to analyze six diverse films about investigative journalism produced in the US in the last 40 years. The films include two instantiations of successful investigative journalism (All the President’s Men, Spotlight), two cases where conflict between journalists and corporate managers diminished the impact of the investigation (Good Night and Good Luck, The Insider), and two instances of a counter-fable of failed investigative journalism (Truth, Kill the Messenger). The paper argues that the films’ representation of investigative journalism influences public perceptions of investigative journalism. It also speculates about the factors that will influence investigative journalism and its representations in the current political context in the US.     

“Putting Patients First”: Systematically Distorted Communication and Merck's Marketing of Vioxx

An estimated 27,000–60,000 patients died while taking Merck's drug Vioxx between 2000 and 2004. This essay uses Deetz's treatment of systematically distorted communication and Nilsen's significant choice to analyze Merck's communication about the drug. The company claimed publicly to be forthright about Vioxx's safety. The article shows, however, that Merck systematically distorted communication through neutralization, topical avoidance, and disqualification in ways that thwarted physicians’ and patients’ abilities to make an informed choice about Vioxx. The analysis shows that Merck employees’ consent to economic priorities framed these communication practices as legitimate and rational within the organization. The same practices, however, appeared socially irresponsible to members of the scientific community outside the company. In contrast to Merck's practices, the essay offers more participatory communication applications that uphold companies’ moral obligation to their stakeholders.     

The Attributes of Relational Maximizers

Using Schwartz’s (2000) conceptualization of decision maximization, we sought to understand how an individual’s propensity to maximize in relationships factored into personal, relational, and communication outcomes. In Study 1, 343 participants currently involved in romantic relationships completed measures of relational maximization along with measures of regret, life satisfaction, closeness, trust, relational satisfaction, and relational uncertainty. In Study 2, 272 participants were surveyed about their tendency to maximize in relationships along with affectionate communication and relational maintenance behaviors. Results from both studies revealed that the tendency to maximize in relationships was negatively correlated with relational outcomes (closeness, trust, satisfaction) and communication outcomes (affection and some relational maintenance behaviors). Furthermore, relational maximization was positively related to regret and relational uncertainty.