Freedom Through Flight: Performing a Counter-Narrative of Disability

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. Our ethnographic portrayal is based on our experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through in-depth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. We unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere.     

Discourses of Disability,Narratives of Community: Reclaiming an Autistic Identity Online

As increasing rates of autism diagnosis generate media interest, the autism community is bombarded with various disability discourses. Using netnographic methods, I explored how members of one online community, Aspies Central (AC), engaged these discourses to communicatively (re)claim a positive autistic identity. By assessing 561 posts on AC's forums, interviewing 10 individuals who frequent online communities, and interacting extensively with two informants, I located reclaiming discourses that allowed community members to shift their understanding of autism from a biomedical to a cultural perspective. Through these discourses, community members reclaimed (a) normalcy, (b) symptoms, and (c) agency. In this paper, I discuss implications for the narrative construction of disability identities and the activation of self-advocacy movements.     

Library Employee Views of Disability and Accessibility

Abstract

This study sought to explore library employee attitudes toward people with disabilities and accessibility. It also aimed to determine the training needs of current library employees. A survey with both quantitative and qualitative questions was developed and snowball sampling was used. Analysis of both types of data indicates that librarians across library types generally feel unprepared to work with patrons with disabilities. Based on the results, there are several recommendations for improvement within the profession, including creating a more robust training program focused on accessibility and disability, examining policies from local through national levels, and improving recruitment and retention of people with disabilities into the profession.     

ARL大学图书馆残障服务对我国大学图书馆之启示

从工作人员的协助、专用服务设施、专用计算机软件、专门硬件设备、服务政策、服务协调、服务提供者、辅助性技术和资金支持、网站的无障碍获取等多个方面,ARL对其成员馆的残疾人服务进行了调查。作为借鉴,我国大学图书馆残疾人服务应该转变观念、增强意识,明确法规、完善政策,配备完善的服务设施及设备,充分利用现代信息技术拓展服务能力,加强服务人员培训。     

An Investigation of First- versus Third-Person Risk Narrative Processing Through the Lens of the Heuristic-Systematic Model

This online experiment analyzed the effect of first- versus third-person risk narratives on 235 female college students’ affect, attitudes, risk perceptions and thoughts regarding tanning beds through the lens of the heuristic-systematic model. Participants receiving a third-person narrative reported a greater number of systematic thoughts as compared to those receiving a first-person narrative. Regardless of condition, participants reported significantly more systematic thoughts as compared to heuristic thoughts. Narrative researchers should take note that not all narratives may be processed in a heuristic manner as largely proposed by past research. Future research should delve further into the reasons why third-person messages may be processed higher along the heuristic-systematic continuum.     

Toward a communication theory of group dialectics: an ethnographic study of a community theater group

A dialectical perspective recognizes that there are tensions between oppositions in human interaction such as the need for independence and the need for dependence. This approach has been instrumental in exploring the dialectical tensions and coping strategies individuals use in interpersonal contexts. This ethnographic study utilized a dialectical perspective to examine group communication in a community theater group. The results revealed 11 specific dialectical tensions within the group that represent four more global issues for the group as well as a number of communication strategies that group members use to manage those tensions. These issues provide a framework for further development of a communication theory of group dialectics.     

Decisional Regret Theory: Reducing the Anxiety About Uncertain Outcomes During Group Decision Making Through Shared Counterfactual Storytelling

People want to live in a predictable world, yet regularly face uncertain outcomes from decision choices. Here, a decision-making theory of communication is proposed. Faced with decisions, people experience anxiety as they anticipate choice-regret. The communicative dynamic of Decisional Regret Theory (DERT) is the production, sharing, and reconstruction of predecisional imaginary narratives that allow alternative decisional outcomes to be anticipated. DERT predicts a type of shared communication (counterfactual storytelling) under specific circumstances (anticipation of making a meaningful decision). It further predicts listener responses: (a) reproducing the story, (b) altering the story, (c) creating an alternative story, or (d) disconfirming the story. Exemplars of counterfactual communication during jury decision making are offered, together with a model describing the emergence of group counterfactual storytelling.     

系统综述——一种更科学和客观的综述方法

本文首先对系统综述的相关内容进行了概述,包括起源及发展历程,核心内涵以及与传统的叙述性综述的区别等,然后对其运用到图书情报学领域进行了可行性分析,最后结合一个实例对系统综述的步骤进行了详细的阐述。     

《说事》:一个小品的多维文化空间

小品《说事》建构了一个内蕴丰富的文化空间。本文从“媒介的地位授予”、“对立的叙事策略”和“意识形态的规训”等三个方面进行了批判性的剖析。     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom–constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness–closedness and control–restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom-constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness-closedness and control-restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

美国信息自由法:从《信息自由法令》到《电子信息自由法令》

本文主要介绍了美国<信息自由法令>的产生及发展过程及美国联邦各机构对<信息自由法令>的执行情况,从中简要概括出美国<信息自由法令>及其执行情况对于我国<政府信息公开条例>的贯彻实施的可借鉴之处.     

Grieving Gender: Trans-identities,Transition, and Ambiguous Loss

More and more families include a member who is trans-identified, and therefore, may be called to consider how sex and gender matter to identity and relationships. Previous research shows that for some family members this is not a simple matter. Often, family members experience transition as a living death, wherein the trans-identified person is perceived as somehow present and absent, the same and different, at once. The purposes of this study were to understand what it is about the transition of sex/gender that incites this meaning struggle and how meaning-making is connected to ambiguous loss. Relational Dialectics Theory was used to analyze how family members construct meanings for transition through competing discourses related to sex, gender, and personal identity. Findings suggest that family members' meaning making processes position them to endure, overcome, or avoid the feelings of grief related to transition.     

Disability as a Form of Diversity: Lessons from Murderball

Objective: To improve students’ perceptions of, and capacity to interact with, persons with physical disabilities

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Introduction to Human Condition     

电传新闻对中美新闻叙事结构的影响——1870～1920年代《申报》与《纽约时报》的叙事结构比较

本文通过对1870～1920年代《申报》与《纽约时报》的新闻图式分析,推导中美新闻叙事结构的演变和趋同的现象,以及电报在其中发挥的主要作用。电传新闻建构了新的叙事模式。从电传新闻启用到新闻叙事结构的成熟,美国报纸用了30年,而中国用了50年,可见传播技术对美国叙事模式的影响效率明显快于中国。但最终传播技术仍导致不同文化中新闻叙事结构趋同。     

Each Medium Tells a Different Story: The Effect of Message Channel on Narrative Persuasion

Limited attention has been given to the medium of story presentation in this process of narrative persuasion. The present study (N = 243) fills this gap by directly comparing narrative involvement across print and audiovisual versions of the same cervical cancer-related story. The mediation analysis revealed that exposure to an audiovisual narrative was associated with higher levels of cognitive and emotional involvement than exposure to the exact same narrative in its printed form. Yet the higher levels of transportation in the audiovisual condition came at a price of enhancing psychological reactance, eliminating the relative advantage of the film narrative.     

The Most Integrated Hour in America: Reframing the Organizational Discourses of Church Purpose

Religious organizations have increasingly drawn the attention of communication scholars. This interest is due in part to the significant role these organizations have in building social capital – particularly in regard to improving racial/ethnic relations. This potential has remained largely unrealized, however, since the Civil Rights Movement over 50 years ago. Consequently, this study seeks to understand how church pastors frame the ambiguous discourse of organizational purpose. Building on an earlier research phase that included 42 pastoral interviews, this study adds to our understanding of framing practices via three dialectical tensions: integration-segregation, belief-practice, and vertical-horizontal. The analysis also reveals how these dialectics were framed through improbability, double bind, alternation, selection, connection, and transcendence, as well as their impact upon ethnic relationships. Theoretic and practical implications are provided.     

Center Stage: Performing a Needs Assessment of Campus Research Centers and Institutes

Outreach to research centers and institutes is often overlooked in academic libraries. This article discusses a needs assessment conducted by the Liaison Services Department at the University of Houston Libraries that reviewed library services to centers and institutes at the University of Houston's main campus. The assessment was conducted for two purposes: to build collaborations with centers and to determine how the libraries might create new services and/or market existing services to meet the centers and institutes' growing research needs.     

Family Ties: Communicating Identity Through Jointly Told Family Stories This paper is based on the author's dissertation study and was presented on the Top Four Panel of the Family Communication Division at the National Communication Association Convention,November 2003, Miami,FL.

Family stories work to construct family identity. Little research, however, has examined storytelling in families. This study examined storytelling content and process to assess the extent to which families jointly integrated or fragmented a shared sense of identity and how these discursive practices relate to family qualities. Results of a study involving 58 family triads indicate relationships between story theme (e.g., accomplishment vs. stress), person referencing practices (e.g., we-ness vs. separateness), and interactional storytelling behaviors (e.g., engagement, turn-taking). Moreover, story framing, perspective-taking, statements about selves-in-the-family, and identifying as a “storytelling family” emerged consistently as positive predictors of family satisfaction and functioning. The results offer a portrait of how families communicate identity and functioning in joint storytelling interactions and further position storytelling as a communication phenomenon worthy of consideration.     

The effects of narrative messages on optimistic bias in South Korea: a focus on controllability,collectivism, and risk perception in a massive fire crisis

This study examined the effect of narrative messages of a massive fire crisis on optimistic bias by experimentally comparing the effect of narrative describing a personal story on the crisis incident and that of non-narrative message (Study 1). Researchers further sought the interaction between controllability and the narrative message and the mediated moderation model of risk perception. In Study 2, the effect of narrative message describing a group story on the crisis incident on optimistic bias was further tested in terms of South Korea’s collectivistic culture. Collectivism, along with controllability, was used as a moderator, and mediated moderation models of risk perception were tested. The present research offers several major findings: (1) a narrative message describing a personal story decreased optimistic bias, (2) among people who read a narrative describing a personal story, those with high controllability had a lower level of optimistic bias than those with low controllability, (3) among people who read the narrative of a group story, those with high collectivism had a lower level of optimistic bias than those with low collectivism, and (4) the interaction between message types and collectivism affected risk perception and this risk perception increased optimistic bias. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.