“Now We Can Talk”

This paper explores debate within Puerto Rico's journalistic community regarding the journalistic role of La Comay, a full-sized puppet host of the popular information and entertainment show SuperXclusivo, which faced a boycott in late 2012 and cancelation in early 2013. Calls to boycott and shutter the daily TV show came from the island's LGBT advocates because of comments made by La Comay that they considered homophobic. This analysis of 58 texts from four of Puerto Rico's island-wide news outlets provides an opportunity to examine how a region's dominant cultural archetype—that of the motherly and controversial comadre, after which La Comay is named—appeared in boundary work conducted by local journalists as they determined whether La Comay should have been awarded journalistic status. This paper is not meant to be yet another examination of satirical journalism as much as it is a chance to explore the appearance of a region's culture in the construction or maintenance of its journalistic community.     

Reexamining LGBT Resources on College Counseling Center Websites: An Over-time and Cross-country Analysis

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students continue to perceive a hostile climate on college campuses. For students facing these challenges, the university college counseling center website (CCW) may serve as a critical resource. This study provides an updated content analysis of the prevalence of LGBT communication on CCWs. Results showed that there remains a lack of LGBT-specific information about services provided on US CCWs. Furthermore, over-time analyses of 2008 and 2013 data showed that there have been no significant increases in any LGBT communication, and CCWs from religious schools continue to provide significantly less LGBT-related communication than nonreligious institutions. Separate analyses of UK CCWs showed that these websites were more likely than US CCWs to make any mention of LGBT issues but less likely to note group counseling services, links to LGBT-specific pamphlets, and educational outreach services offered. Overall, given attractive features of online health information, as well as the extent that students value CCWs, institutions must pursue stronger efforts to promote LGBT-related web counseling information.     

Queering communication studies: a Journal of Applied Communication Research forum

ABSTRACT

Genders and sexualities continue to remain underexplored in the field of communication studies and the academy in general. This essay examines possibilities for incorporating queer perspectives into communication studies. At the invitation of the Journal of Applied Communication Research editor, 9 communication scholars who use queer theory or queer perspectives in their own work responded to a series of questions addressing how queer theory and perspectives can be used in the discipline, both by those who are new to queer theorizing and those who are looking to expand their knowledge and practices. The answers to these questions provide an understanding of what queer theory is and its relationship with LGBT studies; allow practical considerations for incorporating queer perspectives into communication scholarship in multiple methodological areas; offer considerations for welcoming queer voices in the classroom, the communication discipline, and the larger academy; and indicate several scholarly resources for those who want to learn more about queer theory and LGBT studies.     

Tolerating Ambiguity: Leadership Lessons from Off-Road Motorcycling

ABSTRACT

The ability to tolerate ambiguity is an important attribute of successful leaders. In this article the metaphor of off-road motorcycling is used to introduce the concept of ambiguity and the virtues of becoming tolerant and comfortable with the uncertainty that has become a hallmark of information age organizations. Tolerance of Ambiguity is a known leadership concept that also extends to employees. Many employees want to be involved earlier in the planning and decision making process of the organization, but may be uncomfortable with the ambiguity characteristic of early stage planning.     

Interpersonal attraction and religious identification: a comparative analysis of Muslims and Hindus in India

This study compared whether an individual is more likely to perceive interpersonal attraction toward a member of his/her own or a different religious group. Self-identified Hindus (N=526) and self-identified Muslims (N=301) in India participated in the study. Results indicate members of a religious group (Hindus and Muslims) are significantly more likely to perceive physical, social, and task attraction for members of their own religious group than for individuals from another religious group. These results support an ethnic group vitality and in-group/out-group dichotomy.     

“Look for the Union Label”: Exploring the Contradictions and Complications in LGBT Terminology

This article is an exploration of the implications of the gay label applied to LGBT persons and how that label surpasses all others in its implications. The author’s particular focus is on the decades since World War II, where religious, legal, and political definitions all got mixed together into a mélange of cleavages affecting everything from the most definitive national and international proclamations to the personal behavior and beliefs of gay and straight individuals.     

Do Demographics Matter?

This study examines individual differences in perceived news media corruption (PNMC), by conducting a face-to-face survey on a representative sample of the Serbian population (N?=?544). Extremely high levels of PNMC were found, as well as significant differences in PNMC scores for gender, education level, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, and membership in majority ethnic and religious groups. Corruption perception persona types are created and results are discussed in terms of importance of societal integration for PNMC.     

Religious Pluralistic Language in a Computer-Mediated Context: Effects of Intergroup Salience and Religious Orientation

This study investigated the degree to which religious pluralistic language varies as a function of the intergroup salience of a context and religious orientation. Based on a 2 (Religious Salience of Context) × 3 (Religious Salience of Topic) experimental design, participants (N = 239) were instructed to compose an e-mail to an interactional partner based on the randomly assigned condition. Messages were coded for religious pluralistic language, and participants completed measures of religious orientation and evaluations of the conversational partner. Modest effects were found for both intergroup salience of the context and topic as well as religious orientation.     

Facilitating cross-cleavage communication online: Findings from interviews with ultra-Orthodox,religious, and secular participants

One of the key questions addressed by the study of online social media is whether or not they facilitate cross-cleavage communication between users of different nationality, ethnicity, religiosity, and other group affiliations. This study contributes to the literature by addressing communication across religious cleavages, which has scarcely received attention. The study is based on 97 semistructured interviews of a layered sample. Of the respondents, 40 were secular (21 men and 19 women), 28 Modern Orthodox (14 men and 14 women), and 29 ultra-Orthodox (11 men and 18 women). We found that groups differing by their majority/minority status and type of religious observance used the Internet for different purposes. Many secular respondents (members of the majority group in Israel) were motivated to make contact on social media by social needs. On the other hand, ultra-Orthodox respondents (members of the minority group) were exclusively focused on professional objectives as a motivation to use social media. Consequently, their online behaviors were quite different and they more frequently encounter people from groups differing by type of religious observance through social media.     

Curating Queer Heritage: Queer Knowledge and Museum Practice

Abstract Important work in the last decades within the museum studies field has laid bare the implicit nationalist, evolutionist, and patriarchal narratives of the traditional museum. So far, though, only a few writers have discussed the museum’s role in supporting “heteronormative” narratives that consolidate heterosexuality as a norm within social and cultural life. This article is a critical discussion of methodological aspects of a queer perspective in interpreting, exhibiting, and organizing museum collections. Two shows with LGBT / queer perspective that were exhibited in Stockholm, Sweden during EuroPride 2008 are the focus of this article’s analysis. They consist of the photo exhibition Show Yourself! at the Nordic Museum, and Queer: Desire, Power, and Identity at the National Museum of Fine Arts. The author himself was the curator of the latter exhibition. This article offers personal reflections on the methodological challenges of translating an abstract queer perspective into museum practice in order to envision online and on‐site museum encounters that can mobilize various kinds of pluralistic passions.     

Living in the Buckle: Promoting LGBT Outreach Services in Conservative Urban/Rural Centers

LGBT Outreach Center (LOC) faces the difficult task of marketing outreach services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in a conservative rural/urban center. Creating internal messages that support the LGBT identity is critical to organizational member support. However, presenting external messages to a community-at-large that tends to be unsupportive of LGBT individuals is daunting. Focus groups identified obstacles to outreach and fundraising. Recommendations are provided for LGBT outreach centers in conservative areas.     

“Openness through Sound”: Dualcasting on Irish LGBT Radio

This article explores how Ireland’s first LGBT radio station, Open FM, attempted to offer LGBT radio in a heteronormative media landscape. It uses semi-structured interviews with two of the stations founders as well as posts from online LGBT message bulletin boards to argue how Open FM ultimately became ambivalent about its LGBT status and adopted a dualcasting strategy. Despite its ambitions to be a community-led radio station for Ireland's LGBT community, the dualcasting strategy of the station framed many of its endeavors between the mainstream standards of radio broadcasting and the community of interest that their licence claimed to serve.     

A Puzzling Problem

This study examines the discourse observed within The New York Times crossword puzzles that, in Gaye Tuchman’s terms, appears to symbolically annihilate people of color, women, and members of the LGBT community. Using a critical discourse analysis of a random selection of crossword puzzles between 1993 and 2015, this paper will argue that they tend to skew toward white (Western), male, and heterosexual clues and answers in one of the world’s most important newspapers. In doing so, the discourse of the crosswords appear to stereotype, omit, further marginalize, trivialize, underrepresent, and render as child-like many marginalized people. These findings contribute significantly to the theory of symbolic annihilation in mainstream media, the consequences of which will be discussed.     

Mitigating Colorblind Racism in the Postnetwork Era: Class-Inflected Masculinities in The Shield,Sons of Anarchy,and Justified

This analysis explores the relation between class-stratified White masculinities and moral ambiguity in FX crime drama. Conflicts between morally ambiguous White men in The Shield (2002–2008), Sons of Anarchy (2008–present), and Justified (2010–present) support colorblind racial ideology by positioning a central antiheroic protagonist in opposition to overtly racist characters who embody stereotypes associated with the White underclass. In comparison with traditional crime dramas, these juxtapositions provide realistic depictions of contemporary America by acknowledging the existence of racial prejudice while the antihero’s ultimate victory stands as a rejection of anachronistic racial sensibilities drawing attention away from issues related to systemic inequality.     

Context for Collaboration

Abstract

This article considers the use of filtering software (“censor-ware”) and the World Wide Web. It argues that the United States government, religious groups, and corporations should not deter freedom of speech and access to information in libraries. The article describes how governments and religious groups try to prevent Web sites from reaching Internet users, and explains how corporations sell and use filters for their own benefit. It also introduces organizations that rate Web sites as an alternative to electric filters, and presents people and groups that oppose filtering. In conclusion, it supports the idea that librarians and information professionals can educate Internet users without the interference of external entities and censorship.     

The evolution of make/buy contracting for UK independent television (ITV)

Abstract

This paper is an extract from the report of a case study into the programme supply make/buy decision of the UK's main terrestrial commercial television channel, ITV. It compares this decision in the start‐up period (1954–1964) with the latest operating period (1992–2001) to show how programme supply arrangements have changed. It also provides an interpretation for why these changes have occurred. ITV's continuing dominance of the UK terrestrial commercial market permits this paper to be examined as a country specific case of how organising structures for programme supply evolve. Due to the concise nature of this paper, only one aspect of the make/buy decision is compared: changes to the structure within which programme supply decisions are determined. The analysis is based on state archives and interviews. It is concluded that contractual ambiguity and political fear of the social impact of commercial television initially inhibited the adoption of a competitive programme supply structure. Later changes to this structure are attributed to increased contract specification and a more market‐oriented approach. A brief theoretical interpretation based on transaction cost economics, economic sociology, and the property rights literature is provided.     

A telephone survey of religious program preferences among listeners and viewers in Los Angeles

This study attempts to supply an answer to a question often asked by religious speakers and laymen alike: How effective are religious radio and television programs in reaching people who do not usually attend religious services? The information gained by this study represents an important means in determining the value of present day programs of a religious nature — as far as the reactions of people living in the Los Angeles area are concerned.     

Testing the rhetoric of China's soft power campaign: a case analysis of its strategic ambiguity in the Six Party Talks over North Korea's nuclear program

China's soft power campaign has spawned many scholarly studies on it, but few have examined its rhetorical aspect. Through keyword analysis, this research examines strategic ambiguity in China's public affairs rhetoric surrounding the Six Party Talks over North Korea's nuclear program. The two keywords, ‘the Six Party Talks’ and ‘da ju’ (big picture, overall view), are semantically open and central to China's rhetoric in defining ‘What is it?’ and ‘Why is it?’ with regard to the talks. Analysis shows that strategic ambiguity contributed to some of China's goals. However, it was not adjusted when it stopped working. Its effectiveness was undercut by certain inconsistent messages, and da ju failed to differentiate between domestic and international political context and was also culturally maladaptive. This research contributes to public diplomacy and public affairs rhetoric research.