Assessing communication competence in the primary care medical interview

The purpose of this paper is to present preliminary results of a language‐based coding system to analyze physician‐patient communication. This system is grounded in the framework of Cegala and Waldron's (1992) context‐based model of communication competence which reflects the sequential development of talk as primary to definitions of competence. Given a review of the model and identification of information exchange and relational development as the primary tasks in the medical interview, two research questions were advanced to test a coding scheme. Based on the notion that aligning one's utterances to meet self‐ and other‐goals relates to communication competence, the coding scheme was developed to include message content, function, and uptake. Frequency results showed that 32 physician‐patient dyads produced 10, 958 coded utterances. Physicians and patients contributed relatively equal numbers of units. The frequencies of each category and exploratory sequential patterns relating to competence are summarized along with a discussion of the limitations of the analytical system. Overall, the code system provided new information on content, uptake, and sequential patterns of information exchange previously unavailable from published coding scheme results. Yet, the present scheme needs to be refined to produce output that more readily identifies competent and less competent interactions. These results and issues are placed in the context of an ongoing, larger research program on communication competence in the primary care interview.     

Deregulation of television broadcast in India: Cultural and informational impacts

Satellite broadcasting in India can be seen as a metaphor for an integrated national agenda, but the newly deregulated marketplace appears to be setting new agendas for satellite broadcasting by government‐controlled Doordarshan. This qualitative analysis argues that moving to total free market may lead to too little development communication. On the other hand, controlled information may lead to cultural domination ('internal media imperialism') over either one of, or both, rural and urban societies. Diffusion of information may work for rural areas, while urban audiences can afford to spend more time on mass entertainers. There is a need to redefine ‘modernization’ in a non‐global context, and that definition should lead a government towards developmental media policy goals. Further, media policies should be bifurcated to address different developmental goals.     

Engaging the Experts in Museum Computing: Seven Years of Queries on MCN‐L

MCN‐L, an email listserv administered by the Museum Computer Network, is open to anyone interested in discussing information technology in museums and other cultural heritage organizations. To determine how MCN‐L meets the needs of museum information professionals, this study presents an analysis of more than 6,000 emails sent to the listserv over a seven‐year period (2004–2011). The results of this analysis indicate that MCN‐L adds value to the online community of museum information professionals by providing an online communication channel focused on professional outreach and expert support, backed up by specific examples drawn from personal experiences. MCN‐L's emphasis on personal expertise is a key characteristic that speaks to the listserv's lasting value to the museum community and has implications for researchers and practitioners as they consider the future of computer‐mediated communication for all museum professionals.     

An experimental analysis of emphasis

Eighty English‐Canadian subjects listened to a taped persuasive communication attributed to either an English‐Canadian or a French‐Canadian source and read with either an English‐Canadian or a French‐Canadian dialect. Both the speaker's dialect and the source's ethnicity affected the audience's reaction to the message. French‐Canadian subjects responded more favourably to a communication read with an English‐Canadian dialect than one read with a French‐Canadian dialect and responded more favourably to a communication attributed to an English‐Canadian source than one attributed to a French‐Canadian source. Furthermore, French‐Canadian sources were evaluated less stereotypically when communications attributed to them were read with an English‐Canadian dialect than when read with a French‐Canadian dialect. Methodological and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Linking Communication Scholarship and Professional Practice in Colleges and Universities

The 2004 recipient of NCA's Gerald M. Phillips Award for Distinguish Applied Scholarship, Brent Ruben's professional record spans more than three decades and has focused in four major areas: organizational development, communication/information systems, medical/health communication, and intercultural communication. His publication record and professional presentations are extensive. His work with the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership at Rutgers is especially noteworthy and serves as an example of his best applied work. The reviewers were especially impressed with his most recent book, entitled Pursuing Excellence in Higher Education. His use of Baldrige-based criteria by which to measure excellence is a fine example of applying well-tested standards to the field of higher education. His work represents some of the best in the field of applied communication.     

Transforming Indian farmers to reach the next level of the green revolution through communication of strategic knowledge and increased use of ICTs

Agriculture is an important sector of the economy in India as it provides employment to a large number of people and is concerned with the food and nutritional security of a huge population. Indian agriculture is facing several challenges ranging from farmers' debt, climatic changes, technological up-gradation, development of communication infrastructures for more effective extension activities and most importantly, bridging the knowledge gaps existing within India. This article examines the hurdles the Indian agricultural sector face and the potential of ICTs to aid and enhance agricultural development.     

Communication research in Hong Kong: Problematics,discoveries and directions 1

This paper first analyses the communication research environment in Hong Kong in regard to its socio‐political context, the media industry and more direct factors such as research freedom, financial‐institutional support, incentives, size and quality of trained personnel While the overall environment is facilitative, the small size of the research community in Hong Kong is limiting the volume of research output and scope of specialization. In reviewing researches in the last decade, it is found that commercial researches are generally more concerned about opinion distribution and media consumption. Government policy researches‐centre around media evaluations, preferences, programme standards and other regulatory issues. Academics pay most attention to political communication, international communication and, less so, information technology. As to future research, the author argues for more frequent use of longitudinal and comparative methods, the search for an original theoretical contribution to communication, an urban research agenda in development communication, the study of dependent communication development, interaction between mass media and political formation, regional cultural integration, advertising, media management, information technology and policy. The establishment of a communication policy forum is also called for to promote exchanges among academics, policy‐makers, media practitioners and interest groups. The expansion of the research community in Hong Kong hinges on successful faculty recruitment, the establishment of a doctoral communication programme and the relief of some staffs teaching overload.     

Lord of the Rings,Star Wars,and participatory fandom: mapping new congruencies between the internet and media entertainment culture

The culture of media entertainment, as exemplified in the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars film franchises, is being infused with new modes of authorship, production, marketing, and consumption that are characterized by Internet fan clubs, online producer‐consumer affiliations, and real‐world legal controversies over the proprietary ownership of digital bits of information. To analyze these new interactive patterns being employed by two competing media franchises, Bourdieu's theory of cultural production is supplemented with Jenkins's study of participatory fandom. Then, the contested nature of computer‐mediated communication is explored using a model that brackets the opposing potentialities of Internet influence on offline society.     

Collaborative accountability for sustainable public health: A Korean perspective on the effective use of ICT-based health risk communication

The sustainability of public health practices requires collaboration between the government and its citizens. On the government's side, social media can provide a conduit for communicating health risk information in an effective and timely fashion, while also engaging citizens in informed decision-making. On the citizen's side, information communication technology (ICT)-based practices cannot function unless citizens recognize and act on their responsibility to actively engage with government social media platforms. Despite an increasing interest in understanding the adoption of ICT practices and e-government services for health risk communication, there remains a crucial need for a comprehensive framework to explain which factors determine citizen use of digital government resources. The purpose of this study is to investigate how to increase government accountability for motivating citizens to engage in ICT-based health risk communication, thereby attaining sustainable public health practices through collaborative governance.By integrating trust and health risk information into the e-government adoption model (GAM), this research examines factors that influence citizens' likelihood of using government social media resources. Survey data from 700 Korean citizens were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that individuals with higher social media competency are more likely to (a) seek risk information through social media and (b) perceive the government's social media sites as easy to use. Consistent with the GAM, intentions to use the government's social media sites for information and interactions appear to increase as citizens perceive more value in using them regarding information quality, ease of use, functional benefit, and security. Furthermore, perceived trust in the government's social media resources appears to function as a mediator of this process. Initial trust in the government is an important determinant of perceptions of its digital resources. Citizens who trust the government tend to evaluate new initiatives positively and are more likely to accept and make use of them.The results of this study can inform policy design and implementation by elucidating the mechanisms that determine citizens' adoption and usage of digital government services. Theoretically, this work expands the GAM to include health risk communication and adds empirical evidence to the small yet growing body of knowledge of e-government initiatives. These findings also highlight the importance of public trust in the government, as this encourages citizens to seek health risk information and assistance from the government. Overall, the data and model generated in this investigation represent an important step toward the successful and sustainable modernization of public services.     

Context as communication: Mcdonald's vs. Burger King

This study focused on context as communication. The distinctive micro‐environments at McDonald's and Burger King's suburban restaurants were compared and contrasted. The theory‐based conceptualization of high‐load environments generates the prediction that McDonald's customers are more involved and less comfortable than Burger Bang's customers. Results supported this prediction. Communicative and design implications of these results are discussed.     

From Atoms to Bits: Consequences of the Emerging Digital Divide in India

This paper focuses on the impact of ICTs, the Internet, and the Web on the life and work of people and mentions new services available through the convergence of computer and communication technologies. Also discussed are “digital determinism” in general and India's growing “digital divide” in particular. The paper discusses the promises and perils of the digital revolution. Comments are made on the library and information infrastructure, superstructure, and digitization initiatives in India. The paper concludes with the observation that only a suitable national policy for library and information systems can contain the emerging “digital divide” in India. Otherwise, networked information and library networks will have no meaning for the 47·79% Indians who are totally illiterate.     

Outline of an introductory course in international and comparative librarianship

This paper focuses on the impact of ICTs, the Internet, and the Web on the life and work of people and mentions new services available through the convergence of computer and communication technologies. Also discussed are “digital determinism” in general and India's growing “digital divide” in particular. The paper discusses the promises and perils of the digital revolution. Comments are made on the library and information infrastructure, superstructure, and digitization initiatives in India. The paper concludes with the observation that only a suitable national policy for library and information systems can contain the emerging “digital divide” in India. Otherwise, networked information and library networks will have no meaning for the 47·79% Indians who are totally illiterate.     

Cooperation in a Multi-Faceted Reference Department: Blending Resources,Personnel, and Services of Reference,Instruction, Interlibrary Loan,and Government Documents

SUMMARY

Cooperative reference is a valuable approach to serving patrons as well as a means of expanding one's professional knowledge. Members of the reference unit actively participate in cooperative reference for answering patrons' tougher queries, bibliographic instruction, and reference collection development. The cooperative efforts of our unit have expanded our ability to find better information faster. Cooperative reference extends to all librarians within the University Library as each librarian serves in a rotation to staff the reference desk on nights and weekends. Some of the benefits of practicing cooperative reference are the following: providing a balanced and sometimes more complete answer to a reference question; increasing the knowledge of the reference staff by sharing experiences; and increasing morale and support for the reference staff. All of this is accomplished by doing what librarians do best: sharing. Successful cooperative reference relies upon good communication within the department, respect for colleagues, flexibility, and commitment to serving our patrons.     

Family sex communication orientation

The United States leads all industrialized countries in unintended teenage pregnancies, teenage births, teenage abortions. Despite the seriousness of this problem, family communication researchers so far, for all practical purposes, have excluded it from the discipline's research agenda. Our study was designed to consolidate and examine a measure of children's attitudes toward family sex communication on the dimensions of comfort, information, and value — the Family Sex Communication Quotient scale (FSCQ) — and to test this orientation against other potential mediators of sex discussion in the family. Our tentative findings suggest: (1) family sex communication in general is infrequent and ineffective, (2) frequent and effective family sex communication may serve as a contextual model for children's communication patterns, (3) a strong family sex communication orientation, particularly as measured by the FSCQ which tested out to be a reliable measure and a significant and consistent mediator, seems to facilitate children's open discussion with dating partners and with parents and to develop responsible pre‐parenting attitudes, (4) discussing sex in the family does not promote an attitude of sexual license.     

Literacy,Information, and Governance in the Digital Era: An Indian Scenario

This paper presents an overview of the use of digital information in India for the purposes of poverty alleviation, the marketing of farm produce in rural areas, responsive governance, and provision of access to official records and information. The paper also seeks to identify better ways of using information and communication technology for Indian national development.     

Charles Grandison Finney: Herald of modern revivalism

By the year 2000, up to 40 million workers are expected to be surveilled electronically in American workplaces. Management often views surveillance as an attempt to achieve certain organizational goals better by more fully utilizing time and other resources. This article adopts the alternative perspective, that of employees/members, from which surveillance can be understood as an attempt to create new power relationships based on an electronic version of Bentham's panopticon. The study postulated four elements of such panoptic relationships and tested the first and most important of these, perception of being surveilled, in a state‐wide survey of information workers (n = 465). Results supported the hypotheses that the more surveilled workers perceive themselves to be the less a) privacy, b) certainty about their role in the work place, c) self‐esteem, and d) workplace communication they experience.     

A test of a cultural model of patients' motivation for verbal communication in patient‐doctor interactions

In theory, two‐way communication between patient and physician is desirable. However, there is a dearth of research that has explored the effects of patients’ culture and cultural orientations on patients’ ability to actively participate in the medical encounter. The purpose of this paper was to test the effects of patients’ culture and cultural orientations on assertiveness and communication apprehension during medical interviews. According to the proposed model, culture and self‐construals are causal antecedents to patients’ beliefs about verbal communicativeness. Our model suggests that cultural values (self‐construals) are determined in part by culture. In regards to the mediation process, the model proposes that the greater the patient's construal‐of‐self as independent, the more positive her/his beliefs regarding patient participation, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of motivations to communicate verbally with a physician. Our model also suggests that the greater the patient's construal‐of‐self as interdependent, the more negative her/his beliefs regarding patient participation, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of communication avoidance and apprehension during medical interview. The data were partially consistent with the theoretical predictions made. The implications of the model for theory and practice are discussed.     

探析移动端展览应用的传播实践——以故宫博物院“故宫展览”数字化项目为例

通过移动端推送博物馆展览是博物馆信息化的重要内容,但不少博物馆面临数字化应用无法实现服务质量和用户体验的预期,导致下载量和使用量较低的处境。本文以“故宫展览”数字化项目为例,通过对开发数字产品观念意识、展示设计能力的分析,总结出在设计数字产品中结合博物馆需求与观众需求,结合观众心理习惯与博物馆特色,构建以“物”为核心的展示内容,兼顾知识性与趣味性的展示形式,应用分众化传播策略等方法,探讨借助移动端数字应用对博物馆以教育为目标的传播属性起到的积极作用。     

RUBRIQ: tools,services, and software to improve peer review

Rubriq is on a mission to put lost time back into research. We estimate that 15 million hours are lost each year to redundant peer review as papers get rejected and flow down the journal prestige pyramid. Rubriq uses an author‐pays model to facilitate fast, independent, and standardized peer review performed by three academic peers who are financially compensated for their efforts. Authors receive the reviews as well as a detailed journal recommendation report in 1–2 weeks. This service is designed to improve journal selection, supplement editorial reviews, and make peer review more portable between journals. The creation of the standardized scorecard is just the first phase of Rubriq's plans to improve the scholarly communication workflow. Through lessons learned over the past year, the Rubriq approach is evolving into a broader set of tools, software, and services designed to speed and improve the scholarly communication process.     

Press coverage of a social problem in Singapore: An analysis of content,modes and styles of communication

This study examines how Singapore's newspapers are able to play a nation‐building role whilst still maintaining their individuality. It aims to discover the similarities and differences among the newspapers by analysing a wide cross‐section of articles on a social problem over a span of four and a half years.

The study found that the Singapore press responded to the government's campaign against juvenile delinquency by giving greater coverage to this social problem. The leading newspapers were more active than the smaller newspapers in covering the issue, and differed from the smaller newspapers in their content and modes of communication. There were statistically significant differences in the styles of communication but the magnitude of differences was not large.