Citizen reactions to municipalities’ Instagram communication

In this paper, we explore how local governments are using Instagram as a communication tool to engage with their citizens, using data from the municipalities of Andalusia (Spain). We seek to identify the determinants of local government use of Instagram, the determinants of activity in this channel and the determinants of citizen reactions in order to understand the influence of media types (picture, video or album) used in municipality posts, and to understand content type (what the post is about). Instaloader, an open source intelligence (OSINT) tool for Instagram, was applied. It made it possible to automatically extract all posts of the analysed municipalities (14,742 posts). These were later automatically analysed using R, an open source software. It was determined that of the 29 Andalusian local governments with the highest populations, only those that maintain an account on Instagram, totalling 17 municipalities (58.62%), would be part of the final analysis. Our findings demonstrate that when local governments have a high level of debt, they do not maintain and actively use Instagram accounts. We also found that quality of posts’ content is more important than quantity of followers, since there is no significant relationship between citizen reactions and the number of inhabitants of a municipality or the number of followers (audience), while there is a significant negative relationship between the number of posts (activity) and reactions. Our results also highlight that the level of reactions can be stimulated by certain media and content types.     

Couples’ communication problems: The counselor's perspective

Marital and relational counselors bring their normative ideas about couples’ communication to the therapeutic setting and these ideas become a part of the ongoing dialogue between counselors and their clients. Although many therapists emphasize couples’ communication problems as a source of relational difficulty, it is not clear how therapists conceive of, and explain, those problems. The current study addresses this issue by examining counselors’ perceptions of, and attributions for, couples’ communication problems. Interviews with 50 couples’ counselors suggest that communication problems are common among clients. The most frequently noted communication problems involved failing to take the other's perspective when listening, blaming the other for negative occurrences, and criticizing the other. Most of counselors’ attributions for couples’ communication problems referred to stable, unchanging causes and focused on external factors. A content analysis of the attributions further indicated that many counselors felt communication problems were the result of patterns taught to individuals by their family of origin. Finally, when asked to identify the most central problem for dissatisfied partners, only about one‐fourth of the counselors cited issues directly related to communication. The majority noted that communication was usually a manifestation of other, more fundamental, difficulties. Taken together, the findings indicate that counselors tend to focus on individual, rather than interpersonal and relational factors when conceiving and treating the cause of communication problems.     

Communication civility codes: Positive communication through the students’ eyes

Courses: Presentational courses such as Public Speaking, Interviewing, Business and Professional, Persuasion, Interpersonal; any course where civility may be promoted in the classroom.

Objectives: At the end of this single-class activity, students will have an understanding of civility in order to: (1) identify civility and consequences of behaviors, (2) create their own communication civility code for classroom behaviors and presentations, and (3) practice civility throughout the semester.     

Pediatric nurses’ communication of role expectations to parents of hospitalized children

This study examines the role performance of pediatric nurses and parents in relation to hospitalized children. The ambiguity associated with role behaviors for both groups is considered in terms of rules that might be formally adopted to define nurses’ and parents’ roles. Pediatric nurses were interviewed to identify behaviors appropriately performed by parents for their hospitalized children, and formal rules were drafted. These rules were communicated by nurses in writing, orally, or both and were compared to no formal communication for impact on nurses’ job satisfaction, parents’ satisfaction with nursing care, and both nurses’ and parents’ role ambiguity. The formal rules were found to enhance both nurses’ job satisfaction and parents’ satisfaction with the technical‐professional competence component of nursing care. Moreover, both nurses and parents perceived a reduction in role ambiguity as measured by the information that nurses give and the communication of expectations.     

The ecology of academic risk: relationships between communication apprehension,verbal aggression,supportive communication,and students’ academic risk status

Contemporary research exploring at‐risk student populations has generally used the epidemiological model, the constructivist model, or the ecological model to explain processes involved in academic risk. This study applies communication constructs to the ecological model of academic risk, which proposes that academic risk is a function of individual, social, and cultural communication phenomena. A survey of 232 students found that (a) at‐risk students communicated more with friends about school than did regular‐admission students, (b) levels of communication apprehension differed depending on at‐risk status and sex, and (c) levels of verbal aggression differed depending on at‐risk status. These results are discussed in terms of theoretical and applied implications.     

The relationship between computer‐mediated communication and communication related anxieties

This study examines how communication related anxieties are related to individuals' use of computer mediated communication (CMC). 225 respondents were given the PRCA‐24, WAT, and RAT tests. They were also given a measure of computer anxiety. Respondents were then asked to indicate the extent to which they used e‐mail, interactive messaging, or web browsers. The results indicate that there is no relationship between communication anxieties and CMC use. Computer anxiety appears to be the main predictor of e‐mail, chat, and web use.     

Shareholder communication and issue salience: corporate responses to ‘social’ shareholder activism

This study focuses on corporate engagement when shareholder activists raise concerns about social issues during annual shareholder meetings. Building upon strategic communication, social activism, and management research, the study combines Stakeholder Salience Theory (SST) and Issues Management Theory to explain corporate responses to shareholder activism. The researchers constructed a dataset of 844 shareholder actions in the U.S., all concerning environmental issues from 2006 to 2014. The analyses revealed that the urgency of the shareholder requests was the main driver of saliency. Moreover, shareholder activism strategies that engage corporations in private negotiations appeared to be effective in eliciting positive corporate responses. The findings contribute to applied communication theory and research by advancing SST with an issues management perspective in the context of shareholder activism.     

Writing from the archive: Henry Garnet’s powder-plot letters and archival communication

Through a reading of the archived letters of Henry Garnet (1555–1606), Superior of the Jesuit order in England and suspected Gunpowder plotter, this article investigates the nature of the archive in relation to narrative theory. Figuring the archive as one of the number of narrating voices accrued by the individual record, I argue that models of communication such as those put forward by Roman Jakobson, Wayne C. Booth and Seymour Chatman afford useful insights into the ways in which power is inscribed and reinscribed in the record through successive acts of reading and rewriting.

Critical communication pedagogy as a response to the petroleum industry’s neoliberal communicative practices

Courses: Professional Speaking, Business and Professional Communication, Environmental Communication, or any course covering topics related to neoliberalism and the environment.

Objectives: In this single-class activity, students will first examine the possible environmental effects of fracking near the Bakken Oil Formation in North Dakota. Second, students will evaluate how the petroleum industry obscures the effects of fracking through the use of corporate ventriloquism. Third, students will respond to the petroleum industry’s power by utilizing critical communication pedagogy.     

Standpoint: Wither communication?

Dennis, E. E., & Wartella, E. (Eds.). (1996). American communication research: The remembered history. Mulwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lent, J. A. (Ed.). (1995). A different road taken: Profiles in critical communication. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Schiller, D. (1996). Theorizing communication: A history. New York: Oxford.

Signorielli, N. (Ed.). (1996). Women in communication: A biographical sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood.     

The relationship of communication apprehension and interaction involvement to perceptions of computer‐mediated communication

This study investigated how the interpersonal traits of communication apprehension (CA) and interaction involvement (II) are related to one's attitudes toward and use of computer‐mediated communication (CMC). Data were collected by administering a self‐report survey to a sample of 133 participants, and results were analyzed with multiple regression. Findings revealed that CA and II failed to predict CMC attitudes. However, each trait predicted communication style during online interaction. Findings are interpreted within the context of current theories of CMC.     

‘Follow us on Twitter’: How public libraries use dialogic communication to engage their publics

Public libraries that practice effective dialogic communication are more likely to build trust with their communities. Applying principles of dialogic communication as a theoretical framework, this study examines how public libraries in Canada and the USA use Twitter to build long-term positive relationships with their publics. Content analysis of 28,788 Twitter messages sent to and from thirteen library @names revealed that libraries tend to employ the ‘dialogic cluster’ principles more often than the ‘technical and design cluster’ ones. However, ‘technical and design cluster’ messages were more likely to be retweeted. The number of followers was found to be positively related to the frequency of trust messages that the Twitter users send to a library @name. The authors discuss communication practices to actively engage publics in dialogic communication on Twitter.     

Cognitive dissonance and communication theory∗

Rhetorical criticism (i.e., textual analysis of speeches) is severely handicapped because speech cannot be adequately represented in writing; even if it could be so represented, it is illogical and presumptuous to study critically oral communication received from an inappropriate medium (printed page) via an inappropriate sensory channel (vision). A hierarchy of research priorities—the criterion for relative worth being the degree to which methodologies extend our knowledge of rhetorical theory—is proposed by the author.     

Measures of communication‐bound anxiety

This study tested the hypothesis that individuals with different attachment styles vary in the degree to which they display intimacy and nonverbal involvement to their romantic partners. Eighty dyads currently involved in enduring romantic relationships participated in an observational study, with one partner from each dyad representing one of Bartholomew's (1990) four attachment styles. A team of coders viewed videotapes of the dyads' conversations and rated the degree of intimacy and involvement exhibited. Preoccupieds and Secures surpassed Dismissives and Fearful Avoidants on measures of trust/receptivity, gaze, facial pleasantness, vocal pleasantness, general interest, and attentiveness. Preoccupieds engaged in more in‐depth conversation than Dismissives. Fearful Avoidants sat farthest from their partners and displayed the least fluency and longest response latencies. Finally, Preoccupieds and Fearful Avoidants were the most vocally anxious. These findings, which provide preliminary behavioral validation of Bartholomew's four‐category model of attachment, are interpreted in light of the dimensions underlying attachment styles and the principle that communication reinforces mental models of self and others.     

Double media distortions for science communication – an analysis of ‘compiled science news’ transforming in Taiwan

Scientific news is one of the major resources that help the public to understand new scientific knowledge. The latest technology in research and development primarily utilizes English as the language of communication in academic journals and scientific communities. Compiled science news therefore has become a major agent for many non-Western societies to understand the latest technological developments. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate the meaningful change among transforming processes of imported science news from ‘original scientific research’ and ‘overseas news reports,’ to ‘domestic compiled science news.’ The research findings showed that scientific knowledge categories of compiled science news in Taiwan appeared to be apparently unbalanced, and the compiled skills present obvious weaknesses. Furthermore, more seriously compiled science news in Taiwan has continually suffered from the ‘double media distortion’ syndrome. The first distortion appeared from the ‘original scientific research’ to the ‘overseas news reports,’ and the second was from the ‘overseas news reports’ to the ‘domestic compiled science news.’ Such situations are very different from the Western world and could also be a common problem for all non-Western societies.     

On the formation of very high competencies in bachelor’s degree students using information and communication technologies

This paper describes the experience on revealing problems in knowledge of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by undergraduate students and the development of a training scheme using ICT tools for individualizing the formation of the competencies defined by a basic educational program, which helps to manage human capital in the training of modern staff.     

The relationship between physicians’ use of power stategies and type a orientation in physician‐patient communication

Employing a two sample design, this study examined the relationship between physicians’ use of Behavior Alteration Techniques (BATs) and physicians’ type‐A orientation. Patient and physician respondents reported selection of antisocial BATs was a significant predictor of type‐A physicians.     

Chinese and non‐Chinese scholars’ contributions to communication research on greater China, 1978–98

This content‐analytical study investigates, over a two‐decade period, the contribution of ethnic and non‐ethnic scholars to communication research on Greater China. Although its findings show a significant increase in research publications on China over the years by both Chinese and non‐Chinese scholars, Chinese scholars are much more productive than non‐Chinese scholars. In addition, mixed ethnicity scholars have published more comparative studies than single ethnicity scholars. Telecommunications and advertising are the two fastest growing areas in communication research on China.     

The sub‐text: Unspoken communication

We rarely think of the possible beneficial results of training in something “everyone knows how to do”—such as learning from television. This article is drawn from Mr. May's M.A. thesis, completed in 1963 at the University of Maryland under the direction of Prof. George F. Batka. Mr. May is presently working toward a PhD. in the University of Wisconsin, as a teaching assistant in the Division of Radio‐Television‐Film.     

Constructing narratives of success in the introductory communication course: Using written self-assessments to understand students’ perceptions of learning

Learning outcomes assessments are an important aspect of course administration. However, these efforts tend to prioritize the perspective of instructors/administrators. This study seeks to understand how students perceive their learning gains after taking the introductory communication course. In qualitatively analyzing a sample of more than 2,500 student self-assessments, we found that students crafted narratives of success that focused on verbal and nonverbal improvements, provided accounts of growth in confidence, and demonstrated mastery of course principles. These findings incorporated student perceptions of learning and closed the assessment loop by highlighting learning outcomes that need to be better emphasized in the introductory course.