The Politics of Breathing: Asthmatic Medicaid Patients Under Managed Care

This article examines how routine and ostensibly rational administrative and medical procedures required of asthmatic Medicaid patients to gain treatment under a managed care health delivery system, in fact, further disenfranchise them.     

Role Development in the Managed Care Era: A Case of Hospital-Based Nursing

Managed care poses numerous opportunities and challenges for today's health care organizations and their employees. This article investigates the ways that hospital nurses develop and make sense of their professional roles and organizational environments in a changing and often uncertain managed care setting. The case study approach used in this research combined qualitative methodologies to gain a rich, detailed, and contextual understanding of nurses' work roles and organizational experiences. After an analysis of interviews with 24 nurses and observations of nurses' communicative activities on one inpatient unit, the complexity of sensemaking and role development in a managed care environment is considered. Conclusions are then drawn regarding the theoretical and pragmatic implications of nurses' communicative processes, as they attempted to develop and understand their roles in a changing organizational context.     

The Use of Humor to Promote Patient-centered Care

Medical practitioners and scholars are increasingly seeing the need for patient-centered care (PCC) which emphasizes both medical and emotional needs, patients’ reasons for seeking care, and the enhancement of the patient–provider relationship. This ethnographic report examines the use of humor as a means to promote PCC within a hospital unit designed to encourage therapeutic humor. The three distinct themes emerging from this study have implications regarding the use of humor to help facilitate PCC. The three themes are (a) taking a complete patient profile, (b) freeing patients from the label of “bad patient,” and (c) de-emphasizing power disparities.     

The Use of Humor to Promote Patient-centered Care

Medical practitioners and scholars are increasingly seeing the need for patient-centered care (PCC) which emphasizes both medical and emotional needs, patients' reasons for seeking care, and the enhancement of the patient-provider relationship. This ethnographic report examines the use of humor as a means to promote PCC within a hospital unit designed to encourage therapeutic humor. The three distinct themes emerging from this study have implications regarding the use of humor to help facilitate PCC. The three themes are (a) taking a complete patient profile, (b) freeing patients from the label of “bad patient,” and (c) de-emphasizing power disparities.     

Health Care Providers' Confidentiality Practices and Perceptions: Expanding a Typology of Confidentiality Breaches in Health Care Communication

Confidentiality breaches of health information can affect every person who seeks medical care. To better understand this phenomenon, breaches of confidentiality by employees in a health care organization were examined and compared to the perceived confidentiality maintenance actions of the organization's health care providers. The study, using observation and interviews of a health promotion department, supported Brann and Mattson's (2004) typology of confidentiality breaches, provided evidence for another type of communicative breach, and revealed inconsistencies between health care providers' actions and their perceptions of those actions. Future research should address the prevalence of such discrepancies in other health contexts and its impact on patient care.     

The Politics of NASCAR Dads: Branded Media Paternity

The figure of the NASCAR dad emerged in the 2002 and 2004 campaign seasons to signal the importance of white, male Southern voters to politicians and their political parties. Analysis of television news coverage of NASCAR dads shows that it privileges patriarchal masculinity, the Republican Party, and corporate consumerism—all of which were propelled to high visibility by the NASCAR Corporation's place in these stories. Television news produces NASCAR dads as an “emotional brand,” a population of citizen-consumers representing the appropriation of patriotism, Christianity, and fatherhood, deployed in a politically conservative fashion.     

Inoculation and Mental Processing: The Instrumental Role of Associative Networks in the Process of Resistance to Counterattitudinal Influence

This investigation introduced the concept of associative networks to the resistance domain. A four-phase experiment was conducted involving 298 participants. The results confirmed the role of known elements in the process of resistance: the core elements of threat, issue involvement, and counterarguing output facilitated resistance, as did the more recently introduced element of attitude certainty. Also, the results indicated that inoculation treatments modified the structure of associative networks, planting additional nodes and increasing the linkages between nodes. Subsequently, changes in the structure of associative networks contributed to resistance to counterattitudinal attacks.     

人文关怀：图书馆服务与管理理念的新发展

人文关怀理念的确立是图书馆服务与管理理念的新发展。在以人为本的人文价值观念的推动下,图书馆经历了两次重大演进,即从藏书楼以藏为主到近代图书馆以用为主的转变和从传统图书馆以文献借阅为主到现代图书馆以信息开发服务为主的转变。图书馆服务中必须坚持尊重读者的原则、信息公平的原则、人性化服务的原则和个性化服务的原则。     

伯明翰学派青年亚文化研究的起点:理查德·霍加特与“电唱机男孩”

青年亚文化研究是伯明翰学派亚文化研究最具特色、影响最为深远的组成部分之一。作为伯明翰学派的奠基人物,理查德·霍加特从二十世纪五十年代就已开始涉足青年亚文化研究。然而,对电唱机男孩等青年亚文化群体的分析和评价却使他招致学界的批评和忽视。本文在对霍加特的青年亚文化研究进行介绍和分析的基础上,进一步将之放置到伯明翰学派青年亚文化思想的发展轨道之上,从阶级和抵抗两个层面对霍加特青年亚文化研究存在的问题及价值进行阐述和评价。     

Genetic and Rare Disease Diagnoses: A Review of Resources for Patients and Health Care Professionals

Abstract

This article reviews genetic and rare disease resources from the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health that assist patients and their families to decipher the complexity of rare and genetically related diseases. Librarians can use these resources to guide those seeking genetic information that encompasses the medical, social, psychological, and financial aspects of living with a rare disease. Physicians and healthcare professionals will find these resources helpful when assisting patients and engaging in genetic research.     

Kitchen Antics: The Importance of Humor and Maintaining Professionalism at Work

The role of humor in workplace organizing is examined through a year-long ethnography of a hotel kitchen. An institutional and communicative frame reveals how the chefs use everyday humor to make sense of and shape their labor processes and to maintain their professional autonomy and identity and to resist managerial control of their craft.     

Psychiatric Power: The Post-Museum as a Site of Rhetorical Alignment

This essay examines Brain: The World Inside Your Head, a traveling museum exhibit sponsored by Pfizer, to show how the dissemination of psychiatric vocabularies aligns corporate and individual interests. The spatial composition of the museum and its interactive exhibits interpellate visitors as active agents capable of expressing their experiences through the scientific vocabularies of contemporary neuroscience. The gentle and benevolent conditioning to a way of thought and a manner of speaking, rather than a “hard sell” approach, makes pharmaceutical remedy an obvious and desirable mode of self care.     

“政治”与“美学”的合谋——论《意志的胜利》的政治美学传播

本文着重分析纳粹德国制作的党代会宣传片《意志的胜利》,从影片的美学观念、主题诉求策略、视听方案,编辑手段等角度分析政治美学的本质就是运用崇高的观念、庄严的仪式、富有魅力的领袖来建构主宰/奴役的二元美学,进行政治传播的。     

Politics and Advocacy: The Role of Networking in Selling the Library to Your Community

SUMMARY

Current research conducted by the Information Use Management and Policy Institute, Florida State University, identifies the characteristics of the successfully networked public library (SNPL) and in particular explores the impact of technology on both library advocacy and networking in the political system. This paper identifies the factors that are critical to a public library's success in advocacy, community support, government relations, and ultimately the perceived importance of the library in the community. This perspective on the SNPL is reinforced by the examination of Cuyahoga County Public Library's program to use the strategies of the SNPL.     

The Structuring of Invisibility Among the Hidden Homeless: The Politics of Space, Stigma, and Identity Construction

This ethnographic portrayal relies on participant observations at two supplemental support programs for youth without homes, narratives collected through in-depth interviews with educators and case managers, and focus group interviews with youth participants to explore the discursive (re)production of invisibility among youth without homes. Structuration theory is used to frame macro and micro forces coalescing to enable and constrain processes of invisibility among the hidden homeless. Analysis reveals how invisibility shapes (and is shaped by) processes of stigmatization, “street smarts” as enacted by youth, and “Mayberry” and “not in my backyard” community discourses, and how the disappearance of youth without homes simultaneously serves and undermines various stakeholders.     

The Structuring of Invisibility Among the Hidden Homeless: The Politics of Space,Stigma, and Identity Construction

This ethnographic portrayal relies on participant observations at two supplemental support programs for youth without homes, narratives collected through in-depth interviews with educators and case managers, and focus group interviews with youth participants to explore the discursive (re)production of invisibility among youth without homes. Structuration theory is used to frame macro and micro forces coalescing to enable and constrain processes of invisibility among the hidden homeless. Analysis reveals how invisibility shapes (and is shaped by) processes of stigmatization, “street smarts” as enacted by youth, and “Mayberry” and “not in my backyard” community discourses, and how the disappearance of youth without homes simultaneously serves and undermines various stakeholders.     

The Politics of the Pitch: Claiming and Contesting Democracy Through the Iraqi National Soccer Team

Sport was among the many cultural resources that George W. Bush used to justify rhetorically the need for war in Iraq. Specifically, he sought to capitalize on the unexpected success of the Iraqi national soccer team during the 2004 Summer Olympics. The Bush campaign produced a commercial that aired during the two weeks of Olympic coverage, in which Bush was credited with spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world. Simultaneously, the president claimed that Iraq's participation in the Games was possible only because of American-led action that had toppled Saddam Hussein. Rather than accept this narrative, many Iraqi athletes and citizens responded with anger and resentment towards the United States. This analysis demonstrates the extent to which sport metaphors are implicated in the contests over democracy. Moreover, it suggests that critics must engage the discourses of sport as they articulate with politics in an effort to recover the democratic potential of each.     

The Politics of Goods: A Case Study of Consumer Nationalism and Media Discourse in Contemporary China

This study advances the concept of consumer nationalism in the international marketplace. It examines the complex role of the media in its formation and expressive practices through a case study of an incident involving Toshiba Corporation in China. The concept rests upon three key arguments of self-definition through consumption, globalization, and symbolic national unification. In their encounter with the global brand Toshiba, the Chinese media and consumers re-discovered and evoked a strong nationalistic sentiment underlined by Japan's past aggression and atrocities in China. The media discourse of national pride and dignity in the case study represents the complex confluence of China's continuing ambivalence towards Japan, sponsor activities by key advocacy groups, and the changing Chinese media practices. Further research is called for to consider the concept of consumer nationalism, its processes, participants, and consequences.     

Contextualizing Boycotts and Buycotts: The Impure Politics of Consumer-Based Advocacy in an Age of Global Ecological Crises

Despite their popularity and significance, there is a paucity of communication scholarship on boycotts and buycotts. This absence may be due to an erroneous assumption that such tactics are merely economic, as well as to a hesitancy to critique consumption. This essay focuses on three contemporary US-based exemplars that address global ecological crises: the Rainforest Action Network boycott of Mitsubishi; the Farm Labor Organizing Committee boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Company; and the Carrotmob buycott of a liquor store. The circuit of culture framework and a radically contextual approach provide a more nuanced analysis of consumer-based advocacy campaigns.