It’ll Be Okay,Because We Belong Together: The Influence of Person-Organization Fit on Interpretation of Bad-News Messages in Academic Settings

Higher education has recently faced significant budget cuts. In response, academic leaders must communicate negative information to stakeholders while simultaneously attempting to maintain morale and credibility. This project investigated how students interpret a bad-news message from the university president and examined the impact of person-organization fit and demographic characteristics on interpretations and credibility. In Study 1, participants (N = 52) provided 19 varying interpretations for a real-life message. Using 5 components derived from the interpretations, Study 2 (N = 466) determined that person-organization fit and demographic characteristics influence interpretations and source credibility. Some outcomes varied according to whether participants had previously read the bad-news message.     

Making Sense of Fractured Identities: Male Professors’ Narratives of Sexual Harassment

The university has become a site of increased debate over policy and procedures as the experience of sexual harassment reaches all levels of the academic hierarchy. Although this topic has been researched thoroughly, few studies have explored sexual harassment through the voices of men in academe. In this study, sexual harassment is explored from the perspective of two men who are tenured, full professors at a southwestern university. This research employs narrative analysis to locate patterns of discourse that illuminate fractured identities. Through the examination of these fractures, this analysis exposes the ways gender, identity, and sexual harassment are intertwined within academe.     

Media Violence and Adolescents’ ADHD-Related Behaviors: The Role of Parental Mediation

We examined the role of parental media mediation in the relationship between media violence and adolescents’ ADHD-related behaviors. Survey data from 1,017 adolescents (10–14 years) show that parents can play an important role in this relationship, depending on the media mediation strategies that they use (i.e., restrictive or active mediation) and how they apply these strategies (i.e., in a controlling, inconsistent, or autonomy-supportive way). Our findings support the notion that contextual factors are critical in understanding media effects, and provide directions for how parents can manage their adolescents’ violent media use, and possibly by extension, their ADHD-related behaviors.     

News Habits Among Adolescents: The Influence of Family Communication on Adolescents’ News Media Use—Evidence From a Three-Wave Panel Study

Keeping up with what’s going on in the world of politics and current affairs through various news media is commonly seen as important for civic engagement and informed citizenship. Today, however, citizens face more opportunities than ever to select media content according to their personal preferences and interests—leading to what previous research has identified as a polarization between news-seekers and news-avoiders. Given heightened concerns regarding growing shares of news-avoiders in particular, this study analyzes the development, stability, and family influences on Swedish adolescents’ news habits over time. The findings, based on panel survey data among adolescents and their parents, show that (a) news habits are fairly stable at the individual level, (b) parents’ own news consumption is the most consistent predictor of adolescents’ development of news habits, and (c) these family effects are distinct from adolescents’ personal motivations for seeking out news.     

“It’s kind of like an assault,you know”: media resisters’ meta-decoding practices of media culture

ABSTRACT

Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/decoding” essay sparked an on-going focus in media studies on reception and audience studies that remains theoretically robust today. Hall’s insight that audience members decode media content in multiple ways, some in line with the dominant cultural ideology and some resistant to that ideology, illuminates the phenomenon of media resistance. Media resisters significantly limit their media consumption and they do so based on their decodings of media culture—decodings, or readings, that resist normative messages about commercialism and consumption, about the natural diffusion and inherent benefits of mobile technologies and social media, and about the political landscape depicted and generated by news media. Hall’s encoding/decoding model is expanded here to include not only audiences’ decodings of specific content, but of media culture broadly. Concerns about media culture in the aggregate lead to media resisters’ practices of limiting media engagement, practices themselves that are counter hegemonic.     

“Say something instead of nothing”: Adolescents’ perceptions of memorable conversations about sex-related topics with their parents

This study examined adolescents’ (n?=?389) perceptions of parent–adolescent communication about sex, including what their parents say about sex, what types of conversations adolescents report as memorable, the degree to which messages are perceived as effective, and how parental messages predict adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. Six conversation types emerged: underdeveloped, safety, comprehensive talk, warning/threat, wait, and no talk. When adolescents were asked to report how those could have been improved, five types emerged from the analysis of their responses: no change, be more specific/provide guidance, talk to me, appropriateness, and collaborate. Comprehensive talk and safety were perceived as significantly more effective than all other types of conversations. Safety conversations predicted the lowest levels of permissive sexual attitudes and risk-taking.     

“It’s On Us.” The Role of Social Media and Rape Culture in Individual Willingness to Mobilize Against Sexual Assault

Stopping sexual violence has become a key issue in the public and media agenda. This study examines the role of social media and bystander intervention in predicting an individual’s willingness to engage in collective action against sexual violence. Two surveys were conducted in fall 2014 and early 2015 examining young adults’ views of social networking sites, rape culture, and collective action. Results indicated that gender and bystander intervention were key predictors of willingness to engage in collective action, along with the privacy concerns of social network users. Views supporting rape culture were found to have a negative association. Implications are discussed.     

“I Wanna Be in the Room Where It Happens”…: Using Curriculum Mapping to Support the Information Literacy Goals of Online Programs

Embedding information literacy and instruction within an online program can be a difficult process to begin. Curriculum mapping guides librarians to the courses where their services can have the most impact. However, curriculum mapping can seem like an overwhelming and unwieldly process. This case study demystifies the process and shows how simple and effective curriculum maps can be designed and utilized. Particularly in environment with a single librarian dedicated to online outreach serving as a coordinator for other subject liaison librarians, curriculum mapping is a tool that allows for clear communication, outreach and systematic assessment. This paper will provide an overview of how the curriculum maps were developed, how they were used for communication and outreach both within and outside the Libraries, and ideas for programmatic assessment based upon the maps.     

‘It’s a dark cloud’: experiences of social undermining among people living with HIV in New Mexico

Social undermining as a strong predictor of adverse health outcomes in people living with HIV (PLWH), yet little is known about the experiences that constitute social undermining in this population. We led community-engaged research to identify and understand experiences of social undermining of PLWH in largely rural, minority-majority Southwestern communities. While past research focused on stigma-related experiences, participants in this study also told stories that shared their feelings of being undermined by lack of patient-centered care that they did not attribute to stigma, but to bureaucratic and impersonal service provision that marginalized them. These experiences create stress and serve as barriers for participants’ well-being and care. By bringing to the front experiences and mechanisms of social undermining, these findings advance theory, research, and practice regarding social undermining and living with HIV in diverse communities.     

Off-Campus Postgraduate Students’ Perceptions About Distance Library Support Services: A Case Study of Allama Iqbal Open University Libraries Network

ABSTRACT

The present study was conducted to assess distance learning students’ perceptions about location and physical set up of libraries, collections, resources, and services rendered at thirty-four regional campuses as well as main campus libraries network of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) all over Pakistan. During the spring semester of 2007, a questionnaire was mailed to 250 randomly selected students enrolled in eleven postgraduate programs throughout the country. The response rate was 61.2%, which was made up of 43.1% females and 56.9% males. A majority of the respondents were dissatisfied with the virtual reference services, online database facilities, interlibrary loan, library membership, and borrowing of library material from the AIOU libraries. They were satisfied with the location and physical setup of the libraries, the collections, and the resources of the libraries. The study revealed that most of the respondents used the libraries during workshops as well as for research purposes. The statistical analysis (t = 0.550, Sig. = 0.970) showed that there was no significant difference between the opinion of females and males. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows version 10.0.     

“It’s My Job Now,I Guess”: Biographical disruption and communication work in supporters of young adult cancer survivors

ABSTRACT

This study uses narrative interviews to describe how 25 young adult (YA) close supporters (i.e., romantic partners, siblings) experience an often invisible and uniquely burdensome biographical disruption following a young adult cancer survivor’s (YACS; i.e., 18–39) diagnosis. YA supporters reported varying levels of biographical interdependence with the YACS and family system uncertainty with other important supporters. These factors led YA romantic partners and siblings to engage in different types of communication work to negotiate and maintain primary and secondary support roles with parents and in-laws, to ensure that the YACS received helpful social support by gatekeeping (i.e., correcting, blocking) others’ support attempts, and to accommodate both their own and the YACS’s disrupted biographies.     

“This Is Our Library,and It’s a Pretty Cool Place”: A User-Centered Study of Public Library YA Spaces

This study sought to collect data from teens and librarians about their preferences and recommendations for the effective design of physical library spaces for teens. Librarians and teens at twenty-two U.S. public libraries filmed narrated video tours of their young adult (YA) public library spaces. The researchers used qualitative content analysis techniques to analyze the video data and to develop a framework for guiding the design of effective YA public library spaces. In addition to providing specific recommendations for user-centered YA library space design, this study highlights the need for continued user input into the design and maintenance of YA public library spaces as teens’ needs evolve and vary across time and from community to community.