News or Noticias: A Social Identity Approach to Understanding Latinos’ Preferred Language for News Consumption in the United States

For Latinos in the United States, decisions reflecting which language they prefer for news media consumption can have substantial effects on the quality of the content they receive. However, little is known about what influences Latinos’ language preferences for news media consumption. This project looks to fill that void to the immediate appeal of academics and media analysts by asking, What influences Latinos’ language preference for news? This project builds on social psychology theories highlighting the role played by social identity and self-categorization for inspiring culturally consistent behaviors. This social identity approach focuses on the embrace of Latino characteristics and the complementary nature of Spanish-language media outputs relative to those characteristics. Using the 2006 Latino National Survey, the role of identity is explored. The results indicate that language preferences for news consumption are indeed related to various social identity measures among Latinos in the United States.     

Legal Research Guide for the Customs Enforcement of ITC Exclusion Orders

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has recently become more important in the enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights. One significant part of ITC enforcement is the enforcement of ITC exclusion orders by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This Legal Research Guide seeks to provide comprehensive coverage of the primary and secondary sources available in the area of CBP enforcement of ITC exclusion orders, and focuses on primary sources because of the subject's relative newness and administrative law nature.     

Information behaviors of Latinos attending high school in East Los Angeles

The data on Latino school-aged youth with regard to their information and digital literacies are nascent, while this US population is growing explosively. An exploratory study investigated the information behaviors of Latinos attending high school in East Los Angeles. Information behaviors including library use and research skills were investigated through a series of focus groups and a questionnaire. Results challenge several assumptions regarding access to technology and first-generation Latinos.     

Apolitical politics: GOP efforts to foster identification from Latinos, 1984–2000

The growth and youth of the U.S. Latino population at the close of the 20^th century makes them a desired constituency for both major political parties. Intriguingly, the party organization which has long resisted the recognition of internal voting blocs—the GOP—allocated unprecedented resources between 1980 and 2000 to inspire identification from Latinos. This study investigates the nature of these invitations. Specifically, it reveals how a party, whose organizational identity opposes acknowledging individuals as ethnic group members, appeals to an ethnic group. By examining (a) English and Spanish language television advertisements and (b) elite interview data with Republican Latino strategists, we argue that these ads depict satisfied Latino citizens, emphasize Latino family connections, and eschew traditional political issues. These identification strategies are notable for they may have considerable effects on the American polity at the dawn of, and well into, the 21^st century.     

Archival temples, archival prisons: Modes of power and protection

Public and privateorganizations depend, for their disciplinaryand surveillance power, on the creation andmaintenance of records. Entire societies maybe emprisoned in Foucauldian panopticism, asystem of surveillance and power-knowledge,based on and practised by registration, filing,and records. Archives resemble temples asinstitutions of surveillance and powerarchitecturally, but they also function assuch, because the panoptical archivedisciplines and controls throughknowledge-power. Inside the archives, therituals, surveillance, and discipline serve tomaintain the power of the archives and thearchivist. But the archives' power is (orshould be) the citizen's power too. Theviolation of human rights is documented in thearchives and the citizen who defends himselfappeals to the archives. People value storage as a means to keep account of thepresent for the future. In order to be useableas instruments of empowerment and liberation,archives have to be secured as storage memoryserving society's future functional memories.     

“News with an Accent”: Hispanic Television and the Re-negotiation of US Latino Speech

Using Bourdieu's concept of “linguistic capital” as an analytical concept, I examine the value of language as both a means of comprehension and a product that has currency in the television marketplace. Focusing on Fusion, an upstart cable network designed to engage Latinos civically and in English, I examine the ways in which television networks employ language as a device through which to create audiences. I argue that Fusion and other networks are attempting to re-constitute the Latino audience in ways that more closely align with the dominant culture, leading to forms of erasure that challenge the legitimacy of Spanish altogether. I further argue that in the process of pursuing the acculturated Latino, the network pivots away from those most isolated from civic discourses.     

Library analytics as moral dilemmas for academic librarians

Library analytics in academic libraries, especially in the United States, are part of the expanding web of society-wide surveillance. The use of library analytics systems poses serious threats to the well-being of many actors, especially students. Academic librarians are faced with new moral challenges by such systems as described here and must determine the extent to which they wish to participate in the surveillance of students for whom they are responsible. The column concludes with some recommendations from the literature and with consideration of the roles of free inquiry, freedom from surveillance, and exercise of autonomy essential to higher education and full citizenship.     

Smart cities & citizen discontent: A systematic review of the literature

Governments across the world are experimenting with smart city technologies but recent studies suggest that not all citizens support this development. However, a comprehensive understanding of citizen discontent with the smart city is missing. This study systematically reviews academic research addressing citizen discontent with the smart city. Based on a set of 58 articles, two perspectives on citizens' discontent are identified. One perspective focuses on active discontent: citizens are dissatisfied with the technology, democratic process, and societal impact of the smart city and show different types of behavior to express their discontentment. The other perspective emphasizes passive discontent: citizen discontent does not manifest itself due to citizens' lack of awareness and skills and the absence of channels to express their discontentment. Both perspectives on discontent suggest different government responses respectively to overcome citizen discontent through ‘the right technologies’, ‘the right rules’, and ‘the right information’, or to stimulate critical citizenship through ‘the right to smart city education and empowerment’ and the ‘right to participate and challenge’. Based on our findings, a fine-grained understanding of attitudes and behavior, and government actions to address citizen discontent is developed.     

Please Pass the Pan: Retheorizing the Map of Panlatinidad in Communication Research

A departure from the tendencies in past research, which tended to focus solely on majority populations within the Latino community, this article posits new diasporas within the U.S. Latino community as a fertile area for communication research into issues of identity, representation, and citizenship. An examination of the wave of Argentinean migration since 2001 provides one example of how research on new diasporas would complicate the notions of either an essentialistic or a pluralistic “panlatinidad” by contextualizing power relations both within and outside of Latino communities.     

Examining Differences in Predictors of African American,Caucasian, and Latino Young Adults’ Intentions to Register as an Organ Donor

To date, African Americans and Latinos consent to organ donation at lower rates than Caucasians and are disproportionately represented on transplant waiting lists. However, limited work has investigated racial differences in predictors of organ donation registration. In this study, we examined racial differences in the antecedents of African American, Caucasian, and Latino young adults’ registration intentions using the theory of planned behavior, the noncognitive model, and perceived realism. Non-donors (N = 307) were recruited in a stratified random telephone survey. Results indicate that for African Americans, subjective norm, bodily integrity, and medical mistrust were the strongest predictors of registration intention. For Caucasians, attitude and subjective norm arose as key determinants of registration intention. For Latinos, attitude, subjective norm, and medical mistrust were the strongest predictors of registration intention. Consistent evidence for the independent predictive validity of perceived realism was also documented. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, as well as avenues for future research.     

Problematizing "New Media": Culturally Based Perceptions of Cell Phones,Computers, and the Internet among United States Latinos

Recent studies of new communication technologies have shown that broad terms such as “new media” are problematic. This study expands previous research by exploring how first-generation, working class United States Latino participants perceive and use new communication technologies in relation to their cultural values. Discussions generated across seven focus group sessions (N=78) about three common new communication technologies, 1) cell phones, 2) computers, and 3) the internet, showed that United States Latinos positioned the perceived usefulness of each communication technology differently, based upon their cultural values regarding good communication. In particular, participants discussed how cell phones provide an effective way to make interpersonal contact whereas computers and the internet were viewed as damaging to the communication necessary for good social relations. The findings show that this group of United States Latinos did not view new media as a homogeneous category, but instead had very distinct perceptions and ideas about the expected uses of cell phones, computers, and the internet in relation to their cultural values regarding communication.     

Overqualified: Changing the Culture of Hiring Practices in a Public Library Special Collections Department

All too often, applicants for low level paraprofessional positions in libraries are passed over or rejected, not because they are not qualified, but because they have professional experience or advanced degrees. The rationale behind these decisions is that the overqualified staff member in a low level position will continue to look for a better position more aligned with their skills, experience, and education; and when they find another job they will leave and their positions will have to be filled again. This essay argues that this reasoning is flawed and, regardless of the perceived inconvenience, library managers and administrators should want the best and the brightest working in all levels of their library.     

Voicing Terri Schiavo: Prosopopeic Citizenship in the Democratic Aporia between Sovereignty and Biopower

This essay examines the case of Terri Schiavo to develop a theory of prosopopeic democratic citizenship. Prosopopeia—the tropological attribution of voice—rhetorically sutures an aporia between sovereign and biopolitical modes of democratic governance. Citizens are split by the democratic rationality of self-governance: they act as sovereign subjects to govern themselves as biopolitical objects. However, that self-governing logic begins to falter when applied to live bodies that are not speaking subjects. By projecting a live body's self-determining capacity to speak in its own voice, prosopopeia rhetorically reconstitutes that citizen's capacity for self-representation, mediating the gap in the democratic order.     

What About the Hyperlocals?

Using a survey of a sample of hyperlocal actors in Sweden (N?=?178), this article examines preconditions, motivations and sustainability for hyperlocal media operations, outside the traditional media chains, in order to provide a picture of their function in the current media landscape, and to further build on the understanding of the hyperlocal business model. This study extends the hyperlocal definition by including media platforms other than websites. The results show that the operations indeed aim to support and foster citizenship, strengthen democracy and mirror the local community. At the same time, as shown by other studies, the fact that they are not large-scale, highly profitable operations may challenge their sustainability. Nonetheless, most of them claim to be profitable, largely because of the print platform, and have a positive outlook on the future. Revenues from advertising and readership are currently less substantial for Web-based operations, which reinforces the need to broaden the definition of hyperlocal publishing platforms when talking about financial sustainability. Currently, hyperlocal media in Sweden, with small resources and a lower publishing frequency, cannot be viewed as a replacement of established media, but play important roles as complementary alternative voices and contribute to media plurality in the local community.     

CHICANA/O STUDENT JOURNALISTS MAP OUT A CHICANA/O JOURNALISM PRACTICE

Research documenting the media under-representation of people of color indicates that unless journalists re-imagine the way they report on communities of color, those growing segments may be left without a stake in the “public imaginary.” In this paper, I suggest that journalism educators turn their attention to Chicano/a student journalists in order to begin the process of re-envisioning newsgathering and writing in ways that more accurately depict and inform Latino/a communities. Driven by a collaboration between myself and undergraduate student producers of Venceremos, a bilingual Chicano/a student publication at a western state university, this paper builds a case for why these student journalists are an important source of knowledge and inspiration for journalism educators concerned with improving mainstream coverage of diverse communities. The essay also summarizes my association with the Venceremos staff in order to model how journalism educators can team up with alternative student journalists and it demarcates traits that typify their evolving Chicano/a journalism practice.     

Accessibility requirements take on new significance for publishers

Conclusion Publishers may wish to ignore disabilities legislation since it doesn’t apply directly to them, but their customers will not be able ignore the new laws when making purchasing decisions. Thus, as a practical matter each publisher must develop a game plan for how it will position itself to remain competitive in a marketplace where the timely availability of their print works in digital formats is becoming a Sine qua non on purchasing checklists. How individual publishers choose to tackle the new challenges will be determined by a number of variables including the type of content they publish (humanities, math, science, technical), the production systems they use, the length of their press runs, the shelf-life of their products, the level of service they are prepared to provide, the risks they are willing to take, and the dynamics of the markets they serve. A publisher’s strategy will need frequent review and modification because the variables involved in the accessibility environment are changing rapidly. New developments are occurring all the time in the legal environment, in production technologies, in assistive technologies, in distribution technologies, in digital rights management technologies, as well as in file standards. Solutions will need frequent tuning. For publishers, accessibility challenges do not stop with providing alternate formats for printed works. Those delivering their content over private networks via course management systems and over the Internet find that there are other accessibility requirements and standards to be met. It will behoove publishers to develop and implement informed operating policies and protocols that assure that onan ongoing basis its products and services meet applicable accessibility requirements and thus can fully compete in an increasingly demanding marketplace.     

Social identity and trust in internet-based voting adoption

The growth of eGovernment applications has initiated profound re-engineering of numerous citizen-government interactions but has not yet provided significant impacts on internet-based voting (iVoting). This study examines the role of trust and the technology adoption model (TAM) in influencing citizen intentions to adopt iVoting, and whether a social identity perspective may play a role in this individual decision process. The study is based on the integrated trust and TAM model. TAM posits that people choose to adopt a new Information Technology (IT) because they perceive it to be useful and sometimes also because it is perceived as easy to use. Trust plays a central role in building that sense of perceived usefulness in cases where the IT is a conduit to the trusted party, as we propose for iVoting. In support of this social identity extension to the trust and TAM model, our results show that citizens' perceptions that they share the same values as the individuals affiliated with providing eGovernment (and internet-based voting) services are especially instrumental. The perception that the agency is made of “people like me” is associated with increased trust in the agency, which in turn is associated with increased levels of other factors that contribute to the intention to vote electronically over the internet. Implications for theory and practice are identified.     

The Sorry Tale of Contemporary Authorship: A Study of Scottish Authors

This paper gives a detailed overview of contemporary authorship in Scotland through the analysis of interviews with and a survey of Scottish authors. These results are compared to previous studies to highlight the changing nature of authorship over the years. Both the survey and interview results paint a pessimistic picture of authorship in the twenty-first century, with the majority of authors earning very little from their writing and depending on alternative avenues to improve their income. Additionally, Scottish authors are not benefiting from the numerous new platforms to exploit their work through, which could help to enhance their income. This is partly because many Scottish authors still have a traditional view of publishing and do not think about their work commercially, and partly because, in many cases, their rights are controlled by their publishers and not widely exploited. This survey also found that Scottish authors with London literary agents earned more income than their counterparts with Scottish agents; however, this was mainly because they were more likely to be published with London publishers. This shows that Scottish publishers are failing their authors by not fostering their rights efficiently and effectively: fostering these rights more effectively could help supplement authors’ income.     

Necropolitical voices and bodies in the rhetorical reception of Iranian women's asylum claims

In the mid-1990s, US immigration courts were introduced to a group of Iranian women who claimed that they feared persecution because of their “pro-Western and feminist” political opinions and because of the way they performed gender on their bodies. The claims were, in total, unsuccessful bids to asylum. Analyzing these cases set against the geopolitical background of US–Iranian history and contemporary relations, I argue that their denials illustrate three important dynamics. First, building on rhetorical theorizing of voice and body, this essay demonstrates the uneasy reception in US law and politics of willful noncitizen women of color with explicit political voices and bodies, and second, the consequential racialization of these subjects as willful, unorderable migrant subjects too akin in their sovereignty to their state of birth. Third, this analysis adds to the field's attentiveness to geopolitics by consequently demonstrating US necropolitical desires toward Iran in the state's engagement with these cases. I argue that for the United States to recognize these claimants as having political voices contrary to their state would be to recognize the presence and legitimacy of that state—a sovereign that challenges US power and modernity on the global stage.