Social norms and expectancy violation theories: assessing the effectiveness of health communication campaigns

College students' processing of alcohol, smoking, and exercise social norms messages, and related effects on judgments, attitudes toward one's own behaviors, and attitudes toward undergraduates' behaviors were examined using social norms marketing and Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) (N=393). Receiving statistical social norms messages led to an expectancy violation of the perceived social norm (i.e., a discrepancy between the expected and actual statistic conveyed with a message). Consistent with Boster et al. (), the effect of the message discrepancy on attitudes was mediated by judgments. In accordance with social norms, when participants were provided with a statistic, the majority moved their judgments (but not their attitudes) toward the provided statistic, a result only consistent with EVT in the case of positive violations. The results have multiple implications: (1) social norms messages may work to change judgments, but do not result in consistent attitude change; (2) the process of judgment change functions similarly across message topics, as well as message types (i.e., attitudinal versus behavioral); (3) judgment change does not appear to be the main cause for attitude change upon receipt of a social norms message; and (4) a message‐based expectancy violation does not function in the same way as a violated behavioral expectation.     

Communication Efficacy and Couples' Cancer Management: Applying a Dyadic Appraisal Model

The purpose of the present study was to apply Berg and Upchurch's (2007) developmental-conceptual model to understand better how couples cope with cancer. Specifically, we hypothesized a dyadic appraisal model in which proximal factors (relational quality), dyadic appraisal (prognosis uncertainty), and dyadic coping (communication efficacy) predicted adjustment (cancer management). The study was cross-sectional and included 83 dyads in which one partner had been diagnosed with and/or treated for cancer. For both patients and partners, multilevel analyses using the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) indicated that proximal contextual factors predicted dyadic appraisal and dyadic coping. Dyadic appraisal predicted dyadic coping, which then predicted dyadic adjustment. Patients' confidence in their ability to talk about the cancer predicted their own cancer management. Partners' confidence predicted their own and the patient's ability to cope with cancer, which then predicted patients' perceptions of their general health. Implications and future research are discussed.     

“Her” Photographer: The Roanoke Live-Shot Murders and Visual Communication's Place in the Newsroom

This study analyzed coverage of the shootings of two journalists in Virginia in 2015. Coverage of journalism by journalists, or metajournalistic discourse, makes it possible to examine the way an interpretive community represents and reproduces professional norms. Working with the framework of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, the analysis considers the way journalistic specialists maintain their identity, professional boundaries, and hierarchal relationships. This analysis focuses on how visual journalism, in particular, is presented to the news audience. Based on our findings, we argue that coverage of the Roanoke live-shot murders provides insight into the way journalism maintains its authority by highlighting affect and diminishing its constructed dimension.     

Qatar's Hidden Women: Symbolic Annihilation and Documentary Media Practice

This article explores how documentary film practice and visual storytelling can be used to help portray Qatari women's narratives, even though many are prohibited by cultural norms from appearing in visual media. We investigate which communication and media practices can provide a work-around, ensuring that women's stories and testimonies are documented. We also explore whether Qatar's social and cultural restrictions result in a form of “symbolic annihilation” for Qatari women, as articulated by Gaye Tuchman, and how this impacts Qatari women's position and visibility in local society.     

The “Seventy Percent Solution”

SUMMARY

Portland State University Library's fund allocation committee presented information and practical advice on the process of developing a model to reallocate funding for library materials. After experimenting with funding ratios, they decided to use their model to reallocate 30 percent of the funds earmarked for discipline-specific materials while protecting 70 percent of each discipline's original allocation.     

Do old Norms Have a Place in New Media?

Emerging business models for news have the potential to affect the nature of democracy. As the economic foundations of mainstream journalism become increasingly shaky, a new economic model is emerging in the form of news organizations operating as nonprofits. These are mostly run by former newspaper journalists bringing with them traditional journalistic norms they worked under previously; now they are operating under a vastly different economic framework. These organizations are producing a growing amount of public affairs news while mainstream news production shrinks. The research question examined here is whether this emergent form (1) changes but maintains core norms and practices of the journalistic culture from which it arose, or (2) transforms norms and practices into something new. I briefly review norms and practices of traditional journalism to create a framework against which to compare behaviors at one nonprofit news organization, MinnPost, through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews. My findings indicate that MinnPost values some traditional norms (e.g. loyalty to citizens); other norms are valued but not fulfilled in a traditional way (e.g. comprehensiveness of news coverage); yet others are largely eschewed (e.g. forum provision). This suggests a set of evolving journalistic tenets, which observations indicate are linked to MinnPost's economic structure. It points toward how emerging business models are changing journalism, and by extension could be affecting American democracy. This paper is part of a larger project investigating how nonprofit news organizations are changing the information available in local news environments.     

The Staging of Agency in Girls Gone Wild

This paper addresses the ambivalence produced by Girls Gone Wild (GGW) as both text and social practice by interrogating the ways in which it functions hegemonically by staging an effect of agency. I draw on Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque as a means to examine how contradictory spatio-temporal contexts of GGW function as spaces that offer the opportunity to momentarily transgress—yet simultaneously reify—white, bourgeois norms of femininity. The videos reinforce a neoliberalist mentality of personal responsibility through the inclusion of the consent—and dissent—processes on camera. After analyzing how postfeminist discourses emphasizing “individual choice” justify GGW as a mode of female empowerment, I turn to a complementary textual analysis of GGW's role-reversal counterpart, Guys Gone Wild (2004), in an effort to show the ways in which this “mirror image” text ultimately reinforces the structure of exploitation in the original.     

Boys Don't Cry and female masculinity: reclaiming a life & dismantling the politics of normative heterosexuality

–This analysis argues that Kimberly Peirce's film Boys Don't Cry can be read as a liberatory narrative that queers the centers of heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity by privileging female masculinity and celebrating its differences from heterosexual norms. My critique emphasizes how the narrative strategically challenges heteronormativity and, in turn, “narrative's heteroideology” (Roof, 1996), in four ways: 1) by dismantling the myth of “America's heartland”; 2) by problematizing heteromasculinity; 3) by centering female masculinity; and 4) by blurring the boundaries of female masculinity. I argue that the articulation of each subversive strategy within the narratives of Boys Don't Cry can serve a liberatory function, whereby the privileged subjectivities of heterosexuality and hegemonic masculinity are dismantled and, simultaneously, female masculinity and gender fluidity are privileged and normalized. I conclude that the narrative structure of Boys Don't Cry not only privileges gender diversity, but also exposes the inherent sexual bigotry of heteroideology and the brutal and deadly consequences of society's failure to eradicate such prejudice. I just keep on laughing Hiding the tears in my eyes Because boys don't cry. Boys don't cry. (Smith, Tolhurst, & Dempsey, 1988)     

Symbolic convergence and special communication theories: Sensing and examining dis/enchantment with the theoretical robustness of critical auto ethnography

This study answers 4 research questions as it explicates the SCT's ability to explain how special communication theories come into being as the product of rhetorical visions that contain the norms, conventions, and customs for exemplar participation in a specific communication style. This study demonstrates that the concept of rhetorical vision yields insights into the creation, rise, and potential for demise of a style‐specific, special theory of communication named the critical autoethnography special theory (CAST). The study reports that the CAST itself is a symbolically created product of the critical autoethnographic rhetorical vision (CARV). The study's findings indicate that CARV's life‐cycle is congruent with those of other rhetorical visions and would predict that the CARV may well implode upon itself as it contains the seeds of its own destruction.     

A comparative analysis of moral principles and behavioral norms in eight ethical codes relevant to health sciences librarianship,medical informatics,and the health professions

Objective:

Based on the authors'' shared interest in the interprofessional challenges surrounding health information management, this study explores the degree to which librarians, informatics professionals, and core health professionals in medicine, nursing, and public health share common ethical behavior norms grounded in moral principles.

Methods:

Using the “Principlism” framework from a widely cited textbook of biomedical ethics, the authors analyze the statements in the ethical codes for associations of librarians (Medical Library Association [MLA], American Library Association, and Special Libraries Association), informatics professionals (American Medical Informatics Association [AMIA] and American Health Information Management Association), and core health professionals (American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, and American Public Health Association). This analysis focuses on whether and how the statements in these eight codes specify core moral norms (Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, and Justice), core behavioral norms (Veracity, Privacy, Confidentiality, and Fidelity), and other norms that are empirically derived from the code statements.

Results:

These eight ethical codes share a large number of common behavioral norms based most frequently on the principle of Beneficence, then on Autonomy and Justice, but rarely on Non-Maleficence. The MLA and AMIA codes share the largest number of common behavioral norms, and these two associations also share many norms with the other six associations.

Implications:

The shared core of behavioral norms among these professions, all grounded in core moral principles, point to many opportunities for building effective interprofessional communication and collaboration regarding the development, management, and use of health information resources and technologies.     

Beyond the FAQ: Explicit and implicit norms in Usenet newsgroups

Drawing on reference group and socialization theories, this article examines the social norms of online communities. These theories are modified through an examination of the history of Usenet and a review of the scholarly literature related to social norms and normative behavior in Usenet newsgroups and other virtual communities. The article proposes a modification of Merton's paradigmatic division of norms into behavioral and attitudinal norms by dividing social norms found in online interactions into two types: explicit norms and implicit norms. Explicit norms are codified in documents such as FAQs that outline the purpose and rules of a group, whereas implicit norms are those norms that emerge informally through day-to-day interactions of the group. Both categories of norms are examined in two specific newsgroups.     

‘No hugging please,we are Muslims’: Akademi Fantasia,Malay television audiences and the negotiation of global popular cultural forms

This paper analyses the audience reception of the Malaysian reality television programme Akademi Fantasia (AF), which first aired in 2003 and completed its ninth season in 2011. AF has been an influential pioneer in the national television industry, inaugurating the trend of local reality shows and weathering intense competition from similar shows to remain at the top of the ratings chart over the last decade. Based on the Mexican talent search show, La Academia, Malaysia's AF is a unique hybrid blend of an Idol-style talent contest and Big Brother observational spectacle. The article draws on primary audience research to investigate the ways in which Malay audiences interpret the potentially incommensurable cultural meanings generated within the context of a localised version of a global television format. Chua's concept of ‘identification and distancing’ is employed as a framework to analyse the complex ways in which perceived Malay ‘cultural norms’ assume primacy as interpretative lenses for audience evaluations of the show and measures of its local difference from similar global cultural products. The research also reveals how these cultural norms are themselves being negotiated by the audience as part of the everyday experience of inhabiting coexisting local and global popular cultural spaces. The analysis focuses on audience understandings and pleasure in the programme in relation to fashion and taste; the behaviour of the official judges; voyeurism and conflict in ‘backstage’ coverage; and emotional intimacy onstage in the public performance component of the programme.     

Accounting Techniques for Acquisition Librarians

This preconference was led by Rachel Kirk, who presented on accounting topics such as reconciliation and cost–benefit analysis. Attendees had the opportunity to work with library data and spreadsheets provided by Kirk to practice reconciling accounts and analyzing the costs and benefits of particular resources. Additionally, Kirk discussed some common problems that acquisition librarians face, such as managing multiple accounting systems and working with the university's accounts payable office. The session ended with Kirk going over the impact that inflation plays upon a collections budget and strategies to better match the library's resources to researchers' needs, including leaving “Big Deals.”     

Broadcast use by a Latin American professional and technical group

This study analyzes visual production techniques in NBC's 2004 Olympic track and field coverage using Zettl's applied media aesthetics approach. Track and field coverage is worthy of analysis in relation to gender because of the sport's perception as “gender-neutral” in comparison to other sports such as gymnastics (feminine), or U.S. football (masculine). Men's coverage was presented as more visually “exciting” than women's—it used more shot types, camera angles, and motion special effects per minute. These differences may contribute to perceptions that women's sports are inferior or “naturally” less interesting than men's, reinforcing men as the symbolic authority in sport.     

Cinematic Jujitsu: Resisting White Hegemony through the American Dream in Spike Lee's Malcolm X

Spike Lee's film Malcolm X (1992) presented Malcolm X's life story using the narrative framework of the American Dream myth central to liberal ideology. Working from Gramsci's notion of common sense in the process of hegemony, I explain how Lee appealed to this mythic structure underlying American popular culture to give a platform to Malcolm X's controversial ideas. By adopting a common sense narrative to tell Malcolm X's life story, this movie functioned as a form of cinematic jujitsu that invited critical consciousness about the contradictions between liberal ideology and the life experiences of racially excluded groups. Other formal devices in Lee's film incorporated Malcolm X's rhetoric within the common sense of mainstream politics and connected Malcolm X to more contemporary racial struggles. This analysis suggests that common sense framings of controversial figures may provide a limited space to challenge institutionalized forms of racism within popular culture.     

The citation impact of the Open Access accounting journals that appear on Beall's List of potentially predatory publishers and journals

Although there are at least six dimensions of journal quality, Beall's List identifies predatory Open Access journals based almost entirely on their adherence to procedural norms. The journals identified as predatory by one standard may be regarded as legitimate by other standards. This study examines the scholarly impact of the 58 accounting journals on Beall's List, calculating citations per article and estimating CiteScore percentile using Google Scholar data for more than 13,000 articles published from 2015 through 2018. Most Beall's List accounting journals have only modest citation impact, with an average estimated CiteScore in the 11th percentile among Scopus accounting journals. Some have a substantially greater impact, however. Six journals have estimated CiteScores at or above the 25th percentile, and two have scores at or above the 30th percentile. Moreover, there is considerable variation in citation impact among the articles within each journal, and high-impact articles (cited up to several hundred times) have appeared even in some of the Beall's List accounting journals with low citation rates. Further research is needed to determine how well the citing journals are integrated into the disciplinary citation network—whether the citing journals are themselves reputable or not.     

I'm Going to Instagram It! An Analysis of Athlete Self-Presentation on Instagram

Using Goffman's notions of self-presentation and gender displays, the following study examines the Instagram feeds of 27 professional athletes to determine how athletes are using the visual social media site for self-presentation. A mixed methods approach examined the photographs and captions to determine what behaviors and themes emerged. Through content analysis, the self-presentation styles of athletes of both genders, as well as the main differences between them were examined, and significant differences emerged that confirmed the previously established gender norms. Through textual analysis, findings with respect to captions align with previous research on athlete self-presentation on social media. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

The hidden,manipulated, and secret information world of gambling addiction: Maximizing use of in-depth,narrative interviews to understand social impact

The in-depth, narrative interview approach, its use as a storytelling vehicle, and its effectiveness in combination with other qualitative methods to elicit individuals' experiences and perspectives on the information behaviors which contribute to the social impact of gambling addiction is presented. This focus on the information behaviors of individuals affected by gambling allows them to speak out about a problem that is often side-lined, in part because it has been hidden and remains misunderstood in wider society. Collecting people's lived experiences supports a meaningful analysis of how people navigate information to respond to the problems associated with addiction, creating an understanding of social impact beyond the story of the numbers about addiction and offering policymakers a significant perspective to ameliorate marginalization of individuals.     

Characterization of Zinc Carboxylates in an Oil Paint Test Panel

ABSTRACT

Zinc (carboxylate) soaps, formed by reactions between zinc oxide (ZnO) and fatty acids in a drying oil, are known to cause deterioration in the paint layers of modern and contemporary oil paintings. This study investigates zinc carboxylates that developed in an oil painting test panel designed to mimic the aging and degradation encountered in actual works of art. Following accelerated and natural aging, protrusions were noted on the surface of the test panel. A large protrusion with erupted gel features was extracted from the test panel, mounted in top view, and then cut to reveal the sample's cross section. The gel features, which resulted from the unreacted oil binder's separation from the paint matrix, facilitated zinc carboxylate formation. Using reflectance µ-FTIR and SEM-EDX analysis, the morphologies and spatial distributions of zinc carboxylates within the gel regions of the protrusion were studied. A concentration gradient of zinc within the gel material was observed in the cross-sectional view, indicating patterns of zinc carboxylate formation and migration.     

Local Television News Anchors' Public Appearances

Top local anchors (50.4%) were surveyed about community appearances. They personally schedule and make appearances regularly and see them as beneficial to causes, ratings, and their careers and communities; they paradoxically realize appearances take time from producing a quality broadcast. Results illustrate Bantz's (1985) theory of normalization of conflicts among journalistic, business, and entertainment norms; respondents agreed across most demographics, but exceptions support Berkowitz's (1993) scholarship on news-worker socialization. Most reported making appearances that are covered as news. Younger and small-market anchors were more likely to link public appearances to ratings; older anchors were more likely to equate appearances with community service.