Genre systems and “keeping track” in everyday life

Keeping track of what needs to be done and where and when and by whom is a common practice in Canadian households. The documentary tools used to coordinate the work of keeping track in everyday life are the focus of this paper. We consider these documentary tools as belonging to genres. On the basis of four in-depth interviews, observation, and photography, we identify four genres common to all participants: check-ins or status reports, lists, reminders, and calendars. We map examples of these genres to show that they are socially and intertextually connected—in genre systems—with institutions and organizations beyond the home. Archivists have much to gain by applying the concept of genre-as-social-action and using ethnographic methods to study personal records from the creator’s perspective. Such approaches provide insight into the contexts within which personal records are created and used, including the intertextual linkages between personal and institutional recordkeeping.     

Nothing but the Facts?

This paper seeks to understand how journalists deal with storytelling and truth-seeking in their daily news practice. While storytelling is usually studied through texts, we approached it from a practice perspective, combining data from three ethnographic studies in which 36 beat reporters and 13 journalistic storytelling experts were extensively interviewed. Because of the emphasis journalists place on “finding out the truth” in public discourses, it is tempting for academics to present them as naive truth-seekers. However, by means of an interpretative repertoire analysis of their “practice” discourses, we seek to enlarge the discursive space to talk about the supposed tension between story and reality. Although departing from the idea that all news making is storytelling, the interviewed journalists consider news making and storytelling as distinct—and sometimes opposing—practices. These professional practices serve as the framework around which five storytelling repertoires are organized.     

Reshaping the Borders of Journalism

The Saami and the Roma are both transnational peoples with robust journalistic practices. Although vastly different in socio-economic standing and relationship to the state, both groups choose to develop journalism and journalists to share their perspective of the world; and do so while remaining true to the distinction between journalism and propaganda. This requires access and ability to frame issues and actors, problems and solutions while maintaining professional journalistic standards. Media—both having one's “own” media and creating stories that appear in the “mainstream” media—is key to this practice. Saami and Romani journalists very clearly show there is a way to be objective without being neutral. By interviewing 45 journalists, journalism educators, funders, and evaluators across six countries, as well as examining primary source documents, I show that although emerging from radically different contexts, the Saami and Roma are both distinct nations stretching over two or more states—transnational—which allows, and indeed requires, a unique approach to journalism. I identify two distinct strategies in approaching the goals and practice of, “transnational peoples’ journalism”: nation building/speaking within and intervening/speaking outside.     

A Grounded Practical Theory Reconstruction of the Communication Practice of Instructor-facilitated Collegiate Classroom Discussion

Instructor-facilitated collegiate classroom discussion (IFCCD) is a highly valued yet undertheorized instructional practice. Research examining the structure of classroom interaction, scholarship advocating rationales for discussion-based pedagogy, and an investigation of a related interactive classroom communication practice provide an informative backdrop for this study. The data in the study were collected using action-implicative discourse analytic techniques throughout a semester in three classrooms at the same university. Reconstructing the three levels of the practice through grounded practical theory—the problem/dilemma level, the normative situated ideals level, and the talk/discourse techniques level—provides some insight into why in two of these cases of IFCCD, engaged and participatory discussion was accomplished. The shared dilemma of the practice is reconstructed as the problem of engagement in which both individual engagement with curricular content and shared engagement in co-creation of the discussion are valued. The dilemmatic nature of the practice is explored specifically in terms of traditional and nontraditional teacher talk and associated participation structures. Significant similarities and differences across the three cases are found and examined in the reconstructions of instructor situated ideals and third-turn facilitation techniques. Initial conclusions are incorporated in the discussion of discourse-based applications for practitioners interested in facilitating discussion in college classrooms.     

试论图书馆伦理管理

图书馆管理在进入了信息时代后,管理的实践和认识已经进入了管理与人文伦理结合的阶段———伦理管理阶段。管理与伦理结合,是由两者的相关性和一致性决定的,主要是管理活动离不开伦理准则。图书馆职业作为社会特定职业,有其自身的规律和职业范围。图书馆职业伦理就是图书馆管理服务领域中的角色伦理,是以图书馆为主体对图书馆管理的社会化角色的伦理原则和规范。     

ELIMINATION OF IDEAS AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIALISATION

This article investigates and interprets social and cultural production and reproduction as we turn our attention to an important part of routinised practice in the newsroom: the early newsroom meetings. These meetings are essential sites for the building of the craft ethos and professional vision. Our aim is to study how this building of expertise takes place at meetings with a particular focus on the decision-making process concerning ideas for new news stories. In order to do this, we perform linguistic analysis of news production practices, as we investigate how the journalists' ideas for potential news stories are eliminated by the editor at the daily newsroom meetings. The elimination of ideas for news stories are not just eliminations; they are also corrections of culturally undesirable behaviour producing and reproducing the proper perception of an important object of knowledge—what constitutes “a good news story”—in this community of practice.     

Holistic or analytic rubrics? Grading information literacy instruction

Abstract

Studies about the assessment of information literacy instruction have reported the use of specific grading criteria, also known as rubrics, to evaluate students’ responses. Rubrics can be divided into two general categories: (1) holistic, where one score is assigned for evaluating the successful completion of a task; and (2) analytic, where a grade is subdivided into discrete components needed to complete the task and each component is given its own score for achievement. This article will investigate which scoring method—employing holistic versus analytic rubrics—is the most effective for evaluating students’ search strategies in terms of providing constructive feedback to students and informing the librarian’s future teaching practices.     

The Active Citizen's Information Media Repertoire: An Exploration of Community News Habits During the Digital Age

Digital technologies have reconfigured how active community members know about local news. Sampling one Midwest community's most engaged citizens—collectively, a “community of practice”—this research formalizes one emerging media-information repertoire around the issue of homelessness. Components of this repertoire include motivations, structuring conditions, norms of usage, and perceived consequences for media-source selection. Commenting, sharing, and other information exchange become “acts of news” for individuals involved in communities of practice. Through shared information-exchange practices, citizens can not only advocate their social causes but also reinvigorate their own affiliations to the community of practice and to the city itself. The use of this media repertoire by these individuals reconstitutes and amplifies their role in the pursuit of fostering a civil society focused on homelessness. The findings illuminate the process of how community activists work as an informal organizational form and, as a result, build a stronger commitment to civic action.     

传统村落档案建构模式比较研究

本文采用比较研究法和案例分析法,对当下三种主要的传统村落档案建构模式：权力主控模式、精英主导模式、村民自治模式,从建档主体、建档范围、档案材料分类、著录标准、建档成果及利用五个方面对已有建档实践的基本情况、优势、不足做出研判,并对各建档模式的自我优化、深度融合策略以及如何充分发挥档案专业人员在该工作中的“建档规范制定者”“建档技术输出者”“建档质量把关人”等角色作用问题提出建议。     

A Tutorial on Testing,Visualizing, and Probing an Interaction Involving a Multicategorical Variable in Linear Regression Analysis

Empirical communication scholars and scientists in other fields regularly use regression models to test moderation hypotheses. When the independent variable X and moderator M are dichotomous or continuous, the practice of testing a linear moderation hypothesis using regression analysis by including the product of X and M in a model of dependent variable Y is widespread. However, many research designs include multicategorical independent variables or moderators, such as in an experiment with three or more versions of a stimulus where participants are randomly assigned to one of them. Researchers are less likely to receive training about how to properly test a moderation hypothesis using regression analysis in such a situation. In this tutorial, we explain how to test, visualize, and probe interactions involving a multicategorical variable using linear regression analysis. While presenting and discussing the fundamentals—fundamentals that are not software specific—we emphasize the use of the PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS, as it greatly simplifies the computations and potential for error that exists when doing computations by hand or using spreadsheets based on formulas in existing books on this topic. We also introduce an iterative computational implementation of the Johnson-Neyman technique for finding regions of significance of the effect of a multicategorical independent variable when the moderator is continuous.     

Crowdsourcing—an Introduction: From Public Goods to Public Good

“Crowdsourcing” is a practice that combines the concepts of “the crowd” and “outsourcing.” Introducing two articles on crowdsourcing in this issue, Nancy Proctor argues that—although we associate crowdsourcing with Web 2.0 and the social media revolution—its origins stretch back to the nineteenth century. Crowdsourcing is examined for its usefulness in creating radical new relationships between museum constituents, users, and institutions—putting the “wisdom of the crowd” in dialogue rather than in competition with formal institutional knowledge.     

On archival pluralism: what religious pluralism (and its critics) can teach us about archives

Recent work has stressed the importance of pluralism in archival education, practice, and research. By examining the promises and perils of pluralism as it has been constructed in another field—religion—this article analyzes, expands, and delineates the notion of archival pluralism in a way that helps form the conceptual foundation for further work on pluralistic approaches to archival education, theory and practice. More specifically, it argues that archival pluralism can learn from four basic principles of religious pluralism—energetic engagement, understanding, strengthened commitment, and dialog—while at the same time avoiding four major perils: claims of universality, inattention to power, silencing dissent, and collapsing of difference. First, this article presents a brief discourse analysis tracing the emergence and development of archival pluralism in the literature to date. Next, turning to how pluralism has been constructed in another field, this article gives a brief overview of conceptions of religious pluralism using the work of two of its most prominent American scholars as guideposts and then addresses the strengths and weaknesses of this conceptualization of pluralism in the religious sphere. Next, this article proposes how religious pluralism’s main principles and pitfalls can be adapted and applied in the realm of memory keeping in order to strengthen the conceptual framework for archival pluralism. It concludes by suggesting aspects of a research agenda for future work in archival pluralism.     

Creating a smart nation: Strategy,policy, intelligence,and information

In an age characterized by distributed information, where the majority of the expertise is in the private sector, the concept of “central intelligence” is an oxymoron. The greatest threat to both national security and national economic competitiveness is ignorance—uninformed decision making. Intelligence communities are slowly discovering that they should not send a spy where a schoolchild can go, and that spies are not harnessing the vast distributed intelligence of the private sector. Unfortunately, the culture of intelligence in most countries believes that its uniqueness rests on secrets rather than thinking—on producing secrets rather than informing policy. To survive in the 21st century, every nation must become a “smart nation” and engage all of its citizens—every citizen must be a collector, producer, and consumer of intelligence—and, thus, create the Virtual Intelligence Community. To integrate and make the best use of both open-source intelligence and traditional classified intelligence, each nation must establish a National Information Strategy which addresses connectivity, content, coordination, and computational security.     

“The Best Minute and a Half of Audio”

In the introduction to a police audio recording of Bristol Palin describing her family’s involvement in an Alaska house party brawl, CNN anchor Carol Costello commented: “This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across.” The incident, however, involved an alleged assault—an act that mainstream journalism generally reports in a serious manner. Costello’s glib treatment of the event could therefore be seen as potentially breaching the boundaries of professional practice, which brought a widespread media response from both mainstream organizations and right-leaning blogs. Through textual analysis of these items, this study illustrates the challenge of conducting media boundary work—and the role strain that results—when the subject of a story occupies space within both entertainment and news spheres.     

Using Consumer Data to Illustrate How the Library Channel Drives Digital Sales

The library channel is often underappreciated as a key part of a publisher’s business strategy. In an age where publishers are constantly seeking new revenue and marketing opportunities, presence in the library—digitally—can yield significant growth. This paper examines the library channel, its business model based on library lending, the performance of eBooks and audiobooks across all subjects, and consumer reading behavior. Digital Book Clubs, a relatively new phenomenon, are also defined and illustrated with examples demonstrating the library’s valuable role in increasing discoverability and ultimately sales.     

THE DIDACTIC CHALLENGE

The training of journalists in a university context must fulfil a twofold requirement, as it unavoidably has to integrate theory and practice, academic study and practical application—this is the central didactic challenge. There is no doubt, however, that the concepts of theory and practice are employed in a diffuse way in the current debates both within the relevant academic fields and elsewhere. The present article seeks to sketch out the difficulties, which will inescapably arise in any attempt to integrate academic study and practical application within a university, and it relates these difficulties to specific fundamental problems (the problem of definition, the problem of reputation and recognition, the problem of concretisation, etc.). In addition, the author demonstrates by results from his own project work how this integration of theory and practice may be successfully accomplished. The essential purpose of the article is to initiate a didactic debate that meets the demands of the university as well as the requirements of professional practice in equal measure.     

The Strategic Rhetoric of an “At-Risk” Educational Identity: Interviewing Jane

This essay explores how communication research on “at-risk” students relies on under-theorized understandings of identity as seemingly stable traits and characteristics. In this sense, “at-riskness,” as a cultural identity, is dangerous precisely because it encourages researchers to link identity difference with failure, rather than to explore the presence and perpetuation of particular ideologies. We illuminate such ideological tensions through our analysis of a complex educational identity—an in-depth interview with an “at-risk” student—where we locate strategic rhetorics (i.e., discursive constructions that reify normalized assumptions about educational success and failure) that demonstrate how ideology constitutes the phenomenon of educational risk.     

Knowing in Journalistic Practice

This article reports the outcomes of an ethnographic study in a public broadcasting company exploring on-the-job learning and knowing in journalistic practice. We use practice perspective and social learning theory to study how knowing in everyday work is achieved within journalists’ communities of practice and in relation to other practices around journalism. A year-long study involved analysis of 19 on-site observations, 25 interviews, over 30 textual company based documents and over 120 photos. We found that journalists’ communities of practice are actively negotiating a shared understanding of good practice. At the same time, individual journalists are relatively free to choose how they use this collective knowledge resource, enabling a creative tension between shared understanding of good practice and individual performances of that practice. Journalists are also responsive to ongoing and anticipated future changes within the practices they align with—practices that are reported about, journalistic practices of other public broadcasting companies and practices of the audience. We, therefore, argue for an understanding of journalistic practice as open-ended and performative, rather than fixed and routine.     

Homeland security and information

A new phrase—“homeland security”—has come into popular parlance in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As an evolving concept, it draws definition from, and has implications for, various policy areas and actions. This introductory essay reviews the development of two similar policy concepts—national security and internal security—before exploring homeland security, and the significance of each for information policy and practice.