PIETY AND PROFESSIONALISM

This research focuses on two decades in the BBC's relationship with religion as an area of programming. The 1960s and 1970s marked a period of massive social change in Britain in which traditional religious institutions were challenged relentlessly and a more religiously diverse society emerged. This makes it a significant time to examine the BBC's response and the impact these changes had on the culture of production within the Corporation. This research asks how did the BBC frame the making of religious programmes within the changing socio-political context and how did their changing religious mission sit within the Corporation's wider strategic aims? Religious broadcasting also offers a unique microcosm within which to view the changing professional culture of the BBC itself. To address these interests this research uses documents from the BBC's written archive and accounts from staff involved with the genre at the time.     

Barack Obama as the Great Man: Communicative Constructions of Racial Transcendence in White-Male Elite Discourses

This study examined responses on the potential impact of Barack Obama's presidency from 16 semi-structured interviews with White males in leadership positions in various organizations across the United States. While numerous studies examine the circulating racial discourses on Obama, few studies explore how he is represented in first-hand accounts from those in the public, specifically from White-male elites. This study examined interview discourses from White-male elites to reveal how they imagine race through Obama. In positioning Obama among the pantheon of great-man leaders, this study showed how dominant racial ideologies get legitimatized and reworked when members of the dominant group desire to construct racial meanings onto a popular Black leader.     

The Story Behind an Organizational List: A Genealogy of Wildland Firefighters’ 10 Standard Fire Orders

To invigorate research on the dialectic between lists and stories in communication, this study recommends adding context back to text by focusing on the enduring problems these forms are summoned to solve. A genealogy of one significant organizational list, wildland firefighters’ 10 Standard Fire Orders, shows how a list's meaning resides less on its face and more in the discourses surrounding it, which can change over time. Vestiges of old meanings and unrelated cultural functions heaped upon a list can lead to conflicts, and can make the list difficult to scrap even when rendered obsolete for its intended purpose. Reconciling these layers of meanings and functions is thus not a technical problem but rather a rhetorical one. Implications for communication research are addressed.     

Notes toward a rhetoric of animation: The Road Runner as cultural critique

–Recent studies have suggested the need to broaden our approaches to violence in children's programming. This paper uses the violence of “The Road Runner” cartoon series as a starting point for a mythico-rhetorical analysis of the message system contained in the cartoon. It explores how the animated short re-enacts the myth of Sisyphus in the context of the post-World War II technological boom in the United States. Technology is the source of most of the violence in the cartoon, and the violence is created by failures of technology. The use of a “children's” medium to critique our reliance on technology offers substantial freedom to the animator, and, in turn, to the viewer and the critic. Examination of “The Road Runner” yields insights into the meanings of cartoon violence, into how media reproduce mythic structures, and into the potentially rich message systems of children's media.     

Villains and heroes of the great depression: The evolution of Father Coughlin's fantasy themes

This article traces the development of Father Charles E. Coughlin's rhetoric as it evolved over a six‐year period during the height of his popularity, from 1930 to 1936. Bormann's Fantasy‐Theme method was used to evaluate Coughlin's rhetoric. The findings offer insight into Symbolic Convergence Theory by demonstrating how Coughlin attempted to integrate his political and personal agenda with changing social context and audience needs. The implication is that fantasy themes are open systems, which are circumstantially constructed and thus evolve and change over time.     

Accounts in selection interviews

This essay addresses consequences of providing accounts (explanations of conduct) in selection interviews. Previous research has suggested that using accounts in interviews might be detrimental to applicants, since providing accounts may be one of many indices of a powerless style of communication. On the other hand, in ordinary discourse, accounts have positive, beneficial uses: They explain away apparent improprieties, and restore favorable impressions of an actor's character. In this essay, questions about the negative consequences of account use are examined, an explanation of the relative frequencies of accounts by applicants and interviewers is developed, and a subset of selection interviews is conceptualized as a type of “hazardous” communication event. It is argued that accounts given in selection interviews are not necessarily powerless speech forms, and ways of usefully accounting in the context of interview hazards are summarized. Overall, while it is acknowledged that excessive account use might damage applications, it is argued that accounts can assist applications by explaining away questionable aspects of a candidate's history and prospects, within what is quite often a challenging, “hazardous” communication event.     

Writing the Collection Development Manual

This article puts the need for writing a collection development manual in its historical context. It discusses the reasons for producing a collection development manual: to smooth out the functioning of the processing operation; to consider all collection development assumptions; to stimulate both the authors and the users of the manual to discuss important issues in collection development; to reduce bibliographer stress by specifying procedures for collection development: and to provide evaluation criteria for bibliographers. The article distinguishes two types of manuals: the training manual and the reference manual. The training manual provides the novice bibliographer with a comprehensive understanding of the materials selection environment: the structure of the subject field, the library holdings, collection usage patterns, the budget situation, the library's collection development policies, and the library materials market. The reference manual provides a compilation of internal policies and procedures to be consulted by bibliographers when such knowledge is required. It is suggested that a reference manual be organized around the following topics: materials selection, budgeting, purchase, review, and use.     

Plant Collection “Half‐life:” Can Botanic Gardens Weather the Climate?

Botanic gardens are organized around plant collections, and climate change will affect those collections. Land loss is expected for gardens near sea level, prompting a loss of plants from the collection. Future collection development requires planning for these losses, which in turn requires assessment of the extent and rate of collection loss. We examined collection inventory change over time using records at Montgomery Botanical Center (MBC), to formulate a plant collection half‐life concept. This half‐life was used to project changes in MBC's plant collection over the next 100 years within the context of sea level changes. Comparing predicted rates of collection change with projected rates of loss due to sea level rise, we expect plant collection development to keep pace with climate change. As actively curated resources, botanic garden plant collections can adapt to environmental change faster and more deliberately than natural systems.     

Métissage on the Airwaves: Toward a Cultural History of Broadcasting in French Colonial Algeria, 1930–1936

This article explores the methodological challenges and possibilities of writing a cultural history of broadcasting in French colonial Algeria during the tumultuous decades between the two world wars. In a diverse, multi-ethnic colonial society, how can historians and media scholars evaluate audience reception? What meanings did radio broadcasting acquire in the colonial context? To answer these questions, this article considers the controversies surrounding two culturally hybrid broadcasts produced by Radio-Algiers during the 1930s. A careful examination of the remaining historical record concerning these broadcasts, from newspaper accounts to archival sources, exposes the cultural fluidity that typified everyday colonial life and reveals how radio broadcasting politicized music and oral language in novel ways. Broadcasting—as a purely sonic medium—challenged the classificatory mechanisms of the French colonial state and the racial and ethnic boundaries that undergirded colonial society. In consequence, historical memories of Radio-Algiers and its role during the waning years of the French empire deny the sonic cultural hybridity that flourished over the interwar airwaves.     

Governing a Global Cooperative

ABSTRACT

The governance of the Online Computer Library System (OCLC) is understood best by placing it in the context of the arrangements that are typical for non-profit corporations organized within the United States to meet a public purpose. There are some provisions for OCLC's governance structures that are specific to the laws of Ohio, where OCLC was founded and where its principal offices remain.     

Grounded theory for generating theory in the study of behavior

The use of grounded theory procedures for the study of information behavior has contributed to generating theory in this field. Thirty-one works were analyzed with regard to a) their relationship to the context in which the research was carried out, b) the aspect of information behavior researched, c) the use of grounded theory procedures, and d) the generation of theory. Most of the studies were carried out in the context of health information, and grounded theory procedures were for the most part only partially applied. The theoretical propositions produced depended on the subject being studied. Although this methodology is suitable for the study of an individual's interaction with information from that individual's own point of view, documentation of the procedures involved is often deficient.     

Social media rumors as improvised public opinion: semantic network analyses of twitter discourses during Korean saber rattling 2013

Social media rumors are improvised and expressive forms of public opinion that especially arise under uncertain sociopolitical situations. This study utilizes early rumor studies as theoretical framework for textual analysis of Twitter public opinion. A content and semantic network analysis of Twitter messages spread during Korean saber rattling in 2013 was conducted for understanding public opinion in an uncertain context. The results show that, while non-rumor narratives focus on policy-level responses to the threat situation in a similar manner to institutionalized opinion polling, rumors are less concerned with official responses, instead reflective of hegemonic tensions between anti-leftwing political sentiments and the counteractive accounts. Some rumors reveal the public's coping with fears in the form of humor, guesswork, or wishes. Online rumor analysis helps understand how the society's collective memories interact with the current situational uncertainty in shaping public opinions and sentiments.     

Information Sources and the Coverage of Social Issues in Partisan Publications: A Content Analysis of 25 Years of the Progressive and the National Review

An extensive research literature concludes that, in the United States, mainstream media tend to present a remarkably narrow, homogenous and centrist conservative view of political life that tends to support maintenance of the status quo. This is often attributed to heavy media reliance on government officials, leaders of political groups, and large bureaucratic organization as routine, predictable sources of information. In this context, it is important to understand how explicitly partisan publications construct their accounts of public affairs that provide citizens with alternatives to this perspective proffered by the dominant media. A content analysis of 25 years of 2 of America's leading partisan magazines, the conservative National Review and the liberal Progressive, provides data that raise questions about the extent to which information sources do influence the partisanship of media content.     

Film shots and expressed interest levels

According a central role to context‐relevant beliefs in the operation of attitudinal saliency is advocated through contrasting Delia et al.’s cognitive‐constructivist analysis with Cronen and Conville's operant conditioning and aggression displacement accounts.     

Communicating closeness among siblings: An application of the gendered closeness perspective

Relational research has suggested repeatedly that women's relationships are closer and more meaningful than men's. This conclusion is often defended with empirical reports that women self disclose more intimately than men do. Wood and Inman (1993) and others have suggested that men's relationships are not inherently less close than women's, but that men manifest closeness in ways that are more instrumental and less verbally oriented. The present paper refers to this position as the “gendered closeness perspective.” While this perspective has been tested empirically within the context of close friendships, this research examines the relationships of same‐ and opposite‐sex siblings to determine how the perspective applies in a familial context. Results indicate limited support for the “gendered closeness” perspective, primarily in same‐sex relationships.     

LIS Leadership and Leadership Education: A Matter of Gender

To grapple with the difficulties of change, LIS literature often turns to a discourse of leadership as a way of gaining an understanding of how change can be effectively and appropriately managed. However, much of this work fails to account for the feminized nature of the profession and the gendered practices that shape the roles of men and women who choose this field. Furthermore, there is an absence of literature that interrogates the ways in which LIS master's programs address gendered practice. Beginning with an examination of how the field of LIS is feminized, I set out to reveal how, within the context of gender, the experience of women who advance in LIS leadership and administrative positions remains poorly understood. I suggest that the adoption of masculinized practices is a response to the devaluation of “women's work” that has historically defined the service ethic of librarianship. This article serves as an example of the ways in which it is possible to interrogate assumptions about leadership.     

News and Ideological Exegesis in Chinese Online Media: A Case Study of Crime Coverage and Reader Discussion on Two Commercial Portals

Analyzing news stories, commentaries, and readers’ discussions of a sensational serial murder case on China's two most popular commercial online portals, this study examines how the Internet's medium-specific characteristics of unlimited space and interactivity facilitate both reinforcement and challenges to dominant ideologies of crime coverage. The study finds that news accounts on the two portals, Sina.com and Sohu.com, to a large degree favored the interests of the powerful over the powerless, excusing the inefficiency of the police and portraying causes of crime as individual; while readers contributing to online forums on the case voiced concern about social issues underlying crime, expressed standpoints of the poor and underprivileged, and questioned the authority and intentions of the powerful. The result was that, even as news accounts generally reinforced prevailing social relations, readers’ comments upturned them with analyses of inequality, poverty and discrimination. The study lends additional weight to the assertion that the Internet's unlimited space and allowance for simultaneous interactivity among many voices are leading to qualitative changes in public communications as well as quantitative increases in information flow. Even within the context of Chinese information control, online forums open up new options for users that we characterize as exegetical, implying broad possibilities for explanation and exposition as well as for alternative ideological renderings.     

Citizen–government collaboration on social media: The case of Twitter in the 2011 riots in England

How social media can enable opportunities for collaboration between citizens and governments is an evolving issue in theory and practice. This paper examines the dynamic aspects of collaboration in the context of the 2011 riots in England. In August 2011, parts of London and other cities in England suffered from extensive disorder and even loss of human lives. Based on a dataset of 1746 posts by 81 local government Twitter accounts during or shortly after the riots, we explore how local authorities attempted to reduce the effects of the riots and support community recovery. Using Twitter's conversational and rapid update features, they produced a variety of informational and actionable messages with clear calls for offline or online action. In some cases, collective against the riots evolved in a mutual way: not only citizens were mobilized by local authorities, but also local authorities actively promoted actions initiated by citizens.     

Political advertising in Taiwan and the US: Across‐cultural comparison of the 1996 presidential election campaigns

This study applies Hall's (1977) culture‐context theory and Hofstede's (1991) individualistic/collectivistic aspects of cultural differences to understand how content and appeals of political advertising in Taiwan and the US differ. The aspects examined included the presence of direct and indirect attacks, the presentation of issues, types of settings, and the use of metaphors, symbols, and songs. Analyses showed that most of the findings were consistent with cultural expectations.