Do You See What I See?: Third-Person Effects on Public Communication Through Self-Esteem,Social Stigma,and Product Use

In this experiment I examined the effect of self-esteem, negative stigma of product in a message, and product use as a form of ego-involvement on the third-person effect in an effort to understand the variables underlying the third-person effect. The findings broaden 1 belief about the third-person effect in relation to public communication and call into question 2 others. This has ramifications in the area of public opinion regarding socially stigmatized messages, particularly in the realm of tobacco and alcohol advertising, suggesting the perception that a publicly communicated message containing a social stigma can influence the level of the third-person effect, indirectly affecting public communication and opinion formation.     

“Dear Editor: Can You Tell Me What Happened to My Favorite NBC Program,Dimension X?”

Over the course of its seventeen-month run in 1950 and 1951, the science fiction anthology radio program Dimension X served as a showcase for many new and established science fiction writers. Dimension X was among several adult science fiction and fantasy shows that debuted on radio in the late 1940s and early 1950s, alongside CBS’s Escape and Mutual’s 2000 Plus. While many listeners celebrated these programs, NBC received letters detailing concerns over the subject matter of three episodes. In addition to providing insight into the reception of Dimension X, the responses from NBC personnel are equally informative. This back-and-forth communication provides a window into the network’s efforts to mitigate and prevent listener issues, as well as the internal divisions regarding appropriate subject matter for radio programs in the early 1950s.     

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Successful Information Broker?

Successful information brokers possess a uni ue combination of entrepreneurial characteristics and reference skills. An individual may be a successful reference librarian, but may not possess any or enough entrepreneurial characteristics to insure success as an information broker. This article provides an opportunity for reference librarians, in particular, to assess the extent of their entrepreneurial characteristics. The self-analysis and discussion of what information brokers and reference librarians have in common and what they may not, I will help individuals determine if a career as an information broker is a viable one for them.     

Can You Hear Me Now? Social Listening as a Strategy for Understanding User Needs

Maintaining regular engagement with audiences through various forms of social media is becoming more important as library users and the general public increasingly rely on social media for news, updates, and feedback. While large corporations have been monitoring social media for more than a decade, libraries have recently begun to use social listening to stay abreast of trends and assess user needs as voiced directly by their communities. This column will explain what social listening is, explore concerns over its widespread application, consider examples of social media listening software currently available, and offer an overview of its application in library settings.     

When Online Instruction Doesn’t Measure Up: How Can You Tell,and What Should You Do?

At Duquesne University, freshmen are required to take a one-credit information literacy course. This course has traditionally been offered mostly face-to-face, but has expanded into more online offerings. Unfortunately, the experience for students and instructors online was not as positive as those involved with the face-to-face version of the course. Assessment results on a variety of levels and anecdotal evidence indicated that students did not work as well together to learn as those did in the face-to-face version of the course. Not only did instructors receive lower student evaluation scores, but students did not perform as well on their final, collaborative project. While there will be barriers to learning online, especially when students work together in a group, instructors and instructional designers can take distinct steps to make the experience a positive one. Instructors must use particular interventions to increase student-to-student interaction that leads to learning.     

What Happens to the Data Collected When Libraries Use Undercover Agents?

Mystery shoppers deceive front-line personnel into believing that they are real customers. They provide their observations in a natural setting and relate evidence useful for planning, staff development, and organizational accountability. Given the coverage of mystery shopping in the literature for more than a decade, this study explores which of those public libraries currently use such shopping.     

Can the Library Contribute Value to the Campus Culture for Learning?

What value can academic and research libraries contribute to the campus culture for learning? How can these value contributions be measured? This paper offers the campus culture for learning as a new frame of reference for measuring the library's contribution to learning. It examines various means of assessing the role a library plays in a campus learning culture. It identifies related outcome assessment goals, and the means of measuring performance are suggested.     

Giving the “Viewser” a Voice? Situating the Individual in Relation to Personalization,Narrowcasting, and Public Service Broadcasting

This article undertakes a critical comparison of contemporary personalization practices on Web platforms such as YouTube and Facebook with long-established practices of narrowcasting. Though such platforms appear to adhere to goals of universality similarly adhered to by public service broadcasting (PSB), the implementation of personalization on these platforms proves problematic to their discursive positioning as free “public” services. Furthermore, though public service broadcasters have embraced personalization in the name of pluralism, critics suggest that the narrowcasting inherent in personalization exists in tension to PSB's enduring commitments. Finally, the article argues that system-initiated personalization negates the “consumer sovereignty” that narrowcasting has traditionally mobilized.     

Organizational Change and Renewal: Can Strategic Communication Methods Ease the Pain? A Case Study from the University of Southern Queensland

ABSTRACT

Strategic communication is not solely the remit of library managers and directors, but is the product of internal culture and engagement with the organization's brand. Libraries need to communicate strategically, in order to demonstrate to individuals across the organization that their message is on point, and that they understand, are committed to, and actively support the university's goals. Much of this work happens via the myriad of interactions library staff at all levels have with students and staff (and indeed community members) of all kinds. When the attitude and behavior of library staff does not truly reflect the library's and the university's branding or goals, this undermines more explicit measures of value. It is important for the leadership of academic libraries to understand and influence how every library staff member views his or her role in the organization, so that their communication is reflective of a confidence in themselves and their profession, and a solid understanding of their institution and the higher education landscape. In large-scale organizational change, both intellectual and emotional buy-in to the organization can wane. We seek to show how a people-centered change process, rather than adversely affecting staff buy-in, could instead increase buy-in to the organizational change.     

How Much Time Do You Spend Online? Understanding and Improving the Accuracy of Self-Reported Measures of Internet Use

Given the importance of survey measures of online media use for communication research, it is crucial to assess and improve their quality, in particular because the increasingly fragmented and ubiquitous usage of internet complicates the accuracy of self-reported measures. This study contributes to the discussion regarding the accuracy of self-reported internet use by presenting relevant factors potentially affecting biases of self-reports and testing survey design strategies to improve accuracy. Combining automatic tracking data and survey data from the same participants (N = 690) confirmed low levels of accuracy and tendencies of over-reporting. The analysis revealed biases due to a range of factors associated with the intensity of (actual) internet usage, propensity to multitask, day of reference, and the usage of mobile devices. An anchoring technique could not be proved to reduce inaccuracies of reporting behavior. Several recommendations for research practice follow from these findings.     

What Do You Have on Arthur Flegenheimer? Research and Reference at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

No abstract available for this article.     

“What Do You Say to Your Mother When Your Mother's Standing Beside You?” Birth and Adoptive Family Contributions to Adoptive Identity via Relational Identity and Relational–Relational Identity Gaps

Grounded in the communication theory of identity, the present study explores how adoptive identity—an individual's understanding of what it means to be an adopted person—is influenced by the relational layer of his or her adoptive and birth family relationships. Seven focus group interviews were conducted in which participants were prompted to engage in a dialog about their experiences as an adopted individual. Analyses revealed that adoptees' relational identity with both their adoptive and birth families contributed in meaningful ways to their adoptive identity, but these relationships at times come into conflict with one another and with the adoptees' personal layer of identity, generating relational–relational and personal–relational identity gaps.     

Simulation of the h index use at university departments within the bibliometrics-based heuristics framework: Can the indicator be used to compare individual researchers?

Bornmann and Marewski (2019) have adapted the concept of fast-and-frugal heuristics to scientometrics in order to study and guide the application of bibliometrics in research evaluation. Bibliometrics-based heuristics (BBHs) are simple decision strategies for evaluative purposes based on bibliometric indicators. One aim of the heuristics research program is to develop methods for studying the use of BBHs in research evaluation. Many deans probably evaluate rough performance differences between researchers in their departments based on h index values. Bornmann, Ganser, Tekles, and Leydesdorff (2020) developed the Stata command h_index and R package hindex which can be deployed in a fast and frugal way to decide on the following question: can the h index be used to compare all researchers in a university department, or are the citation cultures so different between sub-groups in the department that not all researchers can be compared with one another? The command and package can be used for simulations that might answer the question before extensive processes of data collection start. If the citation cultures are very different in the sub-groups, the researchers should be compared with field-normalized indicators (instead of the h index). This paper shows how the h_index command and hindex package can be employed for the decision on the h index use in the BBH.     

What Motivates Parents to Mediate Children’s Use of Smartphones? An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examines parents’ attitudes, social norms, self-efficacy, and intentions regarding parental mediation of children’s smartphone use. A survey conducted with parents of young smartphone users aged 10–17 shows that parents tend to perceive discussion-based active mediation to be more desirable, as compared to rule-making restrictive mediation. Findings also indicate that the extent to which parents believe that they have control over their parental mediation practices plays an important role in forming positive intentions to practice parental mediation, regardless of the mediation domain.     

Can the Brain be Trained? Comparing the Literature on the Use of EEG Biofeedback/Neurofeedback as an Alternative or Complementary Therapy for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ABSTRACT

Psychologists, social workers, and school counselors are increasingly adding neurofeedback (NFT), a controversial alternative or complementary therapy to their treatment plans for patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. NFT involves training the patient in self-regulation of brain wave patterns, employing a standard diagnostic tool, the EEG, in an interactive operant conditioning mode not often used by neurologists or psychiatrists. Some NFT therapists claim in their books that they have sufficient expertise to advise parents against the use of Ritalin? and amphetamines, which are part of the conventional multimodal therapy strongly endorsed in a wide variety of clinical publications. In return, some of the leading conventional physicians and Ph.D. researchers in the field of ADHD have traditionally ignored or disparaged the literature of NFT as being insufficiently scientific and appearing largely in obscure journals or books published outside the mainstream medical presses. While most librarians are unlikely to have sufficient scientific or clinical credentials to pass judgment, one way or another, on NFT as a treatment for ADHD, an examination of the credentials of authors, their books, book reviews, journals, and the publishers in which opponents and proponents make their case is entirely within our purview, and such an analysis is provided.     

“What Do You Want to Be … When You Grow Up?” Recollections of a Slavic Librarian Part I: The Cold War,Dartmouth, and University of Illinois Years, 1945–1987

In this article, the author describes his experience growing up in Washington, DC, during the Cold War, as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and as a librarian in the Slavic and East European Library, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.