A reputational approach examining publics' attributions on corporate social responsibility motives

This study introduced publics' perceived attribution about the sincerity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) purposes as the main reason why publics react differently to companies that practice similar CSR activities. The effects of congruence of CSR activities and the source of CSR-related information on publics' attribution were examined using prior corporate reputation as a moderator in an experimental setting. Overall, the study found that corporate reputation moderated publics' perceived attributions on the sincerity of the CSR purposes. Sincere motives were more severely downgraded when a negatively-reputed company engaged in a high-congruence CSR activity and used a company source than when a highly-reputed company did.     

The effects of source credibility and message information quantity on the attitude change of apathetics

The paper develops and tests a theoretical rationale for treating the attitude change of apathetic receivers as a function of their capacities to process the quantities of information contained in a message within an environmental constraint established via source credibility inductions.     

The false dichotomy of message desirability in third-person effect scholarship

Meta-reviews of the third-person effect literature explain that scholars have assumed that certain messages are desirable or undesirable. In response, this study examines messages that vary in their social desirability so that we can better understand the specific characteristics of socially (un)desirable messages, how people account for changes in their perceptions of a message’s desirability, and the resulting behaviors from those perceptions.     

基于责任与义务的稿件评议及其质量控制

研究稿件评议过程的所有参与者——作者、编辑部和审稿专家应尽的责任和义务,探讨审稿的质量控制,以期帮助参与者特别是新人增强责任意识,规范相关各方的行为,达到共同提升论文学术质量的目的.     

The effects of power and message variables on compliance

It has long been recognized in the nonverbal communication literature that individual differences in extraversion are expected to be most clearly evident in expressive forms of nonverbal behavior. Although several studies designed to examine the correlation between extraversion and nonverbal behavior have been conducted, most attempts to summarize these studies reflect the inconsistent nature of the research findings. Indeed, correlations range from ?.36 to .73. The extant literature summaries are limited to narrative reviews, however, which tend to be highly selective. The purpose of this study was to meta‐analyze the relevant studies. Results indicated that the mean correlation coefficient weighted for sample size was .13 for the entire sample of studies. Although 63% of the variance was attributable to sampling error, the distribution of correlations was heterogeneous. The remaining variance was due to two methodological artifacts: sample size and the number of nonverbal behaviors coded. For example, hierarchical breakdowns by moderator indicated that the mean correlation was .50 for highly focused studies—those in which researchers concentrated on a few behaviors and limited coding to 40 or fewer subjects. A cognitive‐overload model for these findings is offered and corroborated by findings from other research domains. Implications for communication research and theory are discussed. In addition to clarifying the empirical relationship between extraversion and nonverbal behavior, the contributions of this study reside, in part, in its implications for large samples and large numbers of nonverbal behaviors coded in research and for meta‐analyses of such research literatures.     

The effect of pooling and evaluation depth on IR metrics

Batch IR evaluations are usually performed in a framework that consists of a document collection, a set of queries, a set of relevance judgments, and one or more effectiveness metrics. A large number of evaluation metrics have been proposed, with two primary families having emerged: recall-based metrics, and utility-based metrics. In both families, the pragmatics of forming judgments mean that it is usual to evaluate the metric to some chosen depth such as \(k=20\) or \(k=100\), without necessarily fully considering the ramifications associated with that choice. Our aim is this paper is to explore the relative risks arising with fixed-depth evaluation in the two families, and document the complex interplay between metric evaluation depth and judgment pooling depth. Using a range of TREC resources including NewsWire data and the ClueWeb collection, we: (1) examine the implications of finite pooling on the subsequent usefulness of different test collections, including specifying options for truncated evaluation; and (2) determine the extent to which various metrics correlate with themselves when computed to different evaluation depths using those judgments. We demonstrate that the judgment pools constructed for the ClueWeb collections lack resilience, and are suited primarily to the application of top-heavy utility-based metrics rather than recall-based metrics; and that on the majority of the established test collections, and across a range of evaluation depths, recall-based metrics tend to be more volatile in the system rankings they generate than are utility-based metrics. That is, experimentation using utility-based metrics is more robust to choices such as the evaluation depth employed than is experimentation using recall-based metrics. This distinction should be noted by researchers as they plan and execute system-versus-system retrieval experiments.     

The broadcaster's responsibility for advertising

Far too often, one comes upon people who are unwilling or unable to tear down the artificial walls between “academic research” and “practical broadcasting.” Naturally, many of the most fruitful researchers recognize the advantages of tying their work to the “real world,” and many of the most efficient broadcasters rely strongly upon rigorous research rather than “seat of the pants” intuition. In the following article yet another link between research and broadcasting is demonstrated: the use of research, conducted by or on behalf of a station, to provide a wealth of newsworthy stories for the broadcaster. Whereas most journal articles emphasize the substantive results of a research, here they serve primarily as examples, with emphasis on reporting and the application of research techniques in the newsroom.

Dr. McCombs is an associate professor of journalism in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr. Waters is assistant news manager of station WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina.     

Supportive communication from bystanders of cyberbullying: indirect effects and interactions between source and message characteristics

Cyberbullying is an increasingly common experience that produces psychosocial consequences for targets. Interventions encouraging bystanders to support targets of cyberbullying are limited by a lack of focus on what to communicate. This study considers supportive messages that emphasize emotional comfort, attributions of responsibility, and beliefs that people can change as relevant to this context, and it examines how perceptions of messages differ based on whether support providers have or lack experience with cyberbullying. We extend research on the indirect effects model of supportive communication by randomly assigning participants (N?=?304), who self-identify as targets of cyberbullying, to message and source conditions and assessing their perceptions of messages, providers, and outcomes. Impressions of messages mediate their influence on outcomes, and the experiential similarity of support providers moderates these effects. Certain messages, notably those contending that bullies can change, are less effective when delivered by sources who lack experience with bullying.     

The impact of multichannel message inconsistency on verbal and nonverbal decoding behaviors

This study examines the relative importance and specific nature of the nonverbal and verbal decoding behaviors that subjects use to respond to inconsistent messages. The results indicate not only that inconsistent messages have a greater impact on nonverbal than verbal decoding behaviors but that individuals responding to such messages behave in ways predicted by the double‐bind theory of communication. Decoding behaviors appear to pass through a three‐step sequence which moves from confusion and uncertainty to a high degree of deliberation and interest to expressions of displeasure, hostility, and withdrawal. These decoding behaviors are illustrated and their theoretical implications discussed.     

The relative effects of timing of suspicion and outcome involvement on biased message processing

The propensity to believe information to be predominately truthful has been called the truth-bias (e.g., McCornack & Levine, 1990), although the lie-bias is the tendency to believe that information is mostly false. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect that timing of suspicion and outcome involvement has on biased message processing. A two-way interaction between timing of suspicion and outcome involvement is hypothesized. Specifically, suspicion induced prior to communication will make receivers more suspicious of the communicator and therefore encode more of their nonverbal cues as “suspicious” or “fishy.” This effect is predicted to be magnified in conditions of high outcome involvement. If receivers are already suspicious, and carefully scrutinizing the message, it will be likely that they will note more “fishy behaviors” and demonstrate a heightened lie-bias. In two studies, Participants (Ps) were asked to view videotaped segments of a confederate making true or false statements. The Ps were induced to feel suspicious before or after viewing the videotaped interview. They were also induced to perceive high or low levels of outcome involvement. Results of Study 1 indicated that timing of suspicion has little effect on biased processing, but perceived suspicion did influence biased processing. Results of Study 2 indicated that the timing of suspicion did influence the strength of the truth-bias but did not create a lie-bias. Both studies demonstrated the strong effect of perceived outcome involvement on honesty perceptions.     

The relative impact of violation type and lie severity on judgments of message deceitfulness

This paper is part of a larger program of research assessing variables that underlie quantitative deceptiveness ratings. Several recent theoretical approaches, including Information Manipulation Theory (IMT), propose that deceptive messages are best understood as varying along two or more dimensions. At the same time, researchers have increasingly moved from dichotomous deception judgments to continuous deception ratings. This paper questions the validity of scaling degrees of deceptiveness along a single dimension, and argues that gradations in perceived deceptiveness reflect both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences of the deception. This reasoning was tested with alxl experiment (N = 236) in which both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences were systematically varied. As predicted, the results suggest that false messages (i.e., quality violations) are rated as more deceptive than lies of omission (i.e., quantity violations) when lie severity is low, but this difference diminishes as lie severity increases. In other words, false messages were rated as deceptive regardless of severity, but messages omitting information were rated as deceptive as false messages only when the consequences were serious. The implications for measuring deception are discussed.     

从突发事件看科技学术期刊的社会责任

近几个月来,我国广东、北京等地许多人突患“非典型肺炎(SARS)”。面对这一举国上下关心的突发事件,出版工作者的使命感使我们清醒地意识到,利用医学学术期刊的优势,从专业水平上对SARS进行深层次报道,是《中华内科杂志》义不容辞的社会责任,也是科技期刊为全党全国工作大局服务的具体体现,于是我们立即投入了这场没有硝烟的战斗。     

The ideal source: A reexamination of source credibility measurement

This article investigates the assumption that extreme ratings on the semantic differential are preferable and that common agreement exists among users in the interpretation of items. These assumptions were investigated by measuring ideal ratings for three source types.     

The effects of message sidedness and evidence on inoculation against counterpersuasion in small group communication

This study tested the generalizability of previous research concerning inoculation against counterpersuasion when the counterpersuasive influence is exerted in a small group communication context. Earlier findings indicated that a two‐sided message which includes refutation of opposing positions or which includes documented supporting material tends to inoculate receivers against counterpersuasion in a confrontation setting. Results indicated that a two‐sided message produced more attitude change after counterpersuasion than did a one‐sided message. Evidence effects in the present study were significant at only the .10 level, but in the hypothesized direction. Message sidedness had no significant effect on perceived source credibility. Inclusion of evidence significantly increased perceived source credibility on the authoritativeness dimension.     

The impact of the mass media on source commitment

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of the mass media in creating source commitment. The results showed that the type of source commitment studied in the experiment was not significantly affected by the preparation and transmission of mass media messages.     

不同媒体编辑的职责

由于不同媒体的传播个性和所传递信息内容上的差异与目的的不同,编辑有不同的工作中心与职责.从编辑工作的共性和个性角度,论述不同媒体编辑所应承担的职责,以便更好地做好媒体的编辑工作,提高媒体的传播质量和宣传效果.     

档案部门的新职责

<北京市行政规范性文件备案监督办法>(以下简称<办法>)已经市人民政府常务会议审议通过并公布,将于2006年1月1日起施行.这是本市贯彻国务院<全面推进依法行政实施纲要>和有关法律、法规,推进政务信息公开,加强对行政机关行政行为监督的重大举措.<办法>指定本市市和区县档案馆是本级人民政府指定的查阅行政规范性文件的场所,赋予了市、区县档案馆新的职责.档案部门必须对此高度重视,认真尽责.