Book Reviews

Zuckerman: Scientist Extraordinary by Bernard Donovan BioScientifica, Bristol, 2005, 555pp. ISBN 1‐901978249 £24.95 Negotiating licences for digital resources by Fiona Durrant Facet Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1 85604 586 2 Metadata for Information Management and Retrieval By David Haynes Facet Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1 85604 4890     

Online Celebrity Bashing: Wrecking Ball or Good for You? Adolescent Girls’ Attitudes Toward the Media and Public Bashing of Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez

Journalists and readers of celebrity news regularly bash celebrities online, a behavior that is easily accepted among adolescents. This study investigates whether these attitudes of acceptance differ according to the perpetrator of the bashing (media versus public) and the likeability of the involved celebrity (liked versus disliked). Using a vignette study, we examine adolescent girls’ attitudes toward media (journalists’) and public (readers’) bashing of a generally disliked celebrity (Miley Cyrus) and a generally liked celebrity (Selena Gomez). All participants read an identical negative news story (media bashing) and two related negative reader comments (public bashing). Participants were randomly assigned to read this information about either Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez. Results of a mixed-design ANOVA showed that the girls had less negative attitudes toward media bashing compared with public bashing. Moreover, they more easily accepted the bashing of a disliked celebrity than the bashing of a liked celebrity.     

Blogadapting: Adaptation Experiences among Expatriate Bloggers

ABSTRACT

Increased global communication is adjusting traditional models of cross-cultural communication. Specifically, changes in international communication processes have caused increased scrutiny of cross-culture adaptation theory. This is especially true when focusing on the difference between cultural adaptation and functional fitness. The purpose of this research is to address changes in global communications by testing to see if there is a difference between two important theoretical concepts within cross-cultural adaptation theory – linear and non-linear adaptation. Findings indicate that cultural sojourners do not equate cross-cultural adaptation with linear models of functional fitness. Models that equate the two should be revisited.     

MYTHPERCEPTIONS OF HEARING LOSS,HEARING AIDS,AND AGING

Myths are ill‐founded beliefs held uncritically by persons or groups about other persons or groups. Such myths hinder the communication process and lead to negative feelings or attitudes toward older persons with hearing loss. Hudson, Dancer, Patterson, Reynolds, and Tillery (1990) highlighted five common myths of hearing loss and aging. This article explores whether older persons themselves accept these and other myths presented by the DanPat, a 30‐item questionnaire with “Agree‐Disagree” statements such as the following: “Hearing Aids are Best Left to younger Persons Who Can Learn to Use Them,” or “Persons with Hearing Loss are Paranoid and Suspicious.”

Twenty older persons attending a Senior Companions and Foster Grandparents Health Fair filled out the DanPat with the following results to the 30 statements: informed about 14 of the statements; misinformed about 2 statements; and didn ‘t know the correct answer to 14 statements. Of the five prevalent myths presented by Hudson et al., this group of older adults still believes only one, that persons with hearing loss are excellent lipreaders. They don't know what to believe about two others, and they have discarded the remaining two. This article highlights the DanPat and provides correct answers to the questionnaire.     

The Artist Initiative at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The Artist Initiative at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is piloting models for increased collaboration between conservators and curators through joint work with artists. We seek a more integrated, holistic approach to the care and research of our collection. The project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, comprises five robust research engagements that serve the curatorial collecting departments of the museum (Photography, Painting and Sculpture, Media Art, and Architecture and Design). Three of the projects are monographic studies, examining the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Vija Celmins, and Julia Scher in depth, while two more are thematic, exploring modes of displaying digitally-driven design objects, and developing strategies for addressing the problem of color shift common to photographic prints made with experimental materials during the 1970s and 1980s. The Artist Initiative is also charged with developing hybrid working spaces to advance collaborative approaches to collections research at the museum's new downtown campus and at SFMOMA's new Collections Center in South San Francisco. These spaces include the Collections Workroom, a 56?sq?m (600?sq?ft) space that functions as a studio for visiting artists, a conservation laboratory, an interview suite, and a classroom at SFMOMA's downtown campus. At the Collections Center, a 121?sq?m (1300?sq?ft) Mock-Up Gallery has been built as a working model of one of the museum's new galleries. A functional exhibition space, the Mock-Up Gallery is also a venue for interviewing artists, prototyping exhibition formats, and meeting with students, scholars, museum staff, and community members. With the goal of contributing to critical discourses in contemporary art history, art conservation, and public engagement, each of the Artist Initiative projects includes a colloquium that will bring experts from multiple fields together with the featured artists. Thereafter we aim to share our findings widely through public programs and a range of publications, both digitally and in print.     

Being ‘nice’ or being ‘normal’: girls resisting discourses of ‘coolness’

In this paper we consider discourses of friendship and belonging mobilised by girls who are not part of the dominant ‘cool’ group in one English primary school. We explore how, by investing in alternative and, at times, resistant, discourses of ‘being nice’ and ‘being normal’ these ‘non-cool’ girls were able to avoid some of the struggles for dominance and related bullying and exclusion found by us and other researchers to be a feature of ‘cool girls’ groupings. We argue that there are multiple dynamics in girls' lives in which being ‘cool’ is only sometimes a dominant concern. There are some children for whom explicitly positioning themselves outside of the ‘cool’ group is both resistant and protective, providing a counter-discourse to the dominance of ‘coolness’. In this paper, which is based on observational and interview data in one school in the south of England, we focus on two main groupings of intermediate and lower status girls, as well as on one ‘wannabe’ ‘cool girl’. While belonging to a lower status group can bring disadvantages for the girls we studied, there were also benefits.