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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Critical and Cultural Studies

University of Nebraska - Lincoln

2012

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Accounting For Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers’ Responses To Discursive Challenges, Jody Koenig Kellas, Elizabeth A. Suter Dec 2012

Accounting For Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers’ Responses To Discursive Challenges, Jody Koenig Kellas, Elizabeth A. Suter

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know little about these interactions. The current study included 44 female coparents across 10 focus groups discussing the interactive process of discursive legitimacy challenges. Using the theoretical framework of remedial accounts (Schönbach, 1990), inductive and deductive coding revealed several existing and new types of challenges, accounting strategies, and evaluations relevant to interactions of lesbian mothers. Communicative processes unique to the interactions of female coparents included challenges emerging from societal master narratives (e.g., health care, education, politics, religion); accounting strategies such as leading by example; and evaluations related to …

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Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic’S Locked Up Abroad, Casey Ryan Kelly Oct 2012

Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic’S Locked Up Abroad, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the reformulation of colonial ideologies in National Geographic Channel’s Locked Up Abroad, a documentary program that chronicles the narratives of Westerner travelers incarcerated in foreign nations. An analysis of Locked Up Abroad evinces neocolonialism in contemporary media culture, including the historic association between dark-skin and savagery, the backwardness of the non-Western world, and the Western imperative to civilize it. The program’s documentary techniques and framing devices sustain an Otherizing gaze toward non-Western societies, and its portrayals elide a critical analysis of colonialism in its present forms. I advocate for neocolonial criticism to trace how NatGeo remains …

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Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Kristen Hoerl May 2012

Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King’s dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama’s election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.

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Public Relations In Kenya: An Exploration Of Models And Cultural Influences, Dane M. Kiambi, Marjorie Keeshan Nadler Jan 2012

Public Relations In Kenya: An Exploration Of Models And Cultural Influences, Dane M. Kiambi, Marjorie Keeshan Nadler

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

This pioneer study explores the public relations models that inform the practice of public relations in Kenya, and the cultural values that influence this practice. Results show the personal influence model as the most used by practitioners in Kenya, while individualism is the most experienced cultural value. The strong correlation between personal influence model and Hofstede’s cultural value of femininity points to the practitioners’ strong desire for good interpersonal relationships with colleagues, supervisors, clients and key publics.

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An Examination Of Privacy Rules For Academic Advisors And College Student-Athletes: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective, Jason Thompson, Sandra Petronio, Dawn O. Braithwaite Jan 2012

An Examination Of Privacy Rules For Academic Advisors And College Student-Athletes: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective, Jason Thompson, Sandra Petronio, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study explored how academic advisors managed revealed private information from college student-athletes. The 37 academic advisors were interviewed to address: What criteria advisors use to judge privacy rules regulating access or protection of shared private information from student-athletes, and how privacy-rule choices function in this context? Academic advisors interviewed represented 21 different institutions of the four NCAA division levels and 10 separate athletic conferences. Using Communication Privacy Management theory as a framework, findings indicated there were two main criteria: motivations and risk-benefit ratios used to develop privacy rules managing revealing and concealing the student-athlete’s private information.

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Measuring Classroom Engagement By Comparing Instructor Expectations With Students’ Perceptions, Paul Savory, Amy Goodburn, Jody Koenig Kellas Jan 2012

Measuring Classroom Engagement By Comparing Instructor Expectations With Students’ Perceptions, Paul Savory, Amy Goodburn, Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Even instructors who can demonstrate student success in their courses can be challenged to document which practices are most effective in engaging student learning. National surveys designed to assess student engagement do not provide individual faculty with information that can help them assess their individual teaching efforts. This paper highlights a survey designed to help individual faculty members learn about their students and provides a comparison of instructors’ expectations with students’ perceptions. This paper illustrates the value of such a survey through an extended example of the insights that an instructor gained by using it in her course.

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Genesis In Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy At The Creation Museum, Casey Ryan Kelly, Kristen E. Hoerl Jan 2012

Genesis In Hyperreality: Legitimizing Disingenuous Controversy At The Creation Museum, Casey Ryan Kelly, Kristen E. Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay analyzes the argumentative structure of the “Answers in Genesis” ministry’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Founded by a $27 million grant, the 70,000-square-foot museum appropriates the stylistic and authoritative signifiers of natural history museums, complete with technically proficient hyperreal displays and modern curatorial techniques. In this essay, we argue that the museum provides a culturally authoritative space in which Young Earth Creationists can visually craft the appearance that there is an ongoing scientific controversy over matters long settled in the scientific community (evolution), or what scholars call a disingenuous or manufactured controversy. We analyze the displays and layout …

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Reconsidering Consultants’ Strategic Use Of The Business Case For Diversity, Jennifer Mease (Also Peeksmease) Jan 2012

Reconsidering Consultants’ Strategic Use Of The Business Case For Diversity, Jennifer Mease (Also Peeksmease)

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The business case for diversity—the practice of connecting human differences to an organization’s bottom line—has been critiqued for its compromised treatment of human difference. Through a grounded in action discursive analysis of 19 interviews with diversity consultants, this research identifies three occupational demands that prompted consultants to use the business case: organizational access, motivation, and emotion work. The analysis also identifies strategies consultants used that met these demands without relying on the business case: connecting to mission statements, connecting to individual tasks, appealing to personal experience, sequencing, combining, balancing discourses of emotion and business, drawing on spiritual grounding, and using …

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Ethnic Appeal: A Self-Defense Tool For Kenyan Politicians, Dane M. Kiambi Jan 2012

Ethnic Appeal: A Self-Defense Tool For Kenyan Politicians, Dane M. Kiambi

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

So far, analyses of apologetic rhetoric strategies as used by individuals or organizations to respond to accusations of wrongdoing have been concentrated in the West. An analysis of political apologia in an African setting — in this case Kenya — reveals that while Kenyan politicians have used denial, victimization, mortification, and counterattacking among other self-defense strategies, one particular strategy emerges as the most commonly used by Kenyan politicians — ethnic appeal.

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