Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Othering Of Donald Trump And His Supporters, Stephen D. Cooper Ph.D.

Communications Faculty Research

The 2016 presidential election was extraordinary in many respects. One was the way in which the Republican candidate and his supporters were disparaged in the establishment press. Although it is a truism that politics can often be rough (as in the sayings, 'It ain't beanbag" and "It’s a contact sport') and any apparent civility in the rhetoric is often just a mask in front of bareknuckle tactics, many observers have noted that the 2016 election became especially rough.

Further, the attacks on candidate Donald Trump and his supporters came not only from political opponents- which would be expected-but also from …

George W. Bush, The American Press, And The Initial Framing Of The War On Terror After 9/11, Stephen D. Cooper, Jim A. Kuypers, Matthew T. Althouse

Communications Faculty Research

President George W. Bush's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations on November I 0, 200 I, marks an important moment in the history of the War on Terror. 1 It followed closely upon the joint U.S.-Northern Alliance military capture of Mazari Sarif, Afghanistan, which significantly disrupted the Taliban's operations and arguably marked the official beginning of America's War on Terror. As President Bush stated, "The time for sympathy has now passed; the time for action has now arrived."2 In some ways, the speech offered nothing new. It reiterated words and ideas that the president frequently used to …

The Opppositional Framing Of Bloggers, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

As a new feature of the media system, the blogosphere is an extremely interesting subject for scholarly inquiry. One might spend research time along a variety of lines: why people blog, why people read blog content, the relationship of the blogosphere to the established media outlets, the who/what/when of blog content production and consumption, the subject matter of blog posts, the effects of exposure to blog content, the potential for and limitations on interactions, and so on, for quite a long list. Given that the blogosphere is a recent addition to the media mix, and itself a (presumably) unintended consequence …

A Detailed Case Study Of Unusual Routines, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

Everyone working in organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. In such cases it is normal for people to find ways of completing their work in such a way that hey can get around, or just simply avoid, the procedure or system that has caused the problem. This is an unusual routine – a recurrent interaction pattern in which someone encounters a problem when trying to accomplish normal activities by following standard organizational procedures and then becomes enmeshed in wasteful and even harmful subroutines …

Connecting The Dots: Implicit Commonalities Among Cultural Morphogenesis, Structuration, And Market Economics, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

Perhaps the central foundational issue of our time is the relationship of human agency and social structure. If human actors are constrained by the rules and rhetoric of the social system, how is it that those actors can yet bring about radical change in that social system? A similar puzzle exists in economics: how is it that individual transactions both maintain and transform the marketplace? This paper begins to identify common ground implicit in the work of Margaret Archer, Anthony Giddens, and Friedrich Hayek. Emergence, change, reproduction, time, agency, power, and knowledge are themes which can be read in these …

Press Controls In Wartime: The Legal, Historical, And Institutional Context, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

News coverage of warfare poses a dilemma for social systems with a free press, such as the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflict is inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The importance of secrecy to the conduct of warfare heightens the issue in the current counterterrorism operations. The competitive advantage of live coverage raises the stakes in a crowded media market. The military’s control over newsgathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy …