Other Communication Commons^™

Discrete And Looking (To Profit): Homoconnectivity On Grindr, Chase Aunspach

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The queer dating and hookup app Grindr evidences a technological and economic intensification in queer spaces online. The dominant modality of capitalist power is no longer consumerist norms but the collection and analysis of data. Grindr’s participation in datafication distributes increased risks upon its queer users and necessitates a renewed politics of queer privacy beyond homonormativity. I name this arrangement of power homoconnectivity and detail four techniques that capitalism deploys to capture and monetize queer social production. Ultimately, this article unpacks how Grindr designs experiences that move users to log into the app while hiding its engagement with multi-sided markets. …

Infertility Patient-Provider Communication And (Dis)Continuity Of Care: An Exploration Of Illness Identity Transitions, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Heather L Voorhees, Sarah D’Souza, Edward Weeks

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective: To identify how and why infertility patients’ communication with health care providers relates to their continuity of care within infertility treatment.

Method: A grounded theory analysis was conducted for 25 in-depth interviews across three coding phases, where we remained open to all themes present in the data, narrowed to most prominent themes, and found the connections between the themes.

Results: Based on our identified themes, we created a conceptual model that explains why infertility patients (dis)continued care with one or more clinician. Through this model, we describe two infertility identity transitions for patients: Transition 1: “Infertility as Temporary” to …

Applied Tensional Analysis: Engaging Practitioners And The Constitutive Shift, Jennifer Mease (Also Peeksmease)

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article introduces applied tensional analysis as a methodological framework that integrates constitutive ontologies (that depict organizations as processes in constant states of emerging or becoming) with the applied need for practitioners to understand and navigate the everyday exigencies of their organizational experiences. Applied tensional analysis centers analysis on tensions as the key to understanding organizational becoming in contrast to approaches that assume organizations are stable entities and consequently focus on patterns, themes, or laws. The applied tensional analysis framework offers four analytical foci (context, tensions, enacted responses, and repertoires) organized into two loops (analytical and change) as guides for …

“Feeling Warmth And Close To Her”: Communication And Resilience Reflected In Turning Points In Positive Adult Stepchild–Stepparent Relationships, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Vincent R. Waldron, Jordan Allen, Bailey Oliver, Gretchen Bergquist, Katie Storck, Jaclyn S. Marsh, Nathan Swords, Carol L. Tschampl-Diesing

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

With the goal of understanding the development of positive stepchild–stepparent relationships, the researchers focused on turning points characterizing the interaction of adult stepchildren who have a positive bond with a stepparent. Engaging a relational turning points perspective, 38 stepchildren (males and females, ages 25 to 52 years old) who reported a positive stepparent relationship were interviewed, generating 269 turning points which were categorized into 15 turning point types and coded by valence. Turning points occurring most frequently were: prosocial actions, quality time, conflict/ disagreement, changes in household/family composition, and rituals. Findings are discussed, including implications for developing and enacting resilient …

“Say Something Instead Of Nothing”: Adolescents’ Perceptions Of Memorable Conversations About Sex-Related Topics With Their Parents, Amanda Holman, Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study examined adolescents’ (n = 389) perceptions of parent– adolescent communication about sex, including what their parents say about sex, what types of conversations adolescents report as memorable, the degree to which messages are perceived as effective, and how parental messages predict adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. Six conversation types emerged: underdeveloped, safety, comprehensive talk, warning/ threat, wait, and no talk. When adolescents were asked to report how those could have been improved, five types emerged from the analysis of their responses: no change, be more specific/provide guidance, talk to me, appropriateness, and collaborate …

Community Health Worker Employer Survey: Perspectives On Chw Workforce Development In The Midwest, Virginia Chaidez, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Kate Trout

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

A statewide Community Health Worker Employer Survey was administered to various clinical, community, and faith-based organizations (n = 240) across a range of rural and urban settings in the Midwest. At least 80% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that items characterized as supervisory support were present in their work environment. Thirty-six percent of respondents currently employed CHWs, over half (51%) of survey respondents reported seeing the need to hire/work with more CHWs, and 44% saw the need for CHWs increasing in the future. Regarding CHW support, a majority of respondents indicated networking opportunities (63%), paid time for networking (80%), …

The Wounded Man: Foxcatcher And The Incoherence Of White Masculine Victimhood, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

American cinema has recently favored representations of white men as victims of socioeconomic and political change. Recent scholarship on white masculinity suggests that representations of male victimhood enable white men to disavow that hegemonic white masculinity still fundamentally structures society. This essay argues that Hollywood’s wounded man similarly provides white masculinity with stable footing. I illustrate how the unintelligibility of screen masculinity evades criticism and, further, how melancholic male dramas nurture a traumatic attachment to victimhood. Examining the film Foxcatcher (2014), I show how unmasked portraits of white male victimhood function as counterparts to the hard-bodied action hero. The filmmaker’s …

Relational Uncertainty Management In Adult Children Of Divorce, Sylvia L. Mikucki-Enyart, Sarah R. Petitte, Sarah E. Wilder

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Utilizing uncertainty management theory (UMT) and a multiple goals theory of personal relationships (MGPR) the present study examined how adult children of divorce (ACOD) manage relational uncertainty following parental divorce. In-depth, semistructured interviews with 25 adult children who had experienced parental divorce when they were 18 years of age or older revealed two broad types of information acquisition strategies: deliberate (i.e., information-seeking and information-avoiding) and incidental (i.e., incidental information acquisition). Deliberate information acquisition strategies were animated by several goals, including reducing and maintaining uncertainty, avoiding feeling caught, and protection. Alongside goals, various constraints (e.g., target efficacy, coping efficacy) played a …

Discourses Of Forgiveness And Resilience In Stepchild–Stepparent Relationships, Vincent R. Waldron, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Bailey M. Oliver, Dayna N. Kloeber, Jaclyn S. Marsh

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Challenges and conflicts experienced by stepfamilies are well documented, but researchers are increasingly focused on communication processes that facilitate resilience in these relationships. In other contexts, communicating forgiveness has been linked to relational healing after transgressions or adversity. In the current study, the researchers sought to understand how stepchildren talk about the role of forgiveness in the development of positive adult stepchild–stepparent relationships. Data were drawn from interviews with adult stepchildren who have a positive relationship with a stepparent. Following an interpretive analysis, the researchers identified five themes representing the ways forgiveness was conceptualized and enacted in these positive stepchild–stepparent …

Asset, Liability, Possibility: Metaphors Of Human Difference And The Business Case For Diversity, Jennifer J. Mease (Also Peeksmease), Brittany L. Collins

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Purpose – This analysis draws on interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants and 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites. The findings challenge existing literature that characterizes the business case for diversity as monolithic and wholly problematic for the way it constructs understandings of human difference. The authors accomplish this using metaphor analysis to demonstrate how business case arguments incorporate three metaphorical systems for thinking and speaking about human differences – as asset, as liability and as possibility. Given this diversity of metaphors, the business case does not construct human difference in a monolithic way, but in a variety …

The Toxic Screen: Visions Of Petrochemical America In Hbo’S True Detective (2014), Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article argues that the use of toxic visual and narrative tropes in contemporary dramatic television can expand our capacity to envision and critique the deadly effects of industrial pollution. The HBO series True Detective is an exemplary case study in how evocative toxic images can be integrated into familiar television narratives to animate society’s deadly relationship with toxic chemicals. The petrochemical mise-en-scène of True Detective enlivens the toxic image with inferential power, or visual enthymemes, that invite audiences to draw connections between traumas that unfold through narrative action and omnipresence of toxic iconography. Developing a concept of the toxic …

Negotiating Refugee Empowerment(S) In Resettlement Organizations, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In-depth interviews with both organizational staff and refugee-clients in two American refugee resettlement organizations explore how empowerment is communicated to and understood by refugees being “empowered.” This study found that while organizational staff professed empowerment focused on self-sufficiency as self-determination, in practice their communication to clients defined self-sufficiency a priori in economic terms. Refugee-clients instead constructed empowerment(s) in economic, educational, personal, and family terms. These findings highlight the need for changes in US resettlement policy and for theoretical and practical understandings of refugee empowerment to recognize polysemic and conflicting empowerments in different life arenas and from different positionalities.

Stepchildren’S Communicative And Emotional Journey From Divorce To Remarriage: Predictors Of Stepfamily Satisfaction, Sandra Metts, Paul Schrodt, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study explores the emotional and communicative profiles of young adults who have experienced a parental divorce and the emergence of a stepfamily to better understand influences on stepfamily satisfaction. Results of regression analyses indicate that strong negative emotions experienced at the time of the divorce are a negative predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction, even after controlling for age at the time of the divorce. In addition, level of open self-disclosure to a stepparent, although not parents, is a positive predictor of current stepfamily satisfaction. Finally, the extent to which the father has now fully explained the circumstances of the …

Communicatively Constructing The Bright And Dark Sides Of Hope: Family Caregivers’ Experiences During End Of Life Cancer Care, Jody Koenig Kellas, Katherine M. Castle, Alexis Johnson, Marlene Z. Cohen

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

(1) Background: The communication of hope is complicated, particularly for family caregivers in the context of cancer who struggle to maintain hope for themselves and their loved ones in the face of terminality. In order to understand these complexities, the current study examines the bright and dark sides of how hope is communicated across the cancer journey from the vantage point of bereaved family caregivers; (2) Methods: We analyzed interviews with bereaved family caregivers using qualitative thematic and case oriented strategies to identify patterns in the positive and negative lived experiences when communicating about hope at the end of life; …

“Love Needs To Be Exchanged”: A Diary Study Of Interaction And Enactment Of The Family Kinkeeper Role, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Jaclyn S. Marsh, Carol L. Tschampl-Diesing, Margaret S. Leach

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Family kinkeepers enact an important role centered on interaction and maintaining family relationships. The researchers studied kinkeeping communication in light of mediated communication, topics engaged, and kinkeepers’ assessments. Thirty-four self-identified kinkeepers kept an interaction diary over 2 weeks. Their 275 reports represented 1,487 interactions using largely mediated communication channels (text, telephone, e-mail, social media), centered on everyday activities, rituals, and health and safety. Despite potential complications of the role, kinkeepers reported high agreement and openness with family members, little conflict, and overall satisfaction with their interactions. Implications of these findings, new directions for researchers, and the important mediated role of …

Perceived Benefits And Challenges Of A Multiethnic-Racial Identity: Insight From Adults With Mixed Heritage, Jordan Soliz, Sierra Cronan, Gretchen Bergquist, Audra K. Nuru, Christine E. Rittenour

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the lived experiences of multiethnic-racial individuals (i.e., individuals with parents from different ethnic-racial groups). In-depth interviews were conducted with 29 adults from the United States with mixed ethnic-racial backgrounds ranging in age from 18 to 52 (female n = 20, male n = 9). We identified a number of themes related to perceived benefits (e.g., pluralistic world views, stronger sense of self) and challenges (e.g., identity tensions, communal concerns) of having a mixed heritage. Findings are discussed in terms of four considerations for ethnic-racial identity of individuals with mixed ethnic-racial backgrounds: emphasizing …

The Role Of Health Care Provider And Partner Decisional Support In Patients’ Cancer Treatment Decision-Making Satisfaction, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Janice L. Krieger, Nancy D. Rhodes

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Cancer patients rely on multiple sources of support when making treatment decisions; however, most research studies examine the influence of health care provider support while the influence of family member support is understudied. The current study fills this gap by examining the influence of health care providers and partners on decision-making satisfaction. In a cross-sectional study via an online Qualtrics panel, we surveyed cancer patients who reported that they had a spouse or romantic partner when making cancer treatment decisions (n = 479). Decisional support was measured using 5-point, single-item scales for emotional support, informational support, informational-advice support, and appraisal …

It Follows: Precarity, Thanatopolitics, And The Ambient Horror Film, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In the 2014 horror film It Follows, a teenage woman is terrorized by a fatal curse that passes from victim to victim via sexual intercourse. The subject of the curse is relentlessly pursued by vacant-minded assassins that take the form of friends, loved ones, and strangers. The film is set near the infamous dividing line of Detroit’s 8 Mile Road, between what remains of the suburban working-class and the sacrifice zone of post-industrial urban triage. I argue that It Follows confronts audiences with the spectral manifestation of precarity: the deliberate and unequal redistribution of human fragility to populations who …

Democratic Dissent And The Politics Of Rescue During The Twenty-First Century’S “Inhospitable” Eu Migration “Crisis”, Marouf Hasian Jr., José Ángel Maldonado Olivas, Stephanie Marek Muller

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article uses critical approaches to examine the ways in which dissenters have objected to the European Union’s current “politics of rescue.” The authors argue that the term “hospitality” has been a key term in liberal theorizing about mobility since the Enlightenment, but that various neo-liberal “pull” theories, worries about securitization and the militarization of rescue efforts in the Mediterranean have converged in ways that have turned Europe into an “inhospitable” place for foreigners. The authors use three short case studies—of maritime captains’ and sailors’ rescue efforts, academic critiques of FRONTEX, and vernacular reactions to the iconic Kurdi image—to put …

How Selective Amnesia Brought Us The First Black Socialist President Of The United States, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Post-Racial Amnesia during President Obama’s 2008 Inauguration

My interest in public memory explains why news coverage leading up to President Obama’s inauguration rankled me. The endless news cycle kept repeating trite statements that announced that the civil rights struggle had ended. Reports quoted public officials and former civil rights activists who described Obama’s election as the “fulfillment,” “embodiment,” “culmination,” and “validation” of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. The inauguration took place the day after Martin Luther King Day, and Obama delivered a pre-inauguration address in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the same location where King delivered his 1963 speech. Given …

Postmodern/Poststructural Approaches, Jennifer J. Mease (Also Peeksmease)

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Postmodern and poststructural approaches to organizational communication are marked by an emphasis on ruptures, disjunctions, tensions, instabilities, and other inconsistencies as a part of everyday organizational life. This emphasis is part of an attempt to question, critique, and often compromise the normalized, mundane power structures that regulate organizational life. By questioning and critiquing, these approaches reveal norms and power structures as contingently constructed with particular interests at play. This contrasts with more traditional assumptions that treat norms and power structures as natural, neutral, and stable constructions.

Poststructural and postmodern approaches to organizational communication find their roots in broader philosophical movements …

Communication Structures Of Supplemental Voluntary Kin Relationships, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Jenna Stephenson, Julia Moore, Katie Brockhage

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although scholars have constructed typologies of voluntary (fictive) kin, few have considered challenges and opportunities of interaction and relationships between biolegal and voluntary kin. This study focused on one type of voluntary kin, supplemental voluntary kin, relationships that often arise because of differing values, underperformed roles, or physical distance from the biolegal family, and wherein relationships are maintained with biolegal and voluntary kin. We examined how these family systems are constructed via interactions in relational triads of “linchpin” persons between biolegal family and voluntary kin. From in-depth interviews with 36 supplemental voluntary kin, we examined themes in the linchpins’ discourse …

A Tale Of Two Mommies: (Re)Storying Family Of Origin Narratives, Elizabeth A. Suter, Jody Koenig Kellas, Stephanie K. Webb, Jordan A. Allen

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study examined co-mother family of origin stories. Origin stories, representing the formation of a family, are culturally understood within a master narrative of heterosexual love and biological childbearing. Beginnings of co-mother families rupture this dominant, gendered, boy-meets-girl script. Investigating whether or not co-mother stories reify the normative master narrative or if instead their narrations resist and/or possibly transform conventional understandings, analysis identified three co-mother origin story themes: Becoming a Family (1) as Normal, (2) as Negotiation, and (3) as Normalization. Themes differ in terms of depiction of co-mother family formation as congruent with current norms, as something that needs …

Distributed Cognition In Cancer Treatment Decision Making: An Application Of The Decide Decision-Making Styles Typology, Janice L. Krieger, Jessica L. Krok-Schoen, Phokeng M. Dailey, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Nancy Schoenberg, Electra D. Paskett, Mark Dignan

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Distributed cognition occurs when cognitive and affective schemas are shared between two or more people during interpersonal discussion. Although extant research focuses on distributed cognition in decision making between health care providers and patients, studies show that caregivers are also highly influential in the treatment decisions of patients. However, there are little empirical data describing how and when families exert influence. The current article addresses this gap by examining decisional support in the context of cancer randomized clinical trial (RCT) decision making. Data are drawn from in-depth interviews with rural, Appalachian cancer patients (N = 46). Analysis of transcript …

Age Differences In Cancer Treatment Decision Making And Social Support, Jessica Krok, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Phokeng M. Dailey, Julianne C. Wojno, Janice L. Krieger

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the decision-making (DM) styles of younger (18-39 years), middle-aged (40-59 years), and older (≥60 years) cancer survivors, the type and role of social support, and patient satisfaction with cancer treatment DM.

Method: Adult cancer survivors (N = 604) were surveyed using Qualtrics online software.

Results: Older adults reported significantly lower influence of support on DM than younger adults. The most common DM style for the age groups was collaborative DM with their doctors. Younger age was a significant predictor of independent (p < .05), collaborative with family (p < .001), delegated to doctor (p < .01), delegated to family (p < .001), and demanding (p < .001) DM styles.

Discussion: Despite having lower received social support in cancer …

“I’M Here To Do Business. I’M Not Here To Play Games.” Work, Consumption, And Masculinity In Storage Wars, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the first season of Storage Wars and suggests the program helps mediate the putative crisis in American masculinity by suggesting that traditional male skills are still essential where knowledge supplants manual labor. We read representations of “men at work” in traditionally “feminine” consumer markets as a form of masculine recuperation situated within the culture of White male injury. Specifically, Storage Wars appropriates omnivorous consumption, thrift, and collaboration to fit within the masculine repertoire of self-reliance, individualism, and competition. Thus, the program adapts hegemonic masculinity by showcasing male auction bidders adeptly performing feminine consumer practices. Whether the feminine …

Religious Pluralistic Language In A Computer-Mediated Context: Effects Of Intergroup Salience And Religious Orientation, Jennifer Kienzle, Chad M. Wertley, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the degree to which religious pluralistic language varies as a function of the intergroup salience of a context and religious orientation. Based on a 2 (Religious Salience of Context) × 3 (Religious Salience of Topic) experimental design, participants (N = 239) were instructed to compose an e-mail to an interactional partner based on the randomly assigned condition. Messages were coded for religious pluralistic language, and participants completed measures of religious orientation and evaluations of the conversational partner. Modest effects were found for both intergroup salience of the context and topic as well as religious orientation.

The Man-Pocalpyse: Doomsday Preppers And The Rituals Of Apocalyptic Manhood, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay argues that recent male performances of disaster preparedness in reality television recuperate a preindustrial model of hegemonic masculinity by staging the plausible “real world” conditions under which manly skills appear necessary for collective survival. Representations of masculinity in uncertain times intensify the masculinity-in-crisis motif to cultivate anticipation of an apocalyptic event that promises a final resolution to male alienation. An examination of Nat Geo’s Doomsday Preppers illustrates how these staged performances of everyday life cultivate a dangerous vision of apocalyptic manhood that consummates a fantasy of national virility in the demise of feminine society.

Chastity For Democracy: Surplus Repression And The Rhetoric Of Sex Education, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Moving from opposition to participation, the Adolescent Family Life Act (1981) and the development of abstinence education marks the conservative movement’s pivot to a rhetorical strategy of tolerance that enabled it to coopt the public culture of sex discourse. Working from Herbert Marcuse’s theory of “surplus repression,” I argue that the New Right seized the liberationist argument for open public discourse about sexuality to sublimate libidinal desires into a national project of familial (re)productivity. The AFLA is significant in the rhetorical history of sex education because it demarcates the transition to a productive form of biopolitics that sought to manage …

Camp Horror And The Gendered Politics Of Screen Violence: Subverting The Monstrous-Feminine In Teeth (2007), Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay argues that Mitchell Lichtenstein’s film Teeth (2007) is an exemplary appropriation of the femme castratrice, a sadistic and castrating female figure that subverts the patriarchal mythologies undergirding the gendered logics of both screen violence and cultural misogyny. The film chronicles Dawn’s post-sexual assault transformation from a passive defender of women’s purity to an avenging heroine with castrating genitals. First, I illustrate how Teeth intervenes in the gendered politics of spectatorship by cultivating identification with a violent heroine who refuses to abide by the stable binary between masculine violence/feminized victimhood. This subversive iteration of rape-revenge cinema is assisted by …