Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Medical Tourism: How Far Are You Willing To Go To Save Money?, Thomas J. Prinsen, Louis K. Falk, Javier Martinez

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Medical needs of Americans are increasing as the population is aging and struggling with obesity. The addition of new medical technology and techniques, their widespread availability, and procedural improvements have created a more open market for medical providers. Costly procedures in cardiology and orthopedics serve as examples of increasingly needed medical treatments. Individuals, businesses and insurance companies have struggled to find ways to pay for these necessary procedures. Traditionally, in the U.S. the majority of medical procedures have been performed locally. Because of the rising costs associated with these procedures individuals and some healthcare providers are now looking to foreign …

Social Norms About A Health Issue In Work Group Networks, Lauren B. Frank

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this study is to advance theorizing about how small groups understand health issues through the use of social network analysis. To achieve this goal, an adapted cognitive social structure examines group social norms around a specific health issue, H1N1 flu prevention. As predicted, individual’s attitudes, self-efficacy, and perceived social norms were each positively associated with behavioral intentions for at least one of the H1N1 health behaviors studied. Moreover, collective norms of the whole group were also associated with behavioral intentions, even after controlling for how individual group members perceive those norms. For members of work groups in …

Information Scanning And Vaccine Safety Concerns Among African American, Mexican American, And Non-Hispanic White Women, Meghan Bridgid Moran, Lauren B. Frank, Joyee S. Chatterjee, Sheila T. Murphy, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective: A significant number of parents delay or refuse vaccinating their children. Incidental exposure to vaccine information (i.e., scanned information) may be an important contributor to anti-vaccine sentiment. This study examines the association between scanned information, trust in health information sources and vaccine safety concerns among African American, Mexican American, and non-Hispanic White women.

Methods: Women (N=761) in Los Angeles County were sampled via random digit dial and surveyed regarding use of and trust in health information resources and vaccine safety concerns.

Results: Analyses indicate that the sources of information associated with vaccine safety concerns varied by …

Media Literacy In Action?: What Are We Teaching In Introductory College Media Studies Courses?, Seth Ashley

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

An introductory media studies course is a staple of post-secondary education. What are instructors teaching in this course, and to what extent are the principles of media literacy education being incorporated into this likely home? This article reports the findings of a small survey of instructors, who describe aspects of their course content and pedagogy. Media literacy appears to provide a basic foundation in most cases, though instructors struggle with structural constraints. Findings suggest that more focus should be placed on teaching the political and economic contexts of media, and that instructors should embrace active learning and creative engagement.

The Ability Of Narrative Communication To Address Health-Related Social Norms, Meghan B. Moran, Sheila T. Murphy, Lauren B. Frank, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social norms are an important predictor of health behavior and have been targeted by a variety of health communication campaigns. However, these campaigns often encounter challenges related to the socially specific context in which norms exist: specifically, the extent to which the target population identifies with the specific reference group depicted and the extent to which the target population believes the campaign’s message. We argue that because of its capacity to effect identification among viewers, narrative communication is particularly appropriate for impacting social norms and, consequently, behavioral intention. This manuscript presents the results of a randomized trial testing the effectiveness …

Making The Case For War: A Comparative Analysis Of Cnn And Bbc Coverage Of Colin Powell’S Presentation To The United Nations Security Council, Seth Ashley

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

The normative role of journalism in democracy is well established: democracy depends on news media to facilitate self-government. But theories of the press point to structural limitations that inhibit the democratic ideal. To examine this contradiction, this article offers a comparative analysis of online news coverage by CNN and BBC of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003. Ethnographic content analysis is used to examine the coverage and to consider each outlet’s broad institutional context. The article concludes that structural limitations are less of a hindrance at the BBC, which is better situated to …

Telling Stories, Saving Lives: Creating Narrative Health Messages, Lauren B. Frank, Sheila T. Murphy, Joyee S. Chatterjee, Meghan B. Moran, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increasingly, health communication practitioners are exploring the use of narrative storytelling to convey health information. For this study, a narrative film was produced to provide information about the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer prevention. The storyline centered on Lupita, a young woman recently diagnosed with HPV who informs her family about HPV and the availability of the HPV vaccine for her younger sister. The objective was to examine the roles of identification with characters and narrative involvement (made up of three dimensions: involvement, perceived relevance, and immersion) on perceived response efficacy, perceived severity, and perceived susceptibility to HPV and …

Measuring News Media Literacy, Adam Maksl, Seth Ashley, Stephanie Craft

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

News media literacy refers to the knowledge and motivations needed to identify and engage with journalism. This study measured levels of news media literacy among 500 teenagers using a new scale measure based on Potter’s model of media literacy and adapted to news media specifically. The adapted model posits that news media literate individuals think deeply about media experiences, believe they are in control of media’s influence, and have high levels of basic knowledge about media content, industries and effects. Based on measures developed to assess news media literacy, highly news literate teens were found to be more intrinsically motivated …

When ‘Seeking Love Is Travel By Bus’: Deliberate Metaphors, Stories And Humor In A Romanian Song, Elena Negrea-Busuioc, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drawing on a song by Romanian blues rock singer and satirist Alexandru Andrieș, Transport în comun, we argue that both listeners and metaphor researchers must sometimes assume that a metaphor has been deliberately used and transformed in order to make sense of a metaphorical story, particularly when the metaphor is embedded in a particular cultural and political context. On the face of it Transport în comun is a song about seeking love, but it opens with a decidedly unromantic metaphor, “women are buses,” then develops this song into a story that is intelligible only on the assumption …

A “Glowing Marble”: “Brushed With Clouds” Or “Parched, Scorched, And Washed Away”? Barack Obama’S Use Of Contrasting Metaphors And Stories In Framing Climate Change., L. David Ritchie, Mariko Thomas

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines President Barack Obama’s use of contrasting metaphors and metaphorical stories to frame the issue of climate change and the associated political controversies in a major policy speech at Georgetown University in 2013. One major theme in the speech contrasted a series of metaphors based on violence and destruction with a series of metaphors based on peace, tranquility, and health, all within an overall framing story about the Apollo 8 astronauts and the picture they took of the Earth from lunar orbit. Another major theme is the contrast between metaphors of passivity or obstruction and metaphors of movement …

“Nixon Stonewalled The Investigation”: Potential Contributions Of Grammatical Metaphor To Conceptual Metaphor Theory And Analysis, L. David Ritchie, Min Zhu

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Halliday’s (1985; 1998) theory of grammatical metaphor (GM) has been quite influential among scholars who study structural approaches to language but has received little attention among researchers in cognitive linguistics. In this paper we summarize the aspects of Halliday’s approach that are most relevant to cognitive linguists, and show how key aspects of grammatical metaphor are related to the analysis of lexical and conceptual metaphors. Using an example of scientific writing analyzed by Halliday (1998) as well as examples from discourse previously subjected to conceptual metaphor analysis, we show how the two approaches might usefully be combined to yield new …

Theorizing Strategic Communication In Parsimony From The U.S. Government Perspective, Young Joon Lim

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although the term Strategic Communication seems to be a rising topic in communication studies, it is obvious that the term has been hardly visualized and explained from the U.S. government perspective in academic work. This paper theoretically visualizes strategic communication processes. The Department of State and the Department of Defense streamlined the use of strategic communication in different terms but they both focus on using soft power over hard power to gain support from foreign audiences through communication. Both departments especially after the 9/11attacks have developed programs to win hearts and minds of the target audience. This paper shows the …