Communication Commons^™

Preschool Children And The Media, William J. Thorn

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Bowling Alone, Sumana Chattopadhyay

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Community Renegades: Micro-Radio And The Unlicensed Radio Movement, Lawrence Soley

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Seeing The World While Staying At Home: Slapstick, Modernity And American-Ness, Amanda R. Keeler

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Creative Women In Advertising Agencies: Why So Few “Babes In Boyland”?, Sheri L. Broyles, Jean M. Grow

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore reasons why there are so few women in creative departments of advertising agencies and to discuss what impact that might have on the work environment of those creative departments and advertising messages they create.

Design/methodology/approach – Provides a review of published research and plus opinions of professionals who cover the advertising industry or work in agency creative departments. Personal observations from the authors’ time working in the advertising industry are also included.

Findings – Themes gleaned from the literature look at the gender gap, the creative department of advertising agencies …

Larry Sabato, Sumana Chattopadhyay

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Communication And The Knowable Community, Bonnie Brennen

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This essay draws on Raymond Williams's concept of a knowable community in an effort to understand the myriad of connections that exist between individuals and society. Williams, who sees communication and community as synonymous, suggests that a knowable community may ultimately emerge through the process of communication and that in the discovery of connections between individuals and society, an understanding of historically specific patterns may be shown. This essay also discusses an oral history project with journalists who worked for Gannett in the 1960s as an example of an emerging knowable community that questioned traditional notions of community and challenged …

Task Force Report On The Ethical Responsibilities Of Presidential Rhetoric, Steven R. Goldzwig, Karrin Vasby Anderson, Frederick J. Antczak, Thomas W. Benson, Rita Kirk Whillock

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Patriotic Motherhood And The Iraq War, Ana C. Garner, Karen L. Slattery

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

She plays a familiar character in our nation's war stories and she has a warm place in our nation's heart. She is the patriotic mother, a cultural symbol of bravery and sacrifice, stoicism and silence. Her image may reflect our historical understanding of the mothers of combat soldiers, but the story the national press tells about the mothers of U.S. soldiers in the Iraq War does not quite match these cultural expectations.

Sex And Shock Jocks: An Analysis Of The Howard Stern And Bob & Tom Shows, Lawrence Soley

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Studies of mass media show that sexual content has increased during the past three decades and is now commonplace. Research studies have examined the sexual content of many media, but not talk radio. A subcategory of talk radio, called “shock jock” radio, has been repeatedly accused of being indecent and sexually explicit. This study fills in this gap in the literature by presenting a short history and an exploratory content analysis of shock jock radio. The content analysis compares the sexual discussions of two radio talk shows: Infinity’s Howard Stern Show and Clear Channel’s Bob & Tom Show.

Savedisney.Com And Activist Challenges: A Habermasian Perspective On Corporate Legitimacy, Sarah Bonewits Feldner, Rebecca J. Meisenbach

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study develops a Habermasian framework for evaluating and generating challenges to organizational legitimacy. The launch of the SaveDisney.com web site represents an innovative example of an Internet-based activist public successfully challenging a corporation’s legitimacy and advocating for changes in corporate governance. Legitimacy research has focused on strategies used by organizations to build legitimacy (e.g., Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975; Metzler, 2001), but scholars rarely address how publics challenge legitimacy claims. Using Habermas’ conceptualization of communicative action and legitimacy to explore the SaveDisney.com case offers insight into ways that activist publics successfully challenge and reject the legitimacy claims of powerful corporations.

Blending Journalism And Communication Studies, John J. Pauly

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Sex In Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content Of Media And Marketing, Jean M. Grow

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Political Engagement Through Debates: Young Citizens’ Reactions To The 2004 Presidential Debates, Mitchell S. Mckinney, Sumana Chattopadhyay

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study examines how exposure to a televised debate affects young citizens’ normative democratic tendencies, attitudes that have been linked to increased civic and political participation, including voting behavior. The authors also are interested in the confidence young citizens express in the political knowledge they possess—their political information efficacy—and specifically how confidence in one’s knowledge may be affected by exposure to such a sustained and “information-rich” source of campaign information as a 90-minute candidate debate. Findings reveal that debates strengthen, at least in the short term, democratic attitudes and also strengthen young citizens’ levels of political information efficacy.

The Corporatization Of Communication, Eric Chiappinelli, Adam Candeub, Jeffrey Chester, Lawrence Soley

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Saving Disney: Activating Publics Through The Internet, Sarah Bonewits Feldner, Rebecca J. Meisenbach

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Playing The Zero‐Sum Game With Diversity: Who's The Worthiest Of Them All?, Joyce M. Wolburg

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

– This article confronts the contradictory ideas surrounding diversity and the inconsistent efforts at embracing it. It aims to explore the reasons why marketing, recruitment, and philanthropic efforts differ for various groups, particularly African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans.

Design/methodology/approach

– This article examines data from published research, personal interviews, and government statistics to have a clearer picture of the myths and facts surrounding each group.

Findings

– Some groups can be reached more efficiently by marketers than others. Some groups are more likely to receive support motivated by affirmative action efforts than others, particularly those that …

A Meta-Analysis Of Political Advertising, William L. Benoit, Glenn M. Leshner, Sumana Chattopadhyay

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Political advertising is one of the dominant media for reaching voters. Previous metaanalyses (Allen & Burrell, 2002; Lau, Sigelman, Heldman, & Babbitt, 1999) found little or no net benefit to negative versus positive ads. However, this finding does not reveal whether ads have effects (both or neither could be persuasive). A meta-analysis revealed that political spots increased issue knowledge, influenced perceptions of the candidates’ character, altered attitudes, and affected candidate preference; influenced agenda-setting, and altered vote likelihood (turnout). One moderator variable was detected: The effect size for learning was larger for studies of students than non-students; however, the effect size …

We Have All Been Here Before, John J. Pauly, William R. Burleigh, E. W. Scripps

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Description Of Lobbying As Advocacy Public Relations, Kati Tusinski Berg

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study defines lobbying as advocacy public relations. Data were collected from self-administered surveys of 222 registered lobbyists in Oregon. This study provides insight into a specialized group of public relations practitioners.

Who Is A Journalist And Why Does It Matter? Disentangling The Legal And Ethical Arguments, Erik Ugland, Jennifer Henderson

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

The contemporary debate about "who is a journalist" is occurring in two distinct domains: law and professional ethics. Although the debate in these domains is focused on separate problems, participants treat the central question as essentially the same. This article suggests that the debates in law and professional ethics have to be resolved independently and that debate within those domains needs to be more nuanced. In law, it must vary depending on whether the context involves constitutional law, statutory law, or the distribution of informal privileges by government officials. In professional ethics, the debate should not be oriented around a …

Mothers Of Soldiers In Wartime: A National News Narrative, Karen L. Slattery, Ana C. Garner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

National news media represent mothers of US combat soldiers in the Iraq War as archetypal good mothers, that is, mothers who continue their maternal work even after their children are deployed. However, not all mothers are depicted as the archetypal patriotic mother, i.e., a good mother who is also stoic and silent about the war and her child's role in it. Mothers of soldiers are portrayed as good mothers who sometimes also voice their attitudes about the war effort. The maternal attitudes ranged from complete support for the war to opposition to the war but support for the soldiers. The …

Sports Journalism As Moral And Ethical Discourse, Thomas P. Oates, John J. Pauly

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This paper explores the marginalized practice of sportswriting to demonstrate the limited ways in which the question “who is a journalist?” has been answered within the profession. Following John Dewey and Raymond Williams, we offer an alternative view of democratic culture that values narrative as well as information. We also discuss how “New Journalists” (and other writers since), in their quest for fresh, sophisticated storytelling strategies, turned to sports as a cultural activity worthy of serious examination. Our goal is to demonstrate that sportswriting fundamentally resembles other forms of reporting and that journalism should not use sports as an ethical …

Review Of Can God And Caesar Coexist? Balancing Religious Freedom And International Law, Steven R. Goldzwig

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Measuring Responses To Commercials: A Projective-Elicitation Approach, Lawrence Soley

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Photoelicitation and projective assessment are research methods derived from visual sociology and psychoanalysis respectively. This study combined the methods by having respondents view a commercial, and then showing them one of two versions of a projective drawing showing a lone or a male-accompanied woman sitting on a couch. Respondents were told that the woman in the drawing had just seen the commercial and were asked about what the woman was thinking. The results show that a paper-and-pencil attitude measure correlated moderately with the visually-primed responses, but the visually-primed responses included psychoanalytically-predicted reactions such as denial and displacement and were dependent …

Demagoguery, Democratic Dissent, And "Re-Visioning" Democracy, Steven R. Goldzwig

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Size And Development Of The Shadow Economy: An Empirical Investigation From States Of India, Kausik Chaudhuri, Friedrich Schneider, Sumana Chattopadhyay

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Using the state level data from India, this paper investigates the size of the hidden economy in Indian states over the period 1974/75 to 1995/96. Our analysis has shown that after liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991/92, the growth in the size of the hidden economy has decreased on an average. Our results show that the growth in the size of the hidden economy is approximately 4% less in scheduled election years than in all other years. We also demonstrate that the growth is significantly lower in those states where the coalition government is in power. An increased growth …

WhoʼS Watching Us At Work? Toward A Structural-Perceptual Model Of Electronic Monitoring And Surveillance In Organizations, Scott C. D'Urso

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Nearly 80% of organizations now employ some form of employee surveillance. This significant level of use infers a salient need for additional theory and research into the effects of monitoring and surveillance. Accordingly, this essay examines the panoptic effects of electronic monitoring and surveillance (EM/S) of social communication in the workplace and the underlying structural and perceptual elements that lead to these effects. It also provides future scholarly perspectives for studying EM/S and privacy in the organization from the vantage point of contemporary communication technologies, such as the telephone, voice mail, e-mail, and instant messaging, utilized for organizational communication. Finally, …

After The Flood: Anger, Attribution And The Seeking Of Information (Presentation), Robert J. Griffin, Janet Yang, Ellen Ter Huurne, Francesca Boerner, Sherry L. Ortiz, Sharon Dunwoody

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

In an effort to understand what motivates people to attend to information about flood risks, this study applies the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model to explore how local residents responded to damaging river flooding in the Milwaukee area. Anger at managing agencies was associated with the desire for information and active information seeking and processing, as well as with risk judgment, personal efficacy, lower institutional trust, and attributions for the causes of flood losses.

Transparency In Communication: An Examination Of Communication Journals’ Conflicts-Of-Interest Policies, Lawrence Soley, Sarah Bonewits Feldner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Increased corporate-sponsored university research and professorial consulting has caused medical, psychological, and other scientific journals to adopt conflicts-of-interest disclosure policies. This study examines editorial policies concerning conflicts of interest at communication journals in the context of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The results show that communication journals do not have the same mandatory disclosure requirements that journals of other disciplines have. In this regard, communication research journals are similar to the mass media. Consequently, the article suggests that disclosure policies are needed if communication research journals are to function as part of a larger dialogic process. Moreover, communication researchers are …