Other Communication Commons^™

Empty Ritual: Young-Adult Stepchildren’S Perceptions Of The Remarriage Ceremony, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Jody Koenig Kellas, Cassandra Leclair-Underberg, Emily Lamb Normand, Tracy Routsong, Matthew Thatcher

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This qualitative study investigated 80 young-adult stepchildren’s talk about one of their parents’ remarriage ceremony. The remarriage event was celebrated in six types of ritual enactments, five of which celebrated the couple’s marriage and one of which was family-centered in its celebration of the beginning of the new stepfamily. Three factors led stepchildren to find the remarriage ceremony empty: (i) a ritual form that was too traditional or not traditional enough; (ii) a ritual enactment that failed to pay homage to either the stepchild’s family of origin or the stepfamily as a unit; and (iii) a ritual enactment that failed …

Differences In Computer Mediated Versus Face To Face Negotiation, Melissa Oates

Psychology and Child Development

Ninety Cal Poly students participated in a study to test the hypothesis that e-negotiators would be more likely than face-to-face (FTF) negotiators to employ unethical or competitive negotiation styles in a subsequent negotiation after being lied to in a previous negotiation. Sixty-four Cal Poly students were randomly assigned to partake in a computer mediated or FTF negotiation over the sale of a car. After the initial negotiation was completed, buyers in each condition were led to believe they had been lied to about the accident history of the car. Participants then completed The Incidents in Negotiation Questionnaire by Robinson, Lewicki, …

Using The 2008 Presidential Election To Think About “Playing The Race Card”, Ronald Lee, Aysel Morin

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Bill Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro were accused of “playing the race card” during the 2008 contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. This essay explores the different forms race cards may assume and the dangers each poses to the public dialogue. Moving away from the traditional focus on persuasive effects, the Clinton and Ferraro utterances are analyzed as argumentative discourses. Then, critical standards are promulgated for evaluating their reasonableness.

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Shane Bevell, Cate Weeks, Mamie Peers

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Parsing The Plagiary Scandals In History And Law, Arthur Austin

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In 2002 the history of History was scandal. The narrative started when a Pulitzer Prize winning professor was caught foisting bogus Vietnam War exploits as background for classroom discussion. His fantasy lapse prefaced a more serious irregularity—the author of the Bancroft Prize book award was accused of falsifying key research documents. The award was rescinded. The year reached a crescendo with two plagiarism cases “that shook the history profession to its core.”

Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin were “crossover” celebrities: esteemed academics—Pulitzer winners—with careers embellished by a public intellectual reputation. The media nurtured a Greek Tragedy —two superstars …

Toward A Pervasive Communication Environment Perspective, Ted Coopman

Faculty Publications

In a world where pervasive communication technologies facilitate an increasing percentage of human interaction, the traditional dichotomy between face-to-face and mediated communication (especially computer mediated communication) obscures more than it illuminates. This has impacts for both teaching and research. To address this, I propose a holistic approach: Pervasive Communication Environment Perspective (PCE). Represented as a graphic model, PCE illustrates the circular flow of information and communication across mediums, channels, and individuals. This provides a conceptual tool with practical applications for teaching as well as research.

Networks Of Dissent: Emergent Forms In Media Based Collective Action, Ted Coopman

Faculty Publications

The micro radio movement expanded over the course of 1990s and resulted in the creation of a Low Power Radio Service in 2000. Micro radio activists successfully leveraged the then emerging Internet and other digital technologies to further their cause. By doing so, participants developed new modes of organization and repertoires of action unique to the new interface between analog and digital worlds. In exploring this phenomenon, I developed dissentworks theory – describing how collective action emerges within digital environments. I offer his approach as a tool to reassess the impacts of an infrastructural approach to media based dissent collective …

A Case Study Analysis Of Organizational Crisis Communication During Hurricane Katrina, Rebecca Nell Woodrick

Dissertations

This study analyzed an educational organization's crisis communication with its employees regarding the devastation caused to the organization and to employees by hurricane Katrina in 2005. This study drew upon literature regarding communication in crisis and in particular, natural disaster crisis, to ascertain to what degree employees felt the organization engaged in characteristics of High Reliability Organizations. A case study approach employing both qualitative and quantitative data was utilized.

The data revealed that the organization was perceived by employees has having adequately communicated before and after Katrina. Data further revealed that the organization engages in behaviors consistent with practices of …

Zipped Magazine, Shilpa Prabhakar

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

For my capstone project, I chose to do something that fell within the creative category. Being a magazine journalism major, most of my coursework has to do with editing, writing, and layout so I wanted to use the skills I learned in the classroom to create and find a new publication on the S.U. campus. Zipped magazine is S.U.’s only fashion publication and it allows students with an interest in this area, the opportunity to further develop their skills through writing, photography, graphics and design. Furthermore, readers are able to learn about issues that the fashion industry faces in the …

Inkstinct Tattoo-Lifestyle Magazine, Celina Rosita Tousignant

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Inkstinct, an American tattoo-lifestyle magazine, covers a broad assortment of editorial content in six regular sections: “Inkternet,” “Fokus,” “Kulture,” “Inkternational,” “Lokal,” and “Your Ink.” Created as a regularly published magazine, Inkstinct’s sections allow for fresh content every month, while enabling consistency in theme and reader expectations.

The target demographic of Inkstinct falls between the age of 18 and 35, has interest in tattoos and body manipulations, and is both male and female. Inkstinct assumes readers have at least a very basic knowledge of tattoos and body manipulations, and avoids explaining basic information in detail. However, Inkstinct’s editorial …

The Fourth Phase: New Media And Political Campaigns, Timothy Martinez Jr.

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

With the increased use of new media in political elections, I set out to answer two important questions: how does new media affect the relationship among candidates, journalists, and citizens during elections and how will traditional media adapt to the new technology? Since this topic is evolving, I read blogs and news articles during the 2008 presidential election and reflected on past elections to discover key differences.

I found that four key distinctions pertaining to new media that made the 2008 election different than previous ones. First was the creation of a virtual town hall, which was illustrated through public …

From Page To Screen: Television And The Decline Of Fiction In Magazines, Mirel Ketchiff

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My Capstone project explores how the rise of television contributed to the decline of fiction in magazines and the decline of general interest magazines in America. I argue that television appealed more to advertisers as a mass-market medium than general interest magazines. Magazines had to find a new way to appeal to advertisers, and they did so by becoming niche publications that could offer advertisers a specific type of audience, rather than just a huge amount of readers. Fiction had been used in magazines as a form of mass-market entertainment; with magazines become geared towards specialized interests, fiction fell by …

Speaking Of Books… Connecting With Faculty Through A Campus Author Series, Timothy Hackman

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

A faculty author speaker series is an effective way to build bridges between academic librarians and the teaching faculty, as well as raise the profile of the university library. To explore the challenges and rewards of hosting such a series, this article presents a history of the series “Speaking of Books… Conversations with Campus Authors” at the University of Maryland. It discusses the details of planning and executing author events, in the hope that others can use this information to host their own lecture series. Finally, it presents a few ideas for future directions of the faculty author series.

Women’S Rhetorical Agency In The American West: The New Penelope, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay theorizes women’s rhetorical agency in the nineteenth-century American West. Contrast between fluid gender norms in frontier life and the Cult of True Womanhood highlights how agency is confined by materiality. Agency is the capacity to recognize and act in moments when material structures are vulnerable to resignification. I offer an analysis of Frances Fuller Victor’s novella The New Penelope to demonstrate how pioneer women writers reinvented womanhood in light of socioeconomic changes.

Burning Mississippi Into Memory? Cinematic Amnesia As A Resource For Remembering Civil Rights, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The 1988 film Mississippi Burning drew extensive criticism for its misleading portrayal of the FBI’s investigation of three murdered civil rights activists in 1964. As critics noted, the film ignored the role of Black activists who struggled for racial justice even as it graphically depicted the violence that activists and other Blacks faced during the civil rights era. This movie’s selective depiction of events surrounding the activists’ deaths constituted the film as a site of cinematic amnesia, a form of public remembrance that provokes controversy over how events ought to be remembered. An analysis of the film and its ensuing …

Forging New Pathways, Connie Foster, Jennifer Wilson

SelectedWorks™

No abstract provided.

Deranged Loners And Demented Outsiders? Therapeutic News Frames Of Presidential Assassination Attempts, 1973–2001, Kristen E. Hoerl, Dana L. Cloud, Sharon E. Jarvis

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

There were 7 assassination attempts on U.S. presidents between 1973 and 2001. In this article, we critically examine coverage of each attack in the New York Times and the Washington Post, describing how the coverage employs therapeutic discourse frames that position the president as vulnerable and portray the attackers as lonely and demented outsiders. Noticing contradictions in this pattern, we also identify counter-frames, including those acknowledging the political motivations of the assassins, the diminished public sphere that is a context for those actions, and the contradictions in a legal system that denies the insanity pleas of those framed so …

Inside Unlv, Diane Russell, Shane Bevell, Mamie Peers, Michelle Mouton

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Student Misbehaviors, Instructor Responses, And Connected Classroom Climate: Implications For The Basic Course, Shereen G. Bingham, Robert E. Carlson, Karen K. Dwyer, Marshall Prisbell

Basic Communication Course Annual

The concept of connected classroom climate focuses on student-to-student communication behaviors that are paramount in creating the climate of a class, especially in the basic course. While previous studies have focused on the positive and cooperative behaviors of students and instructors that may contribute to perceptions of classroom connectedness, the role that incivilities may play in detracting from or undermining a connected classroom climate has not been investigated.

This study examines perceptions of a connected classroom climate and its relationships to student misbehaviors and instructor responses. A total of 542 university students enrolled in 30 sections of the basic public …

Telling Tales: Enacting Family Relationships In Joint Storytelling About Difficult Family Experiences, April R. Trees, Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Narratives help people make sense of difficult experiences. In addition, stories provide insight into people’s conceptualizations of the world, including their understanding of their family relationships. Given these two functions of storytelling, the ways in which family members tell stories about difficult experiences together should reveal or reflect relational qualities. This project focused on how the family relational context relates to jointly enacted sense-making behaviors as families tell stories of shared difficult experiences. Findings indicate that interactional sense-making behaviors, in particular coherence and perspective-taking, predict important family relational qualities. This suggests that family qualities affect and are reflected in the …

Commemorating The Kent State Tragedy Through Victims’ Trauma In Television News Coverage, 1990–2000, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd at Kent State University and killed four students. This essay critically interprets mainstream television journalism that commemorated the shootings in the past 18 years. Throughout this coverage, predominant framing devices depoliticized the Kent State tragedy by characterizing both former students and guard members as trauma victims. The emphasis on eyewitnesses as victims provided the basis for a therapeutic frame that promoted reconciliation rather than political redress as a rationale for commemorating the shootings. This dominant news frame tacitly advanced a model of commemorative journalism that promoted reconciliation at …

Communication Privacy Management Within The Family Planning Trajectories Of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples, Wesley Durham, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although the phenomenon of voluntary childlessness has garnered increased attention from researchers in a number of disciplines over the past 20 years (Connidis & McMullin, 1996; Letherby, 1998; Morrell, 1993; Park, 2002), little is known about the interaction processes that compose the family planning of couples who choose to remain child-free. In the present study, the researchers used Communication Privacy Management (Petronio, 2002) as the theoretical framework to describe the intradyadic communication processes that made up the family planning and decision making of voluntarily child-free couples. An interpretive analysis was performed on the transcripts of interviews with members of child-free …

Talkin' 'Bout My Generation: Exploring Age-Related Resources, Susie Skarl, Sidney Lowe

Library Faculty Research

In the past few years, as technology has radically changed how we find and use information resources, library staff have begun to notice significant generational differences in the information-seeking behavior of library patrons. These frequent observations at the reference desk and in library instruction classes planted the first small seeds of our interest in this topic. Internet sites and online articles about generational differences are plentiful and focus on a wide range of subjects, such as learning styles, social behaviors, moral values, technological skills, marketing, communication, and workplace performance.

Defining Leadership: Understanding Desired Traits Of Leaders, Alex Acton

Theses and Dissertations

What do people want from leaders? That question has been asked for generations. In recent history, a huge growth in leadership studies has produced a wealth of information on this topic, but because of the multitude of publications, there are now many competing schools of thought about what qualities make a great leader. This paper seeks to understand the qualities that people look for in leaders and to understand if any consistent patterns emerge from these desired traits. This is done through two avenues.

Firstly, a survey of the existing leadership publications in several different established leadership genres provides an …

Copyright And Copy-Reliant Technology, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Part I of this Article introduces the phenomenon of copy-reliant tech­nology by focusing on four significant case studies. The first case study, Field v. Google Inc., centers on the permissibility of automated archiving in the context of text-based search engines. The second case study, Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., centers on the creation and display of thumb­nail representations of copyrighted photographs by image-based search en­gines. The conduct challenged in the third case study, the Google Book Project, relates both to the generation of metadata and to the display of fragments of books as part of a menu …

Front Cover

Basic Communication Course Annual

No abstract provided.

Title Page

Basic Communication Course Annual

No abstract provided.

Editorial Board

Basic Communication Course Annual

No abstract provided.

Editor's Page, Paul Turman

Basic Communication Course Annual

Note: The Editor's Page from Volume 20 was repeated in Volume 21 by mistake of the publisher at the time, American Press. It is included here as printed, but it does not pertain to the content in this issue.

Contents And Abstracts

Basic Communication Course Annual

No abstract provided.