Surgical Identity Play: The Anatomy Lab Revisited

The anatomy lab has been studied by sociologists interested in professional socialization since the 1950s. This is because the act of dissecting a cadaver is thought to be foundational for both the student's medical knowledge and the development of the student's professional identity. In this paper, I revisit the anatomy lab both historically and ethnographically. Drawing on theoretical insights from the laboratory ethnography tradition within science and technology studies, I show that students use material artifacts in the lab to support their “surgical identity play.” This activity is structured by the laboratory's performative architecture even while it is unsupervised by anatomy faculty. While many analyses of professional socialization focus on how students learn to interact with patients during their training, I show that the anatomy lab experience is an important form of professional socialization because here students learn to employ surgical instruments, language, and dress, and begin to relate to each other as colleagues.     

Navigating the gendered academy: women in social work academia

ABSTRACT

Women fare less well than men across all academic disciplines: they are less likely to be promoted, they earn less, and many more professors are men. There has, however, been little analysis to date of the experience of women in social work education, a discipline that has historically had higher representation of female staff and students. This study set out to explore women in the social work academy through a case-study of social work education in Scotland. A mixed-methods approach was used, including a review of relevant literature; an online survey of women and men academics in social work education; and semi-structured interviews with female social work leaders, past and present. The study found that women in the social work academy faced the same pressures as other women in higher education; some of these pressures were also shared by men. Most significant, however, was the extent to which women in social work academia experienced twin challenges, firstly, as female academics and secondly, as female social work academics in a discipline that struggles for recognition in the academy. We conclude that this makes for a contradictory and, at times, ambiguous experience for women as they navigate the gendered academy.     

A systematic review on the application of dialogue in public relations to information communication technology-based platforms: Comparing English and Chinese contexts

This study aims to systematically analyze and compare studies applying the dialogue approach in public relations to information communication technologies (ICTs) under English and Chinese context. Specifically, we want to investigate the subjects, the adoption of dialogic principles, and the processing of additional valuables of dialogue in selected studies. By identifying 68 relevant peer-reviewed journal articles under English context and 13 under Chinese context, we analyzed different subjects in selected publications, including their research topics, methods, samples and objectives. Moreover, our study also revealed the following results: (1) three dialogic principles were well adopted while the other two were not; (2) public engagement was the most common effect; (3) organizational response was the most common antecedent to dialogue implementation. Future studies are recommended to diversify research methods, topics and relevant technologies. We also call for developing theoretical models for dialogue in public relations and updating dialogic principles and measurements. Based upon the fact that the dialogue approach is less studied under Chinese context, we also offer a path to construct effective and ethical communication between organizations and publics on various ICT-based platforms in Greater China.     

Tornado warning: Understanding the National Weather Service’s communication strategies

This study explores the National Weather Service’s communication through a multi-sited rapid ethnography that extends the fully functioning society theory. National Weather Service field offices do not employ public information officers. Instead, forecasters predict the weather, craft messages, and build relationships with their publics. Scholars have called for public relations research that examines messages, including how crisis communication can help publics cope. Additionally, scholars have noted that all organizations need public relations, even if they do not employ formal public relations personnel. In our study, forecasters emphasized the need to build their publics’ tornado threat awareness and provided strategies to make weather science accessible. Forecasters discussed a variety of message strategies including avoiding fear appeals, humanizing the organization, and visualizing risks. Forecasters also built relationships with active publics through soliciting weather spotters and empowering them to prepare others for severe weather. Overall, findings expand knowledge about how organizations can employ strategic public relations to benefit society, thereby extending fully functioning society theory.     

Explicating trust and its relation to dialogue at a time of divided societies

Values, beliefs, opinions and attitudes on issues (such as religion, LGBTQ, immigration, etc.), and the proliferation of social media platforms have made society not only more diverse but also more divided. Competing and conflicting views and attitudes result in more schisms and disengagement. In addition, conflicts and disagreements on various issues also have resulted in a lack of trust and a reluctance of organizations and publics to engage in meaningful communication. As a result, developing trusting relationships by facilitating dialogues is significant. Trust has been an important construct in past research on organization-public relationships. However, the concept of trust has rarely been discussed in-depth in public relations literature. This special section of Public Relations Review, entitled Enhancing Dialogue and Trust in Diverse Societies, examines whether the current definitions of trust and its dimensions in the public relations literature are adequate in an organization-public dialogic communication setting.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Developing a multi-level organization-public dialogic communication framework to assess social media-mediated disaster communication and engagement outcomes

Dialogic communication has long been viewed as vital for effective organization-public relations. Yet, it is under-theorized whether and how organizations’ disaster communication messages may embody dialogic communication principles, and how various dialogic features are associated with different public engagement outcomes on social media. Extending the Organization-Public Dialogic Communication (OPDC) framework to the context of social media-mediated disaster communication, we propose a multi-level framework to assess the dialogic capacity of Facebook messages sent by disaster management organizations during a natural disaster. Three levels of dialogic communication characteristics (i.e., message structure-level, topic-level, and linguistic level) are examined using content analysis and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Results identified media richness, correcting, and confirming topics as three consistent predictors of public engagement of all types. Meanwhile, there exhibit greater variations regarding how other topical features and linguistic characteristics are related to public’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement during a disaster.     

‘Seeing through their Eyes’: Towards Understanding Risk and Protection Perspectives of Young Bedouin Children in the Unrecognised Villages of the Naqab

This article is based on a participatory, context-informed study that examined perception of ‘risk’ and ‘protection’ among 30 Bedouin children aged four to five. It was conducted in the Bedouin unrecognised villages — Southern Israel and utilised photography, drawings and verbal explanations. The analysis yielded seven themes representing children’s perceptions of risk and protection. It indicated that children facing extreme adversity were aware of numerous risk conditions, including a lack of infrastructure and the fear of losing their homes, thus adversely affecting their well-being. Children’s insights, and suggested modes of protection, as the study findings reveal, are crucial for promoting children’s welfare.     

“Who generates this city”? Socialist strategy in contemporary London

This essay, based on a “militant ethnography” of the attempts of the small radical grassroots activist group, Our London (a pseudonym), to mobilize a collective oppositional politics through activities around an election campaign, engages critically with E. Laclau and C. Mouffe's arguments on discourse and collectivity in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). I argue, on the basis of my findings, that while their model does provide insights that help describe the process of building collectivity from among disparate perspectives and identities, we need to go beyond a focus on discourse alone and consider the ways politics is shaped by material contexts. This is necessary if we are to understand the continued appeal of class politics as well as the difficulties in mobilizing collectivity in highly unequal and fragmented cities. From an activist perspective, the essay also highlights how developing a conception of collective interests and a critique of overarching systems of exploitation can be important in building political unity.