What to do with “I Don't Know:” Elicitation in Ethnographic & Survey Interviews

When a researcher enters an interview, she has already construed it as being a standard type of communicative event. This article considers how a researcher's construal of a communicative event as either an ethnographic or survey interview shapes the production of information. Interview standards entail epistemological assumptions that directly inform the type of information sought and produced. I consider this process through a comparison of the elicitation techniques I employed in survey and ethnographic interviews conducted during research in Mexico. I draw on theory in linguistic anthropology on the nature of meaning in language, examining how dialogicality and interaction are essential to understanding the construal of communicative events.     

Crisis perceptions,relationship, and communicative behaviors of employees: Internal public segmentation approach

This study examines when and why employees engage in external communicative behaviors during the periods of a corporate crisis. Combining a cross-situational factor (i.e., pre-crisis relationship quality) and a situational factor (i.e., crisis-specific perceptions), this study segments internal publics to understand employees’ motivations of becoming advocates for or adversaries of their organization. The results of an online survey demonstrated that employees’ pre-crisis relationship to their organization plays a critical role in encouraging them to advocate for their company; meanwhile, their crisis-perception—whether they feel fewer constraints in solving a crisis—is more likely to make them share negative information externally. Segmented groups of employees with high levels of both relationship and activeness are most likely to engage in both positive and negative external communication behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for public relations and internal crisis communication are suggested.     

Understanding publics’ perception and behaviors in crisis communication: Effects of crisis news framing and publics’ acquisition,selection, and transmission of information in crisis situations

This study aims to better understand publics’ perception and communicative behaviors in crisis communication. The extant research has overlooked how framing factors and different publics’ communicative behaviors directly influence crisis outcomes, including reputation and behavioral intentions. An online experiment with 1,113 participants was conducted to fill the gap. The findings demonstrated that preventable crisis news framing was a strong negative predictor for crisis outcomes. Another finding based on Communicative Action in Problem Solving (CAPS) in Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) revealed that information attending, forwarding, and seeking are positively associated with reputation and behavioral intentions.     

Reclaiming,proclaiming, and maintaining collective identity in the #YoSoy132 movement in Mexico: an examination of digital frontstage and backstage activism through social media and instant messaging platforms

This article starts from the recognition that digital social movements studies have progressively disregarded collective identity and the importance of internal communicative dynamics in contemporary social movements, in favour of the study of the technological affordances and the organizational capabilities of social media. Based on a two-year multimodal ethnography of the Mexican #YoSoy132 movement, the article demonstrates that the concept of collective identity is still able to yield relevant insights into the study of current movements, especially in connection with the use of social media platforms. Through the appropriations of social media, Mexican students were able to oppose the negative identification fabricated by the PRI party, reclaim their agency and their role as heirs of a long tradition of rebellion, generate collective identification processes, and find ‘comfort zones’ to lower the costs of activism, reinforcing their internal cohesion and solidarity. The article stresses the importance of the internal communicative dynamics that develop in the backstage of social media (Facebook chats and groups) and through instant messaging services (WhatsApp), thus rediscovering the pivotal linkage between collective identity and internal communication that characterized the first wave of research on digital social movements. The findings point out how that internal cohesion and collective identity are fundamentally shaped and reinforced in the social media backstage by practices of ‘ludic activism’, which indicates that social media represent not only the organizational backbone of contemporary social movements, but also multifaceted ecologies where a new, expressive and humorous ‘communicative resistance grammar’ emerges.     

Known and Unknown Identities: Openness and Identity as Experienced by Adult Adoptees

This qualitative study investigates the relationship between openness and identity among 15 adoptees. Several studies have argued that a high degree of openness is important for the identity of adoptees. However, few have explored this relationship. Two types of openness (biographical knowledge and communicative openness) are used to categorize the empirical material, making it possible to shed light on how different types of openness influence identity. The findings suggest that there is no direct link between a high degree of openness and positive identity formation. Rather, the relationship appears to be situational and changeable as adoptees come of age.     

The critical space between: Access, inclusion and standards in information technologies

By examining the Canadian standards system, and especially the work of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) related to accessibility, this article explores the question: can legislation and/or standards ensure access and inclusion for people with disabilities in the area of information technologies? And if so, what type is required? It argues that the standards system in Canada privileges the voices of industry while creating a discourse of public accountability and corporate social responsibility. This paradox leads to an undervaluing of the need for addressing issues of accessibility and inclusion in information technologies. By proactively seeking out innovators in the disability community and bringing them to the table, the CSA could open up the standards development discussions and find creative solutions to accessibility barriers. The principles of balanced representation and consensus decision-making open the possibility for discussions around standards that can effectively address access and inclusion of people with disabilities in the development and use of information technologies, but only if the systemic barriers to both individual and organizational participation are recognized and addressed.     

认知方式与交际策略选择的关联性

本文研究的焦点是一组补偿性策略,并对西北某大学四年级学生交际策略使用情况做了调查研究,旨在评估中国学生在使用英语进行交际时较为喜欢哪一类型的策略。在此研究中,笔者发现人们的认知风格决定他们使用什么样的交际策略。     

Using STOPS to predict prosocial behavioral intentions: Disentangling the effects of passive and active communicative action

This study seeks to understand the confluence of factors that might lead individuals to engage in prosocial action around a societal issue that has received little attention– the mass incarceration of women in the United States. Through qualitative and quantitative inquiry, the authors employ the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) to disentangle active and passive communicative action in a model that predicts three common supportive prosocial behaviors--financial support, volunteerism, and political support. Findings demonstrate an asymmetry between passive and active communicative actions, both with respect to antecedents and the strength with which they predict prosocial behavioral support. While both situational motivation and referent criterion predict active communicative action; only situational motivation predicts passive communicative action. Further, in this context, passive communicative action is the best predictor of common support behaviors including donating money, volunteering time and participating in policy advocacy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The rise and fall of collective identity in networked movements: communication protocols,Facebook, and the anti-Berlusconi protest

This paper explores the impact of communication protocols on the development of collective identity in networked movements. It focuses primarily on how communication protocols change patterns of interactions and power relationships among the constituents of social movements. The paper suggests that the communication protocols of commercial social networking media lead to organizational centralization and fragmentation in social movements by eroding one of the preconditions of collective identity, namely solidarity. The empirical material presented is part of a PhD dissertation on a political protest movement and their use of Facebook as a core communication and organizational platform. The data gathering is multi-methodological and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in the form of a historical analysis of interaction patterns, and a content analysis of online conversations among activists.     

Social Media: Defining,Developing, and Divining

What is a social medium, and how may one moderate, isolate, and influence communicative processes within? Although scholars assume an inherent understanding of social media based on extant technology, there is no commonly accepted definition of what social media are, both functionally and theoretically, within communication studies. Given this lack of understanding, cogent theorizing regarding the uses and effects of social media has been limited. This work first draws on extant definitions of social media and subcategories (e.g., social network sites) from public relations, information technology, and management scholarship, as well as the popular press, to develop a definition of social media precise enough to embody these technologies yet robust enough to remain applicable in 2035. It then broadly explores emerging developments in the features, uses, and users of social media for which future theories will need to account. Finally, it divines and prioritizes challenges that may not yet be apparent to theorizing communication processes with and in mercurial social media. We address how social media may uniquely isolate and test communicative principles to advance our understanding of human–human and human–computer interaction. In all, this article provides a common framework to ground and facilitate future communication scholarship and beyond.     

Corporate dialogue in crises of China: Examining dialogic strategies and communicative outcomes in a child abuse scandal

Although dialogue has become a key concept in the field of public relations, little research has dealt with corporate dialogic strategies and communicative outcomes in crises of a non-Western context. Applying a mixed-method approach including both quantitative survey research and qualitative content analysis, this study analyzed both corporate dialogic strategies and public reactions in a social-mediated crisis in mainland China. Results demonstrated the corporation utilized both concertative and transformative dialogic strategies as the crisis progressed. After the crisis, concerned publics perceived low trust and moderate distrust towards the organization and reported five different communicative action intentions (i.e., mobilizing, information seeking, threatening, persuasion, and partnering). Trust and distrust exerted different impacts on publics’ post-crisis communicative action intentions and distrust was a stronger driver. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Cost-containment,computers and confidentiality

The profession of social work has clear standards to follow in protecting confidentiality when a client discloses information in a psychotherapy session. These standards are examined in relation to an ever-increasing diresrefard for privacy as staff of managed care for mental health services and employee assistance programs gather and store information in computer databases, with the overall objective of cost-containment. Ethical principles are discussed and suggestions are made for safeguarding, the client's right to privacy.     

State standards for domestic violence perpetrator treatment: current status, trends, and recommendations

We empirically surveyed and analyzed existing standards for the treatment of perpetrators of domestic violence across the United States. Specific areas examined included: presence and scope; administrative entity for certifying; screening and risk assessment protocols; minimum length of treatment; theoretical or conceptual orientation; treatment content; preferred or allowable modalities of treatment; whether research findings are mentioned; methods for revising standards; and minimum education and training required for providers. We examined trends using several methods including comparisons between present and previous survey data (Maiuro et al., 2001). Positive trends were evident including increased use of multivariate models of treatment content, use of an intake assessment prior to treatment, use of a danger/lethality assessment to manage risk, recognition of the need for program evaluation and supportive research, and the requirement of a minimum level of formal education as a prerequisite for providers. We identify specific areas for further research and development and make recommendations for improving existing practice and standards of care.     

Families,Not Parents,Differ: Development of Communication in Finnish Infants

This longitudinal study on Finnish families was conducted to identify developmental differences in family‐level communication among mothers, fathers, and their infants during the second half of the infant's first year, and associations with infants' later language and communicative skills. We examined coregulated communication of parent‐infant dyads during 5‐min laboratory play sessions at 7 and 11 months. Few differences in mutually regulated communicative exchanges emerged between maternal and paternal dyads, and few developmental changes were found across the whole sample. Families with different communication profiles were identified, and changes rather than stability characterized communicative development at the family level. The family‐level differences at 7 months predicted variation in children's language and communicative skills at 14 months.     

Social work education,training and standards in Africa

This paper describes the historical development of social work education in South Africa, paying particular attention to the transformation of social work education and training post‐1994, and provides some detail about the efforts being made toward the development of a regional qualifications framework. It also describes the constitution of the Social Work Standards Generation Body (SGB), its functions, the processes followed by the SGB, and details the outcomes generated by the SGB. The potential costs and benefits of the development of minimum standards are discussed, with specific reference to the debates around the ‘whole qualifications’ and ‘unit standards’ approaches to generating standards. Although the registration of social work qualifications on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is a statutory requirement of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), and was imposed, it holds promise and signifies an achievement by the social work profession. Since the inception of social work education and training in South Africa in the 1920s these are the first nationally formulated standards that have been accepted.