Channel selection and knowledge acquisition during the 2009 Beijing H1N1 flu crisis: a media system dependency theory perspective

This study uses secondary data from a four-wave repeated cross-sectional survey to examine communication channel usage patterns and their effects on health knowledge acquisition during the different phases of the 2009 H1N1 crisis in Beijing, China. The results suggest that channel choice, particularly for mobile phone and interpersonal communication, varies as a function of different levels of threat during a crisis. Moreover, social groups like students, retirees, and professionals differed in their channel selection. The study concludes that television users have more H1N1 knowledge than non-users and that in most cases, interpersonal communication does not contribute to knowledge gains. The theoretical implications are discussed at the end.     

Social media,empathy and interpersonal skills: social work students’ reflections in the digital era

ABSTRACT

This paper examines second-year social work students’ (n = 19) reflections on empathy as part of an interpersonal skills course at a regional university in Australia. Students were asked to consider their personal, online and classroom experiences, before responding to a reflective learning prompt: ‘Online communication is killing connection: (the Facebook Like symbol) does not equal empathy’. Qualitative analysis of their responses identified tensions between students’ engagement with social media and their developing understandings of empathy. Students reported an ease and confidence in the use of social media, but were also aware of the risks associated with perceived anonymity, shifting boundaries and an absence of audial and verbal cues in establishing context and quality of communication. Their reflections also suggested that the range of stimulus material used in the interpersonal skills course—including podcasts—had increased their social media awareness and their desire to improve their online interpersonal skills. The implications for professional and pedagogical objectives, as well as curriculum design are discussed.     

Decrypting cultural nuances: using drama techniques from the theatre of the oppressed to strengthen cross cultural communication in social work students

ABSTRACT

Despite widening participation in social work education in the UK, social work students from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds can find that they have less positive experiences on social work courses than their counterparts. This can happen when courses do not equip students to navigate the subtle rules of communication with service users that are premised on dominant UK values. As a consequence BME students can be assessed as having poor interpersonal skills and poor skills in engaging service users. However, the issue is often more one of cultural differences and high expectations of cultural integration than one of incompetence.

This paper reports on a drama workshop using techniques from the Theatre of the Oppressed to foster awareness of the complexities of cross cultural communication that BME students may face. The workshop facilitates insight into the nuances of culturally informed values that differ from dominant UK values.

Drawing on student workshop evaluations, the authors highlight the positive use of techniques from the Theatre of the Oppressed as a pro-active pedagogical approach to equipping BME students with insight and skill to circumnavigate cross cultural communication in practice and develop awareness of empowering strategies to combat negative paradigms about BME cultures.     

Student mobility and identity-related language learning

This paper reviews some recent studies problematizing various aspects of identity in relation to mobile students’ encounters with the social interactive and pragmatic dimensions of language. The paper will examine several salient demographic categories represented in the literature: nationality, ‘foreigner’ status, gender, age, and sexuality. These studies clearly demonstrate that student sojourners abroad may encounter challenges not only to their language skills, but also to their identities. Furthermore, these challenges can influence both the overall quality of study or residence abroad as an environment for language learning and the particular aspects of language that students choose to appropriate or reject. In light of these findings, it would appear that simply enjoining language learners to become more engaged or less judgmental may not be sufficient. Rather, what is in order is a renewed emphasis on awareness of language and culture as well as approaches helping students to understand how linguistic choices both reflect and create interpersonal, social, and cultural contexts.     

‘What you need to do is …’: social work students’ reflections on an advice giving audit exercise

This paper reports on qualitative research investigating the advice giving behaviours of social work students. Second-year students, who were enrolled in an interpersonal communication skills course, were required to undertake an ‘advice-giving audit’ exercise across 6 days, with the aim of strengthening their awareness of the interactive nature of advice giving. Students then wrote a diary entry about the frequency of their everyday advice giving behaviour, its intent and reception. Nineteen students provided these reflections for analysis. Findings included three themes pertaining to advice-giving: (i) Giving advice as a natural, comfortable and unconscious way of communicating; (ii) Power and position influences advice dissemination, and (iii) Withholding advice opens, deepens and confuses norms of communication. A fourth theme pertained to the insights that students reported from engaging with the exercise. These findings illustrate the complex interactional process associated with professional advice giving. The research also suggests that experiential activities, which are conducted outside of the classroom, have significant potential to promote the critical examination of embedded communicative practices.     

Towards a Communication Dialectic: Embedded Technology and the Enhancement of Place*

Communication literature traditionally divides interaction into two forms: mass media and interpersonal communication. These ideal types are unquestionably useful heuristic tools. Yet their conceptual utility is often undermined when researchers place them at opposite ends of a linear, historical transformation in which mass media technology is believed to supplant interpersonal communication and the locations in which it occurs. This article abandons the polar, historical relationship in favor of a communication dialectic that recognizes the synthesis of ideal types into composite forms of interaction. Embedded technology demonstrates the dialectic by exploring how electronic media fixed within a physical location can combine with the interpersonal communication taking place there to enhance group interaction. The resulting hybrid defies the assumption that mass media simply displace interpersonal interaction, pointing instead to a dialectic relationship in which ideal types continually challenge and transform one another.     

How College Students Spend Their Time Communicating

This study sought to assess how college students spend their time communicating and what impact, if any, communications devices may be having on how that time is spent. Undergraduates (N=696) at four southeastern colleges were surveyed. Results revealed that listening comprises 55.4% of the total average communication day followed by reading (17.1%), speaking (16.1%), and writing (11.4%). Each of these communication behaviors includes some aspect of Internet use. College students spend as much time listening to media as they do engaged in interpersonal interactions. New technology is changing the way mediated communication activities are perceived. A different paradigm of expressive, receptive, and interactive communication is offered.     

Transference,Countertransference, and Mutuality in Relational Social Work with College Students

The college experience represents a major life transition from adolescence to adulthood, which is often fraught with challenges in relationships, identity formation, and communal belonging. Steady generational changes in self and relational identity have led to younger generations that increasingly embody a more interpersonal and less individualistic conception of the human person, with less rigid norms and greater openness to diversity. These characteristics make college students an appropriate target population for interpersonal psychotherapies based on mutuality of process. Relational therapy is a particularly fitting treatment modality for college students, as it focuses on these very qualities. This article reviews the current literature on relational theory in psychological and social work practice, describing its principal tenets and concepts, and applying this theory to clinical work with college students to reveal applications for constructive practice with this population.     

“He Wanted Me to Achieve that for Our Family and I Did,Too”: Exploring First-Generation Students’ Experiences of Turning Points During the Transition to College

This study explored the ways in which family communication facilitated support and persistence for first-generation students during the transition from high school through the first year of college with a specific focus on the first-year experience, a pivotal time when first-generation students often decide whether they will leave or stay in college. Through semistructured interviews, we identified the communication events that first-generation students perceived to be turning points in their interpersonal interactions with their family members. Seventeen participants identified a total of 121 turning points that they experienced from family members spanning from the time they had their first conversation about going to college through the first year of college. Interviews revealed three suprathemes of turning points: (a) coauthoring the dream, (b) experiencing obstacles to the dream, and (c) actualizing the dream.     

Permanently online and permanently connected: Taiwanese university students’ attachment style,mobile phone usage,and well-being

Taiwan has been the top country worldwide in terms of its adoption and use of mobile phones. This study explores the permanently online (PO) and permanently connected (PC) phenomenon in mobile phone use among Taiwanese university students. It seeks to determine whether attachment styles are a distinctive factor that influences PO and PC (POPC) behavior and leads to various levels of well-being. The results of this study provide initial evidence that Taiwanese users highly depend on their mobile phones for PC and PO activities but perceive that being permanently connected causes interpersonal stress. Although the findings showed that all styles were positively associated with PO, only the secure and anxious styles predicted PC. Regarding mobile phone activities, the avoidant attachment style was not associated with any activities, the secure attachment style was positively associated with online and voice communication as well as information-seeking activities, and the anxious attachment style was associated only with voice communication. Furthermore, attachment styles lead to various levels of interpersonal stress through PO and PC behavior. The anxious style interacts with PO on interpersonal stress. This study provides evidence that attachment style is a significant antecedent of POPC and its consequences in mobile phone usage.     

Is interpersonal trust a necessary condition for organisational learning?

Abstract

The organisational behaviour and management literature has devoted a lot attention on various factors affecting organisational learning. While there has been much work done to examine trust in promoting organisational learning, there is a lack of consensus on the specific type of trust involved. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of interpersonal trust in promoting organisational learning and propose a research agenda to test the extent of interpersonal trust on organisational learning. This paper contributes to the existing organisational learning literature by specifying a specific form of trust, interpersonal trust, which promotes organisational learning and proposing a future research direction. The paper is organised as follows: firstly, a common conceptualisation of organisational learning is revisited. Secondly, the existing literature on trust reviewed and salient points on how interpersonal trust enhances organisational learning discussed. Finally, a research agenda to test the extent of interpersonal trust on organisational learning is being set out.     

Theory and Research in Teaching. Arno A. Bellack,Editor. New York: Teachers College,Columbia University, 1963. 122 pp. $2.50 Softbound

This study compares the efficacy of experimental, competency-based methods of teaching the interpersonal skills of empathic communication, respect, and genuineness with traditional didactic methods. An experimental design using randomly-chosen experimental and control groups of first-year graduate students was employed. Experimental conditions involved communication laboratories consisting of didactic and experiential learning opportunities organized in a systematic and sequential fashion. The findings supported the hypothesis that the experimental groups would significantly outperform the control groups on the criterion variable. A second hypothesis, that the control groups would not achieve significant gains, was refuted.     

Public relations education in Thailand

Public relation education in Thailand, offered at undergraduate and graduate levels at 21 universities, has become one of the most popular and competitive programs chosen by Thai students. This article discusses the development of public relations education in Thailand, the structure of current programs' curricula and course content at eight universities (three public, five private), graduate programs, instruction, and faculty.The in-depth interviews with public relations faculty revealed that while public university professors believed their students were well-prepared academically, most at private universities did not think the current curriculum sufficiently prepared students to be competitive in the work force in the future. The faculty uniformly agreed, however, that courses in interpersonal communication, intercultural/international communication, marketing communication, and new media technology should be added to the curriculum to help better prepare future practitioners to work in the global communication era.     

Lyme Disease: A Case Report

Abstract

Using a needs-assessment technique called story-boarding to determine characteristics of health promotion and wellness among university students is discussed. Storyboarding allows students to work together as they generate ideas and eliminates the territorial defensiveness that often occurs when new ideas are suggested. Sixteen graduate students in a health education teaching methods course demonstrated the use of the technique to identify characteristics of wellness for university students. In addition, they identified content areas and outlined key programs, services, personal habits, and skills useful for enhancing university students' wellness.     

《霍华德庄园》中的“联结”主题探析

E.M.福斯特是一位在现代英国文学乃至世界文学中占有重要地位的小说家。其作品主要反映了西方社会在＂发达＂到了一定历史阶段的时候所呈现的现实。作为一个人文主义者,福斯特尊重友谊、注重人际间的交往和人际关系的建立。因此,福斯特小说的重要主题便是＂联结＂。本文从福斯特的代表作品《霍华德庄园》出发,研究他的＂联结＂思想及其如何从梦想走向幻灭。     

Imperative for an Arab model of public relations as a framework for diplomatic,corporate and nongovernmental organization relationships

This paper advocates a morally/ethically defensible “organic theory” of public relations that is in opposition to the public relations literature that predominantly suggests that only those publics that have direct consequences for the organization are publics with whom public relations practitioners should deal. A biological metaphor can be used in supporting this “organic” theory of public relations in which the organization is an organ and society is a body as a whole.This paper concludes that the process of public relations, as well as the outcomes, is critically important in maintaining a metabolic balance and harmony within society itself—a requisite for the health and well-being of nation-states, corporations and nongovernmental organizations. Much of this process involves communication as a ritual, rather than communication as transmission of information; it involves interpersonal communication, rather than mass communication. It involves relationship-building as opposed to persuasion. Much of this process has been found traditionally in Arab culture, and these rich traditions should be recognized and examined for their utility and value in developing an Arab model of public relations to help resolve the plethora of 21st Century issues that threaten global stability and ultimately the well-being of all cultures and societies.     

Media Exposure or Pressure? The Mediating Role of Nonmediated Norms in Young Adults’ Body Esteem

This study explores how media use, sociocultural, and individual differences factors influence college students’ body esteem. Two hundred seventy-four college students participated in this online survey. Women reported lower body esteem than men. The influence of sociocultural pressure on body esteem was slightly more pronounced among men compared to women. Magazine reading and TV viewing had little bearing on body esteem. Sociocultural pressure was the most influential factor that contributed to both men and women’s low body esteem. Specifically, the most salient predictor of low body esteem for both men and women was influence from family and friends. Not only did peer and family pressure have a direct impact, they also mediated the impact of media pressure on body esteem. This study offers a prime location in which to integrate studies of media influence and interpersonal communication. Limitations and directions for future research are also outlined.     

Virtual Worlds and Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

The introduction of computerised virtual worlds in the early twenty-first century was considered to be an innovation that would be widely used in higher education. There are a number of examples of virtual worlds used for higher education in medicine, nursing, and allied health, including examples in social work. The aim of this article is to explore the potential value of virtual-world technology to enhance the student learning experience for social work education in interpersonal communication skills in a virtual health centre. Findings of a study of Australian undergraduate social work students who engaged in a role play in a virtual health centre for skill development in interpersonal communication are presented. The study findings highlight issues for social work educators to consider when deciding whether or not to use virtual-world technology in social work education, and when designing further research on similar innovations.     

College students coping with interpersonal stress: Examining a control-based model of coping

Objective: The ways that college students cope with stress, particularly interpersonal stress, may be a critical factor in determining which students are at risk for impairing mental health disorders. Using a control-based model of coping, the present study examined associations between interpersonal stress, coping strategies, and symptoms. Participants: A total of 135 undergraduate students from 2 universities. Methods: Interpersonal stress, coping strategies, depression, anxiety, and somatization were assessed via self-report. Results: Students reporting more interpersonal stress reported more depression, anxiety, and somatization, and they reported less use of engagement coping strategies and greater use of disengagement coping strategies. Engagement coping strategies accounted for a significant portion of the association between interpersonal stress and mental health symptoms. Unexpectedly, coping strategies did not moderate the association between stress and mental health symptoms. Conclusion: Interventions designed to improve students' coping strategies may be an effective way to reduce mental health problems on college campuses.     

Alcoholism/Drug Abuse Counselors in Industry:

A basic premise in the canons of therapy is that all counselors possess interpersonal skills. To many this means counselors enter the profession with an a priori compassion to "help people" and perform services expected of them by agencies. This premise is so standard that many clinical training programs rarely require courses in public speaking, empathy, and business diplomacy skills. But clinical personnel employed in industry and conducting Employee Assistance Programs may, in fact, have interpersonal deficits that jeopardize their jobs. This paper examines a workable model for interpersonal communication between counselors and those employees diagnosed "at risk" by a referral team.