One does not simply meme about organizations: Exploring the content creation strategies of user-generated memes on Imgur

This study explores how online publics are engaging with organizations by creating and sharing brand-related content online, outside corporate-controlled communication environments. This research employs a quantitative content analysis of memes shared on the social networking site Imgur to reveal how user-generated content conveys meaning about organizations. The analysis reveals brand-centric memes are generally classified as orphan memes, or memes that have distinct textual and visual characteristics separating them from established or emerging meme families. Memes about organizations are neither an overwhelming reflection of biting criticism or support, but rather a reflection of online public engagement with organizations that primarily use humor and textual brand features (or quiddities) to convey their commitment and satisfaction with the organization and unite meme families.     

Implementing School Based Youth Courts in a Rural Context: The Impact on Students’ Perceptions of School Climate,Individual Functioning,and Interpersonal Relationships

The Youth Court in Schools Project was implemented in two low-income, violent, racially/ethnically diverse rural counties. This study examined if the presence of Youth Court impacted students’ perceptions of school danger, individual functioning, and interpersonal relationships. Data were gathered from 3454 youth; following multiple imputation, data were analyzed using paired samples t tests. Results indicated that perceptions of school danger increased significantly and self-esteem decreased significantly in the control schools pretest to posttest. Violent behavior, anxiety, friend rejection, and bullying victimization decreased significantly in the Youth Court intervention schools pretest to posttest, but did not change significantly in the control schools. Findings provide preliminary evidence that Youth Court is an effective way of improving school climate, individual functioning, and interpersonal relationships.     

Modeling Synergy and Learning under Multiple Advanced Manufacturing Technologies

The advent of the wide variety of new, highly integrated, advanced manufacturing technologies available for acquisition by a firm's managers has brought to light an accompanying set of unexpected issues. These issues include expectations for the benefits and costs of these technologies, determining the appropriate order of implementation and finding a way to justify acquisition when many of the benefits are a function of the technology's learning and synergistic effects on other operations and technologies. We present here a model that captures the interaction effects of these highly integrated technologies and discuss the data requirements for application of the construct. We then illustrate the model's workings with a number of multitechnology examples and show the danger of ignoring the synergistic and learning effects of these technologies when considering their acquisition.     

Making Implementation More Democratic through Action Implementation Research

Public administration scholars often associate increased publicparticipation in policy implementation with the advancementof democratic values. Likewise, scholars engaged in the variousforms of action research (AR) promote their efforts as a meansto democratizing the research process or contributing to improvedsocial outcomes. Despite these common interests in participationand democracy, there have been few attempts to apply AR methodsto policy implementation problems. Drawing on Matland's conflict-ambiguitymatrix, we develop a framework for matching particular AR methodsto specific policy implementation contexts.     

“Everything That We Can Do”: A Content Analysis of the Protective Strategies Used by GLBTQ Parents

Despite increased access to parenting rights through legal marriage and adoption, U.S. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) parents continue to experience varying levels of support for their families. This study explored protective strategies, or actions taken to meet one's safety needs when vulnerable, that GLBTQ parents pursue. This study included 454 GLBTQ parents from a national survey. Participants' open-ended responses about protective strategies were extracted from the survey and analyzed using content analysis. Responses were coded into 10 categories capturing strategies GLBTQ parents used to protect their families. While strategies utilizing legal supports were common, the most cited strategies were symbolic strategies, including creating a family name and developing written statements of parent wishes. Exploratory analyses revealed no difference in mean number of strategies used between parents who reported having legal status as a parent through adoption or listing on the birth certificate and those without legal parenting status. These results suggest that GLBTQ parents, regardless of their legal parenting status, take intentional measures to achieve a sense of safety and increase social support. The findings reiterate the importance of both legal and social support of GLBTQ parents.     

Applying a Positive Youth Development Perspective to Observation of Bereavement Camps for Children and Adolescents

A positive youth development perspective focuses on recognizing psychosocial strengths and providing social environments that contribute to the development of these in children and adolescents. Bereavement camps can provide such an environment as they help children cope with the death of someone close. The purpose of this study was to observe bereavement camps through the lens of positive youth development to determine the applicability of the eight features of positive developmental settings for describing bereavement camps (safety, appropriate structure, supportive relationships, opportunities to belong, positive norms, support for efficacy, skill building opportunities, integration of family and community). Observational notes were recorded by researchers during on-site visits to three different weekend bereavement camps. Results identified how each element of positive developmental settings was exemplified in either typical camp activities or bereavement-focused activities. For example, assigning campers to cabin groups based on age and gender provided opportunities to belong, and giving campers a comfort object and a big buddy provided supportive relationships. Findings were used to create a positive developmental settings observation checklist for use by bereavement camp practitioners to assess the extent to which each camp provides the requisite elements for promoting positive youth development.     

Deaf studies meets autistic studies

What might deaf studies and autistic studies have in common? Why, in many cases, is deafness considered to be a norm to be analyzed through linguistic and cultural frameworks, while autism is (still) seen as pathological? Utilizing ethnographic research, participation in two conferences on autism and sign language, and an analysis of deaf peoples’ and autistic peoples’ self-(re)presentation, we attend to sensory solidarities that might exist between deaf and autistic people, communities, and studies. We argue that an analysis of the two fields side-by-side offers important insights into new ways of conceptualizing sociality, identity, and community both in the specific cases of deafness and autism, and more broadly. Additionally, attending to deaf and autistic peoples’ language and communication desires and practices opens up analytic and empirical space for considering interdependent and multimodal communicative approaches.     

Conducive Characteristics or Anti-Racist Context? Decomposing the Reasons for Veterans’ High Likelihood of Interracial Marriage

Over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, veterans have been more likely to enter into race/ethnic intermarriages than non-veterans. Theories of race/ethnic intermarriage variously point to how minority race/ethnicity, race/ethnically diverse social settings, progressive racial attitudes, and high socioeconomic status increase individuals’ likelihood of intermarrying. Veterans’ unique racial and socioeconomic characteristics may contribute to their greater likelihood of intermarrying relative to non-veterans: larger percentages of veterans than non-veterans are members of racial and ethnic minority groups, while military service increases individual service members’ long-term economic and educational prospects. At the same time, veterans share in common their exposure to the unique military environment, which may increase their likelihood of intermarriage by diversifying their social circles, and subjecting their attitudes and behavior to group norms that are more explicitly egalitarian than those of society at large. The present study considers these two possible explanations for veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarriage. We use data on seven cohorts of men over six decades in the Current Population Survey, representing a total of 1,456,742 observations, to decompose the difference in likelihood of racial intermarriage between veterans and non-veterans among married men aged 18–65. We find that across cohorts and decades, veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarrying is not fully explained by their race/ethnic and socioeconomic composition. We argue that veterans’ greater likelihood of intermarrying may therefore be driven by their exposure to the military environment.