Showing papers in "Communication Theory in 2005"
TL;DR: This paper explored the intersection between social norms and communication by specifying the meaning of norms, delineating the moderators in the relationship between norms and behavior, and highlighting some of the attributes of behaviors that determine their susceptibility to normative influences.
Abstract: This article identifies four factors for consideration in norms-based research to enhance the predictive ability of theoretical models. First, it makes the distinction between perceived and collective norms and between descriptive and injunctive norms. Second, the article addresses the role of important moderators in the relationship between descriptive norms and behaviors, including outcome expectations, group identity, and ego involvement. Third, it discusses the role of both interpersonal and mass communication in normative influences. Lastly, it outlines behavioral attributes that determine susceptibility to normative influences, including behavioral ambiguity and the public or private nature of the behavior. The study of norms is of particular importance to communication scholarship because, by definition, norms are social phenomena, and they are propagated among group members through communication (Kincaid, 2004). Communication plays a part not only in formulating perceptions about norms (as when people use the preponderance of a behavior depicted in the media to form their perceptions about the prevalence of the behavior), but also in acting as a conduit of influence (when people base their decisions to act in a situation on the support for their actions that is communicated to them). This article is based on the premise that, given the centrality of communicative processes in propagating information about norms, its inclusion would enhance the explanatory power of theories of normative influences. The purpose of this article is to explore the intersection between social norms and communication by specifying the meaning of norms, delineating the moderators in the relationship between norms and behavior, and highlighting some of the attributes of behaviors that determine their susceptibility to normative influences.
1,076 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains and show how a reconceptually defined theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of their expanded theory.
Abstract: Collective action theory, which is widely applied to explain human phenomena in which public goods are at stake, traditionally rests on at least two main tenets: that individuals confront discrete decisions about free riding and that formal organization is central to locating and contacting potential participants in collective action, motivating them, and coordinating their actions. Recent uses of technologies of information and communication for collective action appear in some instances to violate these two tenets. In order to explain these, we reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains. We show how a reconceptualized theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and we situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of our expanded theory.
548 citations
TL;DR: The authors make the case that the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy is created and maintained through organizational talk and practices and, in turn, serves as a constitutive discourse that produces four subject positions with both symbolic and material consequences: strategized self-subordination, perpetually deferred identities, auto-dressage, and the production of good little copers.
Abstract: This article begins with the following question: Why, even with the proliferation of poststructuralist theoretical understandings of identity, do people routinely talk in terms of “real” and “fake” selves? Through an analysis of critical empirical studies of identity-construction processes at work, this article makes the case that the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy is created and maintained through organizational talk and practices and, in turn, serves as a constitutive discourse that produces four subject positions with both symbolic and material consequences: strategized self-subordination, perpetually deferred identities, “auto-dressage,” and the production of “good little copers.” The article challenges scholars to reflexively consider the ways they may perpetuate the dichotomy in their own academic practices. Furthermore, the authors present the metaphor of the “crystallized self” as an alternative to the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy and suggest that communication scholars are well-poised to develop alternative vocabularies, theories, and understandings of identity within the popular imagination.
322 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use theories about media and emotion as well as theories about emotion as a process to develop a model for the unfolding of emotion in violent video games, and argue that violent games provide a gratifying context for the experience of emotions.
Abstract: This article proposes a theoretical explanation for the popularity of violent video games among adolescent male gamers. The author uses theories about media and emotion as well as theories about emotion as a process to develop a model for the unfolding of emotion in violent video games. It is argued that violent video games provide a gratifying context for the experience of emotions. The fact that gamers are largely in control of the game implies that they can voluntarily select the emotional situations they confront. This freedom is attractive for adolescents who are in the midst of constructing an identity. For them, the violent game is a safe, private laboratory where they can experience different emotions, including those that arc controversial in ordinary life. Gamers may deliberately select emotions that sustain dominant masculine identity (e.g., anger), as well as emotions that are at odds with dominant masculinity (e.g., fear).
250 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the study of health activism can benefit from adopting critical perspectives that focus on issues of power and conflict and on multisectoral views of health that examine activist efforts related to a broad array of the determinants of health, including political, economic, and environmental issues.
Abstract: This article argues that “health activism” as a concept has been overlooked as an important element of health communication and situates the concept in relation to key areas of research in the field, including health citizenship and community organizing. The author presents theoretical frameworks for comparing and contrasting health-related social action based on issue focus and political orientation that facilitate communication-based contributions to multidisciplinary research. This contribution is discussed in more detail by theorizing communicative processes associated with health activism. It is then argued that the study of health activism can benefit from adopting critical perspectives that focus on issues of power and conflict and on multisectoral views of health that examine activist efforts related to a broad array of the determinants of health, including political, economic, and environmental issues. Use of the term health activism is not particularly common in either popular or academic discourse, especially when compared to the ubiquity of the term environmental activism. We are more likely to hear discussion of AIDS activism or breast cancer activism than we are to hear the covering term “health activism.” By referring to activists one disease or health issue at a time without reference to the more encompassing concept, many scholars and the public may overlook important commonalities (and differences) among activist efforts that focus on a range of issues related to health. Initially defined in terms of efforts, often grassroots, to change norms, social structures, policies, and power relationships in the health arena, health activism includes actions related to patient activism, health care reform, disease prevention, illness advocacy, physical disability, environmental justice, public safety, and health disparities in populations such as women, minorities, gays, and lesbians, among others.
136 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines early problematizations of "the audience" in communication studies (in Michel Foucault's sense of problematization), and argues that an ontology of media subjects and audience powers offers new perspectives on audiences and audience studies.
Abstract: This article examines early problematizations of “the audience” in communication studies (in Michel Foucault's sense of problematization). Using Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's concept of the “multitude,” the author argues that the audience is a product of discursive constructions, but that these constructions themselves draw upon the ontological practices of what may be called “audience powers” or “mediated multitudes.” Problematizations of the audience in communication studies are examples of what Negri calls “constituted power,” as they seek to capture conceptually the immanent practices of audience constituent powers. Concentrating on 3 early audience discourses (propaganda, marketing, and moral panics), the author assesses how audience power provoked these problematizations and argues that an ontology of media subjects and audience powers offers new perspectives on audiences and audience studies.
60 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a synthesis of procedural justice research is presented to support a model for studying procedural justice as a type of framing to which individuals are exposed during participation in civic life.
Abstract: Efforts aimed at increasing civic-mindedness must consider both what encourages and what discourages political engagement. Procedural justice argues that individuals care about the fairness of decision-making or deliberative procedures beyond whether the outcome of any future decision goes in their preferred direction. In turn, perceptions of procedural fairness influence participant satisfaction, commitment to the organization, perceived legitimacy of authorities, and willingness to volunteer on an organization's behalf. The concept of procedural justice holds significant promise for addressing questions in political communication research, particularly those examining the impacts of public engagement. Thus, we offer a synthesis of procedural justice research to support a model for studying procedural justice as a type of framing to which individuals are exposed during participation in civic life and, in so doing, try to make more explicit the previously implicit communicative aspects of procedural justice.
48 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that recent scholarship emanating from the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) promises to further current understanding of relationship development processes in organizations, and highlight the potential of EP as both a metatheoretic framework through which seemingly disparate areas of scholarship can be unified, and a vehicle for theoretical development, a catalyst of novel predictions about communication in organizations.
Abstract: In this article, the authors argue that recent scholarship emanating from the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) promises to further current understanding of relationship development processes in organizations. To this end, they briefly review EP’s core assumptions about human nature and behavior and then examine three adaptive mechanisms that underlie close relational functioning in the workplace. Specifically, the authors describe how reciprocal altruism and preference for similarity, coupled with sensitivity toward prestige hierarchies, underscore the exchange and coordination activities of employees’ relationships at work. The proposed model of relationship development is discussed in terms of employee adjustment and integration processes. In conclusion, the authors highlight the potential of EP as both (a) a metatheoretic framework through which seemingly disparate areas of scholarship can be unified, and (b) a vehicle for theoretical development, a catalyst of novel predictions about communication in organizations, grounded in ultimate, rather than proximate, causation.
29 citations
TL;DR: This paper looks at popular cultural artifacts to consider the ways in which genetics and genetic technology are changing public thinking about health, behaviors, and reproduction, setting up a new system for evaluating choices and technologies within a genetic paradigm.
Abstract: This paper looks at popular cultural artifacts (films, television programs, magazines, and books) to consider the ways in which genetics and genetic technology are changing public thinking about health, behaviors, and reproduction, setting up a new system for evaluating choices and technologies within a genetic paradigm. Genetic thinking embroils us in a system of surveillance: discovering, reading, and interpreting our genomes has become the cutting edge of medical health practices. Yet, the lack of options for effective genetic interventions means that this surveillance system ends up supporting a largely preventative view of medicine, even to the point of “preventing” the birth of a child with a potential genetic problem. Ultimately, genetic knowledge is limiting and proscribing our health choices, not expanding them.
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the role of whiteness as a structuring absence to ethnographic audience research and argues that these narratives for whiteness can be traced to experiences in the field that are shaped by historical and institutional forces outside of the field.
Abstract: This article examines the role of whiteness as a structuring absence to ethnographic audience research. After ignoring whiteness altogether, media ethnographers have tended to essentialize whiteness within narratives of structural dominance or individual vulnerability. Using poststructuralist theories of language, whiteness, and hegemony, the author argues that these narratives for whiteness can be traced to experiences in the field that are shaped by historical and institutional forces outside of the field. Researchers both perform whiteness in the field, by claiming its privilege and hiding its visibility, and codify whiteness for others to identify outside the field. To illustrate, the author examines “narcissistic whiteness” and “defensive whiteness” as two articulations that are visible in her own field notes, interpreted through unifying narratives and rearticulated through an alternative reading of the notes.
20 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that the libertarian approach is insufficient as a basis for a news media ethic, and suggested a modified communitarian approach that advances media ethics theory by resisting a moralizing ethic, foregrounding the epistemic nature of moral philosophy as it relates to the communicative enterprise, and reconceptualizing the public sphere being served by the mass media as a population predicated on moral agency.
Abstract: Media theorists have created competing normative ethical frameworks based on libertarian and communitarian philosophies, but because each approach essentially promotes different moral principles, they do not merely offer competing alternatives that essentially serve the same purpose, as some scholars have presumed. This analysis suggests that the two dominant theoretical approaches of libertarianism and communitarianism require further clarification and elaboration. The article seeks to clarify why the libertarian approach is insufficient as a basis for a news media ethic. Instead, it suggests a modified communitarian approach that advances media ethics theory by resisting a moralizing ethic, foregrounding the epistemic nature of moral philosophy as it relates to the communicative enterprise, and reconceptualizing the public sphere being served by the mass media as a population predicated on moral agency.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze three examples that capture elements of a world saturated with science and technology and find that biotechnology offers a direct challenge to compliance because of its effects on context.
Abstract: The approach to health care advocated by compliance-gaining research asserts a vision of technology-mediated life that sees mostly advancements, improvements, and benefits brought about through biotechnology. A closer analysis offers a more problematic view of the body and biotechnology, one marked by disruption, contradiction, and transformation. Because of the growing importance of the self-regulation of illness and disability, the health communication and medical education fields have focused on compliance and compliance-gaining strategies as the means to empower patients in the recovery of lost health. This view of patient agency is limited by its exclusive focus on interpersonal, dyadic relationships and the presumption that agency can be transferred from one individual to another through an exchange of certified knowledge, skills, and technologies. Such a model of agency impoverishes what counts as context. This article analyzes three examples that capture elements of a world saturated with science and technology and finds that biotechnology offers a direct challenge to compliance because of its effects on context.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take a critical look at the discourse of globalization in the realm of television, suggesting that the dichotomy between national and global television is unduly simplistic and that a better understanding of how global television content enters local broadcasting is achieved by examining three variables: who selects the content and for whom, the proportion of local to foreign content and how foreign content is adapted to local viewing.
Abstract: This article takes a critical look at the discourse of globalization in the realm of television, suggesting that the dichotomy between national and global television is unduly simplistic. It proposes that a better understanding of how global television content enters local broadcasting is achieved by examining three variables: who selects the content and for whom, the proportion of local to foreign content, and how foreign content is adapted to local viewing. Based on these features and an analysis of the Israeli case, the author presents a typology of six types of television channels—a typology that focuses on the various viewing positions offered by various channels.
TL;DR: The authors proposes a meeting of media studies and the philosophy of nonviolence in order to better critique the tendency in popular media discourses about war and international conflict to naturalize violence as an eternal and essential human trait.
Abstract: This article proposes a meeting of media studies and the philosophy of nonviolence in order to better critique the tendency in popular media discourses about war and international conflict to naturalize violence as an eternal and essential human trait. Nonviolence exposes certain foundational myths about violence in the media; namely, the myths that violence is cultural (as implied in the “clash of civilizations” thesis), historical, or natural. However, this is possible only if nonviolence is retrieved from its present marginalization as a mere technique for political activism or personal behavior and understood more accurately as a coherent, universal, practical worldview that can inform a critical engagement with media discourses of violence. Using Gandhi's writings on nonviolence, this essay aims to initiate such an understanding, particularly in connection with existing critical approaches to media violence, such as cultivation research and cultural studies, and concludes by proposing a set of concrete questions for media research based on nonviolence.
TL;DR: The authors examines English-language media coverage of Seed over a 5-year period, tracing how his initial framing as a "mad scientist" was quickly contained and managed by the scientific community through his reframing as a bad scientist.
Abstract: In 1998, Chicago physicist Richard Seed's announcement that he would clone a human being set off an international media furor that revealed important insights into our understandings of biotechnology, scientists, and governmental regulation of genetic research. This study examines English-language media coverage of Seed over a 5-year period, tracing how his initial framing as a “mad scientist” was quickly contained and managed by the scientific community through his reframing as a “bad scientist.” Amid media calls for a response from government regulators, it became apparent that the state has failed to adequately prepare itself and the public for the eventuality of human cloning, a failure of biogovernance. This article discusses how three tensions in current biogovernmental practice were made visible once Seed was read as a biogovernmental event.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore issues of ownership as one particularly potent site of struggle in the biotechnological arena and discuss the problem with conceptualizing the body as property.
Abstract: This essay explores issues of ownership as one particularly potent site of struggle in the biotechnological arena. The article begins with the concept of ownership, followed by a discussion of the problem with conceptualizing the body as property. The author then maps the terrain of ownership, using the cadaver market, the organ trade, the market for replenishable human biological materials, and the market for genetic materials as examples. Two landmark legal cases (Diamond v. Chakarbarty and Moore v. Regents of the University of California) illustrate the limitations of traditional discourse on the body and the increasing urgency with which relations of power and agency play out in the biotechnology arena. New configurations of the body emerging in the biotechnology arena indicate that communication scholarship needs new conceptual tools in order to address what it means to be/have a body.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the public debate over reproductive and genetic technologies in Canada through an examination of the federal government's efforts to pass legislation in the area, including four attempts, in 1997, 2000, 2003, and finally 2004, before a bill was passed that regulated the use of embryos in both infertility treatments and nonreproductive genetic therapies.
Abstract: This article traces the protracted public debate over reproductive and genetic technologies in Canada through an examination of the federal government’s efforts to pass legislation in the area. Four attempts were made, in 1997, 2000, 2003, and finally 2004, before a bill was passed that regulated the use of embryos in both infertility treatments and nonreproductive genetic therapies. At stake in the debate was the supremacy of health over life as a fundamental value of Canadian national identity, and the role of biotechnology in ushering Canada into a new era of prosperity and global leadership. Using a feminist cultural framework, the author challenges notions of modernity versus postmodernity in the social construction of bodies, nations, and knowledge. She critiques the legal intrusions on women’s bodies in particular for the way that they, perhaps inadvertently, offer some limited form of autonomy for embryos as valuable commodities in scientific progress. Canada has long been considered to occupy a unique space in the Western world as a new country that has effectively skipped over some of the assumed logical steps toward modern nation building. Many have pointed to the country’s lack of revolution in its history as endemic to its problematic position as a modern nation-state. Although some may contest this as a carte blanche characterization, it is nonetheless a generally accepted and even sometimes cherished ideal, seen as central to Canada’s consensual, rational civil culture. However, in an era of globalization and transnationalism, where everything is cited as potentially revolutionary, that perception could stand in the way of Canada gaining access into this brave new world order. Thus, it is interesting that the government has placed a claim on biotechnology, and in particular health and therapeutic research, as a major priority for both economic and intellectual growth. At the same time, however, the legal and regulatory frameworks established thus far can only be characterized as strategies of avoidance. Since the final round of failed legislation on abortion in 1989,
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TL;DR: A comparison of the dominating perceptions of the relationship between text and knowledge in the Middle Ages, the modern era, and the postmodern era reveals a fundamental shift of attitude.
Abstract: A comparison of the dominating perceptions of the relationship between text and knowledge in the Middle Ages, the modern era, and the postmodern era reveals a fundamental shift of attitude. This article describes this shift metaphorically as a pendulum: from intra/intertextual study in the Middle Ages (when texts contained divine truth within themselves and in relation to other texts), to an extratextual methodology in the modern era (in which texts reflected objective reality), and back to postmodernist intra/intertextualism (in which texts do not reflect a doubtful objective reality but instead cloaked social constructions). The author posits that surprising similarities exist between the intra/intertextual cultures of the Middle Ages and the postmodern era and offers some explanations for these similarities.
TL;DR: This article examined Nelson's (2004) textual critique of the writings regarding communibiology and found that the claim that traditional genre theories are contradicted by this analysis is not justified. But they also pointed out that the motives for communibiological texts alleged by Nelson are preempted by the (conscious or nonconscious) motives of the critic.
Abstract: The motive analysis included in Nelson's (2004) textual critique of the writings regarding communibiology is examined and found erroneous. It is suggested that the claim that traditional genre theories are contradicted by this analysis is not justified. The motives for communibiological texts alleged by Nelson are seen as preempted by the (conscious or nonconscious) motives of the critic.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the changing ideology surrounding the body during the late 19th-early 20th century and observed that the body is conceived as a porous surface, allowing for the perimeter to be thought of as porous, specifically in regard to technology.
Abstract: This article illuminates the changing ideology surrounding the body during the late 19th–early 20th century. The study hypothesized that the shift in the cultural conception of the body to a permeable surface engendered what has become an ever-increasing interface between technology and corporeality. An examination of an assortment of cultural production—the philosophy of Henri Bergson, scientific photographer Etienne-Jules Marey, critical theorist Walter Benjamin, and the avant-garde Italian Futurists—indicates that the manner in which the body is conceived has broadened, allowing for the perimeter to be thought of as porous, specifically in regard to technology. Also implied is that memory and history are affected by the alteration to ideology, and subsequently the body. This study indicates the genesis of thought concerning the body and technology, and therefore, today's ideology concerning corporeality is better understood.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors expose the fallacious nature of Nelson's analysis and raise questions about the approach he employed, concluding that the motivation of the scholars contributing to the communibiological literature was the desire for status.
Abstract: As a result of Nelson's (2004) textual analysis of the communibiological literature, he concluded that the motive of the scholars contributing to the literature was the desire for status. In this essay, I expose the fallacious nature of Nelson's analysis and raise questions about the approach he employed.
TL;DR: The authors examines the California antismoking media campaigns and contemporary U.S. television and film that reframed smoking as an icon of "flawed modernity" marked by a polluting industrial economy and the Cold War.
Abstract: This article argues that in the early 1990s, a new discourse on cigarette smoking arose in the U.S. in both public health campaigns and commercial media that challenges us to rethink theoretically the nature of the media sphere in relation to the assumptions and goals of public health promotion. The article examines the California antismoking media campaigns and contemporary U.S. television and film that reframed smoking as an icon of “flawed modernity” marked by a polluting industrial economy and the Cold War. However, the wide variation in critical revision of the older smoking culture from one site to another within the media landscape suggests that the public media sphere may be far more fractured than is commonly acknowledged in social marketing and health promotion discussions.