Colleges and Department Research
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Research, creative, and scholarly works created by the university community organized by college.
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Browsing Colleges and Department Research by Department "Communication Studies"
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Item Family Communication at the End of Life(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2017-07) Keeley, Maureen P.People often feel awkward and ill at ease when faced with the opportunity for communication at the end of life, thus the overall theme for the articles in this special issue is the creation of more awareness and knowledge regarding the depth, breadth, and importance of current research exploring family communication at the end of life. This introductory essay attempts to accomplish the following: (1) discuss the importance of talk regarding death; (2) highlight the formative role of family interactions on the death and dying process; and (3) outline the articles in this special issue. Scholars contributing to this special issue on "Family Communication at the End of Life" have provided evidence that communication is important between and for terminally ill individuals, family members, and healthcare/palliative care specialists. Overall, research exploring communication at the end of life is especially relevant because every person experiences the death and loss of loved ones, and ultimately faces the reality of their own death.Item Final Conversations: Overview and Practical Implications for Patients, Families, and Healthcare Workers(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2017-04) Keeley, Maureen P.; Generous, Mark A.The current paper presents a summary of a 12-year body of research on final conversations, which will be useful for healthcare providers who work with patients and family nearing the end-of-life, as well as for patients and their family members. Final conversations encompass any and all conversations that occur between individuals with a terminal diagnosis and their family members (all participants are aware that their loved one is in the midst of the death journey). Final conversations take the family member's perspective and highlights what are their memorable messages with the terminally ill loved one. In this paper the authors highlight the message themes present at the end-of-life for both adults and children, the functions each message theme serves for family members, and lastly, the communicative challenges of final conversations. Additionally, the authors discuss the current nature and future of final conversations research, with special attention paid to practical implications for healthcare providers, patients, and family members; also, scholarly challenges and future research endeavors are explored.Item Keynote Address: Finding the Sweet Spot in Human Communication(2010-07-24) Salem, Philip J.The dynamic tension in all living systems is between similarity and difference. There are many sets of polarized terms representing this tension, but chaos and complexity scholars recognized this tension as amounts of information. Information represents the amount of relative variety – a mix of similarity and difference, and when the amounts were high, but not too high, the system moved to transformation – to the edge of chaos, to the complexity regime, to strange attractors, or to chaos, depending on the model. The sweet spot is that range of relative variety, just the proper mix of similarity and difference, leading to transformation. Human communication is an emergent social process. It occurs when individuals in a social relationship create messages cueing each other as part of an ongoing episode. Human communication is an effort to make sense of an episode created by the process itself. The process constitutes our social and psychological life together. This paper explores the dynamic tension in communication constituting three phenomena: (a) self, (b) trust in immediate and extended relationships such as social networks, and (c) organizations. In each case I will describe current literature highlighting tensions between similarity and difference, and I will explore the potential to move from one basin of attraction to another. The primary constraints on modeling communication transformations are discovering the appropriate parameters and bracketing sequences to define initial conditions, constraints common to modeling all nonlinear processes.Item Organizational Communication and Higher Education(American Association for Higher Education, 1981-01) Gratz, Robert D.; Salem, Philip J.This research report examines major themes in the literature related to organizational communication and higher education. Academic institutions are social systems whose primary function is information processing, and, as such, they are prone to problems common among social systems. Academic institutions have often devoted great energy to communication with external publics, but their focus on internal communication problems usually has had a lower priority. Several previous studies have examined external communication from an institution with emphasis on the public relations aspects. This report concentrates on the internal aspects of organizational communication in higher education.Item Personal-Organizational Processes in Workplace Health Promotion: Understanding Wellness Program Participation in China(University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, 2019-01) Zhu, Yaguang; Dailey, StephanieAround the world, there has been a noticeable increase in demand for workplace health promotion (WHP). Research has demonstrated the beneficial outcomes of WHP program participation, yet scholars lack an all-encompassing framework that captures why employees do or do not participate in these initiatives, especially in non-Western contexts. To show the role of two personal-organizational processes--perceived organizational support and organizational identification--in predicting WHP program participation, we collected survey data from 204 employees at a Chinese company with a wellness program. Results suggest that organizational identification mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and employees' participation in WHP programs. Besides contributing to the WHP literature in non-Western countries, this study opens up new opportunities to explore the relationship between other personal-organizational processes and their relationship to WHP.Item Physicians’ Religious Topic Avoidance during Clinical Interactions(Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2017-05) Villagran, Melinda; MacArthur, Brenda L.; Lee, Lauren E.; Ledford, Christy J. W.; Canzona, Mollie R.Religious and spiritual (R/S) conversations at the end-of-life function to help patients and their families find comfort in difficult circumstances. Physicians who feel uncertain about how to discuss topics related to religious beliefs may seek to avoid R/S conversations with their patients. This study utilized a two-group objective structured clinical examination with a standardized patient to explore differences in physicians' use of R/S topic avoidance tactics during a clinical interaction. Results indicated that physicians used more topic avoidance tactics in response to patients' R/S inquiries than patients' R/S disclosures; however, the use of topic avoidance tactics did not eliminate the need to engage in patient-initiated R/S interactions.Item Retelling Stories in Organizations: Understanding the Functions of Narrative Repetition(Academy of Management, 2013-10) Dailey, Stephanie; Browning, LarryScholars have yet to explore narrative repetition—when a story is recalled and retold from another narrative—for its rich conceptual depth. To build a case for this area, we analyze stories from scholarly research to identify the functions of narrative repetition. We distinguish three dualities produced through repetition, which are grounded in cultural issues of sameness and difference. These dualities—control/resistance, differentiation/integration, and stability/change—bring a more sophisticated understanding of the inherent complexity of narrative as a mode of interpretation and offer a transformative view of narrative that describes how the meaning of stories shifts over time. When people repeat stories, some individuals may interpret a narrative of stability, whereas others may hear a hint of change. Furthermore, we offer narrative repetition as a new methodology for organizational research with the recommendation that scholars use the recurrence of a story as a starting point for inquiry into the cultural life of organizations.Item Social Media Behaviors and Psychosocial Predictors of Social Media Addiction(2018-02-23) Howard, Krista; Roming, Sinjin M.P.; Ceballos, Natalie A.; Dailey, Stephanie; Grimes, TomSocial media addiction is an ongoing problem. Maladaptive social and personal factors associated with addiction can include: • Preoccupation with social media; • Withdrawal symptoms; • Replacing important activities (sleep, eating) with social media use; • Escape from problems (poor coping); • Loss of relationships. Prior research has identified several independent factors related to social media addiction: • Desire for belongingness; • Lack of conscientiousness; • High levels of extroversion; • Low self-esteem; • Anxiety; • Depression; • Stress. This study aims to simultaneously evaluate both the social media behaviors and psychosocial factors related to high levels of social media addiction.Item The Seven Communication Reasons Organizations Do Not Change(Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2008-01) Salem, Philip J.Data describe six common communication behaviors during failed organizational change efforts. The combination of these behaviors suggests a seventh pattern. Communication during failed efforts seldom involves enough communication opportunities, lacks any sense of emerging identification, engenders distrust, and lacks productive humor. These problems are compounded by conflict avoidance and a lack of interpersonal communication skills. Members decouple the system, sheltering the existing culture until it is safe for it to reemerge later.Item Upward Social Comparisons and Posting Under the Influence: Investigating Social Media Behaviors of U.S. Adults with Generalized Anxiety Disorder(Spotlight on Research, 2019-10) Bonnette, Aaron; Robinson, Anthony; Dailey, Stephanie; Ceballos, Natalie A.; Howard, KristaIntroduction: The use of social media has been steadily increasing among U.S. adults, and while time spent on social media has been linked to certain mental health difficulties, it remains unclear precisely which social media behaviors may be damaging to mental well-being. The current study aimed to identify specific social media behaviors related to Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Methods: U.S. adults (n = 1,314) aged 18 to 82 (M = 35.74) who actively use social media were recruited to participate in an online survey assessing specific social media behaviors. The Patient Health Questionnaire was included to assess the presence of GAD. Univariate analyses were conducted to identify specific social media behaviors associated with GAD. A stepwise binary multivariate logistic regression was developed to determine the key social media behaviors most strongly associated with GAD. Results: Analyses at the univariate level showed a trend, such that individuals with GAD endorsed behaviors associated with social media addiction and censorship. Other behaviors associated with GAD included a greater likelihood of participants comparing themselves to others who are better off than they are, being bothered if unfriended/unfollowed, and being more likely to post under the influence. The multivariate logistic regression model identified two key social media factors most strongly associated with GAD: participants comparing themselves to others better off (p < .001) and posting while drinking alcohol (p = .044). Conclusion: Upward social comparisons and alcohol use while on social media are significantly associated with GAD in an adult population.