bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nitrogen metastable (N2(A3Σu+)) in a cold argon atmospheric pressure plasma jet: Shielding and gas composition
Authors: Iseni Sylvain , Bruggeman Peter J. , Weltmann Klaus-Dieter , Reuter Stephan
Published: May 2016

N 2 ( A 3 Σ u + ) metastable species are detected and measured in a non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma jet by laser induced fluorescence. A shielding device is used to change the ambient conditions additionally to the feeding gas composition. Varying the amount of N2 and air admixed to the feeding gas as well as changing the shielding gas from N2 to air reveals that the highest N2(A3Σu+) is achieved in the case of air admixtures in spite of the enhanced collisional quenching due to the presence of O2. The reasons for these observations are discussed in detail.
Effect of glass inclination angle on solar still performance
Authors: Azooz A. A. , Younis G. G.
Published: May 2016

Experimental results on the performances of ten solar stills with different glass inclination angles are presented. The inclination angles selected are 10–55 in steps of 5°. Results demonstrate that the angles between 30° and 35° may be associated with the least still performance while those between 20° and 25° provide the optimum performance as far as the clean water productivity and cost effectiveness are concerned. Empirical modeling of the still operation produced good agreement with the experimental data.
Nanoparticles induced multiferroicity in liquid crystal
Authors: Ganguly Prasun , Kumar Ajay , Muralidhar K. , Biradar A. M.
Published: May 2016

Soft multiferroic character has been observed in a ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) dispersed with nickel nanoparticles (Ni NPs). A suitable amount of ferromagnetic Ni NPs has been added into FLC material, and the co-existence of ferroelectric and ferromagnetic ordering is examined using P-E and M-H hysteresis measurements. The magnitude of ferromagnetic order is found to depend strongly on the concentration of Ni NPs. Our theoretical approach indicated a strong dependence of helical pitch of FLC on the doping concentration of Ni NPs. We proposed that the intrinsic magnetic field of Ni NPs has been coupled with that of director field of the FLC molecules to result in the observed multiferroic behavior.
Modeling of micro-scale thermoacoustics
Authors: Offner Avshalom , Ramon Guy Z.
Published: May 2016

Thermoacoustic phenomena, that is, onset of self-sustained oscillations or time-averaged fluxes in a sound wave, may be harnessed as efficient and robust heat transfer devices. Specifically, miniaturization of such devices holds great promise for cooling of electronics. At the required small dimensions, it is expected that non-negligible slip effects exist at the solid surface of the “stack”-a porous matrix, which is used for maintaining the correct temporal phasing of the heat transfer between the solid and oscillating gas. Here, we develop theoretical models for thermoacoustic engines and heat pumps that account for slip, within the standing-wave approximation. Stability curves for engines with both no-slip and slip boundary conditions were calculated; the slip boundary condition curve exhibits a lower temperature difference compared with the no slip curve for resonance frequencies that characterize micro-scale devices. Maximum achievable temperature differences across the stack of a heat pump were also calculated. For this case, slip conditions are detrimental and such a heat pump would maintain a lower temperature difference compared to larger devices, where slip effects are negligible.
Controlling the exciton energy of a nanowire quantum dot by strain fields
Authors: Chen Yan , Zadeh Iman Esmaeil , Jöns Klaus D. , Fognini Andreas , Reimer Michael E. , Zhang Jiaxiang , Dalacu Dan , Poole Philip J. , Ding Fei , Zwiller Val , Schmidt Oliver G.
Published: May 2016

We present an experimental route to engineer the exciton energies of single quantum dots in nanowires. By integrating the nanowires onto a piezoelectric crystal, we controllably apply strain fields to the nanowire quantum dots. Consequently, the exciton energy of a single quantum dot in the nanowire is shifted by several meVs without degrading its optical intensity and single-photon purity. Second-order autocorrelation measurements are performed at different strain fields on the same nanowire quantum dot. The suppressed multi-photon events at zero time delay clearly verify that the quantum nature of single-photon emission is well preserved under external strain fields. The work presented here could facilitate on-chip optical quantum information processing with the nanowire based single photon emitters.
Broadband local dielectric spectroscopy
Authors: Labardi M. , Lucchesi M. , Prevosto D. , Capaccioli S.
Published: May 2016

A route to extend the measurement bandwidth of local dielectric spectroscopy up to the MHz range has been devised. The method is based on a slow amplitude modulation at a frequency Ω of the excitation field oscillating at a frequency ω and the coherent detection of the modulated average electric force or force gradient at Ω. The cantilever mechanical response does not affect the measurement if Ω is well below its resonant frequency; therefore, limitations on the excitation field frequency are strongly reduced. Demonstration on a thin poly(vinyl acetate) film is provided, showing its structural relaxation spectrum on the local scale up to 45 °C higher than glass temperature, and nanoscale resolution dielectric relaxation imaging near conductive nanowires embedded in the polymer matrix was obtained up to 5 MHz frequency, with no physical reason to hinder further bandwidth extension.
All-solid-state supercapacitors on silicon using graphene from silicon carbide
Authors: Wang Bei , Ahmed Mohsin , Wood Barry , Iacopi Francesca
Published: May 2016

Carbon-based supercapacitors are lightweight devices with high energy storage performance, allowing for faster charge-discharge rates than batteries. Here, we present an example of all-solid-state supercapacitors on silicon for on-chip applications, paving the way towards energy supply systems embedded in miniaturized electronics with fast access and high safety of operation. We present a nickel-assisted graphitization method from epitaxial silicon carbide on a silicon substrate to demonstrate graphene as a binder-free electrode material for all-solid-state supercapacitors. We obtain graphene electrodes with a strongly enhanced surface area, assisted by the irregular intrusion of nickel into the carbide layer, delivering a typical double-layer capacitance behavior with a specific area capacitance of up to 174 μF cm−2 with about 88% capacitance retention over 10 000 cycles. The fabrication technique illustrated in this work provides a strategic approach to fabricate micro-scale energy storage devices compatible with silicon electronics and offering ultimate miniaturization capabilities.
Efficient analysis of mouse genome sequences reveal many nonsense variants
Authors: Steeland Sophie , Timmermans Steven , Van Ryckeghem Sara , Hulpiau Paco , Saeys Yvan , Van Montagu Marc , Vandenbroucke Roosmarijn E. , Libert Claude
Published: May 2016

Significance

Mouse genome sequences have been generated of tens of inbred strains. We here describe a user-friendly bioinformatics tool for revealing the sequence variations in protein-coding genes in one or more inbred strains and predicting which proteins are significantly different compared with those of the reference genome of C57BL/6J inbred mice. The analysis of truncated proteins in the strain SPRET/Ei, as an example, results in a user-friendly PDF file. This information is essential for interpreting biological data obtained using a given inbred strain, and confirms that inbred lines are a rich source of variant alleles of protein-coding genes, including knockout alleles.
GDP-to-GTP exchange on the microtubule end can contribute to the frequency of catastrophe
Authors: Piedra Felipe-Andrés , Kim Tae , Garza Emily S. , Geyer Elisabeth A. , Burns Alexander , Ye Xuecheng , Rice Luke M.
Published: May 2016

Microtubules are dynamic polymers of αβ-tubulin that have essential roles in chromosome segregation and organization of the cytoplasm. Catastrophe—the switch from growing to shrinking—occurs when a microtubule loses its stabilizing GTP cap. Recent evidence indicates that the nucleotide on the microtubule end controls how tightly an incoming subunit will be bound (trans-acting GTP), but most current models do not incorporate this information. We implemented trans-acting GTP into a computational model for microtubule dynamics. In simulations, growing microtubules often exposed terminal GDP-bound subunits without undergoing catastrophe. Transient GDP exposure on the growing plus end slowed elongation by reducing the number of favorable binding sites on the microtubule end. Slower elongation led to erosion of the GTP cap and an increase in the frequency of catastrophe. Allowing GDP-to-GTP exchange on terminal subunits in simulations mitigated these effects. Using mutant αβ-tubulin or modified GTP, we showed experimentally that a more readily exchangeable nucleotide led to less frequent catastrophe. Current models for microtubule dynamics do not account for GDP-to-GTP exchange on the growing microtubule end, so our findings provide a new way of thinking about the molecular events that initiate catastrophe.
Orientalism in the Victorian Era
Authors: Kennedy Valerie
Published: May 2016

Orientalism in the Victorian era has origins in three aspects of 18th-century European and British culture: first, the fascination with The Arabian Nights (translated into French by Antoine Galland in 1704), which was one of the first works to have purveyed to Western Europe the image of the Orient as a place of wonders, wealth, mystery, intrigue, romance, and danger; second, the Romantic visions of the Orient as represented in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon, Lord Byron, and other Romantics as well as in Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh; and third, the domestication of opium addiction in Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

Victorian Orientalism was all pervasive: it is prominent in fiction by William Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, and Rudyard Kipling, but is also to be found in works by Benjamin Disraeli, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. In poetry Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat is a key text, but many works by Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning also show the influence of Orientalist tropes and ideas. In theater it is one of the constant strands of much popular drama and other forms of popular entertainment like panoramas and pageants, while travel writing from Charles Kingsley to Richard Burton, James Anthony Froude, and Mary Kingsley shows a wide variety of types of Orientalist figures and concepts, as do many works of both popular and children’s literature. Underlying and uniting all these diverse manifestations of Victorian Orientalism is the imperialist philosophy articulated by writers as different as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx, supported by writings of anthropologists and race theorists such as James Cowles Pritchard and Robert Knox.

Toward the end of the Victorian era, the image of the opium addict and the Chinese opium den in the East End of London or in the Orient itself becomes a prominent trope in fiction by Dickens, Wilde, and Kipling, and can be seen to lead to the proliferation of Oriental villains in popular fiction of the early 20th century by such writers as M. P. Shiel, Guy Boothby, and Sax Rohmer, whose Dr. Fu Manchu becomes the archetypal version of such figures.
Irish Modernism
Authors: Arrington Lauren
Published: May 2016

Although Irish writers were foundational to English-language modernism, Irish Modernism is a new field in literary studies. Embedded imperial frameworks and assumptions about Irish traditionalism have been an obstacle to recognizing Irish Modernism, despite the importance of Irish writing to the development of modernism as a whole. Informed by postcolonial and transnational theory, a reading of Irish Modernism accommodates writers who lived and wrote in and about Ireland, as well as those who were Irish by birth but who lived and worked outside of the country, such as James Joyce; who wrote in languages other than English or Irish, such as Samuel Beckett; or whose political allegiances are at odds with the rise of the separatist nation state, such as Elizabeth Bowen. Irish Modernism has its genesis in the Irish Revival (ca. 1880s–1910s), a popular movement that sought to create a distinctive Irish culture. The little magazines and literary theaters that arose out of the Revival were often aesthetically conservative in themselves; nonetheless, they became venues for literature that was radical in form. Just as early modernist writing arose out of the Revival, high modernist literature was provoked by a rejection of the Revival’s values. These reactions are exemplified in William Butler Yeats’s poetry from The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910), in which he castigates the Irish public for its religious conservatism, and in Joyce’s Dubliners (1914) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Late modernism, which is typified by a weakening of the tropes of high modernism to make way for a more politically engaged literature, not only includes well-known Anglophone writers but also the work of Brian Ó Nualláin/Flann O’Brien and Máirtín Ó Cadhain, whose satires were formally and politically radical.
Violent Media Content and Effects
Authors: Busching Robert , Allen Johnie J. , Anderson Craig A.
Published: May 2016

In our modern age, electronic media usage is prevalent in almost every part of the world. People are more connected than ever before with easy access to highly portable devices (e.g., laptops, smartphones, and tablets) that allow for media consumption at any time of day. Unfortunately, the presence of violence in electronic media content is almost as prevalent as the media itself. Violence can be found in music, television shows, video games, and even YouTube videos. Content analyses have shown that nearly all media contain violence, irrespective of age rating (Linder & Gentile, 2009; Thompson & Haninger, 2001; Thompson, Tepichin, & Haninger, 2006; Yokota & Thompson, 2000). It is therefore important to ask: What are the consequences of pervasive exposure to screen violence? One consequence of media violence exposure, hotly debated by some in the general public, is increased aggressive behavior. This relationship was investigated in many studies using experimental, longitudinal, or cross-sectional design. These studies are summarized in meta-analyses, which support the notion that media violence increase the likelihood of acting aggressively. This link can be explained by an increase in aggressive thoughts, a more hostile perception of the environment, and less empathic reaction to victims of aggressive behavior. However, the often debated notion that media violence allows one to vent off steam, leading to a reduced likelihood of aggressive behavior, has failed to receive empirical support. The effect of media violence is not limited to aggressive behavior; as a consequence of violent media usage attentional problems arise and prosocial behavior decreases.
Policy Issues Surrounding Journalism
Authors: Napoli Philip M. , Stonbely Sarah
Published: May 2016

The role of government policy in journalism can vary substantially across nations; as in 21st century the primary policy issues surrounding journalism have evolved as technological changes have dramatically configured—and in some cases threatened—the position of traditional journalistic institutions and given rise to new journalistic forms and organizations.

In nations such as the United States, where the commercial model of journalism production has long predominated, we have seen a pronounced expansion in recent years beyond a policy focus on how to maintain sufficient competition and diversity among the organizations that produce journalism (i.e., ownership regulation) to also include consideration of possible policy approaches to preserving and protecting traditional journalism organizations in the face of a much more challenging economic environment. Thus, policymakers have considered options such as legislation allowing commercial newspapers to convert to nonprofit status, as well as engaging in more rigorous governmental assessment of the functioning of local journalism ecosystems and the ways in which news consumers’ critical information needs are being met. In this latter case, the question of what, if any, policy responses may emerge from such investigations has remained unclear and a source of significant controversy.

In nations with a stronger tradition of non-commercial, publicly supported journalism (the focus here is primarily on western Europe), key 21st-century policy issues have included media freedom and pluralism, with particular emphases and mechanisms for protecting journalists and for ensuring ownership transparency and diversity. There have also been comprehensive reassessments of the structure and functioning of public service media in order to ensure that these institutions are effectively evolving in response to the changing media environment in ways that maximize their ability to serve media users’ information needs.

Issues of journalism ethics and performance have found their way into the policy agenda as well. This has most notably been the case in the United Kingdom, where revelations of illegal mobile phone hacking by British tabloid journalists led to a formal government inquiry (the Leveson Inquiry) and recommendations for the creation of a new, independent governance structure with significant sanctioning and dispute arbitration authority.

An important concern that is only now beginning to emerge (particularly in Europe), one that may ultimately take form as a dominant journalism policy issue, involves the question of the increasingly influential role that digital intermediaries (social media platforms, search engines, mobile applications) play in the process via which journalism reaches news consumers. Here, the emerging concern is whether some more formal and authoritative governance structures are necessary to ensure that these intermediaries have positive rather than negative effects on the flow of news and information within communities.
Political Knowledge and Communication
Authors: Hoffman Lindsay H.
Published: May 2016

Political knowledge is a concept of central importance in political communication research, yet exactly how it should be operationalized has been a long-running conversation among scholars. The study of political knowledge is rooted in democratic theory, which suggests that citizens should be informed if they are to participate in a democratic society. Political knowledge is also referred to as political sophistication or political expertise. Generally, political knowledge is defined as holding correct information, but the type of information can vary dramatically from study to study—from civic knowledge to issue knowledge to candidate information to the structural relationships among cognitions.

Because political knowledge is so often seen as a bedrock of a democratic society, scholars often examine what cultural, economic, and political antecedents play a role in increasing or decreasing political knowledge. However, knowledge can also be examined as a predictor of behaviors such as voting, a moderator in the study of framing effects, or a mediator between communication and political behavior. But the problem that plagues political knowledge research, just as it has plagued scholars of general knowledge for centuries, is how to measure it. Like general knowledge, which is often measured in exams or through IQ tests, political knowledge isn’t directly measurable. Political knowledge, then, cannot be fully captured in a series of test questions. The challenge facing scholars interested in this important variable is one of measurement and interpretation, which means that there are many ways to measure political knowledge.
Journalism on the Web
Authors: Karlsson Michael , Holt Kristoffer
Published: May 2016

In the early 21st century, almost everyone takes journalism on the web for granted. However, it was not many years ago that journalism moved online and a distinct form of journalism began to develop. Ranging from online doubles of the paper editions to publications exclusively produced for the web, the evolvement of web journalism has entailed both dramatic and not-so-dramatic changes in the way that journalistic products are produced, disseminated, and received. Online journalism has usually been demarcated from traditional journalism by four traits: interactivity, immediacy, hypertextuality, and multimodality. These characteristics are generally identified by scholars as points where journalism on the web brings added value in comparison to the old print newspapers. Interactivity involves various aspects of user activity and participation in the processes of consuming, contributing to, and disseminating news afforded by the web. Immediacy refers to the nature and consequences of the faster pace of publication in web news. Hypertextuality has to do with the possibilities of linking journalistic texts to other texts, which makes the text more transparent and open. Multimodality denotes the telling of news with the use of many different modes at the same time. When studying research about these aspects of web journalism, three general observations can be made. First, researchers have approached these characteristics unevenly in terms of scope and interest. The interactive aspects of web journalism are by far the most investigated. Second, the four characteristics have been studied through the lenses of different theoretical frameworks. Third, empirical research shows that change in journalism is slow and not always as radical as many predicted when journalism on the web was in its infancy.
Christianity as Public Religion in the Post-Secular 21st Century
Authors: Gibbons Tom
Published: May 2016

The Christian gospel message was intended to be public. The biblical basis for this is undisputable. Yet in recent times the visibility of the Christian perspective on issues affecting society that are often debated in the public sphere has declined in many Western societies. In “Sociology and Theology Reconsidered: Religious Sociology and the Sociology of Religion in Britain,” John Brewer states that “religion has tended to be restricted to the private sphere” in many modern nation-states over the 20th century, meaning public displays of religiosity have been frowned upon and strictly limited. The privatization of religion is a result of a decline in the importance of religion in modern societies, a process termed “secularization.” Yet the idea of increasing secularization in society is not accepted by all. Despite common-sense notions that such societies have become increasingly secular in nature, Christian values do still clearly underpin the nature and functioning of institutions of the state and government in many Western nation-states. Bryan Turner states in “Religion and Contemporary Sociological Theories” that since the late 20th century at least, there has actually been a “growing recognition of the importance of religion in public life”, something José Casanova termed “public religion.” The sociologist Peter Berger suggested that we began to witness the “desecularization” of the world in the late 20th century as there has been (and continues to be) a global resurgence in religious adherents. This situation was evident most considerably in the rapid growth of Christianity across the globe throughout the 20th century, a phenomenon that continues to gather momentum into the 21st century.
Privacy Rights
Authors: Shepherd Tamara
Published: May 2016

Privacy rights are controversial in communication processes and entail varying levels of disclosure of sensitive personal information. What constitutes such personal information and how it should be accessed and used by various actors in a particular communicative exchange tends to be dependent on the situation at hand. And yet, many would argue that a baseline level of privacy should be expected by individuals as part of maintaining human integrity and personal control over information disclosure. Different frameworks exist for thinking about privacy as a right, and these frameworks further suggest different mechanisms for the control of information and the protection of privacy rights in changing communication environments. For example, the main shift in communication processes from the pre-Internet era to a networked world has brought with it renewed debates over the regulation of privacy rights. How would privacy rights be evoked in the face of rapidly changing technologies for networked surveillance, biometric identification, and geolocation? And moreover, how would these rights be applied differently to distinct populations based on class, nationality, race, gender, and age? These questions form the core of what is at stake in conceptions of privacy rights in contemporary communication.
Film and Horror
Authors: Decker Lindsey , Phillips Kendall R.
Published: May 2016

The term horror film refers to a wide variety of films generally understood to focus on frightening topics like ghosts, monsters, and murder. Horror films have been consistently popular among filmgoers since the earliest days of cinema in part because the genre has developed so many diverse variations in terms of theme, style, and tone. Popular horror films have employed supernatural elements, alien invaders, homicidal individuals, and wide scale apocalyptic themes. In part because of their variety and endurance, scholars from various disciplines have inquired into their nature and appeal. A substantial body of scholarship has grown up around the horror film. Scholars have inquired into the nature of the horror film, the reasons it might appeal to audiences, the evolution of the genre across time, and the relationship between these frightening films and the broader culture.
Verbal Communication Styles and Culture
Authors: Liu Meina
Published: May 2016

A communication style is the way people communicate with others, verbally and nonverbally. It combines both language and nonverbal cues and is the meta-message that dictates how listeners receive and interpret verbal messages. Of the theoretical perspectives proposed to understand cultural variations in communication styles, the most widely cited one is the differentiation between high-context and low-context communication by Edward Hall, in 1976. Low-context communication is used predominantly in individualistic cultures and reflects an analytical thinking style, where most of the attention is given to specific, focal objects independent of the surrounding environment; high-context communication is used predominantly in collectivistic cultures and reflects a holistic thinking style, where the larger context is taken into consideration when evaluating an action or event. In low-context communication, most of the meaning is conveyed in the explicit verbal code, whereas in high-context communication, most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, with very little information given in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. The difference can be further explicated through differences between communication styles that are direct and indirect (whether messages reveal or camouflage the speaker’s true intentions), self-enhancing and self-effacing (whether messages promote or deemphasize positive aspects of the self), and elaborate and understated (whether rich expressions or extensive use of silence, pauses, and understatements characterize the communication). These stylistic differences can be attributed to the different language structures and compositional styles in different cultures, as many studies supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have shown. These stylistic differences can become, in turn, a major source of misunderstanding, distrust, and conflict in intercultural communication. A case in point is how the interethnic clash between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can be exacerbated by the two diametrically opposite communication patterns they each have, dugri (straight talk) and musayra (to accommodate or “to go along with”). Understanding differences in communication styles and where these differences come from allows us to revise the interpretive frameworks we tend to use to evaluate culturally different others and is a crucial step toward gaining a greater understanding of ourselves and others.
Globalizing and Changing Culture
Authors: Ladegaard Hans J.
Published: May 2016

Although there is no exact definition of globalization, and relatively little empirical evidence on how it affects people’s lives, most scholars argue that it reflects an increasingly mobile and interconnected world. People travel for pleasure or work, or they migrate to other parts of the world. They also communicate with linguistic and cultural others, either face-to-face or via modern communication technologies, which requires them to use a global lingua franca (English). This leads to greater interdependence and a sense of sharedness, but also to more intergroup conflicts. Thus, the world has become more interconnected, but also more fragmented, and social and economic inequality both within and across nation-states has become more visible.

The importance of culture as an analytical concept in (intercultural) communication research is another pertinent topic in the literature. Some scholars have argued that culture has lost its potency as a meaningful analytical concept and therefore should no longer take center stage in communication research. Others claim that culture will always be salient and influence behavior. How and to what extent globalization changes culture has also been discussed extensively in recent years. Some scholars argue that globalization leads to sameness and uniformity, and ultimately to the end of the nation-state. Others disagree and posit that globalization leads to a strengthening of the nation-state and of the cultural values we associate with it.

A meaningful way to test theoretical assumptions about globalization and culture is to analyze communication and work practices in global organizations. Research from these contexts suggests that globalization has not led to cultural assimilation and uniformity. Employees in the global workplace and student sojourners use national stereotypes as a frame of reference when they communicate with cultural others, and they demonstrate high awareness of cultural differences and how they impact their communication, study, and work practices.

Recent research on cultural change and globalization has included a critical dimension that questions a world order where the increase in power and cultural and economic wealth in developed countries happens at the expense of poor people with no voice and little visibility living in developing countries. Critical (intercultural) communication research considers these imbalances and also provides a critique of Anglocentric research paradigms, which do not include the cultural and linguistic experiences of non-Western cultural others.
Cultural Identities
Authors: Chen Yea-Wen , Lin Hengjun
Published: May 2016

Within the discipline of communication, the concept of “cultural identities” has captivated, fascinated, and received sustained attention from scholars of communication and culture over time. Like the concept of “culture,” which is varied, complex, and at times contested, the study of cultural identity has been approached from diverse lenses, whether theoretically, methodologically, or ontologically. In one sense, cultural identity can be understood as the experience, enactment, and negotiation of dynamic social identifications by group members within particular settings. As an individual identifies with—or desires acceptance into—multiple groups, people tend to experience, enact, or negotiate not just one cultural identity at a time but often multiple cultural identities at once. Further, how one experiences her/his intersecting cultural identities with others can vary from context to context depending on the setting, the issue at hand, the people involved, etc. Not surprisingly, intercultural communication scholars have contributed quite a number of theories concerning cultural identities within communication interactions: co-cultural theory, cultural contract theory, and identity negotiation theory, to name a few. In addition, intercultural communication scholars have offered rich cases that examine dynamic enactments, negotiations, or contestations of cultural identities across important contexts such as race, media, and globalization. Ultimately, the study of cultural identities offers rich understandings for both oneself and others. As the world that we inhabit is becoming increasingly diverse, the study of cultural identities will continue to gain traction within the communication discipline and beyond.
Social-Ecological Approaches to Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Williamson Kirsty
Published: May 2016

Before health and risk messaging can have the best possible effect, there needs to be an understanding of what might influence health and associated risky behaviors. A wide range of elements needs to be considered, given the many possible influences on health habits and risky exposures. Since “ecology” is defined as the relationship between organisms and their environments, ecological models enable this consideration to be made. As a result ecological approaches have been widely used in health behavior, health planning, and health education.

Ecological theory, with a communication focus, has also been developed, emerging specifically from the field of “information behavior.” Grounded in the work of Bronfenbrenner, on the experimental ecology of human development, the theory grew out of a study of older adults’ information and communication needs and uses, undertaken in the 1990s. The ecological model, as developed, enabled a wide range of personal and social influences on information seeking and communication to be explored with people aged 60 and older. Analysis of the impact of multilevel factors is facilitated by an ecological approach, increasing its value for the task of designing the content of health and risk messages. The “how” of designing health messaging is not addressed specifically by this approach.

Following the study of older adults, the ecological model was broadened, modified, and applied to the study of the information and communication behavior of different community groups, involving a range of topics. The flexibility of the approach is a key strength. A study of information seeking, by women with breast cancer, indicated that several “ecological” elements, such as age, ethnicity, and stage of disease, played a part in the type of information sought and in preferences for how information was communicated. Health and risk avoidance implications emerged from a study of information seeking for online investment, providing another good example of the ways in which the model can be adapted. A range of ecological factors were shown to influence investing behavior, including level of risk taking. A study of people in the Fourth Age (the last stage of life) resulted in a further refined and extended model, as well as making a contribution to the already substantial body of accumulated gerontological knowledge.
Message Framing Variations in Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: O'Keefe Daniel J.
Published: May 2016

Many health-related message variations have been described as variations in the framing of the message. What different applications of the term message framing have in common is that, in each case, something gets described in different ways (with researchers having a special interest in the consequences of these different descriptions). But what that “thing” is and how the descriptions of it differ vary across different uses of the term framing. In research on health-related messages, at least three different variations have been described using “framing” as a label.

One concerns variation in consequence-based arguments in persuasive messages. In this kind of framing, what varies is the description of the antecedent or consequent in arguments designed to persuade people to adopt some course of action. For example, the antecedent in an argument designed to encourage sunscreen use might be expressed as “if you wear sunscreen” or “if you don’t wear sunscreen,” and the consequent of such arguments might emphasize sunburns or skin cancer. A second concerns variation in the description of some news event, public policy issue, or health subject. For example, news media might describe obesity as controllable or as something over which one has limited control. A third concerns variation in the description of an attribute of a course of action. For example, a surgical procedure might be described as having a “90% success rate” or a “10% failure rate.”
Race, Nationalism, and Transnationalism
Authors: Washington Myra , Ono Kent A.
Published: May 2016

Race is important within U.S. society and globally. However, race also plays a significant role in communication, and research on its influence cuts across every conceivable area of the field, ranging from rhetoric to organizational communication to film studies to health communication. Race is discussed so much within communication that this article, although expansive, cannot refer to all the important work that has been done. Research on race and communication considers a broad range of racial, multiracial, and ethnic groups. Scholarship also ranges from more applied research to purely theoretical work.

Critical and cultural studies work has significantly affected the way scholars think about communication and race. Specifically, concepts developed and explored have provided new lenses through which to understand communication and race. Nationalism, for example is significant. A nation is a collectively shared and discursively constructed identity. In thinking about nations as imagined communities cultural ties (such as language, ethnicity, and shared memories) are part of that identity. For racially marginalized groups, a nation may be a political organization at the same time as it is a collectively identified political group based on racial ethnic ties, ancestry, or simply politics. The concept of transnationalism, on the other hand, relates to cross or “trans” national relations, ties, and processes, processes that globalization has accelerated and strengthened, such as the movement of capital, media, and people which in turn has shaped local happenings and vice versa. When coupled with nationalism and transnationalism, race plays a mediating role, helping to govern and regulate people, relationships, and sometimes the very reason for relationships existing.
European Union: Integration, National, and European Identities
Authors: Croucher Stephen M.
Published: May 2016

The European Union (EU) is an economic, political, and social conglomeration of 28 member nations. These member nations work together via a system of supranational institutional and intergovernmental-negotiated treaties and decisions by member states. While the EU has been able to continue its development in various stages since the 1950s respectively, a key issue continually facing the EU has always been integration at different levels. Integration of new member states, integration of individuals and cultures within member states, and most recently integration of immigrants (newcomers of different designations) into the EU.

While the EU has strict guidelines regarding the integration of new member states into the EU, no policies/procedures are in place regarding the integration of individuals into the EU. Issues of national sovereignty are critical to EU member states when discussing how to integrate newcomers. Most recently during the heightened wave of refugees entering the EU through its southern and eastern borders, the issue of how to integrate newcomers into the EU has come to the forefront of national and EU policymakers. Key questions facing the EU and its member states include: What are the national integration policies, and how do they differ? What is the future for the EU in response to increased legal, illegal, and irregular migration?
Rhetorical Invention
Authors: Arthos John
Published: May 2016

Rhetorical invention is both a practice and its teaching—the capacity to create effective communication, and the instruction in this capacity. Teachers of rhetoric have provided over time a rich and durable supply of pedagogical resources for crafting communication in speech, writing, and multi-modal composition. These resources come down to us through traditions of teaching and practice, in handbooks, theoretical tracts, exemplary models, and heritable pedagogies. Such materials have sometimes succumbed but often resisted the temptation to standardize and systematize, since the art of rhetoric in its very nature speaks to each particular audience and occasion, a requirement that hinders efforts to give it rule-bound methods. The reasons for this resistance to standardization need to be explored as well as how invention has continued to provide heuristic guidance without prescriptive methodological tools. Lacking method, rhetoric is aided by the cultural support of convention, which in turn is modified for each new situation. Such a dialectic of convention and invention animates the ongoing registration of rhetoric to communicative practices and explains its durability as an unsystematic art.
Public Discourse and Intergroup Communication
Authors: Marlow Mikaela L.
Published: May 2016

Discourse analysis is focused on the implicit meanings found in public discourse, text, and media. In the modern era, public discourse can be assessed in political or social debates, newspapers, magazines, television, film, radio, music, and web-mediated forums (Facebook, Twitter, and other public discussion). Research across a variety of disciplines has documented that dominant social groups tend to employ certain discursive strategies when discussing minority groups. Public discourse is often structured in ways that marginalize minority groups and legitimize beliefs, values, and ideologies of more dominant groups. These discursive strategies include appealing to authority, categorization, comparison, consensus, counterfactual, disclaimers, euphemism, evidence, examples, generalizations, rhetorical questions, metaphors, national glorification, and directive speech acts. Evoking such discourse often enables prevailing dominant groups to reify majority social status, reinforce negative assumptions about minorities, and maintain a positive public social image, despite deprecating and, sometimes, dehumanizing references.
Visual Rhetoric and Semiotic
Authors: Danesi Marcel
Published: May 2016

Visual Rhetoric (VR) is a field of inquiry aiming to analyze all kinds of visual images and texts as rhetorical structures. VR is an offshoot of both visual semiotics, or the study of the meanings of visual signs in cultural contexts; and of the psychology of visual thinking, as opposed to verbal thinking—defined as the capacity to extract meaning from visual images. The basic method of VR, which can be traced back to Roland Barthes’s pivotal 1964 article “The Rhetoric of the Image,” is to unravel to connotative meanings of visual images. The picture of a lion, for instance, can be read at two levels. Denotatively (or literally) it is interpreted as “a large, carnivorous, feline mammal of Africa.” This level conveys informational or referential meaning. But the image of lion in, say, an advertisement or music video invariably triggers a connotative sense—namely, “fierceness, ferociousness, bravery, courage, virility.” The key insight of VR is that connotation is anchored in rhetorical structure, that is, in cognitive-associative processes such as metaphor and allusion, which are imprinted not only in verbal expressions, but also in visual images. So, the image of a lion in, say, a logo design for men’s clothing would bear rhetorical-connotative meaning and affect the way in which the clothing brand is perceived. This same basic approach is applied to all visual expressive artifacts, from traditional visual art works to the design of web pages and comic books. VR is showing that visual objects are rhetorical objects and that, therefore, they can be used to influence and persuade people as effectively as rhetorical oratory, if not more so. Given its simple, yet effective method of analysis, VR is spreading to various disciplines as a technique, including psychology, anthropology, marketing, and graphic design, among many others, affirming how visual images tap into a system of symbolism that is interconnected with other forms of symbolism and representation.
Discursive Approaches to Race and Racism
Authors: Whitehead Kevin A.
Published: May 2016

In the wake of what has been called the “discursive turn” or “linguistic turn” in the social sciences, research at the intersection of language and communication and race and racism shifted from being largely dominated by quantitative and experimental methods to include qualitative and particularly discursive approaches. While the term “discursive” potentially encompasses a wide range of modes of discourse analysis, discursive approaches share a focus on language use as social action, and as a constitutive feature of actions, events, and situations, rather than as merely a passive means of describing or transmitting information about them. When applied to the study of race and racism, such approaches have examined ways in which language functions to construct, maintain, and legitimate as well as subvert or resist racial and/or racist ideologies and social structures.

Research in these areas has made use of a range of empirical materials, including “elite” texts and talk (media texts, parliamentary debates, academic texts, etc.), individual interviews, focus groups and group discussions, “naturally occurring” talk-in-interaction from conversational and institutional settings, and text-based online interactions. Although these different data types should not be seen as strictly mutually exclusive, each of them serves to foreground particular features of racial or racist discourse(s), thus facilitating or constraining particular sorts of discourse analytic findings. Thus, different data sources respectively tend to foreground ideological features of racial discourse(s) and their intersection with power and domination, including examination of “new” racisms and the production and management of accusations and denials of racism; discursive processes involved in the construction and uses of racial subjectivities and identities; interactional processes through which prejudice and racism are constructed and contested; and the everyday interactional reproduction of systems of racial categories, independently of whether the talk in which they occur can or should be considered “racist.”
Rhetorical Construction of Bodies
Authors: Johnson Thornton Davi
Published: May 2016

Communication studies identifies bodies as both objects of communication and producers (or sites) of communication. Communication about bodies—for example, gendered bodies, disabled bodies, obese bodies, and surgically modified bodies—influences bodies at the physical, material level by determining how they are treated in social interactions, in medical settings, and in public institutions. Communication about bodies also forges cultural consensus about what types of bodies fit in particular roles and settings. In addition to analyzing the stakes of communication about bodies, communication studies identifies bodies as communicating forces that cannot be accounted for by standards of reason, meaning, and decorum. Bodies are physical, material, affective beings that communicate because of, not in spite of, their messy, ineffable status. Moreover, communication is an embodied process that involves a range of material supports, including human bodies, technological bodies, and other nonhuman physical and biological bodies. Investigating bodies as communicating forces compels an understanding of communication that is not exclusively rational, meaning-oriented, and nonviolent.