Centrality Of Communication Research Articles

CONNECTING THE FUTURE: TRANSFORMING EMITEC'S INTERNAL COMMUNICATION WITH THE VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

This study sought to verify the importance of using the Virtual Learning Environment to facilitate the internal communication process of High School with Technological Intermediation, a program linked to the Bahia State Department of Education. Ensuring a good internal communication flow favors the achievement of institutional strategic objectives. Thus, the research aimed to describe the functionalities of the Virtual Learning Environment and the favorable and limiting aspects regarding its use. This is a case study, with descriptive and telematic analysis with a qualitative approach. It was found that the Virtual Learning Environment mainly enables the centralization of communication with multimedia resources, thus, it was concluded that the use of the Virtual Learning Environment contributes to the facilitation of internal communication. However, it is necessary to ensure that all those involved are digitally included, since its use depends on internet connectivity and a certain level of digital skills by the users.

Modelling constructivist language acquisition through syntactico-semantic pattern finding.

The constructivist acquisition of language by children has been elaborately documented by researchers in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. However, despite the centrality of human-like communication in the field of artificial intelligence, no faithful computational operationalizations of the mechanisms through which children learn language exist to date. In this article, we fill part of this void by introducing a mechanistic model of the constructivist acquisition of language through syntactico-semantic pattern finding. Concretely, we present a methodology for learning grammars based on similarities and differences in the form and meaning of linguistic observations alone. The resulting grammars consist of form-meaning mappings of variable extent and degree of abstraction, called constructions, which facilitate both language comprehension and production. Applying our methodology to the CLEVR benchmark dataset, we provide a proof of concept that demonstrates the online, incremental, data-efficient, transparent and effective learning of item-based construction grammars from utterance-meaning pairs.

Agency in business networks: combining IMP research with a relational sociological perspective to challenge views on sustainability and ethics

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to clarify the ontological assumptions regarding the concept of agency and sociality within business networks in the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group (IMP) research by refining these assumptions with a relational sociological (RS) perspective. This paper reinforces the robustness of the actors-resources-activities (ARA) model with an in-depth investigation of the actor dimension, where local interactions between interdependent individuals play a central role in building common futures within business networks through organisational reflexivity.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper investigates the social ontology of research. It challenges the implicit assumptions of IMP research regarding agency and sociality within business networks with a problematisation strategy (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2011). Combining IMP views on agency with the RS perspective, it sets this combined framework as an alternative for the analysis of sustainability and ethics within business networks.FindingsCombining IMP research and an RS perspective allows us to extend the knowledge of sociality within business networks, highlighting the centrality of meaning sharing in the process of network change. By focusing on symbolic interaction processes, an RS perspective contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of the relationship between local communication and business network patterns. Combined with an IMP perspective on agency, it provides researchers with an alternative conceptual framework for examining sustainability by considering ethics and leadership dialectically.Research limitations/implicationsRS is still an emerging stream within sociology, characterised by diverse views. Not all relational sociologists, as scientists, feel obliged to engage with sustainability research. Thus, the paper is a two-sided invitation to IMP researchers and relational sociologists to delve into the adaptation processes in business networks in highly uncertain environments.Practical implicationsRS focusing on the centrality of communication in local interactions, business network researchers can show that organisational leaders are not the ones with a charismatic vision isolated from any natural and social environment; rather, they are the people with “the capacity to assist the group to continue acting ethically, creatively and courageously in the unknown” (Stacey,2013).Social implicationsAdopting an RS perspective on agency in business networks can help managers and researchers determine how business networks can be managed in a more sustainable way. Combined with a dialectical and processual understanding of ethics, the IMP-RS perspective emphasises day-to-day local communication practices within and between organisations that challenges microeconomic views on nature, strategy, ethics and leadership. This paper thus places the social at the centre of sustainability approaches.Originality/valueFrom an RS perspective, business networks are analysed as patterns of interactions between many organisations and individuals. The value of this conceptual paper is in showing that change within business networks is negotiated through local interactions and symbolic communication between individuals. Thus, it suggests the need to combine the individual and the organisational levels to analyse agency within business networks and to examine the adaptation of business networks to sustainability.

The Paradox of the Niger Delta: Examining the Principal Determinants of Poverty and Underdevelopment

Extant literature indicates that the Niger Delta region has struggled with developmental issues for ages. Efforts by the government to tackle the perennial underdevelopment have met with failure, a situation that has necessitated the institution of diverse research to unearth the causal factors. Leveraging a combination of historical analysis and a survey involving 206 respondents, this study brings to the fore the principal drivers of poverty in the region, with mismanagement of funds and the apparent lack of citizen engagement emerging as the most significant predictors of poverty and underdevelopment. The study thus highlights the need for optimal management of financial resources and also emphasizes the centrality of citizen engagement and participatory communication in community development. The study argues that while funding is critical to development, no substantial development can occur without the active participation of the citizens, from the conceptualization to the execution of strategies and plans for development.

Discursive Analysis on Reports of School Violence: Centralization and Limitation of Communication by Discussion System

Discursive Analysis on Reports of School Violence: Centralization and Limitation of Communication by Discussion System

"L’idiot de la famille, c’est moi". Movimento della ‘neurodiversità’ e letteratura

Autism is an exponentially increasing diagnosis, and beyond the medical gaze, it manifests itself in the public discourse; it is a cultural event to which the endless amount of books, movies, TV series on the subject are testimony. Clearly, in the time of the centrality of communication, the forms of its nonconformity come to assume symbolic centrality. This is addressed by that sectoral field of Disability Studies that is emerging as Critical Autism Studies. In this article, the res-onances between literary criticism and autism are analyzed from that theoretical perspective. In particular, a text will be analyzed that panders to the emancipatory intentions of CAS, Autistic Disturbances by Julia Miele Rodas, a book in which the expressive peculiarities that are given as critical in clinical discourse, as symptoms, are found as stylistic devices in a heterogeneous literary corpus, and therefore redeemed.

Exploring the centrality of nonviolent communication for resolution of conflicts for a culture of peace

At a time when humanity finds itself enveloped by conflicts of different kinds, violence, greed and crimes at various levels, the world hungers for peace and nonviolence. The United Nations talks about how conflict and violence ‘are currently on the rise’. It talks of the rising involvement of non-state actors like political militias, criminal and international terrorist groups. Amongst the dominant forces behind conflicts according to the United Nations are unresolved regional tensions, breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain and the scarcity of resources. (https://www.un.org/en/un75/new-era-conflict-and-violence) The aim is to constantly work to find frameworks and practical models to end these conflicts. The challenge is not just to find solutions for cessation of these conflicts but also to address the root cause of these violence. In most of these conflicts, there are attempts to encourage sanitization of language and distort reality; in many occasions there is use of language to demonize groups and normalize violence. Communication hence can be said to fuel all forms of violence – direct, structural and cultural. Using case studies of integrating Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent communication in different settings and social institutions, the paper will look at how this approach of nonviolent communication can help in bringing change in attitude and behavior of the conflicting parties and aid in the resolution of the conflict.

Centralization and democratization: Managing crisis communication in health care delivery.

Communication is an essential organizational process for responding to adversity. Managers are often advised to communicate frequently and redundantly during crises. Nonetheless, systematic investigation of how information receivers perceive organizational communication amid crises has remained lacking. The aim of this study was to characterize features of effective internal crisis communication by examining how information-sharing processes unfolded during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between June and August 2020, we conducted 55 semistructured interviews with emergency department workers practicing in a variety of roles. We analyzed interview transcripts following constructivist constant comparative methods. Our findings revealed that at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic response, emergency department workers struggled with immense fear and anxiety amid high uncertainty and equivocality. Frequent and redundant communication, however, resulted in information delivery and uptake problems, worsening anxiety, and interpersonal tension. These problems were ameliorated by the emergence of contextual experts who centralized and democratized communication. Centralization standardized information received across roles, work schedules, and settings while decoupling internal communication from turbulence in the environment. Democratization made information accessible in a way that all could understand. It also ensured information senders' receptiveness to feedback from information receivers. Centralization and democratization together worked to reduce sensed uncertainty and equivocality, which reduced anxiety and interpersonal tension. Establishing frequent and redundant communication strategies does not necessarily address the anxiety and interpersonal tension produced by uncertainty and equivocality in crises. Centralization and democratization of crisis communication can reduce anxiety, improve coordination, and promote a safer workplace and patient care environment.

Perspectives of Intensive Care patients and family members on competencies for Advanced Intensive Care nurses in Europe

Background
 One output from the International Nursing Advanced Competency-based Training for Intensive Care (INACTIC) collaboration is a set of core competencies for advanced practice Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurses across Europe. Some European countries, such as the UK, have identified such competencies, however, these advanced practice roles are rarely practiced across the rest of Europe. The INACTIC competencies were developed with an expert panel of 184 ICU nurses from 20 countries. It is also important to examine what patients and relatives with experience of intensive care felt about these competencies. 
 Aim
 To examine the views of recovered ICU patients and relatives regarding the INACTIC competencies.
 Methods
 Three patient and relative focus groups were conducted in England (n=5), Scotland (n=4) and Greece (n=4) to discuss a lay version of the INACTIC competencies. Discussions were open ended, followed a topic guide, recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis followed a conventional thematic approach, with the findings discussed iteratively among the authors.
 Results
 The feedback from across the focus groups resulted in three themes: 1) the importance of nurses being empowered to advocate for the patient; 2) the centrality of communication; and, 3) the impact of variability in ICU practices. There was a notable difference with the Greek focus group; because of restricted family visiting policies, relatives did not feel encouraged to participate in patient care.
 Conclusions
 The perspectives of patients and relatives largely aligned with the consensus of the INACTIC expert panel. Local differences in ICU experience highlight the changes that some ICUs would need to make for the INACTIC competencies to be embedded.

Communication and Raising Citizen's Consciousness of Climate Change Challenges and Adaptation in Nigeria

The global impact of climate change remains a grave concern to every nation, from severe droughts in East Africa to wildfires in Australia and extreme floods and landslides in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, and, recently, the devastating floods witnessed in Nigeria, climate change challenges continue to escalate. Climate change is driving people out of their homes and ushering in a world of poverty. Extant literature avers that at the centre of mitigating the adverse effects of climate change and stimulating the desired action is communication. Consequently, this paper seeks to interrogate the centrality of communication as a tool in the hands of policymakers, the media and international donor agencies in stimulating public consciousness in Nigeria towards climate change challenges and adaptation. Leveraging a quantitative and exploratory approach and using surveys with structured and unstructured questionnaire questions, the study exposed gaps in citizens' knowledge of the causes of climate change and revealed the level of awareness of climate change challenges, people's attitudes to climate change, sources of information, and desired medium of communication among the Nigerian public. The study highlights the interplay between the contents of climate change communication and actionable steps that are easy to be understood and relatively simple to be followed by the citizens. Finally, the paper contends that much more needs to be done in sensitising citizens on climate change while suggesting a combination of alternative communication strategies that promise to stimulate citizens' awareness of climate change challenges and adaptation in Nigeria.

Sensemaking in and for times of crisis and change: Irish primary school principals and the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The Children’s School Lives (CSL) study provides a unique opportunity to learn first-hand from school principals as part of a large national study about their sensemaking as they led in a time of crisis and change in terms of teaching and learning. Major interconnected findings include: (1) the centrality of relationships and communication between school principals, teachers and the wider school community; (2) the systemic and school-related challenges and supports for pedagogical and curriculum leadership; (3) the emotional intensity of leading during crisis and its implications for individual and collective wellbeing in schools; and (4) the value and role of collaborative practices both within the school and between the school and system, including school self-evaluation efforts to establish leadership impact, which in turn inform the principal and leadership team’s sensemaking and adaptive leadership. Findings are contextualised through the responses of 11 principals from case study schools. While theoretical observations are drawn regarding sensemaking, practical suggestions are also made. A refocusing on the particular supports and challenges for school leadership learning and development in contexts of crisis and change is also warranted and problems and possibilities are discussed in this regard.

Collegiality and tenure: Results of a national survey of academic librarians

The propriety of using collegiality or related constructs as an evaluation factor in faculty promotion and tenure (P&T) is strongly contested. The work of many academic librarians requires extensive collaboration among their library colleagues as well as teaching and research faculty who work outside of the library. Given the centrality of communication and cooperation to their success, one might expect that collegiality could manifest differently in their tenure processes than in those of other faculty. Therefore, we surveyed library faculty to learn about their perceptions of the extent to which attributions of collegiality or lack of it influence tenure decisions at their institutions. With a total of 165 respondents, key findings include: 1) approximately 55 % of respondents whose libraries' P&T documents mention the concept of “collegiality” reported that they understood the concept clearly; 2) approximately 42 % of the respondents believe that collegiality should be included in their library's P&T documents; 3) the group that most strongly believed that collegiality should not be included were non-White respondents (58 %). Many of the respondents commented that a complex concept such as collegiality is too easily misused to perpetuate common biases against those who identify as being part of underrepresented groups; and 4) approximately 36 % of the White respondents and 59 % of non-White respondents thought that using collegiality as an evaluation factor would negatively affect underrepresented faculty.

A Venn diagram of vulnerability: The convergence of pediatric palliative care and child maltreatment a narrative review, and a focus on communication

Child maltreatment and end-of-life care independently represent two of the most emotion-laden and uncomfortable aspects of pediatric patient care. Their overlap can be uniquely distressing. This review explores ethical and legal principles in such cases and provides practical advice for clinicians. The review focuses on three archetypal scenarios of overlap: life-limiting illness in a child for whom parental rights have been terminated; life-threatening injury under CPS investigation; and complex end-of-life care which may warrant CPS involvement. While each scenario presents unique challenges, one consistent theme is the centrality of effective communication. This includes empathic communication with families and thoughtful communication with providers and community stakeholders. In almost all cases, everyone genuinely wants to do what is in the best interest of the child in these unthinkable circumstances. Transparent and collaborative communication can ensure that broad perspectives are considered to ensure that each child gets the best possible care in a manner adherent with ethical and legal standards, as they apply to each case.

De-westernizing mediated city research: display and decay in Zagreb’s urban signage

ABSTRACT Studies of mediated cities argue that urban signage (public screens, outdoor advertising, media façades) symbolizes the centrality of communication in post-industrial urbanism. This correct general argument also tends to be geographically limited to centrally positioned cities in a service economy. I explore how the peripheral position of Zagreb, constructed during permanent political transition (Austro-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslavia, EU, etc.) has made its urban signage especially diverse and seemingly chaotic. I argue that relating urban communication to national and transnational identities offers important, under-explored directions for research, particularly reminding us that display usually also means the opposite.

MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION AND ITS ROLE IN ‎ACHIEVING QUALITY IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS‎

Communication is at the core of human relations. It is one of the most ‎important means of achieving human integration. It is present in all areas ‎and in all other circumstances.‎ Today, communication has become an independent knowledge of itself ‎and one of the most important sciences taught in schools, universities, ‎institutes and training centres in order to regulate its rules, acquire its skills ‎and promote its culture in order to achieve an integrated structure in all ‎spheres of life.‎ And what we're interested in in this humble article is effective ‎management communication, that is, communication for and for ‎management, through which the educational leader can achieve many of the ‎goals of the educational institution to create the right environment for ‎successful communication with all those involved in education. This cannot ‎be imagined without the educational leader having a deeply rooted and ‎adequate communication culture to absorb problems and find appropriate ‎solutions.‎ In contrast, when communication is lost, the educational institution is ‎less effective, which exposes it to ill-management and indifference, it is ‎ultimately responsible for failure, infertility in management, well-being and ‎loss of educational security within and outside the institution.‎ In view of the above, the centrality of administrative communication ‎within the educational system, which is essential for raising its value and ‎giving it the status it deserves, we have the right to present the following ‎problems: How willing are educational administrative frameworks to have ‎access to an administrative and educational outreach that is at the level of ‎educational administration in general and Morocco in particular? And what ‎are the impediments to administrative communication? What is the role of ‎effective administrative communication in achieving educational security and ‎quality in educational institutions? All of that we're going to try to answer ‎with this humble intervention, which we're going to split into a group of ‎detectives as required. It is from God that we derive help, compromise and ‎payment‎. Keywords: Communication‎,‎ Administrative‎,‎ Quality‎,‎ Educational Institute.

Following the Leader: An Analysis of Leadership and Conformity in Business Meetings

Background: Past research has established the importance of discursive leadership in professional communication, but it has not systematically examined how conformity behaviors emerge as a potentially undesirable consequence of discursive leadership. Literature review: Review of the literature on the centrality of communication in leadership processes and conformity behavior suggest a void of analytic tools to adequately examine the negative consequences of discursive leadership. Research question: Are later interlocutors more likely to speak similarly to earlier ones if the earlier interlocutors occupy a more central position in the conversation network? Methodology: Based on 32,000 words of a transcribed meeting corpus, we measured conformity behaviors using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency scores, which are widely used in the information retrieval setting. We also operationalized the strength of discursive leadership as a positional centrality measure in the conversation network using a matrix algebra approach in social network analysis. Results: Findings support the hypothesis that discursive leadership is associated with conformity in language aligned toward discursive leaders' opinions. Conclusions: This study makes theoretical advances in understanding leadership construction and conformity behaviors between leaders and followers using empirical, authentic meeting data. We also give business people an applied understanding of the process of discursive leadership, which may help them to improve communication efficacy in their organizations by reducing overly conforming behaviors. We recommend that future research include more diverse participants and be combined with a survey to supplement the conversation data.

We Need the Lens of Equity in COVID-19 Communication

ABSTRACT The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought forward the centrality of public communication as a force for information, and in highlighting the differential impact on diverse segments of the society. Information and communication technologies-led developments including social media have previously been discussed as instruments of democratization of knowledge. However, the evidence so far shows that the promise remains unfulfilled as upper socioeconomic groups acquire information at a faster rate than others. The communication inequalities have only reinforced the existing societal fault lines of race, class and place. As the first pandemic of the social media age, COVID-19 has also given rise to an “infodemic”, providing fertile ground for the spread of information, misinformation and disinformation. With limited gatekeeping, an immense amount of unprocessed scientific information is being put forward to publics not trained in science. In this commentary, we offer some propositions on how disinformation on COVID-19 has become mainstreamed through social media’s spiral of amplification and what role public communication has in an emergency from a lens of equity. We raise the question of whether the tremendous flow of scientific information during the COVID-19 pandemic has a differential impact on different socioeconomic groups. We propose that more systematic research is urgently needed to understand how mis/disinformation originate, spread and what their consequences are. In our view, research in health communication inequalities is foundational to mitigating the current off-line and online ravages of the pandemic.

Communication and culture in international business – Moving the field forward

The centrality of communication in international business (IB) is undeniable; yet our understanding of the phenomenon is partially constrained by a cross-cultural comparative focus as opposed to intercultural, process-oriented research designs that capture the dynamic nature of communicative interactions. Our brief review of studies at the intersection of culture and communication in the context of global work interactions reveals the dominant research trends that guided IB scholarship to date in this domain. We propose eight shifts in perspective to advance the field’s theorizing and create avenues for further research.

#CommunicationSoWhite: Race and Power in the Academy and Beyond

The debates and critiques of #CommunicationSoWhite have arisen as responses to troubling academic and political contexts, which are complexly intertwined. We are in the midst of widespread expansion and ascendance of white supremacy globally, as disturbingly evident in the trajectories, rhetoric, and actions of Donald Trump in the United States, the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson, and the Golden Dawn in Greece, alongside the growing power of right-wing and authoritarian regimes more generally: China under Xi, India under Modi, Brazil under Bolsonaro, and others. At this moment of such cultural and political crises, a critical mass of scholars, recognizing the centrality of media and communication in facilitating...

Pornography, Trans Visibility, and the Demise of Tumblr

Abstract The December 2018 adult content ban instituted by the social media and microblogging site Tumblr had far-reaching effects. The ban cost the platform its user base, and its economic value plummeted. Purchased by the media conglomerate Verizon as part of a $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo's internet business in 2017, Tumblr was sold in August 2019 for less than $3 million. This article reviews the factors that led to the adult content ban, including Verizon's plan to eliminate pornography to attract more advertisers to Tumblr, heightened concern about sexual harassment lawsuits in the wake of #MeToo and Time's Up, and the passage of two new federal laws, SESTA and FOSTA, aimed at combatting sex trafficking online. It analyzes the critical role that Tumblr played in connecting and supporting marginalized sexual communities, especially trans communities, and others whose livelihood depends on freedom of sexual speech, such as sex workers, and discusses the centrality of online communication to processes of sexual self-discovery and self-actualization. Corporate control of sexual speech, and pornography bans, which are increasing as platforms like Facebook institute ever-tighter community standards, pose a direct threat to queer individuals and limit the possibility for authentic, positive representation of trans bodies and trans sexuality.