Communication Literature Research Articles

일본의 한국 지역연구 동향

This paper aims to analyze the trends of Korea area studies in Japan, with a focus on the Korean Regional Research Association. Firstly, examining the current status of regional research-related conferences in Japan, such conferences were established in the 1980s and continued until the 2000s, but their numbers sharply declined in the 2010s. The Modern Korean Chosun Society, founded in 2000, is a relatively new society comprising members from various academic disciplines, including law, politics, international relations, economics, business administration, sociology, social welfare, journalism and communication research, pedagogy, cultural anthropology, ethnography, folklore, history, literature, and language. Korean political research tends to describe political dynamics based on different regimes, while political history often focuses on individual figures. Much of the Korean economic research has centered on analyzing the impact of the IMF economic crisis on Korean society. Additionally, Korean social research has examined various topics, such as changes in employment structures resulting from job insecurity in the labor market, the rapid aging of the population, and shifts in population and family structures due to trends like unmarried and late marriage.

Argumentation strategies in lobbying: toward a typology

PurposeThis paper develops a typology of argumentation strategies used in lobbying. Unlike in other strategic communication functions such as crisis or risk communication, such typologies have not been proposed in the sub-field of public affairs.Design/methodology/approachThe article synthesises the strategic communication, political communication and policy studies literature and employs exchange theory to explain the communicative-strategic exchange in public affairs. It showcases its explanatory potential with illustrative examples from Big Tech lobbying.FindingsThe paper describes that categories of argumentation strategies that a public affairs professional will choose are based on the contingency of the issue, policy objective and lobbying objective. The descriptive typology will require empirical testing to develop further.Social implicationsThe paper describes how public affairs professionals influence public policy through their argumentation strategies, which sheds light on the usually opaque activities of lobbying.Originality/valueThe proposed typology is the first of its kind for the field of public affairs. Beyond, it contributes communication-scientific insights from a rhetorical tradition to strategic communication research and other social science fields where lobbying is studied, e.g. policy studies.

Opowiadanie świata. Dorośli w roli pośredników lektury współczesnej książki dla dzieci

The aim of the article is to describe the contemporary function and role of an adult reader as a mediator in a young child’s contact with a book. The specificity of children’s literature in the context of literary communication and contemporary education was discussed. It shows what competencies are required from an adult to read picture books and stories about difficult situations in a child’s life together with a child. Selected literary examples illustrate that books for the youngest require joint dialogical reading, and the adult most often assumes the function of a translator of difficult words, the depicted world, as well as the cultural, social, or political context. The article is of a review nature, the clues collected in it indicate the need for conscious and competent mediation in contemporary children’s reading by teachers, parents, and other adult participants of literary education.

Credibility Signals from Soft Information: Evidence from Investor Reactions to Tone in Earnings Conference Calls

Research assigns significant share price relevance to linguistic tone in earnings conference calls. Tone is, however, only one facet in the mosaic of the soft information that is disseminated in the interactive conference call setting. We argue that investors exploit further aspects of this soft information to simultaneously assess the tone’s credibility. Drawing on the communication literature, we focus on the role of perceived sender and message credibility in conference calls in altering investor reactions to tone. We measure sender credibility as the trustworthiness originating from the manager’s perceived personality (i.e., Big 5 traits), and message credibility as characteristics of a credible communication style and structure. We find corroborating evidence that investor reactions to tone are stronger in the presence of higher sender and message credibility. We also find the credibility effect to be stronger in weaker information environments, where we expect the reliance on simultaneously perceived credibility signals from soft information to be higher. Finally, we find that sender and message credibility strongly attenuate the negative post-conference-call drift in the investor reaction to tone. Our results provide evidence that investors benefit from considering credibility signals from the simultaneously perceived soft information when reacting to tone in conference calls.

How risk messages influence tourist processing and sharing: The role of emojis

Understanding how tourists process and share risk messages during a crisis is critical for tourism risk communication. This research develops and tests a theoretical framework of tourist risk information processing and sharing in the context COVID-19 pandemic. A mixed-method design was employed, consisting of three separate studies conducted in different case contexts, involving different experimental subjects. The results showed that: a) risk message framing significantly impacted information sharing; b) heuristic and systematic processing and perceived value of information sharing were critical mediators that underpin the tourists' role shift from “receiver” to “sharer”; c) emojis strengthened tourists’ processing of risk message, and improved their perceived value and information sharing in the risk amplifying frame, compared with the risk attenuating frame. This research advances the risk communication literature and provides implications for destinations to set effective risk communication strategies in times of crisis.

Evaluating the Mediator Role of Organizational Identification in the Relationship between Symmetrical Internal Communication and Individual Performance of Hotel Employees

The tourism industry has been distinguishing itself by promoting economic benefits and contributing to the creation of employment and opportunities in the country. This paper aims to investigate and analyze the impact of symmetric internal communication on individual performance and organizational identification, as well as to evaluate the mediating role of organizational identification in this relationship. Through the cooperation of several institutions in the tourism business sector, online surveys were applied resulting in a convenience sample of a total of 237 hotel employees in Portugal. The results of this study demonstrate that symmetrical internal communication has a positive impact on organizational identification and individual performance, and that organizational identification exerts a partial mediating effect on the relationship between symmetrical internal communication and individual performance. This study therefore extends the knowledge of the effects of important variables usually treated separately by the literature, and thus we build bridges between the communication literature and human resource management, providing information to support the structuring of new strategies.

Do you want to promote recall, perceptions, or behavior? The best data visualization depends on the communication goal.

Data visualizations can be effective and inclusive means for helping people understand health-related data. Yet numerous high-quality studies comparing data visualizations have yielded relatively little practical design guidance because of a lack of clarity about what communicators want their audience to accomplish. When conducting rigorous evaluations of communication (eg, applying the ISO 9186 method), describing the process simply as evaluating "comprehension" or "interpretation" of visualizations fails to do justice to the true range of outcomes being studied. We present newly developed taxonomies of outcome measures and tasks that are guiding a large-scale systematic review of the health numbers communication literature. Using these taxonomies allows a designer to determine whether a specific data presentation format or feature supports or inhibits the desired audience cognitions, feelings, or behaviors. We argue that taking a granular, outcomes-based approach to designing and evaluating information visualization research is essential to deriving practical, actionable knowledge from it.

Solving women’s voices? A theoretical framework for talking through the algorithm

This article offers a four-dimensional framework for analyzing technologies of gendered voice, especially those which have sought to correct or “solve” the supposedly unruly, unpleasant, or otherwise problematic voices of women. While modern technologies such as artificially intelligent assistants Siri and Alexa implement digital algorithms for cultivating feminine voices, this framework insists upon a broad conceptualization of algorithms to consider how predigital technologies and institutions of vocal cultivation also anticipate and echo such contemporary means of vocal norm-production and control. By imagining gendered voice through this broad lens of the algorithm, we can begin to deconstruct the ways in which technologies and institutions of voice have historically operated as algorithms that attempt to “solve” women’s voices by making them amenable to hegemonic, patriarchal values, uses, and ideals. The research builds upon existing communication literature surrounding the nature and functionality of algorithms as well as feminist posthumanist theory, which provides a richer conceptualization of how algorithms of voice enact both a political and material discipline upon women’s voices.

English-Chinese translation strategies based on BERT and multi-similarity fusion of English and American literature

Abstract Under the background of big data development, more intelligent technologies make work and life convenient, and the traditional English-US literature translation methods and means are difficult to adapt to the fast-paced era of big data, so this paper conducts research and analysis on this problem. In terms of the English-Chinese translation strategy based on BERT and multi-similarity fusion of English and American literature, the article first introduces the concept and principle of BERT, and multi-similarity fusion algorithm then constructs the model of BERT and multi-similarity algorithm fusion, analyzes and discusses the English and American literature translation dataset respectively, and compares it with three different similarity algorithms in terms of three indicators. The data shows that BERT has the greatest effect on the accuracy rate, followed by BLEU value and Manhattan distance. Compared with the fusion of the three methods, the data analysis of a single method is better, and the three selected index values all remain above 90%, and this study is conducive to improving the accuracy and efficiency of English and American literature work, which is of great historical significance for international literary communication.

Multilingualism and language endangerment flame via COVID-19-crisis communication

ABSTRACT Drawing from health-crisis communication literature and anchoring the study on what we have coined as Dressler-Schmidt’s endangered language model, we aim to explore the extent to which COVID-19 pandemic has become a language endangerment window for users of English as a second language (ESL) in Nigeria. To achieve this, data was collected from respondents via online questionnaires and follow-up interviews. The analysis of the data was done using frequency count and percentage while that of the interview responses was done thematically. Overall, the analysis reveals that Nigerian languages are facing a serious linguistic dislocation amid the COVID-19-crisis communication. The paper concludes that the wheel of language endangerment may keep rolling in the multilingual Nigerian society and can get accelerated by any health-crisis communication. We, therefore, propose a COVID-19-crisis communication model to slow down the language endangerment flame in the country.

Being Reassuring About the Past While Promising a Better Future: How Companies Frame Temporal Focus in Social Responsibility Reporting

How is time framed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) talk? The literature mostly fails to analyze how multiple CSR activities are framed from a temporal perspective. Moreover, those researchers who undertake temporal framing tend to overlook the role of home-country cultural characteristics. Using a mixed-method analysis of 2,720 CSR reports from developing country companies, we show that CSR talk is mostly framed in the future tense when firms communicate complex human rights issues such as slavery or child labor, while the past and present tenses are more frequent when they report on philanthropy and other cause-related activities. We find that these effects are stronger when firms are from countries characterized by greater uncertainty avoidance. We contribute to the CSR communication literature by showing that temporal references in CSR talk tend to differ, depending on the company-level control of CSR activities, and by highlighting uncertainty avoidance’s role as a boundary condition for aspirational talk’s performativity.

Reconsidering a multivalent concept: An integrated affordance framework to approach technology and social media use

The affordance concept has been widely used in communication studies to theorize and examine social media use beyond specific features and practices. However, its implementation is characterized by an inconsistent use of terms and a neglect of the concept’s relationality. The present article demonstrates and addresses these shortcomings. First, it briefly reviews the affordance perspective’s origins and its further development in communication literature. Second, it outlines the perspective’s diverse but inconsistent application in social media research. Third, it introduces an integrated framework that contributes to a better understanding of affordances and supports a more precise use of the underlying concepts and terms in social media research. The framework a) emphasizes the relational nature of affordances as opportunities for action that occur in various technological and social contexts and are contingent on designed and cognitive mechanisms, b) it highlights the abstract nature of individual, relational, and collective affordances that are distinct from outcomes such as practices and structures, and c) it encompasses effects and dynamics that impact both technology and actors. Drawing on the framework, the article concludes with conceptional, empirical and terminological implications for future research approaching technology and social media use from an affordance perspective.

A Dual-Process Model of Promoting Employee Mental Health in Crises: Impacts of Leadership Health Support and Organizational Leaders’ Crisis Communication in COVID-19

ABSTRACT This study examined how organizations may promote their employees’ mental health in difficult times. Drawing from organizational crisis communication and organizational health promotion research, it proposed and tested a dual-process model that links leadership health support, an essential dimension of organizational health culture, with organizational leaders’ crisis communication (i.e. use of ethical-base responses) and workers’ self-care awareness and perceived stress in a crisis. Through a survey of 502 full-time U.S. employees conducted during COVID-19, we found that organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses predicted employees’ enhanced self-care awareness and decreased stress levels. Further, leadership health support provided a double-buffer effect to sustain employee mental health by directly bolstering employees’ self-care awareness and organizational leaders’ use of ethical-base responses. The findings of this study bridge the gaps in organizational health promotion and crisis communication literature and offer practical suggestions for organizations seeking to foster employees’ mental health challenges during crises.

On the Effects of Range-Doppler Processing for Target Detection in OFDM-Based RadCom

In integrated radar sensing and radio communication (or simply termed RadCom) literature, a standard method is to use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms as communication signals and to sense the echoes of this OFDM signal for radar purposes. While OFDM radar is shown to be simple and effective in proper circumstances, its detection performance under multi-scatterer target scenarios has not been investigated thoroughly yet. This letter focuses on this issue, indicating that the 2-D periodogram method, which is the most commonly used detection method for OFDM radars in the literature, performs poorly when the targets consist of multiple scattering centers. Then, an interference-aware adaptive detector is proposed and shown to be robust against such realistic target scenarios. Analytical and simulation results are provided to support the idea.

“I Think Quality is More Important Than a Lot of Data” in Cities Datafication

This article studies how the decision to connect data volumes to value is made by technologists and governance people in smart cities’ datafication process. Its entry point is that datafication promises to use data to make cities liveable domains. Cities on the back of this promise presuppose that more data produce value and therefore fixate on exhaustive datafication. But datafication does not appear self-evident, and knowledge of how technologists and governance people connect data volumes to data value is quite unclear in media and communication literature. Using evidence from interviews (<em>n</em> = 6), datafication policy documents (<em>n</em> = 4), and a diverse dataset of city activities (<em>n </em>= 299) in the open data portal of a situated datafication site, the Stavanger Smart City, Norway, and with the theoretical support of critical data studies, this article responds to the question: How does data volume connect to data value in smart cities datafication? Its findings put data quality as the intermediary that makes this connection.

The Suicide of Egyptian Queer Activist Sarah Hegazi in the News: A Comparative Analysis of the Coverage in Egyptian, Lebanese, and American Media

ABSTRACT This study is a textual analysis of Egyptian queer activist Sarah Hegazi’s suicide in 2020. Based on a grounded theory approach, qualitative analysis was performed on 23 media articles from Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States, with particular focus on episodic/thematic frames and the stigma/stigma-challenging frames due to their significance in studies about mental illness. The main findings reveal that Egypt had the highest stigma frames coupled with the lowest sympathy theme and the least attack on the Egyptian regime, whereas US and Lebanese outlets displayed high sympathy and vehemently attacked the Egyptian regime. Further, the study explains the findings in relation to country media systems. The significance of the study lies in its analysis of media coverage in three countries to help us understand how Arab and American media discuss the intersection of mental health and queerness in the Arab world. It also enriches the health communication literature as the first study to analyze the framing of the suicide of an Arab woman outside the context of war.

The impact of rumination on information seeking, depressive symptomology, and protective actions in response to COVID-19

A lengthy history of research in the crisis communication literature has documented sex differences in information needs and responses. Response Styles Theory is introduced as a potential explanatory mechanism for these findings, which may be attributable to differences in rumination tendency. A representative survey of over 5,000 United States residents explored information seeking and risk perceptions regarding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Results support the argument that previously observed sex differences may be accounted for rumination, and rumination is predictive of specific (but not general) risk estimation. Rumination may also drive information seeking and subsequent depressive symptoms, especially among men. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for risk and crisis communicators, and our consideration of gender norms and their impact on risk message processing.

Communicative Function of Nonverbal Cues in Hausa Prose Fiction

Fictional writing is goal oriented and those goals can only be achieved through effective communication. In literary communication, the text is the foundation upon which the writer establishes or rather constructs meaning. But, meaning can only be achieved through the skilful use of verbal and nonverbal forms of communication as shown by many scholars (Knapp, Hall & Horgan 2014), (Kendon 1990), (Band ull 2012). Therefore, the use of gestures, postures touch, time, space and distance to define characters and what they do is essential in any fictional writing. This paper studies the communicative impact of nonverbal signals in Hausa prose fiction, with data drawn from the novel Mafarkin Khadija. The data was interpreted based on context. The study shows the ubiquitous nature of nonverbal signals in meaning-making, establishing the fact that, the significance of communication is not in words alone, but rather, in the overall process through the use of verbal and nonverbal repertoire.

Michelle P. Medicaid Waivers: Exploring Sources of Uncertainty for Parent Caregivers of Children with Disabilities

ABSTRACT Guided by Brashers’s uncertainty management theory, the purpose of this study was to better understand the experience of family caregivers utilizing Medicaid waivers to subsidize health care for children with disabilities. Specifically, the focus of this study was to explore caregivers’ experience with Kentucky’s Michelle P. Waiver (MPW), a Medicaid waiver that provides robust benefit offerings to children with disabilities. Little is known about how parents come to know about the waiver, and the communication challenges they experience when applying for and navigating their child’s health care through Medicaid. Data were gathered by narratively interviewing 31 parents of children who are currently receiving services through the MPW. Data were analyzed using narrative thematic analysis. The analysis focused on the community-level communication that contributes to parent caregivers’ uncertainty about the MPW system. Findings show that parents experience unique personal, social, and medical uncertainties related to the MPW when navigating care for their child in the community. This project contributes to the health communication literature theoretically by expanding the conceptualization of the uncertainty in illness framework to include the means of health care (i.e. Medicaid) as a consequential element of an individual’s illness experience.

Access to the affordances of literacy: reflections on the evolving influence of ICT in Zambia

The literacy practices of a community draw on a set of affordances reflecting the particular speech varieties and orthographic conventions of a sociocultural system. Access to these affordances depends on co-ownership of a system of meanings co-constructed in the course of history. Individuals acquire this sense of ownership by participating in social activities such as personal correspondence, formal schooling, engagement with bureaucracies, etc. Modern information and communication technology (ICT) affords access to the system of meanings that constitutes literate communication in rapidly evolving ways. Thus, in contemporary Zambian society, social groups influence public opinion via social media accessed on mobile phones that reach a larger and more immediate audience than the older technologies of print, radio and TV. Economic and political processes influence, but do not fully control, the use of ICT in African countries. It is debatable whether the net impact of modern ICT on access to and uses of literate communication in Zambian society has been democratisation or the entrenchment of top-down, hegemonic control.