Message Production Research Articles

Communicating About a Relational Problem While (Not) Intoxicated: Influences on Goal Judgments and Message Features

This project considered the influence of alcohol on goal pursuit and message production during difficult relational discussions. Forty-four heterosexual dating dyads discussed a hypothetical infidelity. Males were randomly assigned to drinking condition (sober vs. 0.08 g/dl) and females to a conversational resistance condition (resistance vs. no resistance). Participants provided accounts of goals, and conversations were coded for focal center and message embellishment. Drinking influenced the content of primary goals, reduced the importance of multiple goals and reduced judgments of goal difficulty. Under resistance, drinkers had significantly longer, more self-focused and less relationally focused messages than sober participants. We apply the results to an understanding of alcohol-influenced interaction in close relationships.

Explaining Gender Differences in the Perception of Support Availability: The Mediating Effects of Construct Availability and Accessibility

Perceived support availability (PSA), a general belief about the likelihood that social support will be available when needed, is associated with numerous processes and outcomes of supportive communication. Currently, however, there is little understanding of the factors that contribute to this belief. Numerous studies have reported gender differences in PSA, with women generally indicating that they see support as more available than do men; in turn, gender differences in PSA have been cited to explain gender differences in the production and interpretation of supportive messages. In an effort to explain gender differences in PSA and, more broadly, understand the social-cognitive factors that contribute to individual differences in PSA, this article proposes and reports a test of a theoretical model that treats PSA as the outcome of the availability and accessibility of cognitive schemata for construing social situations. Participants (150 men and 271 women) completed instruments providing assessments of PSA, construct availability (cognitive complexity), and construct accessibility (expressive and instrumental orientations). Bootstrap procedures for the simultaneous assessment of multiple mediators found that construct accessibility generally was a stronger mediator of gender differences in PSA than construct availability. However, a cooperative suppression effect was found for 1 index of construct accessibility, complicating the interpretation of mediation effects.

Examining the Effects of Planning and Empathic Accuracy on Communication in Relational and Nonrelational Conflict Interactions

Grounded in message production research, we considered the effects of planning (plan vs. not plan), discussion type (relational vs. nonrelational), and perceived empathic accuracy on the likelihood of conflict resolution in close relationships. Eighty-two “dating” couples from a southeastern university participated in two conflict discussions; one concerned a relational problem, while the other focused on a nonrelational problem-solving task. As predicted, individuals were more likely to report the nonrelational task as resolved, compared to the relational discussion. While discussion type was not associated with empathic accuracy, there was a positive association between perceived empathic accuracy and conflict resolution. Surprisingly, planning was not associated with perceived conflict resolution. Implications for message production and interpersonal conflict research are discussed.

Socio-Contextual Influences on the Korean News Media's Interpretation of Samsung's $847.6 Million Donation

By content analyzing a multinational company's philanthropic activities after a series of illegal issues based on the framework of the contingency theory of conflict management, Shoemaker and Reese's (1996) onion model of media message production process, and crisis communication theory, this study shows that the failure to fulfill legal responsibility cannot satisfy the important public (mass media in this case), even though the company tries to fulfill philanthropic responsibility as a crisis communication strategy. Although Samsung wanted to express its apology through a donation, the Korean news media interpreted Samsung's philanthropic donation as an excuse or justification to minimize negative outcomes such as a tarnished reputation. The different interpretations of the donation by Samsung and the Korean news media can be attributed to the sudden change of corporate stance, influence of similar events of other companies, and socio-contextual factors (i.e., media types and affiliation).

Usando la web 2.0 para informarse e informar. Una experiencia en educación superior

En un contexto donde la información se ha convertido en la principal material prima y las pantallas inundan el espacio público y privado, las instituciones educativas han de proporcionar herramientas para la comprensión del mundo en el que se vive, la promoción del pensamiento crítico o la construcción de una ciudadanía activa y responsable. En este sentido, la lectura crítica de los mass media y la producción de mensajes mediáticos por parte del estudiantado se torna fundamental.
 Para ello, el rol del docente ha de cambiar para convertirse en un facilitador de espacios de aprendizaje que permitan al estudiantado adquirir las competencias necesarias para enfrentarse a los retos del siglo XXI y la Web 2.0 se convierte en una herramienta pedagógica interesante para aprender haciendo, buscando, interactuando y colaborando (Cobo y Pardo, 2007).
 El presente artículo tiene como finalidad difundir una experiencia de innovación educativa que se ha desarrollado en la Universitat Jaume I de Castellón (España) donde el estudiantado de Educación Cívica y Social ha utilizado la Web 2.0 para buscar información, seleccionarla y analizarla para luego producir sus propios discursos informativos tanto textuales como audiovisuales al mismo tiempo que se alfabetizaban digitalmente. El proyecto fue evaluado por el estudiantado a través de un cuestionario tipo Likert y sus resultados mostraron una alta valoración tanto de la introducción de las TIC en la asignatura como del aprendizaje producido por el planteamiento de trabajo.

Analysis of YouTube Videos Used by Activists in the Uyghur Nationalist Movement: combining quantitative and qualitative methods

This paper explores the uses of YouTube by Uyghur nationalist movement activists and studies various ideological codes used by different communities to promote their messages. It argues that several ideological codes are produced in order to challenge the dominant ideologies promoted by the Chinese government, which create a ground for Uyghur ‘imagined solidarity’ across physical borders. Analysis of the production of audio-visual messages by the dispersed ethnic group provides an important window into how ethnic identity is forged by means of Web 2.0.

Frontiers in outreach and education: The Florida red tide experience

To enhance information sharing and garner increased support from the public for scientific research, funding agencies now typically require that research groups receiving support convey their work to stakeholders. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) funded Aerosolized Florida Red Tide P01 research group (Florida Red Tide Research Group) has employed a variety of outreach strategies to meet this requirement. Messages developed from this project began a decade ago and have evolved from basic print material (fliers and posters) to an interactive website, to the use of video and social networking technologies, such as Facebook and Twitter. The group was able to track dissemination of these information products; however, evaluation of their effectiveness presented much larger challenges. The primary lesson learned by the Florida Red Tide Research Group is that the best ways to reach specific stakeholders are to develop unique products or services to address specific stakeholders’ needs, such as the Beach Conditions Reporting System. Based on the experience of the Group, the most productive messaging products result when scientific community engages potential stakeholders and outreach experts during the very initial phases of a project.

Listening Is for Acting

Interpersonal communication researchers have not only tended to ignore the role that listening plays in face-to-face interaction, they have also viewed message production and message processing as distinct processes. The message production-message processing bipolarity is belied by recent research suggesting that mirror neurons subserving speech production are activated as people listen to speech and that the same brain areas that process gestural communication are activated in both senders and receivers of gestural communication. The prevalence of interaction routines and the unconscious activation of interaction goals also suggest that production and processing mechanisms are integrated.

The Articulation of a French Civil Hinduism

This paper examines the impact that the French principle of laicite has upon Indian and Hindu associations' production of messages about Hinduism in Guadeloupe, French West Indies. Laicite is meant to protect the public arena so that all religious traditions may coexist privately. It is the principle that, for example, has restricted displays of Muslim identity in women by banning the headscarf (foulard) in public spaces such as national schools. In Guadeloupe, Indian and Hindu associations are forced to respond to French public policy in configuring their messages about Hinduism. To fit their messages within the context of laicite, associations have chosen to present Indian culture and Hinduism as two entities; Indian culture has to do with dances and songs, whereas Hinduism is everything related to the temple. Beyond the appearance of laicite that Indian and Hindu associations cultivate, however, this paper suggests that they are deliberately creating understandings of Indian culture that are everyday more inclusive of Hinduism. Since the principle of laicite does not allow this religious minority to exist in a meaningful way, the minority has expanded the notion of laicite in order to survive.

Source characteristics and advertising effectiveness

The study examines the impact of source likeability and source credibility on the effectiveness of print advertisements. A theoretical model that depicts the impacts of source characteristics on (1) ad attitude, (2) brand attitude, and (3) willingness to purchase is investigated using data collected through a quasi-experimental design. In addition to direct impacts, the moderating role of message processing motivation (involvement) and product category knowledge in the relationships of interest are investigated via multigroup analyses. Findings indicate that the sequence of relationships between source characteristics, attitudinal responses and willingness to purchase may vary substantially across the four conditions characterised by high/low levels of processing motivation and product category knowledge.

Risky bodies: health surveillance and teachers’ embodiment of health

In the current climate of health surveillance, governmental measurement and control as well as a focus on individual responsibility for risk are prevalent in school contexts. Physical education is a crucial site for the production and reproduction of health messages and thus is an important location through which health and healthy bodies are constructed and surveilled. Within a broader project with 16 participants in an urban city in the USA, it was found that the work of physical education teachers involved the management of a range of risky bodies – both their own bodies and the bodies of others. Risky bodies were unhealthy bodies, bodies read as overweight, ageing bodies and injured bodies. The physical education teachers’ identities were embedded in their desire to embody health but not in simplistic, unified ways. In a climate of health surveillance, the teachers took personal responsibility for managing risk and were both the embodiment of bio‐citizens and part of the mechanisms of (re)producing bio‐citizens.

Endogenous Expression of Functional Factor VIII by Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells In Culture

AbstractAbstract 2216The liver is considered to be the primary site of factor VIII (FVIII) production in the body; however, evidence is mounting that suggests there are secondary sites in which considerable synthesis of FVIII takes place. Studies of FVIII mRNA expression in various human tissues have revealed that FVIII message can be found throughout the body. Additionally, acute liver failure correlates with an increase in circulating FVIII levels. Some reports have identified endothelial cells as a significant extra-hepatic source of FVIII, possibly explaining both the widespread presence of FVIII mRNA and the increase in FVIII levels upon liver failure. However, the possibility exists that other cell types present throughout the body also produce FVIII and contribute to circulating FVIII levels. Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) represent a potential alternative; they are a diverse group of stromal cells which can be found in the perivascular regions of multiple tissues throughout the body. Previous studies demonstrated that MSCs are capable of efficiently producing and secreting high levels of FVIII in vitro when transduced with FVIII-encoding viral vectors, but to date, the innate ability of MSCs to produce FVIII has not been explored. As such, we investigated the potential for MSCs to produce endogenous FVIII message and secrete functional protein. MSCs isolated based on Stro-1 positivity from human lung, liver, brain, and bone marrow (BM) were grown in cell culture and assayed for production of FVIII message by both microarray analysis and RT-PCR. Microarray data showed that there were significant amounts of FVIII message in all four cell types tested and that the amount of message in BM MSCs was three-fold higher than each of the other three cell types. RT-PCR analysis confirmed the presence of FVIII message in all four MSC populations. Secretion of functional FVIII protein was subsequently measured using a chromogenic assay. MSC culture supernatants were collected for either 24 or 48 hours, and FVIII activity was determined using pooled normal human plasma as a control to create a standard curve. FVIII activity in the supernatants of MSCs was in the range of 0.6 to 2.0 mU/1×10^6 cells/ 24hr. Moreover, MSCs continued to express and produce FVIII during time in culture until our last evaluation at passage 20, indicating that there is an innate ability of these cells to continually produce FVIII. Taken together, these data demonstrate that human MSCs are capable of producing and secreting functional FVIII in vitro, and given their widespread location throughout the body, this finding raises the possibility that, in vivo, these cells might significantly contribute to the total FVIII pool. This is the first report, to our knowledge, that implicates MSCs as a potential endogenous source for circulating FVIII. Further studies of in vivo FVIII expression by MSCs are warranted and may provide a clearer understanding of extra-hepatic FVIII production in the body while aiding in the discovery of novel therapies for hemophilia A. Disclosures:No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

EGFR Promotes Lung Tumorigenesis by Activating miR-7 through a Ras/ERK/Myc Pathway That Targets the Ets2 Transcriptional Repressor ERF

MicroRNAs (miRNA) mediate distinct gene regulatory pathways triggered by epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activation, which occurs commonly in lung cancers with poor prognosis. In this study, we report the discovery and mechanistic characterization of the miRNA miR-7 as an oncogenic "oncomiR" and its role as a key mediator of EGFR signaling in lung cancer cells. EGFR activation or ectopic expression of Ras as well as c-Myc stimulated miR-7 expression in an extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)-dependent manner, suggesting that EGFR induces miR-7 expression through a Ras/ERK/Myc pathway. In support of this likelihood, c-Myc bound to the miR-7 promoter and enhanced its activity. Ectopic miR-7 promoted cell growth and tumor formation in lung cancer cells, significantly increasing the mortality of nude mice hosts, which were orthotopically implanted with lung cancers. Quantitative proteomic analysis revealed that miR-7 decreased levels of the Ets2 transcriptional repression factor ERF, the coding sequence of which was found to contain a miR-7 complementary sequence. Indeed, ectopic miR-7 inhibited production of ERF messages with a wild-type but not a silently mutated coding sequence, and ectopic miR-7 rescued growth arrest produced by wild-type but not mutated ERF. Together, these results identified that ERF is a direct target of miR-7 in lung cancer. Our findings suggest that miR-7 may act as an important modulator of EGFR-mediated oncogenesis, with potential applications as a novel prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in lung cancer.

Copyright and the Sound Bite Society

We live in a sound bite society. The imperatives of marketing and the ubiquitous availability of media technology lead to the ever-increasing production of commercial messages, coined phrases, invented words, and brief opinions expressed instantly. Copyright law, however, originally developed to protect printed books, and is underpinned in Commonwealth jurisprudence by John Locke's 17th century proposition of property rights deriving from applied labour. This article examines how Lockean theory applies to copyright in the sound bite society. It is argued that, while Lockean theory may not be the most socially beneficial of the major theoretical approaches to copyright, it provides straightforward principles that can be usefully applied to the commercialised and truncated language of contemporary discourse.

Alternative Ways to Think about Cellular Internal Ribosome Entry

Internal ribosome entry sites (IRESs) are specialized mRNA elements that allow recruitment of eukaryotic ribosomes to naturally uncapped mRNAs or to capped mRNAs under conditions in which cap-dependent translation is inhibited. Putative cellular IRESs have been proposed to play crucial roles in stress responses, development, apoptosis, cell cycle control, and neuronal function. However, most of the evidence for cellular IRES activity rests on bicistronic reporter assays, the reliability of which has been questioned. Here, the mechanisms underlying cap-independent translation of cellular mRNAs and the contributions of such translation to cellular protein synthesis are discussed. I suggest that the division of cellular mRNAs into mutually exclusive categories of "cap-dependent" and "IRES-dependent" should be reconsidered and that the implications of cellular IRES activity need to be incorporated into our models of cap-dependent initiation.

Invited Review Article

Despite being the dominant perspective for understanding how messages are produced in interpersonal communication, multiple goals theories of communication have not been prominent in relationship scholarship. In this article, I argue that multiple goals theories can be adapted to provide important insights into communication and relational outcomes (e.g., satisfaction). To illustrate the utility of this perspective, I summarize three sets of studies from my research program and conclude that a multiple goals perspective can enrich both relationship and message production scholarship. In particular, a multiple goals perspective provides a counterpoint to some overly simplistic conceptualizations of relational interaction and highlights important research questions that are rarely addressed.

A Phrase Well Turned: Creative Facility in Narrative Production

It is commonly recognized that messages are simultaneously patterned and creative, but studies of message production have tended to focus on repetitive features of messages, to the relative exclusion of examination of their novel characteristics. This study is concerned with creative facility—the ability readily to construct novel, appropriate messages. In order to investigate this phenomenon, subjects produced a series of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives and also completed measures of speed of information processing (Digit-Symbol Substitution Test, DSST), cognitive tempo (Matching Familiar Figures Test, MFFT), and need for cognitive structure (Personal Need for Structure scale, PNS). Results indicate each of these measures was related to the speed with which participants were able to formulate their narratives. Moreover, the impact of both cognitive tempo, assessed as number of errors on the MFFT, and need for cognitive structure was heightened under more cognitively demanding message-production conditions. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Teaching Educational Assistants to Facilitate the Multisymbol Message Productions of Young Students Who Require Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Many classroom educational assistants (EAs) have a significant amount of responsibility in carrying out educational plans for children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), but they receive little instruction on how to do so (Kent-Walsh & Light, 2003). This study investigates the impact of using a communication partner instructional program to teach EAs how to teach their students to produce symbol combinations on their speech-generating devices. A single-subject multiple-probe-across-participants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional program on (a) the EAs' implementation of an interaction strategy with their students who used AAC and (b) the rates of multisymbol message productions for the students who used AAC. All 3 participating EAs learned to use the interaction strategy appropriately, and all 3 participating students who used AAC increased their multisymbol message production rates. Results provide further evidence (a) of the viability of using a communication partner instructional program for teaching partners how to facilitate the communication skills of children who use AAC and (b) that the interaction strategy can be an effective tool for increasing expressive multisymbol message rates for children who use AAC.

Recipient design in tacit communication

The ability to design tailored messages for specific listeners is an important aspect of human communication. The present study investigates whether a mere belief about an addressee’s identity influences the generation and production of a communicative message in a novel, non-verbal communication task. Participants were made to believe they were playing a game with a child or an adult partner, while a confederate acted as both child and adult partners with matched performance and response times. The participants’ belief influenced their behavior, spending longer when interacting with the presumed child addressee, but only during communicative portions of the game, i.e. using time as a tool to place emphasis on target information. This communicative adaptation attenuated with experience, and it was related to personality traits, namely Empathy and Need for Cognition measures. Overall, these findings indicate that novel nonverbal communicative interactions are selected according to a socio-centric perspective, and they are strongly influenced by participants’ traits.

The application of expression analysis in elucidating the eukaryotic elongation factor one alpha gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana

Eukaryotic elongation factor one alpha (eEF1A) encoding genes are part of the large GTP binding protein family. The eEF1A family is important for protein synthesis and actin filament and bundle formation. In this study, the expression of four eEF1A genes in Arabidopsis thaliana is reported. Microarray analyses of the gene family showed high expression levels in germinating seeds, embryos, and shoot and root meristems. Quantitative real time RT-PCR was used to determine individual eEF1A gene expression. Unlike animals, in Arabidopsis tissues all four eEF1A genes were expressed in all tissues sampled. However, the abundance of each transcript varied spatially. Knocking out expression of one eEF1A gene produced seedlings with stunted roots and a subsequent change in expression of the other three eEF1A genes. The varying abundance of each gene in different tissues may indicate different concentration requirements for each message product. These results will be very useful for elucidating the role of each gene in growth, development, and stress responses of the plant.