This study examined how laid-off workers' professional social media posts shape others' perceptions. We explored whether the groups with which laid-off workers identify (profession, former organization, or with other laid-off workers) in LinkedIn posts affect how others assess hireability. Participants (n = 215) rated laid-off workers higher in hireability when their post expressed identification with their profession or former organization, regardless of how prestigious participants perceived those groups. Participants rated laid-off workers expressing identification with other laid-off workers higher in hireability when they perceived that group as prestigious. Blaming workers for their layoff had no significant moderating effect.
This study proposed relationship cycling (on-again/off-again relationships) as a chronic stressor that might drive experiences of turbulence. We assessed a model based on Relational Turbulence Theory (RTT) with 188 participants in romantic relationships (50 cyclical; 138 noncyclical). Relational uncertainty, interference, and facilitation were modeled to predict experiences of emotions, cognitions, and communicative aggression, and these were modeled to predict turbulence. Multigroup analyses generally supported RTT. Yet, cyclical partners reported lower relational quality (e.g. more uncertainty, aggression), and results suggested they might be desensitized to problematic behaviors and cognitions whereas emotions played a stronger role in determining their experience of turbulence.
In 2022, the song "Bella Ciao" went viral, taken up by disparate liberation struggles. We analyze this trend to add a consideration of rhetorical form to existent scholarship about memetics and internet virality, focusing on the ability of certain types of rhetorics to span differences and create transnational and transtemporal solidarities. "Bella Ciao" is not merely a repeated chant of the global antifascist left but also a rhetorical vehicle for complex solidarities forged across difference, space, nationality, and language via rhetorical invention within a form. Our analysis and theorization of rhetorical solidarity demonstrates how rhetorical forms may facilitate solidarity to achieve transtemporal and trans-subjective revolutionary goals.
Young adult children's attachment anxiety and avoidance were tested as moderators of how their received accommodation, underaccommodation, and overaccommodation from a parent were associated with their relational satisfaction. Attachment anxiety moderated how underaccommodation and overaccommodation were associated with satisfaction, such that the associations were stronger for children with high anxiety when compared to children with low anxiety. Attachment avoidance moderated how accommodation and underaccommodation were associated with satisfaction, such that the associations were stronger for children with low avoidance when compared to children with high avoidance. Young adult children may experience (non)accommodation differently depending on their attachment anxiety and avoidance.
We sought to understand how severity of hazing events (low, medium, or high) and organizational tenure (newcomer or senior member) influenced support for whistleblowers reporting hazing in a sorority. A sample of 367 sorority members encountered a news article covering a recent hazing event. The findings suggested that as event severity increased, perceived whistleblower support, perceived responsibility, source credibility, and source agreement increased. For organizational tenure, senior members were rated higher in trustworthiness and goodwill in the low-severity condition, whereas newcomer members were rated higher in trustworthiness and goodwill in the high-severity condition.
This study examines how communication shapes mothers' experiences of childbirth in the United States, focusing on the ways voice and agency are either affirmed or denied during and after delivery. Drawing on an interpretive lens of the Theory of Communicative (Dis)enfranchisement (TCD), we analyzed 20 narrative interviews with a racially and culturally diverse sample of mothers to understand how they make sense of voice and agency during and after delivery. Three themes were identified: undermining maternal agency (being spoken about rather than to, non-consensual procedures), postpartum silence (proceduralism and emotional neglect), and resistance and recovery (boundary-setting, reinterpretation, and cultural advocacy). Findings reveal that (dis)enfranchisement is not incidental, but a patterned communicative process that reproduces institutional hierarchies and stigma. While some mothers resisted through acts of refusal and reframing, such resilience highlights systemic failures rather than adequate support. Theoretically, this study extends TCD by demonstrating how subtle silences and omissions enact structural violence in reproductive healthcare. Practically, it calls for trauma-informed, equity-centered reforms that embed communicative accountability into training, policy, and postpartum care.
Inoculation research has traditionally evaluated both treatment and attack messages delivered in lengthy formats-paragraphs of text with extended arguments. In this study, in addition to using a traditional inoculation message format, inoculation messages were delivered via terse SMS/text messages. Specifically, inoculation was delivered as part of a three-terse-message series or a one-terse-message series in which inoculation was conceptualized (in alignment with the medical analogy) in parallel to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19 that required multiple doses for "fully vaccinated" status. Attack messages were designed as succinct social media messages. Results reflected parallels to the biological metaphor, as the three-dose regimen elicited higher resistance compared to the control and the one-dose regimen, the latter of which itself provided higher resistance compared to control.
On September 25, 2024, Matthew Sluka, former starting quarterback for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) football team, announced that he would forgo participation in all team activities for the 2024-2025 season. Using a multimethod approach that combined computational semantic network analysis and qualitative grand narrative analysis, we analyzed 1,515 news articles (n = 1515) covering Sluka's departure from the UNLV football program and the controversy surrounding a name, image, and likeness dispute that accompanied it. Results indicated a narrative reconstitution of blame that positioned university athletes, like Sluka, as the cause of current instability in the collegiate sports landscape. The theoretical and practical contributions of this research can be summarized in three key points: (1) agentic control in elite athletics organizations is tied to the economic exploitation of aspirational labor, (2) the NIL bargaining landscape operates as a tool of flexibility in vocational membership across totalistic organizations, and (3) systemic resistance to the grand narrative critique of NIL bargaining begins with a reframing toward critical pragmatism.
This study uses a critical discursive framework to examine how advice is formulated for dating app users to manage early encounter online interactions that ask them to give an account for their romantic or sexual desires. The purpose was both to identify the salient discursive forms that this advice took and contextualize the advice against the ideological landscape of contemporary online dating practices situated within neoliberal and technofeudal marketplaces where romantic and sexual identities are manufactured and commodified for the purposes of gamified, competitive consumption. Two robust interpretative repertoires for advice-giving were identified and discursively analyzed-the advice repertoires to 1) be honest and 2) use strategic obfuscation and avoidance. The findings show how dating app advice is a window into a marketized culture of intimacy pursuits in which initial interactions are the discursive sites where social discourses encourage the production of entrepreneurial selves in commodified processes of constant self-reflexive consumption.
This article argues that psychological operations need to be contextualized within and introduced to the field of communication, particularly rhetorical studies. This study offers a definition offering a definition of psychological operations, highlighting their rhetorical aspects, and explaining how they could be rhetorically examined by studying the relevant texts and contexts in whichthese psychological operations are orchestrated.
This presidential address examines support as a scholarly construct and a lived practice within WSCA. Through personal narrative and vulnerability, Justin P. Boren reflects on his scholarly journey. Analysis of the 95th annual convention revealed four emergent themes: Educational support; queer and trans support; community and cultural support; and organizational support. The address positions WSCA as enacting support through fostering emerging scholars, welcoming newcomers, and creating space for resistance. Two new initiatives were announced including a mentoring program and the WSCA Distinguished Mentor Award, operationalizing support as praxis and recognizing WSCA members as chosen family.
Political polarization increasingly disrupts family communication, reshaping relationships and intergenerational socialization. This essay synthesizes recent scholarship on political difference in families and integrates three frameworks - Family Systems Theory, Family Communication Patterns Theory, and Relational Dialectics Theory - to explain how polarization reverberates through families at systemic, structural, and discursive levels. The resulting model advances propositions linking political difference to alliance shifts, patterns of talk and silence, and competing meanings of loyalty and belonging. The framework positions family communication as central to understanding - and mitigating - the relational consequences of polarization through communicative resilience.
Guided by communication privacy management theory, this study examined rules in a friends with benefits relationship for established adults (30-55 years old). The most common rules from the sample (N = 240) included prevention of overlapping lives (i.e. cannot meet family) and the presentation of the relationship (i.e. keep the relationship a secret). Explicit rules were associated with greater relationship satisfaction, intimacy, and trust as compared to implicit or no rules. Rule specificity (i.e. explicit, implicit, no rules) did not impact commitment, love, passion, or sexual satisfaction. These findings offer unique insights into casual sex relationships for a non-college-aged population.
Certain communicative actions are prosocial, and reflecting on (i.e. savoring) these behaviors can be meaningful for communicators. This mixed-methods study developed a typology of kindness communication and examined how prosocial dispositions predict savoring. Participants described five types of kindness communication: acts of service (small and large), gifting, emotional support, companionship/inclusion, and expressed appreciation. We assessed beneficence and humanity-esteem as predictors of engagement in savoring and capacity to savor kindness communication. Beneficence emerged as the strongest predictor of both outcomes. Findings highlight kindness communication and savoring as agentic, relational processes with implications for communication theory, pedagogy, and relational well-being.
In 2015, Humane Party presidential candidate Clifton Roberts delivered "A Passionately Compassionate Nation." This article argues that Roberts' nomination acceptance address takes the form of an American jeremiad, a speech affirming a founding national covenant, diagnosing its breach, and urging its restoration. Yet Roberts creatively retools the jeremiad's tripartite structure in light of the ideology of intersectional abolitionist veganism to promote multispecies justice. This finding augments scholarly knowledge of the jeremiad's reach, function, and evolution. It illustrates the genre's uptake in minor-party politics; displays its utility for systemic critique; and exemplifies a novel fusion of the African American and environmental jeremiads.
The current study examines the influence of relational characteristics, in particular closeness and relational uncertainty, on the prevalence of the support gaps people experience with a romantic partner. Participants currently in a romantic relationship responded to a questionnaire about their relationship, a stressful event they recently experienced, and how much support they desired and received from their partner. Results indicate that closeness was positively associated with support matches and negatively associated with support deficits. Facets of relational uncertainty did not directly correspond with support gaps; however, closeness and relationship uncertainty jointly explained support deficits and surpluses.
Disabled and neurodivergent women face multiple and interlocking oppressions that jeopardize their workplace performance and chances for career advancement. Through a critical organizational exploration of the theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD), we question how uncontested and seemingly tacit organizational knowledge reinforces and perpetuates oppressive practices. Through data from eighteen semi-structured interviews with working women and gender non-conforming individuals who identified as disabled and/or neurodivergent across the United States, we surfaced four disenfranchising workplace tactics: (a) question professional competence, (b) discount workplace legitimacy, (c) encourage masking and concealment, and (d) structural resistance to change. We discuss theoretical and practical contributions.
Two experiments investigated predictors of intentions to engage in intimate partner violence as a communicative response to jealousy (CRJ). Both studies examine whether exposure to media depicting IPV influences perceived descriptive social norms surrounding physically and verbally aggressive CRJs and how norms impact behavioral intentions. The second study explores moral beliefs as moderators. Results indicate exposure to depictions of destructive CRJs increased perceptions that violence is a common CRJ. Additionally, norms predicted intentions to engage in physical violence and verbal aggression. Finally, endorsement of the loyalty moral foundation moderated the relationship between norms and intention to engage in physical violence.
