This study explores citizens' anticipations of wind turbines that may be installed in their vicinity and the experiences of those living near existing turbines - reflecting different stages of the installation process. Findings from a German online survey (N = 2664) reveal that citizens experience considerable uncertainty regarding the impacts of wind farms, both prior to and after construction. Across several dimensions, including ecological and economic effects, experiences with existing wind farms are less negative than expectations of those anticipating future installations. An exception concerns the perceived fairness of the installation process. These results are integrated into a preliminary model of environmental change communication, which draws on insights from organizational transformation research to better understand the dynamics and outcomes of installation-related discourses.
Self-affirmation can reduce defensiveness toward threatening information, thereby increasing receptivity to persuasive messages. Prior research suggests that individuals may experience the benefits of self-affirmation by proxy when they observe a similar other affirm identity-relevant qualities. To extend this line of inquiry, the present study (N = 744) investigated whether such effects vary by affirmation domain (i.e., cognitive, emotional, or values-based) in the context of attitudes towards the human papillomavirus vaccine. Notably, only the emotion-based affirmation improved message-consistent attitudes through increased self-appraisal and reduced message derogation. These effects emerged at low and moderate levels of issue involvement and medical mistrust, suggesting intervention effectiveness even among less invested or skeptical individuals. Findings are discussed in light of both theory and practice.
The Communication discipline has faced criticism concerning the systematic embeddedness of whiteness within its disciplinary norms. This study examined NCA's annual convention presentation titles (2005-2024; N = 39795) using computational and network analysis. Only 9.37% of presentations were race-related. Most large divisions scheduled race scholarship on the first or last conference day or during early morning sessions and empaneled a smaller proportion of race-related scholarship than NCA more broadly. Race scholarship was most often sponsored and co-sponsored by divisions focused on race or critical methodology, or caucuses representing the interests of a racial or social demographic. We discuss our findings considering the marginalization of race-related scholarship, and implications for epistemological racism and NCA's role in guiding the discipline's trajectory.
This study utilized relational dialectics theory to examine the discursive (re)constructions of family for Christian feminists who have renegotiated their conservative evangelical religious identities in the age of Trumpism. Participants' talk manifested discursive struggles between two competing discourses about family: the discourse of obliged relationship endurance (DORE) and the discourse of deliberate relationship cultivation (DDRC). The DORE views family as permanently bound by biological or legal ties, requiring unconditional, enduring commitment. In contrast, the DDRC emphasizes the voluntary nature of family relationships, individual needs, and open communication. This study sheds light on how (formerly conservative Christian) feminists make sense of new family dynamics, offering insights into evolving definitions of family and the complexities of navigating family relationships amid sociopolitical divisions.
Sexual harassment (SH) is a ubiquitous problem that causes material, physical, and psychological challenges for employees. When SH occurs, there are also myriad workplace relationships and organizational roles to consider - including the survivor, the harasser, the bystander (i.e., third-party witness), and other coworkers who do not neatly fit into one of these three categories. This study examines survivor relationships and communication with organizational members who they perceive impacted their experiences and decisions surrounding reporting SH. We collected 30 in-depth qualitative interviews with a diverse pool of participants from a variety of occupations. Theoretically, this study offers new employee roles to the literature that complement and extend identity-based research on SH bystanders - including complex champions, contradictory confidants, and complicit conspirators.
Nonconsensual condom removal (NCCR), or "stealthing," remains culturally and institutionally under-recognized despite its documented harms. This study draws on grounded theory interviews with 15 survivors to examine how they interpret and communicate experiences of ambiguous sexual harm. Survivors described embodied distress but often distanced themselves from the language of victimhood and engaged in social calibration to make sense of unlabeled violations. Findings reveal a culture of silent sacrifice, wherein survivors suppress personal harm to preserve social or relational stability. By centering survivors' meaning-making and examining how people navigate the space between consent and coercion without institutional or cultural support, this project contributes to feminist, critical, and communication scholarship, highlighting how harm is normalized through everyday interaction.
Using Communication Infrastructure Theory as a theoretical framework, the current study examines how public libraries, as enacted communication action contexts in under-resourced urban communities, facilitate patrons' communicative social capital and health literacy, as well as implications for the Relational Health Literacy model. Employing qualitative research methods, the findings revealed that public libraries promote openness for increasing communicative social capital by highlighting homophily, connecting to meso-level storytellers, and managing boundaries. Library staff members also promote residents' health literacy through neighborhood storytelling networks by facilitating the use of resources, assisting in the application of information, and bridging resources in the community. The study also provides theoretical and practical implications for future research to reduce health disparities and the expansion of a communication-centered health literacy model.
The act of identifying speech communities has always had a validity problem in the ethnography of communication research. We devise a communication approach to speech communities that recognizes culturally distinct patterns of language use but also regards speech community as an interactional achievement by members of particular collectives responding to rhetorical exigencies. Drawing on the first author's ethnographic fieldwork in the Basque diaspora in the United States, we identify three locally recognized communication practices members used to communicatively constitute a speech community. We argue that community members deployed these practices in response to a threat to community cohesion and identity posed by geographic dispersal. We conclude with a discussion of contributions to scholarship on speech community and social identity.
Psychological reactance theory has guided research on resistance to persuasion attempts for decades. Yet its focus on resistance, as rooted in a need to feel free from imposition, may be incomplete and create an inaccurate understanding of how threats to freedom contribute to persuasive resistance. We used politeness theory to develop an alternative model that encompasses reactance theory to better explain resistance by showing that (1) perceived threats to one's social value have a stronger effect than perceived threats to one's freedom and (2) the effect of perceived freedom threat was notably reduced after including perceived social value in the model. Two studies using student samples (N = 424, 254) demonstrate how politeness theory offers superior predictive power relative to reactance theory.
Expertise is believed to be critical to the development of human resources, and multiple discourses of expertise are inherent to organizations. The current study explores how expertise discourses are simultaneously positioned and shaped by contextual and cultural practices. Eighty-six qualitative interviews with women in STEM careers suggest that personal, educational, organizational, and societal perspectives shape and simultaneously get altered by the construct of expertise in organizations, delineating the enabling and constraining role of communication. The results suggest that expertise is simply not about knowledge but the entrenched power of discourses, organizational practices, and communicative infrastructures, which are gendered and seek to marginalize and obscure the domain knowledge of women in STEM. Theoretical and practical implications of expertise as a silencing device are discussed.
The current paper reports a review of the Door-in-the-Face (DITF) technique using meta-analysis. Results indicate a significant relationship between use of DITF strategy and compliance for verbal compliance and behavioral compliance across 89 and 53 comparisons respectively with weighted effects of r = .14 and r = .08. The pattern of findings did not vary over time for verbal compliance but did so for behavioral compliance with effect sizes increasing over time. DITF worked better when students were approached for compliance and when control compliance rates were lower for control requests for verbal compliance and for requests for money versus requests for volunteering for behavioral compliance. Supplemental analyses indicate an additive effect of combining study moderators for predicting verbal compliance.
When prenatal tests point to life-limiting fetal abnormalities, parents are forced to imagine the unimaginable - a termination for medical reasons (TFMR). This incredibly difficult decision to interrupt a wanted pregnancy is made more complicated by the uncertainties involved, yet little is known about uncertainty in this context. Babrow's theory of problematic integration, which assumes uncertainty is a product of integrative dilemmas, offers one lens through which to view TFMR-related uncertainty. As such, we conducted a narrative analysis of 71 stories found on two websites (aheartbreakingchoice.com and terminationsremembered.com), using constructs from Babrow's theory as a guide. We found evidence of five forms of PI and three types of relationships between those forms. The discussion contextualizes these findings and addresses their implications.
Grounded in critical feminist theory, we interviewed 40 women who engage with AI companions in intimate contexts to examine their perceived AI's intentionality, consciousness, and rights. The findings indicate that, while AI companions are frequently viewed as sources of emotional comfort, concerns regarding their lack of rights and their absence of sexual awareness raise critical ethical issues and contribute to the alienation of traditional reciprocal romantic dynamics. Moreover, participants express divergent views, with some advocating for the personhood of AI partners, while others emphasize their role as tools, fostering broader societal debates surrounding the essence of love. We argue that gendered subjectivity and patriarchal norms are dynamically (re)shaped through women's narratives surrounding techno-intimacy within Chinese unique sociocultural and political contexts.
The theory of credibility work (CW) reveals the invisible, unjust, and exhausting communication labor individuals perform in relationships. This study extends CW by analyzing interviews with 25 LGBTQ+ individuals in the United States, illustrating how they prepare for, navigate, and recover from family encounters. Participants described emotional bracing, disengaging, or fawning during tense moments, debriefing to affirm identity, and engaging in restorative practices to support well-being. Power shaped tensional experiences - double binds, double standards, and gaslighting - that (re)produced the need for CW and undermined participants' realities. This study contributes to CW by emphasizing the situated nature of credibility and expanding its scope beyond double binds. Findings urge family members to recognize and reduce the burden of CW for LGBTQ+ individuals.
Church workers often face tensions in their roles, negotiating their identities as both workers and followers of religion. Guided by organizational identification and enmeshment, this study examines the enactment and consequences of worker-follower identity tensions, drawing from interviews with church workers who have recently left their roles. Analysis revealed participants were encouraged to enmesh their identities, guilted or induced to identify, compelled to be "always on" and a direct reflection of the church, and attempted to resist using their faith. Theoretically, this study conceptualizes discursive and relational enmeshment, which explains inducements to identity conflation. Additionally, it offers implications for chronic-conflicted identification (resulting in exit or burnout). Practically, it addresses ways to avoid harmful d/Discourses and increase accountability for leadership.
This study explores the rhetorical construction of leader charisma in inaugural speeches delivered by presidents, chancellors, and vice-chancellors of top-tier educational institutions worldwide. Through a rhetorical and textual analysis of 109 speeches, the study identifies the presence of 14 rhetorical charismatic tactics (RCTs) based on Lehman's model of textual leader charisma [Lehman, I. M. (2024). Charismatic leadership in organizations: A critique of texts (1st ed.). Routledge]. These tactics function to enhance ethos by establishing credibility and authority, and pathos by fostering emotional connection and inclusivity. The study provides theoretical and methodological insights into the textual creation of charisma, contributing to the fields of communication, rhetoric, and leadership studies, and suggesting new directions for future research.
Racist and xenophobic extremists often claim their prejudicial actions are morally justified to extinguish perceived threats from racial or national groups. Many violent and nonviolent perpetrators report learning about intergroup threats from news media, citing both fringe and mainstream sources as catalysts for their hatred. Integrating the theory of dyadic morality with research on intergroup threat and mediated contact, two studies (NStudy1=165; NStudy2=300) tested how threatening news influences prejudice. Results showed threatening news did not directly increase prejudice; however, it heightened audiences' perceptions that their ingroup was harmed by an outgroup, which in turn increased justification for a range of nonviolent and violent prejudicial outcomes. Findings highlight perceived ingroup-harm as a key mechanism linking threat-based news coverage to extreme prejudice.
The evolutionary theory of loneliness (ETL) posits that loneliness poses significant risks to morbidity and mortality. When individuals are lonely, both their physical and psychological safety may rely, in part, on the ability of conspecifics to detect their loneliness so they can offer protective and corrective actions. Building on ETL, we propose that loneliness is detectable at greater-than-chance levels via communicative behaviors, signaling that individuals are struggling to meet their needs for connection. In the present experiment, 853 observers evaluated self-presentation messages from high- and low-loneliness speakers. We hypothesized that observers can detect speakers' loneliness at greater-than-chance levels and that nonverbal safety behaviors and verbal relational references mediate the association between a speaker's loneliness and the detection of that loneliness. Speakers' speaking rate, use of relational terms and use of personal pronouns significantly mediated the association between the speakers' loneliness and observers' perceptions of the speakers' loneliness. These findings demonstrate ETL's claim that lonely individuals signal their loneliness socially, perhaps as a means of eliciting support.
