Communication Studies

This study set out to explore similarities and differences between firefighting organizations using and not using social media for crisis/emergency situations. Using Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST), our exploratory survey results from 129 first responders suggest social media innovations are outpacing PIOs' abilities to effectively adopt and utilize social media strategies. Of those who do not use social media, they have considered using it for information-dissemination purposes only;; the main differences between those who do and don't use social media is their perception of the obstacles to implementing it (training, time, resources) and whether they use it in their personal lives.

This article is a study of three major metaphors organizing nationalistic discourse about Cyprus in two online forums for Turkish university students. The analysis suggests that discussants symbolically warranted their constructions of the future of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots with metaphors of blood and heroism that emphasized their personal and collective memory of sacrifice. Sports metaphors were used predominantly to convey a sense of the strategic importance of Cyprus. In addition, discussants employed gender and sexual metaphors to structure the tension between nationalist feelings associated with motherland Turkey as a pure, virgin female, and the geopolitical demands of the nation-state, portrayed as a father faced with uneasy choices.

New Media/New Europe' conceals a paradox. The new media are media of segmentation and individuation while the new Europe cries out for media of unification. Unification was the achievement of the era of mass communication beginning with the newspaper , followed -all the more effectively -by classical broadcasting . These were the media of national unification, and might have served European unity well if they were not being undermined by the new media of divisiveness -the satellite, the cable, the internet and the cellphone.

"On May 31, 2010, Israeli Defense Forces raided the ship Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel flotilla aiming to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and to deliver supplies to Gaza. Using comments posted on Turkish online discussion forums in the aftermath of the raid that resulted in the death of nine passengers, this article analyzes how the incident was appropriated to negotiate between Turkishness and Islam
as two alternative, yet coinciding forms of collective identity. Particularly, the article will compare different discursive strategies that were utilized in “general-interest” and “Islamic-leaning” online discussion groups. A deductive thematic analysis of 585 posts in general-interest and Islamic-leaning forums found significant differences in how metaphors of the body—blood, sacrifice, and martyrdom—as well as in-group/out-group comparisons were used in order to support a territorial-based nationalism
versus a religion-based identity. The analysis also discusses the rhetoric that enabled discussants in general-interest forums to negotiate the tensions between the two collective identities."

This essay argues that U.S. judicial decisions in obscenity cases at the beginning of the twentieth century reveal a systematic social process of emotion management that supported, in ways not previously recognized, the emotional culture of the middle class and, through it, middle-class status policy. Using a grounded theory analysis on a sample of 256 U.S. federal judicial opinions between 1873 and 1956, the analysis shows how the evidentiary rules developed by judges in anti-obscenity cases at the turn of the twentieth century were actually “feeling rules” meant to penalize lust, assert social control over women via normative shame, and define normalcy as self-control over inner life.

We use the legal framework of captive audience to examine the FTC’s 2012 privacy guidelines as applied to mobile marketing. We define captive audiences as audiences without functional opt-out mechanisms to avoid situations of coercive communication. By analyzing the current mobile marketing ecosystem, we show that the FTC’s privacy guidelines inspired by the Canadian “privacy by design” paradigm fall short of protecting consumers against invasive mobile marketing in at least three respects: (a) the guidelines ignore how, in the context of data monopolies, the combination of location and personal history data threatens autonomy of choice; (b) the guidelines focus exclusively on user control over data sharing, while ignoring control over communicative interaction; (c) the reliance on market mechanisms to produce improved privacy policies may actually increase opt-out costs for consumers. We conclude by discussing two concrete proposals for improvement: a “home mode” for mobile privacy and target-specific privacy contract negotiation.

In an age of information overload, recommender systems (RSs), software modules that provide automated and personalized information filters, are indispensable, if often concealed and concealing, mediators between cultural environments and the users who navigate them. Lost in a flood of choices vying for our attention, we habitually rely on algorithms woven into the digital web as if they were our own personal assistants. As these digital curators of information are slowly replacing the role played by cultural intermediaries of varying informality (a teacher, an art critic, one's peers) and become an intimate part of the fabric of everyday life, they also tend to fade from view like immutable laws of the digital background, given and invisible but for the occasional glitches. Algorithms are inconspicuously reshaping the meanings we assign to cultural objects; our habits of cultural consumption; our practices of content production; and the standards we use to judge a work "relevant," "popular" (Gillespie, "The Relevance of Algorithms") and even "original" (Introna). In the attention economy of digital content, RSs may even adjudicate among various forms of self-expression and "voice" by strategically nudging communicators to modify their speech to increase its visibility (Gillespie, "Can An Algorithm Be Wrong?"). It is precisely this normalization, this process of "backgrounding" (Mackenzie) that makes the power of algorithms all the more ubiquitous, their role in reshaping cultural practices all the more compelling, and the task of uncovering their logic of operation all the more urgent.

The recent decision in Alexander v. Sandoval has seriously limited the available opportunities for minorities to argue their claims for environmental justice. ... The assumption that the environmental justice movement has always had a distinct identity outside the context of struggle within the legal system is wrong. ... It shows the ways in which the primary actors in each of these cases contributes, perhaps unintentionally, to an important modification of the identity of the environmental justice movement. ... The legal venue chosen by affected communities in environmental justice trials attests to the importance of racial and ethnic identity, used both as a means of identification and as a warrant for the assignment of blame. ... Evidence also suggests that for African-Americans, racial identity is more important at work than at home, in the neighborhood, or in the general public. ... One, a long term resident of the community, argued that the siting permit was granted only after the number of minorities in the neighborhood had increased. ... They were explicitly identified by race or ethnicity, but without reference to their economic status. ... Conclusion: The Identity of the Environmental Justice Movement Is at Risk ... The framing of the environmental justice movement in terms of race and class is likely to narrow the scope of the movement. ...

This article looks at how the logic of big data analytics, which promotes an aura of unchallenged objectivity to the algorithmic analysis of quantitative data, preempts individuals’ ability to self-define and closes off any opportunity for those inferences to be challenged or resisted. We argue that the predominant privacy protection regimes based on the privacy self-management framework of “notice and choice” not only fail to protect individual privacy, but also underplay privacy as a collective good. To illustrate this claim, we discuss how two possible individual strategies—withdrawal from the market (avoidance) and complete reliance on market-provided privacy protections (assimilation)—may result in less privacy options available to the society at large. We conclude by discussing how acknowledging the collective dimension of privacy could provide more meaningful alternatives for privacy protection.

We use the legal framework of captive audience to examine the FTC's 2012 privacy guidelines as applied to mobile marketing. We define captive audiences as audiences without functional opt-out mechanisms to avoid situations of coercive communication. By analyzing the current mobile marketing ecosystem, we show that the FTC's privacy guidelines inspired by the Canadian "privacy by design" paradigm fall short of protecting consumers against invasive mobile marketing in at least three respects: (a) the guidelines ignore how, in the context of data monopolies, the combination of location and personal history data threatens autonomy of choice; (b) the guidelines focus exclusively on user control over data sharing, while ignoring control over communicative interaction; (c) the reliance on market mechanisms to produce improved privacy policies may actually increase opt-out costs for consumers. We conclude by discussing two concrete proposals for improvement: a "home mode" for mobile privacy and target-specific privacy contract negotiation.

This review of African-American seminal research seeks common themes among research and how the themes are related to media representation of African-American communication. Common themes among research are identified and grouped into three different groups based on how the research relates to African-American self-identification, self-actualization and internalization. The groups are named metaphorically named as to represent different aspects of African-American hair politics: good hair, nappy hair and natural hair. These three groups represent Higgins (1987) concepts of self; actual self, ideal self and ought self.