ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT In 2016, the American Bison Coalition (ABC)—an alliance of conservationists, ranchers, Indigenous advocates, and others—petitioned the U.S. government to designate the American bison as the national mammal. They aimed to create a patriotic conservation symbol to rally cross-sector stakeholder support for the Bison Restoration Movement. Scholars have criticized such symbolism for provoking conflict due to its reliance on synecdochic argumentation. Using the Vote Bison Campaign as an illustrative case study, this article argues that synecdoche can also foster cohesion. A rhetorical analysis of the ABC's official statements shows how ironic synecdochic appeals framed the bison as an open-ended, inclusive symbol. This rhetorical strategy affirmed the coalition's diverse and sometimes oppositional priorities, cultivating a discursive atmosphere that enabled alignment without consensus.

ABSTRACT Remote volunteer opportunities can provide individuals with a sense of self-efficacy. Yet, when remote volunteers are highly involved in decision making, tensions can arise. This study draws on 26 interviews with organizers and remote volunteers on an abortion fund hotline. I investigate a tension, caring about and for, that emerged when volunteers discussed making paradoxical funding decisions. As a feminist reproductive justice organization, the hotline also navigated the caring about and for tension in organizational policies and practices. To address these tensions, I argue bureaucratic processes typically eschewed by feminist and postbureaucratic organizations might be suitable for some nonprofits like the remote hotline in this study. I explore how bounded emotionality and a proposed feminist bounded rationality might address volunteer decision-making tensions.

ABSTRACT This paper reports the findings from two randomized controlled experiments and a field study, evaluating the effectiveness of a culture-centered campaign co-designed with foreign domestic workers in Singapore on the public knowledge of, attitude toward, and support for policy protections for their rights. The process of co-creating voice infrastructures in partnership with hyper-precarious workers sought to address the upstream structural determinants of health. Led by a community advisory group of workers involved in the formative research, strategy, implementation, and evaluation, this campaign offers an empirical example of the culture-centered process for organizing justice-based health communication interventions. Moreover, the conceptualization of effectiveness, anchored in the voices of communities at the margins, puts forth nodes for conceptualizing data justice in health communication.

ABSTRACT Guided by the Symbiotic Sustainability Model, this study examines how partnership characteristics influence people’s evaluation of corporate-nonprofit alliances and how attitude toward partner organizations and partnerships influence intention to support the corporation. Using the NFL’s partnership with a LGBTQ+ sports organization as a context, this study analyzed data from 459 participants. Findings show that using the nonprofit partner as the communication source enhances the NFL’s reputation, but, this effect disappears after controlling for other factors. Partnership type indirectly impacts the NFL support intention, mediated by foundation attitude. Attitudes toward the NFL, the nonprofit, and the partnership, are all related to the willingness to support the NFL. This study offers implications for strategic communication to enhance reputation and public support.

ABSTRACT Using three experimental studies, this research considers whether exposure to source cues, content cues, and media bias ratings impacts perceptions of ideological bias in news stories. As a possible news media literacy intervention strategy, viewing a media bias ratings chart after reading a news story had limited influence on assessments of bias. Source cues consistently influenced bias perceptions. Study 1 and Study 2 revealed evidence of the relative hostile media perception, where Republicans and Democrats perceived the news stories as biased in the same direction but to a significantly different degree. This finding did not replicate in Study 3, where content cues were held constant. Thus, content cues, alongside source cues, appear necessary in facilitating the relative hostile media perception.

ABSTRACT This study investigates resilience processes in the context of identity-based discrimination through the lens of the communication theory of resilience (CTR). Participants enacted all CTR processes delineated in the theory utilizing both in-person and online communication when facing six identity-related triggers. Participants described how social media, virtual tools, and online communities empowered them to adapt each communicative resilience (CR) process digitally, particularly when feeling unsafe in face-to-face interactions. Utilizing thematic co-occurrence analysis, we identified relationships within triggers and CR processes, both in person (maintaining networks, productive action, and alternative logics) and online (crafting normalcy, affirming identity anchors, and maintaining networks). These findings offer valuable insights into resilience strategies across communication channels for individuals navigating identity-based disruptions. The findings also illuminate the intricate interplay of triggers, CR processes, and communication channels in response to identity-based discrimination, underscoring the need for a holistic understanding of the vital role of building resilience both in-person and online.

San Bernardino was prevented by NCA staff leadership from making the speech that appears below.Dr. Muhtaseb planned to make a statement referencing genocide in Gaza.In essence, she was censored because of her speech's topic, even though she is an expert in our field on this subject.Other invited performers partaking in the presidential address, as well as many conference attendees present, walked out in protest.We are highlighting the speech here to uphold the values of academic freedom, to recognize the loss of life across the region particularly in Gaza, and to call attention to the ongoing and long-standing genocide 2 against Palestinians and the crisis facing those elsewhere around the world within the Palestinian diaspora.

ABSTRACT The Hulu original comedy Shrill is a communicative text for understanding fat women’s subjectivity in line with discourses of neoliberalism and postfeminism. Based on interviews with twenty-five women who watch the series, I argue that Shrill offers an avenue through which audiences reckon with expectations of the female body and celebrate resistance to those expectations; in a media landscape that has routinely erased fat women completely or made their bodies a site of comic relief, Shrill engages with rhetorics of body positivity and self-acceptance. While it pushes back against neoliberal, postfeminist discourses of the disciplined female subject, it simultaneously reifies notions of the “right” kind of fat femininity, one that is marked by class (middle- to upper-class) and race (white).