ABSTRACT Shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma (SBS/AHT) is the number one cause of child abuse related deaths in the United States. This study, based on qualitative interviews with 35 birth parents of SBS/AHT survivors, employs grief management and dialectical theory to explore the ambiguous loss experienced by parents. This study finds parents experience dialectics of acknowledgment-denial, control-helplessness, certainty-uncertainty, guilt-innocence, and openness-closedness, which prevent them from fully experiencing grief due to the ambiguity of the loss. Because their child is still alive, and the loss is the experience of raising a formerly healthy child, the ambiguous loss experienced, complicated by dialectics of grief, prevent their fully dealing with the grief. Grief management tactics that impact family communication are explored.

ABSTRACTThis study empirically tested theoretical postulations regarding the persuasive effects of emotional flow induced by narrative messages. An experiment (N = 347) was conducted to test if emotional flow and ending emotional valence promote transportation and identification, and in turn persuasion. Emotional flow was operationalized as a shift in emotional valence experienced during message exposure (positive-negative, negative-positive). Consistent with the theory of emotional flow, messages inducing an emotional shift led to greater transportation and identification than messages that did not induce a shift. Ending emotional valence had significant effects on transportation but not identification. Finally, transportation and identification mediated effects of shift on attitude and behavioral intention. This paper concludes with avenues for future research on emotional flow including discussion of methodological challenges such as a confound between message length and emotional shift manipulation, which was a limitation in this study.

Media reports frequently frame youth as foolish but also uniquely vulnerable when it comes to social media. However, adult framings of teen online activities and teens’ reported experiences regularly differ due to the privileging of adult concerns. In this paper, we take a youth-centered approach to teen online activities exploring the constitutive processes of social media and the micro-, meso-, and macro-level discourses associated with youth social media use. Through in-depth interviews with 55 culturally and socio-economically diverse young people, we examine the contradictions and tensions that organize teens’ experiences online, as well as the discursive resources they draw on to navigate online life. Our research showcases a multi-level discursive analysis that enables scholars to see how discourses intertwine to organize communication online, foregrounding theoretical implications about how young people resist and reify certain discourses about social media, as well as how identity and imagined audiences are maintained online.

This study examines how international directors in religiously-affiliated nongovernmental organizations (RNGOs) cope with workplace stress. Interviews were conducted with directors from eight RNGOs who oversee programs in seven international regions. Findings reveal they experience three major stressors: difficulties communicating with others abroad, lack of funds, and dealing with constant travel. Overall, directors encounter these unique stressors due to the international demands of RNGO work, including international travel, fundraising for international programs, and intercultural communication. Moreover, they cope with stressors by striving for physical/mental health, pursuing/providing education, putting family first, seeking support, facilitating stakeholder communication, and planning ahead. Directors rely on problem-centered and emotion-centered coping, but they also describe the beneficial outcomes of avoidance-centered coping. Since only a few directors use prayer as a coping strategy, RNGOs must recognize that employees rely on secular and spiritual coping when developing organizational practices and programs related to stress management.

While previous research has documented a relation between sexual content in music and the sexual attitudes and behaviors of consumers, to date, there are no meta-analytic reviews of the literature, making our meta-analysis the first in this area. Results from 26 studies indicated that sexual content in music had a significant effect on sexual attitudes and behaviors, with both music format and genre being significant contributors. Additionally, participant ethnicity, sex, age, location, and study design were found to be significant moderators. Theoretical implications are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.

The importance of both parent–child conversations about sex and general family communication climates has been emphasized in numerous studies. This study compared general family communication via family communication patterns (FCP) to specific parental communication about sex in understanding young adults’ sexual communication/risk (avoidance, threat, and risk behavior). Results suggest that FCP were stronger predictors of adult children’s perceptions of sexual communication as threatening and overall avoidance of sexual communication with their partners compared to the frequency of and overall quality of parent–child conversations about sex. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.

This study collects survey data (n = 345) from a healthcare organization in the early stages of electronic health record (EHR) implementation to understand how a series of organizational communication sources—managers, coworkers, IT personnel, and online organizational sources—impact healthcare employees’ (a) EHR resistance and (b) perceptions of EHR’s relative advantage. Regression results reveal that the levels of EHR information employees sought from coworkers did not predict EHR resistance or perceived relative advantage. Seeking information from managerial sources enhances EHR’s perceived relative advantage and decreases affective EHR resistance but is not related to behavioral or cognitive EHR resistance. Seeking information from IT staff decreased all types of EHR resistance and increased EHR’s perceived relative advantage. Finally, seeking information from online organizational sources increased EHR’s perceived relative advantage and decreased behavioral and cognitive resistance but is not related to affective EHR resistance. Study implications and limitations are offered.

This study expands conceptions of organizational membership by examining individuals whose relationships with their organizations are traditionally characterized as involuntary in nature. Data from inmates and prison employees in four U.S. and Norwegian correctional institutions was examined using structuration theory as an emergent interpretive lens, and five primary ways in which involuntary membership is constructed in communication are identified: physical environment, mobility, relationships, engagement, and body. These facets are presented as the foundation of a continuum-based theoretical perspective on (in)voluntary membership and are discussed for their applicability to future research and theorizing across organizational communication studies.

Family members’ communication about health has a significant impact on issues of obtaining social support, avoiding stigma, and seeking and receiving appropriate medical treatment and care. A Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theoretical perspective was used to analyze 85 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with parents and one of their adolescent children in 40 families. Findings reveal intergenerational motivations and strategies for managing individual and collective privacy boundaries around health information and the consequences of this management for individuals and families. Motivations include protecting personal privacy, preventing stress, and soliciting social support. Strategies for boundary management include humor and topic avoidance. Implications for future research in the areas of privacy management, health, and family relationships are discussed.

The relational turbulence model argues that periods of transition in romantic relationships are ripe for upheaval due to heightened relational uncertainty and interference from partners (Solomon & Knobloch, 2004). This research explores communicative and physiological manifestations of relational turbulence during the transition to the empty-nest phase of marriage. Participants completed surveys about their marriage, engaged in a videotaped conflict interaction, and provided saliva samples that were tested for cortisol levels. Multi-level modeling results indicated that relational uncertainty predicts avoidant conflict behaviors but not approach conflict behaviors, and interference from partners predicts indirectness, topic avoidance, withdrawal, and criticism in conflict interaction between empty-nest spouses. Results also revealed that indirectness and withdrawal were positively associated with increased cortisol following conflict. In addition, indirectness, topic avoidance, and withdrawal during conflict interaction corresponded with a more rapid decrease of cortisol following the episode, whereas criticism and demandingness were associated with an increase in cortisol.