When do Online Audiences Amplify Benefits of Self-Disclosure? The Role of Shared Experience and Anticipated Interactivity

ABSTRACT

As individuals increasingly write about their distressing experiences online, it is important to understand how perceived online audiences influence the effects of self-disclosure. In an experiment, participants wrote about recent breakups for online audiences purportedly varying in 1) whether they shared recent breakup experiences and 2) their ability to leave comments. Participants perceiving audiences with shared experience showed more cognitive processing in their writing and reported increased post-traumatic growth at follow-up than participants perceiving general audiences. Those anticipating comments wrote less about emotions than those who did not. Mechanisms accounting for the benefits of shared experience warrant further investigation.     

News and notes from the state associations

An account of some active audiences and unusual situations confronting public speakers in Missouri's early years.     

The Audience Adaptation Infomercial Speech

Courses: Basic course; public speaking; business and professional speaking; persuasion.

Objective: Students will adapt their presentations to specific audiences by making use of various audience analysis and adaptation techniques.     

Adlai E. Stevenson's United Nations audience

As United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Stevenson, with the assistance of his staff, analyzed and prepared to address three widely varied audiences: the primary audience, his fellow diplomats; his secondary audience, representatives of the world press and the radio and television media; and a spontaneous and ever‐changing group of daily visitors. To influence these audiences and to seek the widest level of support and the least antagonism for American policies, Stevenson had to concern himself with their functions, attitudes, and loyalties.     

Street Crossing: Observational Research and Developing Health Communication Strategies

Courses: Advertising Account Planning, Research Methods, Health Communication

Objective: In this unit activity, students learn about conducting observational research, segmenting audiences for communication campaigns, and the importance of sharing the thinking behind their research—explaining how they operate as problem solvers.     

Personality studies in speech

From the turbulent seventies in California emerged two very different men with two widely divergent solutions to the problems of troubled times. Through violent invective Dennis Kearney won an immediate popular following for a vague political program directed against surface evils. Henry George, with less understanding of mass audiences, won acceptance for his thoughtful economic analysis more slowly. But by 1886 George had learned much about popular speaking, while Kearney's hollow rantings had lost their appeal. George's long‐range influence was in part the result of his new‐found skill with mass audiences.     

Virtuality and the Television Audience: The Case of Futurama

This essay examines the impact of Internet-based discourse on television audiences by examining the specific case of the recent program Futurama. Futurama has inspired the development of a vast and diverse virtual community dedicated to discussions of the program and the production of a variety of secondary discourses. .     

#MeToo as networked collective: examining consciousness-raising on wild public networks

ABSTRACT

In 2017, the #MeToo movement swept across social media, making the pervasiveness of sexual assault visible to millions. People shared hashtags and stories often only told in intimate settings on a variety of platforms, exposing this issue to the multitudes. At its core, the #MeToo movement was a consciousness-raising effort, but it was occurring in a new mediascape that dramatically altered its spread, force, and impact. This paper examines #MeToo as it unfolded across wild public networks and, in doing so, resisted contemporary image practices, transformed the rhetor into what we term a rhizomatically networked collective, and expanded audiences.     

The relative effect on audience attitude of the first versus the second argumentative speech of a series∗

This research sought (a) to distinguish between the concepts of apathy and neutrality toward contemporary issues, (b) to model, via computer simulation, apathetic and neutral audiences in order to predict reactions to persuasive messages, and (c) to validate, by means of both attitude and behavioral measures, the efficacy of the model. A computer program was developed and modified by data gathered in the field. The program provides recommendations for messages which can be presented to audiences in order to test their effectiveness. Neutral individuals and apathetic individuals shifted attitudes significantly in this study. A measure of “commitment to action” revealed mixed responses.     

Negotiating Genre and New Media for STEM News

ABSTRACT

This article—co-authored by a transdisciplinary team of social scientists and journalists in the United States—traces changes to the news landscape in recent decades, and asks: How are legacy media producers grappling with these new realities? As part of a four-year collaboration on young adult news consumption, we take a participatory action research approach to this question, tacking back and forth between newsroom concepts and anthropological ones in pursuit of a synthesis that strengthens both. Starting from anthropological frameworks of participation, the authors argue that broadcast videos typically position their audiences as overhearers rather than interlocutors, while the reverse is true for social media, and that these tendencies shape audience expectations. We find that many audiences have what we call poetic motivations: they are drawn to stories that exemplify their genre. For example, the participatory nature of social media genres translates well to a more candid style that can incorporate live questions and other direct participation. The study reported here focuses on STEM news, but many of the findings apply to news production in general. Our reflective methods can also be applied more widely in the field of journalism to synthesize perspectives from theory and practice.     

Factors related to attention to the first Kennedy‐Nixon debate

A recent survey by Broadcasting of television programming personnel indicates that professionals in the broadcasting field agree with the general public in holding that the Kennedy‐Nixon debates during the late presidential election campaign were among the most exciting programs ever presented on television. We know that the audiences to these “great debates” were among the largest ever recorded, but sheer numbers do not tell us why audiences paid attention to these debates in the first place, much less the potential and actual effects of these programs.

The following article is one of a number being prepared by the members of the Communications Research Center at Michigan State University, covering a great many facets of political behavior in the 1960 campaign and election. The author of the following article, Dr. Lionel C. Barrow, Jr., is Assistant Professor in the Communications Research Center.     

Teaching audience adaptation using connected presentations and teamwork

Courses: Introduction to Communication, Public Speaking, Persuasion, Business Communication.

Objective: This activity increases students’ understanding of audience adaptation and improves their ability to adapt presentations to specific audiences.     

Equal time: Origins of section 18 of the radio act of 1927

This study examined the effects of television network affiliation switches that took place in the Miami market in January, 1989. Results indicate viewer loyalty to local news, especially early local news, although not necessarily to local stations, and probably little to network news. Network affiliation results in primetime audiences significantly larger than those of independent stations. The findings demonstrate that structural variables are stable and predictable indicators of audience behavior.     

Health Behavior Change Challenge: Understanding Stages of Change

Objectives: After completing their own health behavior change challenge (HBCC) activity, students will be able to understand better, first hand, the complexities of implementing health behavior change. More specifically, students will increase their understanding of the barriers target audiences’ face by participating in their own personal challenge. They will also be able to identify and apply stages of change (Transtheoretical Stages of Change model) and other health communication models (Health Belief Model), theories, and concepts. At the same time, students will come to develop a deep appreciation of their own barriers, competitions, and motivations for positive health change.

Courses: Health Communication, Health Communication Campaigns, Communication Theory     

Communicating with medical library users during COVID-19

Background:The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library serves a community of over 22,000 individuals primarily from the Yale Schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing and the Yale New Haven Hospital. Though they are geographically close to one another, reaching these disparate populations can be a challenge. Having a clear and thorough communication plan has proved invaluable in transcending communication chasms, especially in recent times of crisis.Case Presentation:This article describes the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library''s methods for communicating and promoting its remote resources and services in response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It details our communication strategies and messages leading up to, and after, the Yale campus was closed and specifies how we pivoted from reaching users inside the library to reaching our audiences remotely.Conclusions:Our communication plan has provided the foundation for all of our messaging, be it print or digital media. In recent moments of crisis, it has been especially helpful for planning and executing large scale messaging. Similarly, knowing whom to contact around our organization to promote our message in different and broader ways has been extremely beneficial.     

Poison or panacea?: Sarah Moore Grimké's use of the public letter

Rhetors have long used the letter form to overcome difficult situations. This essay considers the difficulties inherent in the form when used by a female rhetor. During her career as an abolitionist, Sarah Grimke attempted to use the apostolic letter to appeal to divergent audiences yet discovered, that the form and its attendant persona limited her audience appeal. In her work as a woman's rights activist, she reformulated the private letter and developed a persona that allowed her to empower herself as well as her audience.     

World War Z,The Zombie Apocalypse,and the Israeli state’s monstering of Palestinian “others”

ABSTRACT

The authors deploy a critical cultural critique that extends the work of monstrosity scholars and other researchers who are interested in the application of zombie apocalypse analyses to critiques of contemporary nationalistic and social controversies. World War Z sets in motion a series of cinematic dynamics that invite audiences to consider how Israeli securitization of Jerusalem might serve as the world's best hope for containing the zombie apocalypse. By decoding the “monstering” features World War Z, the authors note the heuristic value of understanding how the rhetoric of autoimmunity influences mediated perceptions of Israeli and Palestinian conflicts.     

Bouncing off the Paywall – Understanding Misalignments Between Local Newspaper Value Propositions and Audience Responses

ABSTRACT

Declining advertising revenue and print copy sales have propelled extensive paywall experiments in local newspapers to generate new revenue and fund local journalism. The success of these experiments is ultimately depending on whether or not they deliver the value that customers require. This article studies local newspapers’ potential to build successful paywalls by conducting a two-sided analysis of paywall value propositions and local news audiences’ responses to these value propositions. Drawing on mixed methods – in-depth interviews with 20 newspaper managers and a national survey (N = 1586) among local newspaper audiences – our study identifies a major gap between intended value of paywalls and customer value perception and behavior. These are misalignments between the intended attractiveness of paywalled content and audience attitude toward this content, and misalignments between access to paywalled content and use. Local newspapers’ offerings are particularly misaligned with younger, lower income and lower news interest customers. When these groups hit a paywall, they most likely bounce off.     

FluView and FluNet: Tools for Influenza Activity and Surveillance

Abstract

Online resources can assist with locating and monitoring the spread of influenza. The aim of this review is to describe two online tools for tracking influenza activity: FluView from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and FluNet from the World Health Organization. Overall, these freely available online resources for influenza activity and surveillance may be helpful to a range of audiences including health providers, local governments, hospitals, schools, librarians, travelers, and members of the general public.