Communication

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Another Episode in the Great American Adventure: A Fictional Play (based on a speech by Richard Nixon "The Cambodia Strike," April 30, 1970
(Moments in Contemporary Rhetoric and Communication, 1972) Klumpp, James F.
A fictional representation of the writing of the speech in which Richard Nixon justified to the Nation the incursion into Cambodia.
Motive and New Rhetorics
(1973) Klumpp, James F.
Analysis of the uses made of the Attica prison revolt by various groups in society in support of the motivations which drove their own efforts. Contains critique of rhetorical theory and the place of motives in rhetorical theory.
Richard Nixon's Anti-Impeachment Campaign: America's Paradise Lost
(Fred McMahon, 1974-05-01) Brock, Bernard; Klumpp, James F.
Analysis of Richard Nixon's April 29, 1974, speech during the Nixon impeachment crisis. Interprets the speech as a quest narrative.
The Vietnam Veteran: A Victim of the War's Rhetorical Failure
(1988-02-22) Hollihan, Thomas A.; Klumpp, James F.
Argues that from defense and media coverage of the Vietnam War, an image of the character and activities of those fighting the war emerged. Within the defense of the war two justifications fought for dominance: a romantic call to idealism and a pragmatic materialist call to complete a task started. These contradictory motivations for the war colored the image of the soldier who fought the war as he became a concrete symbols caught in the contradiction. After the war, survivors had to then struggle with this image produced to defend the war.
Report of the Seminar on Communication and Culture
(1990) Klumpp, James F.; and others
Report of a seminar held at the Second Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society, New Harmony, IN, May 1990. Records topics and outcomes for the seminar. Includes ideas about how to use Kenneth Burke's ideas and methods to understand the relationship between Communication and Culture.
Wading into the Stream of Forensics Research: The View from the Editorial Office
(National Forensics Journal, 1990) Klumpp, James F.
Commentary on the state of research in debate and forensics in 1990.
The Literary Journalism as Illuminator of Subjectivity
(1990) Belgrade, Paul S.; Gillespie, Patti P.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
Research into objectivity in the news media abounds. Much of it indicates that objectivity is a flawed concept, one most difficult to incorporate into traditional journalistic practice. This study, departing from the customary line of inquiry, concentrates instead on the ability of journalism to illuminate subjectivity. The literary journalism is selected as the focus of this study because it both adheres to the journalistic contract to sustain factualism and intentionally creates individual versions of reality. Examples of literary journalism are analyzed to determine how they illuminate subjectivity and how they deal with the tension between objectivity and subjectivity. Examples of the life history and fiction, two contiguous forms of writing that also emphasize subjectivity, are investigated to determine how they meet these same challenges. Choosing for the examples works on a similar subject, the lives of mildly retarded men, facilitates the comparison of the three forms. In a final experimental exercise, the author creates an original example of literary journalism on the same subject, Although authors of all three forms exhibited difficulty in dealing with the tension between objectivity and subjectivity, the willingness of authors of literary journalism to reveal this conflict served to help resolve it. After comparing the three forms' techniques for illuminating subjectivity, the author combined techniques of literary journalism with techniques borrowed from both the life history and fiction to illustrate major ways by which literary journalism can achieve the illumination of subjectivity. Literary journalism was proficient both at illuminating its authors' subjective realities and the subjective realities of the works' main actors. In a comparison of the three forms, literary journalism proved to be more powerful than the life history but less powerful than fiction at revealing authors' subjective realities. Conversely, literary journalism proved to be more powerful than fiction but less powerful than the life history at illuminating actors' subjective realities. The strong narrative voice within works of literary journalism proved to be the most effective of the literary techniques at illuminating subjectivity, although the controlling presence of authors within works of literary journalism sometimes overwhelmed other important elements.
The Unconsumated Flirtation: Contextualist Approaches to Argument
(1990-06) Klumpp, James F.
Contextualism's influence on the 20th century was profound. This was true also of argumentation studies. But argumentation scholars reached the limits of their engagement of contexualism falling back into formal study of argument. This essay illustrates this argument with studies of the narrative rationality of Walter Fisher and the public sphere theory of Jurgen Habermas.
Symbolic Power as a Dimension of Public Life
(1991-11) Klumpp, James F.
Argues for a reconceptualization of citizenship built around participation in the symbolic life of a political community. Ties revisions in political theory into revisions in rhetorical theory.
THE BATTLE OF IDEOLOGIES: A STRUGGLE FOR OWNERSHIP IN THE DEAF COMMUNITY
(1992) Jankowski, Katherine Anne; Klumpp, James F.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This dissertation examines the rhetorical process of the Deaf social movement as it evolved from the beginnings of community conception in America to the early 1990s. Specifically, this study employs a Foucaultian approach to address how rhetoric shapes the empowerment of the cultural identity of the Deaf social movement. Such a study contributes not only to our understanding of social movements, but also how members of a movement empower themselves through language. Although rhetorical analyses traditionally place communication as the means, the study of the Deaf social movement further contributes to our understanding of the phenomenon of communication because for the Deaf community, communication is the central issue of their struggles with the dominant society. The rhetorical strategies of the Deaf social movement suggest a theory for community building, especially within a multicultural vision of society, which require three necessary attributes: creating a sense of self-worth, strengthening the internal foundation of community building, and accessing the public sphere.
The Public Sphere and the Political Sphere: Rhetorical Interconnections
(2002) Klumpp, James F.
Exploration of the relationship between the public sphere and the political sphere. Key rhetorical concepts that mediate the relationship between them are explored.
THE EMPLOYEE-PUBLIC-ORGANIZATION CHAIN IN RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF A GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
(2004-04-30) Rhee, Yunna; Grunig, James E; Communication
This dissertation examined the critical roles that employees play in an organization's relationship-building process with its publics. By conducting an in-depth case study of a government organization's exemplary community relations programs, the researcher explored links among three focal concepts: employee-organization relationships, employee-public relationships, and organization-public relationships. Field research was conducted over the course of seven weeks. Data were collected through long interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. Based on the findings of this study, a normative public relations theory of integrative internal and external organizational relationship management was proposed. The findings suggest that employees who have positive employee-organization relationships (i.e. employees who have high level of commitment) and those who are capable of using symmetrical cultivation strategies contribute significantly to the development of positive organization-public relationships. The study also found that when the external publics have positive interactions and develop trusting individual relationships with employees, they tend to evaluate the overall organization positively. In other words, when employees have positive employee-organization relationships and employee-public relationships, external publics who interact with those employees tended to develop positive organization-public relationships. The study also found that employee empowerment can occur through employees' participation in public relations programs for external publics. Employees in this study believed they were acting as "the ears" of the organization and that they were contributing to the betterment of the organization and the community at the same time. Employees also developed personal networks with other employees through participating in public relations programs, which contributed to the building of an internal community. The study showed that public relations programs that tap into the intersection of internal and external publics contribute to the simultaneous development of positive relationships within and between both arenas. Visible leadership, continued dialogue, listening, face-to-face communication, and educational communication were newly identified as significant strategies effecting the development of positive organization-public relationships. In conclusion, this dissertation proposes that in order for public relations to enact its role as an integrated relationship management function for both the internal and external publics, it should be organized according to the principles outlined by the excellence theory and practice symmetrical communication.
RESEARCHING LISTENING FROM THE INSIDE OUT: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONVERSATIONAL LISTENING SPAN AND PERCEIVED COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
(2004-04-30) Janusik, Laura Ann; Wolvin, Andrew D.; Communication
Listening research has been a challenge, as there is lack of agreement as to what constitutes listening (Glenn, 1989; Witkin, 1990). This lack of agreement has spawned over 50 definitions and models for listening, but not one testable theory. Most models and definitions were developed in the early 1970s, and listening researchers grounded their work in the popular attention and memory theorists of the day including Broadbent, Treisman, and Kahneman. Attention and memory models of this time period were linear in nature and popularized with the notion of short-term memory/long-term memory (Driver, 2001). The Working Memory theory (WM) was introduced by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974, and by 1980 it had become the dominant theoretical perspective. WM is a fixed-capacity system accounting for both processing and storage functions. However, a close inspection of past and present listening definitions and models reveal that they all are built, implicitly or explicitly, on the unsupported linear attention and memory research. This study first provides a comprehensive chronological overview of both listening models and attention and memory models. A cognitive listening capacity instrument, the Conversational Listening Span (CLS), is proposed, tested, and validated. The CLS is grounded in WM and acts as a proxy measure for the biological construct of conversational listening capacity. Conversational listening capacity is defined as the number of cognitive meanings that one can hold active and respond to within the course of a conversation. Communibiologists assert that communication behaviors are a function of biological systems (Beatty & McCroskey, 2001). Thus, the CLS, a biological measure, is used to predict perceived communicative competence. Thus, this study (N=467) investigates the role of CLS on perceived communicative competence. Four hypotheses are advanced and ultimately supported: H1: Conversational Listening Span will have a direct relationship with the reading span, the listening span, and the speaking span. H2: Conversational Listening Span will have a direct relationship with perceived interpersonal competence as well as communicative competence. H3: Listening Span and Conversational Listening Span will predict one's communicative competence. H4: Those with greater interest (high) in their conversational topic area will score higher on the CLS than those with lower interest in their topic area.
First Ladies as Political Women: Press Framing of Presidential Wives, 1900-2001
(2004-11-15) Burns, Lisa M.; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This project contends that press framing of the U.S. first lady institution throughout the twentieth century positioned presidential wives as important public women who were presented as models of American womanhood. An analysis of the print news coverage reveals that the first lady institution serves as a site of ideological contestation over women's public and political roles, reflecting the intersection of gender, publicity, and power at particular historical moments. The press practice of gendered framing draws on often competing ideologies of American womanhood, and in doing so shapes the content of news narratives. The subjects of the stories often become representatives of social gender norms. I call this practice personification framing, which is the positioning of a well-known individual as the embodiment of a particular ideology. A personification frame serves as an ideological short cut used by journalists to simplify, in the case of first ladies, the complexities of gender role performance, making such discussions easier to insert into the limited space of a single news story. An outgrowth of personification framing is the emergence of first ladies as public women, gendered celebrities, political activists, and political interlopers, positioning that reflects press representations of women's public and political roles at various points in U.S. history. The publicity and scrutiny surrounding gendered performances of the first lady position construct boundaries of empowerment and containment that help to normalize women's public activity and domestic empowerment while challenging women's public and private political influence. Press frames, thus, serve as important boundary markers that help to define "proper" performances of both gender and the first lady position. While first ladies' status as public women and gendered celebrities results in both access to and influence within U.S. political culture, they remain on the fringes, with their power largely limited to domestic matters and women's issues. When their influence is suspected of trespassing too far into the male political reserve, press coverage exhibits a rhetoric of containment that suggests the political activities of first ladies violate the gendered boundaries of institutional performance. Such framing accentuates the contestation that surrounds first ladies as political women.
The cognitive dynamics of beliefs: The role of discrepancy, credibility, and involvement on microprocesses of judgment
(2004-11-30) Chung, Sungeun; Fink, Edward L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation investigates the process of belief change by examining the time course of beliefs. The time course of belief change during judgment provides information about dynamic aspects of the cognitive system, cognitive responses during judgment, and the effect of distal variables on belief change. Several previous studies obtained individual belief trajectories using a computer mouse technique to observe the time course of belief change. Based on characteristics of belief trajectories, this study developed a new framework for their analysis. This framework allows analyses not only of overall but also of micro aspects of belief change during judgment. Hypotheses about the time course of belief changes were developed and tested with four data sets from three previous studies. Total N = 267. This study found the following: (1) Belief change during message receipt reflects the structure and properties of the message; (2) belief change during the post-message phase shows some oscillatory and some damping dynamics; (3) message discrepancy and source credibility have dynamic effects on belief change during judgment. This study generally supports dynamic models of belief change. Methodologically, this study suggests that belief trajectories can provide on-line information about cognitive responses and micro belief changes during judgment.
TOWARD A MODEL OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC RELATIONS: SCENARIO BUILDING FROM A PUBLIC RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE
(2004-12-03) Sung, MinJung; Grunig, Larissa A; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores how public relations can employ scenario building as part of strategic management. It examines the scenario-building process from a public relations' perspective and proposes a new model of scenario building. Scenario building is a strategic-planning technique that projects multiple future environmental situations for an organization to improve its understanding of the environment and to develop strategies based on alternative outlooks. Strategic management, scenario planning, issues management, environmental scanning, and the situational theory of publics serve as context for this study. After building the conceptual framework of scenario building, I apply the model to selected case issues of a large corporation and build possible scenarios. I conducted a case study based on two issues: insurers' use of credit scoring and insurance regulatory reform. The study first examines how the organization manages public relations through interviews with its public relations practitioners and document review. As an initial step of the model, I identified the organization's issues and environmental factors through individual interviews, a group interview, and extensive environmental scanning. I conducted interviews with members of activist publics using J. Grunig's (1997) situational theory of publics, which provided critical components of scenarios. After building multiple scenarios, I revised them based on the comments from the organization's public relations practitioners and discussed further development as well as future usage. The findings suggest that public relations theories provide useful insights into scenario building. Publics' behaviors and attitudes, which are often overlooked in scenario-building processes, are critical environmental factors that structure scenarios. Scenario building can also be incorporated with issues management and initiate cross-functional strategic conversation. Furthermore, public relations practitioners will benefit from this model not only as a strategy-development tool, but as a device for internal educational and organizational learning. Consequently, scenario building can help public relations practitioners maximize their contribution to strategic management. It can empower communicators as it allows them to find novel and valuable ways to be involved in strategic decision-making. Thus the study extends the understanding of how practically, as well as theoretically, public relations can participate in strategic decision-making.
The Status of Public Relations In Latvia
(2004-12-06) Petersone, Baiba; Grunig, Larissa A.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis explores the status of public relations in post-communist Latvia. The study reviews: whether public relations practitioners in Latvia practice J. Grunig and Hunt's (1984) press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetrical, and two-way symmetrical models of public relations; how former communist propaganda has affected contemporary public relations; and how public relations has contributed to political and economic transformation. Long-interviews were conducted with ten Latvian public relations practitioners. The findings revealed that the four models of public relations were practiced in Latvia. Communist propaganda affected contemporary public relations. The field of public relations contributed to the political and economic transformation. This study adds a Latvian perspective to the global theory of public relations. The study also provides practical implications for public relations practitioners by describing the ways political and economic contexts influence the practice of public relations in Latvia.
Strategic Decision-making, Group Behavior, and Public Relations Strategies
(2005-04-15) Philbin, John Patrick; Grunig, James E; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
As a boundary spanning function in organizations, public relations can enhance strategic decision-making by introducing relevant information that addresses decision-making consequences on stakeholders to the process. The premise for the study was that effective communication that attends to certain communication aspects of decision-making through organizational strategic decision-making initiatives can enhance the likelihood of more effective decisions. The method of investigation was active interviews. This method was considered most appropriate to acquire an understanding of senior executives' interpretation and description of four strategic decision-making events that were conducted in the U.S. Coast Guard during the 1990s. The results of this study revealed several patterns or themes associated with more effective strategic decision-making. First, organizations that view decision-making as more continuous and connected to other important goals find their efforts to be more effective. Second, transparency is an important quality in strategic decision-making because it leads to higher levels of trust among participants. Greater participation by stakeholders also enhances the likelihood of more effective decision-making. Robust alternatives resulting from an inquiry-based approach rather than an advocacy-based approach can contribute to more effective decisions. Relationships between organizations and stakeholders that possess higher degrees of trust, familiarity, commitment, loyalty, cooperation, transparency persistence, and dispersed power contribute to more effective decision-making. Finally, organizations that seek to minimize affective conflict and maximize cognitive conflict among all decision-making participants during the process can improve the likelihood of better decision-making.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AS ANTECEDENTS OF EMPLOYEE-ORGANIZATION RELATIONSHIPS IN THE CONTEXT OF ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS
(2005-04-19) Kim, Hyo Sook; Grunig, James E.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
One research direction that is needed but has not been fully exploited in studies of organization-public relationships is research on the antecedents of relationships. The antecedents of relationships are the first stage of the relationship framework, for they are what cause specific relationships between an organization and its publics to develop. The purpose of this study was to explore possible antecedents of internal relationships in organizations. I examined the direct and indirect influences of organizational structure and internal communication on employee-organization relationships using organizational justice as a mediating factor. Organizational justice is a relatively recently developed but widely used concept in organizational studies that refers to the extent to which people perceive organizational events as being fair. This study was a typical example of multilevel research in that it gathered and summarized individual-level data to operationalize organizational-level constructs such as organizational structure and internal communication. The multilevel nature of the main constructs of this study was addressed by using the multilevel analysis method. Data were collected by conducting a survey of about 1,200 employees in 31 Korean organizations. I used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), which is a type of random coefficient model and is specifically designed to accommodate nested or multilevel data structure, to test the cross-level hypotheses of this study. The findings suggested that organizational structure and the system of internal communication were associated with employee-organization relationships, playing the role of antecedents of internal relationships. More specifically, asymmetrical communication was negatively related to employees' commitment, trust, and satisfaction. Also it was shown that symmetrical communication was associated positively with communal relationships. Lastly, organic structure was negatively related to exchange relationships and positively related to trust and control mutuality. On the other hand, organizational justice was associated with organizational structure and internal communication as well as with employee-organization relationships. Organizational justice also mediated the effects of symmetrical communication and organizational structure on communal relationships and four relationship outcomes (control mutuality, trust, commitment, and satisfaction), implying that symmetrical communication and organic structure can contribute to building quality relationships when they are combined with fair behavior by management.
The Effects of Organization-Public Relationships on Organizational Reputation From the Perspective of Publics
(2005-05-13) Yang, Sungun; Grunig, James E; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In recent years, organizations have demanded evidence that public relations is effective. Consequently, professionals and scholars alike have looked for the key concepts to establish the value of public relations. The terms "relationships" and "reputation" have emerged as the focal concepts in explaining the purpose and value of public relations. The concepts of organization-public relationships and organizational reputation can be integrated within a theoretical framework of public relations effectiveness. When those concepts are integrated in a model, the role of public relations can be captured more clearly than when there is a separate focus on each of the concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the link between organization-public relationships and organizational reputation. In particular, the dissertation examined how organization-public relationships affect organizational reputations in a causal model. Survey research was used to collect data, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to empirically test the causal effects of organization-public relationships on organizational reputation for four South Korean-based organizations. In the causal model, organization-public relationship outcomes and types of relationships (communal and exchange relationships) predicted organizational reputation, taking into account the exogenous influences of communication behaviors of publics, experience, and familiarity with the organizations studied. The hypothesized structural equation model had tenable data-model fits for all organizations studied, supporting the hypotheses proposed in the study. More specifically, the research produced the following important results. First, this study found a significant positive effect of organization-public relationship outcomes on organizational reputation for all organizations studied. Secondly, this study found significant effects of types of organization-public relationships on organization-public relationship outcomes and organizational reputation. Third, it showed the relevance of key antecedents of organization-public relationship outcomes and organizational reputation. Fourth, the study found a stronger effect of communication behaviors on the quality of relationship outcomes than the effect of familiarity. Finally, it found a different distribution of cognitive representations for profit and nonprofit organizations. The final causal models for all organizations studied showed three distinct routes to organizational reputation, based on significant causal relationships in the models: a communication-based route, a communitarian route, and a familiarity-based route. An unexpected result was a differential effect of types of organization-public relationships on organizational reputation for profit and nonprofit organizations: Exchange relationships had more of a negative effect for nonprofit than for profit organizations. Finally, the results for one of the organizations showed that familiarity can have a negative effect on organization-public relationship outcomes. Overall, the results of this study show that public relations has value to an organization and to society in general when it cultivates quality relationships with publics and that favorable reputation can be obtained through the development of quality organization-public relationships.