Research

This examination of secondary agricultural education students’ performance was used to determine if students could perform up to industry standards. In this study, the industry standard were blueprints created by engineers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Students had to fabricate a Cost-effective Roll-Over Protective Structure (CROPS) to be placed on a tractor within their community. All the pieces of the CROPS were inspected by an outside consultant with experience with inspecting projects and visual inspection of welds. It was found that students struggled the most with fabricating the axel brackets. The axel brackets required the most drilled holes and cuts of all the pieces therefore creating more areas where mistakes could be made. Students fabricated the vertical support tubes with the most accuracy. According to the Data-Driven Decision Model (DDDM), teachers analyzed student work, provided feedback, and need to incorporate this new knowledge into their future instruction to increase the accuracy of their students’ fabrication skills. Teacher trainers are recommended to incorporate this performance data into the summer training to better prepare teachers. The inclusion of teaching strategies need to be created for secondary teachers such as peer evaluation of measurements prior to drilling and cutting.

Since the 1970s, the National Weather Service has trained citizens to collect, confirm, verify, or supplement radar and other data to contribute to a weather-ready nation. This study examines citizens who volunteer as weather spotters through a case study of an award-winning network. We uncover what motivates citizens to become involved in government science projects. Through the lens of relationship management theory and the related network approach, the study provides some of the first evidence on the benefits and drawbacks of citizens serving as amateur scientists and risk communicators and how these citizen scientists sustain their relationships with government scientists.

Myths about pharmaka are especially useful during dramatic cultural and technical changes. This essay first explores a contemporary myth, Bernard Stiegler’s “Allegory of the Anthill,” as a warning about protocological fascism – the industrialized and undemocratic exercise of control through digital infrastructures. Following Stiegler, I suggest that the algorithms structuring many digital technologies threaten to impose ant-like efficiency logics on subjects, making them more susceptible to the homogenizing political impulses of fascism. If not the logos of the ant, what should we aspire to? To answer this question, I turn to the myth of the cicadas in Plato’s Phaedrus. Lysias, Socrates’ antithesis in the Phaedrus, is associated with an ant-like practical rhetoric that prizes industry over virtue. Opposed to the ant’s efficiency logics is the cicada, associated with poetic world-making, joy, and mania. I argue that the cicada might be recuperated as an icon of democratic renewal, resonance, resistance, and re-enchantment.

Among the most prominent cinematic franchises, the Star Wars universe has shaped popular culture in the United States for over forty years. This essay analyzes one of the newest additions to this lineage, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and the ways the film moves the original Star Wars from the purely fantastical to the contemporary, political climate. Given Rogue One's chronological position between the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies, the film acts as a bridge between the two. Rogue One connects the overt politics of the prequel trilogy with the covert, yet still present, politics of the original trilogy. Ultimately, Rogue One mirrors contemporary conflicts and crises in the geopolitical sphere and moves the original Star Wars films into this territory, creating a potential rhetorical crossroad for renewed cultural readings.

This study explores the effects of food science perception on food decisions in the controversial case of genetically modified (GM) foods. We examine (1) how scientific consensus and scientific deference affect the public perception of GM foods; and (2) how perception and healthy eating interest influence people's actual food consumption decisions. We categorized our samples into four groups based on different risk/benefit perceptions of GM food: tradeoff, relaxed, skeptical, and uninterested in the process of further data analysis.

In its use of interactive media technology, the public takes on an important role in disseminating news, especially when sharing it through social networking sites. This study demonstrates what motivates media users to participate in the process of sharing online news in two cultures: South Korea and the United States (U.S.). Employing the theory of reasoned action, this study empirically displays how the intention to share online news is influenced by attitudes and subjective norms. Particularly, this study measures both attitudes toward and subjective norms about (1) the specific news article and (2) social media participation. Our findings reveal more substantial effects that attitudes have on behavioral intention than subjective norms in the U.S. group. The discussion highlights the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Aging in place (AIP), or older adults' ability to remain in their homes and communities as they age, is an important social issue given the growing aging population. Communication is a central component of this process, yet little is known about how communicative resources are used by residents to co-construct community as they age. In order to address this topic, a quasi-ethnographic study of a local neighborhood was completed using communication infrastructure theory (CIT). Three themes emerged from the data: (1) shifting communication infrastructure, (2) shifting identities, and (3) shifting priorities of the community and its members. These findings inform theoretical and practical implications related to the built environment and organizational-resident communication that facilitates the AIP experience.

This experiment manipulated three features (intergroup social comparison, outgroup character stereotypicality, intergroup intimacy) of an intergroup TV pilot proposal. The study examined how two underlying social identity motivations (social enhancement, social uncertainty reduction) were gratified by the aforementioned features, and whether this gratification predicted media attractiveness. Findings indicate that when social comparison was manipulated to advantage the ingroup, intergroup media gratified existing social enhancement motivations and led to audiences rating the show as more entertaining and attractive. This finding was most clearly evident in the absence of intergroup romance. The gratification of social uncertainty reduction motivations was also shown to increase audience perceptions of intergroup media attractiveness, but outgroup stereotypicality was weakly associated with the gratification of this motivation. These results are discussed in terms of both theoretical implications as well as applications to media campaigns.

While the need for evaluation has become increasingly emphasized within the global public diplomacy community, recent research suggests the state of the practice is grim. However, the few writings that exist on evaluation practices in public diplomacy are anecdotal and focus mainly on obstacles to enacting evaluation behavior. Little is known about evaluation-related perceptions, motivations, and attitudes of public diplomacy practitioners themselves. As practitioners are under increasing pressure to deliver evaluations, understanding the perspective of practitioners and their motivations is necessary. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this study presents the results of interviews with 25 public diplomacy practitioners in the U.S. Department of State. The results lend insight into the attitudes, norms, and behavioral controls that influence practitioners’ intentions to engage in evaluation. The article also suggests explanations as to why evaluation struggles to gain a foothold within public diplomacy, and makes proposals for improving future practice.

Companies have frequently used visuals (e.g., still images and videos) as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies, and those visuals often contain emotional content. As yet, however, scholars and practitioners have little understanding of how emotional design influences the effectiveness of CSR communication. This study examined how the emotional valence and arousal generated from contextual images in CSR messages affected the perceived CSR motives of companies, attitude toward the companies, purchase intention, and CSR participation intention. The results of a 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (arousal: calm vs. arousing) experiment showed that arousing negative images elicited the highest level of attributing public-serving CSR motives to companies, the most favorable attitude toward the companies, and the strongest purchase intention, and CSR participation intention. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications.