Research

Black women and Black feminist scholars have always pointed out the hypocrisy of advocating for civil rights and freedoms that do not extend to them. However, with the rise of digital culture and tools as the primary space and mechanism whereby Black feminists crafted arguments, a new urgency has emerged within Black feminist writing online, advocating for a dialectic of self and community interests. Black feminist writers have created a new rhetorical principle central to the #BlackLiveMatter movement, which began in the blogosphere with longform writing and enclaved communities. Before the hashtag or activism on Twitter or Instagram, the blogosphere provided a space for Black women to craft new arguments that centralized Black cis and trans women in the fight for justice. Black feminist writers insist that caring for themselves is integral to Black feminist praxis and social justice. Retracing this work from the blogosphere to social media reminds us of the importance of centralizing Black women in our discussion of digital culture and activism and the lessons this may provide in crafting a more just future.

Professor Linda Aldoory and Professor Emerita Elizabeth Toth present a socio-ecological model for understanding and building a feminist future for public relations. Their approach acknowledges previous gaps in scholarship and practice caused by ideological, societal, mediated, and organizational factors constructing norms and expectations for gender and race. The book, entitled The Future of Feminism in Public Relations and Strategic Communication: A Socio-Ecological Model of Influences, was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield.

"Two of the field’s top feminist scholars have provided us with an ambitious and comprehensive assessment of gender in public relations. They have taken a wide lens, showing the interplay across levels of context. The volume provides a starting point for those new to the topic and a jumping off point for those eager to press forward."--Lana F. Rakow, University of North Dakota, Ph.D., professor emerita, Communication

"This book moves away from traditional liberal feminist inquiry into the pay gap and the glass ceiling and introduces a socio-ecological framework into PR scholarship. Drawing from sociology, cultural studies and environmental science, as well as international scholarship, the authors create a compelling case for studying women in PR and provide a thoughtful and reflective account of decades of scholarship and activism for equality of women in the PR industry."--Dr. Martina Topić, Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom

Focusing on debunking misinformation about genetically modified (GM) food safety in a social media context, this study examines whether source cues and social endorsement cues interact with individuals’ preexisting beliefs about GM food safety in influencing misinformation correction effectiveness. Using an experimental design, this study finds that providing corrective messages can effectively counteract the influence of misinformation, especially when the message is from an expert source and receives high social endorsements. Participants evaluate misinformation and corrective messages in a biased way that confirms their preexisting beliefs about GM food safety. However, their initial misperceptions can be reduced when receiving corrective messages.

This commentary sheds light on some of the most creative online campaigns which have been launched to counter Islamophobia and overcome the negative stereotypes and skewed (mis)representations of Islam and Muslims, especially in the West. It provides a number of scholarly definitions of Islamophobia and explains why, and how, social media could act as a double-edged sword, which may fuel Islamophobia, on the one hand, while providing effective tools to counter it, on the other hand. It highlights several examples illustrating both effects of the social media, while focusing on the factors behind the success of some online countering Islamophobia campaigns, such as the amplification of Muslims’ voices, including gendered voices; the deployment of humor; and the selection of suitable strategies, tactics, and tools. It concludes with a few thoughts on what needs to be done to ensure the success and continuation of countering Islamophobia efforts, moving forward.

After Senator Wendy Davis’s epic filibuster of Texas’s House Bill 2 in 2013, she was vilified in the media as “Abortion Barbie.” As a term, “Abortion Barbie” was circulated in conservative and liberal press, from blogs to traditional media outlets. This essay examines the media frames that helped characterize Davis as Abortion Barbie to chart how they functioned during and after the Texas HB2 debate. By making female bodies inert, sexualizing them, and describing women as criminal, we argue that the visual rhetoric of Abortion Barbie damaged Davis’s political career and circulated this negative image to the public as a rationale for sexist policies that undermine access to reproductive health care.

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, this study investigates how U.S. higher education leaders have centered their crisis management on values and guiding ethical principles. We conducted 55 in-depth interviews with leaders from 30 U.S. higher education institutions, with most leaders participating in two interviews. We found that crisis plans created prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate due to the long duration and highly uncertain nature of the crisis. Instead, higher education leaders applied guiding principles on the fly to support their decision-making. If colleges and universities infuse shared values into their future crisis plans, they will not have to develop a moral compass on the fly for the next pandemic. This paper suggests the following somewhat universal shared values: (1) engage in accuracy, transparency, and accountability; (2) foster deliberative dialog; (3) prioritize safety; (4) support justice, fairness, and equity; and (5) engage in an ethic of care. To navigate ethics tensions, leaders need to possess crisis-relevant expertise or ensure that such expertise is present among crisis management team members. Standing up formal ethics committees composed of diverse stakeholders also is instrumental in navigating tensions inherent in crises. The next pandemic is already on the horizon according to experts. Through infusing values into future crisis plans, higher education leaders can be confident that their responses will be grounded in their communities’ shared values.

To see a full list of 2021 award recipients, visit https://communication.umd.edu/about/awards-honors

Drug overdose is a leading cause of injury and death in the United States, and opioids are among the most significant of causes. For people with opioid use disorders (OUDs), opioid stigma can lead to devastating consequences, including anxiety and depression. Still, mass media may stigmatize people with OUDs by ascribing stigmatizing labels (e.g., “opioid addict”) and other stigma features to those individuals. However, it is unclear how these stigmatizing messages influence public perceptions of people with OUDs and public support for rehabilitation and Naloxone administration policies. The model of stigma communication (MSC) provides a framework for understanding these relationships. This study used the MSC in two online factorial experiments, the first among college undergraduates (N = 231) and the second among Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (N = 245), to examine how stigmatizing messages about people with OUDs influence stigma-related outcomes. Results reveal that opioid stigma messages influence different outcomes depending on the content of those messages. Classification messages with a stigmatizing mark (e.g., “Alex appears unkempt”) and label (e.g., “opioid addict”) led to greater perceptions of dangerousness and threat in both studies. High stigma classification messages also led to an increased desire for behavioral regulation and social distance in Study 2. Structural equation modeling in Study 1 also supported the applicability of the MSC in the opioid context. Implications for health communication theory development and practice are discussed.

Background: Social media has been widely used for health-related purposes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous reviews have summarized social media uses for a specific health purpose such as health interventions, health campaigns, medical education, and disease outbreak surveillance. The most recent comprehensive review of social media uses for health purposes, however, was conducted in 2013. A systematic review that covers various health purposes is needed to reveal the new usages and research gaps that emerge in recent years.

Objective: This study aimed to provide a systematic review of social media uses for health purposes that have been identified in previous studies.

Methods: The researchers searched for peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2006 and 2020 in 12 databases covering medicine, public health, and social science. After coding the articles in terms of publication year, journal area, country, method, social media platform, and social media use for health purposes, the researchers provided a review of social media use for health purposes identified in these articles.

Results: This study summarized 10 social media uses for various health purposes by health institutions, health researchers and practitioners, and the public.

Conclusions: Social media can be used for various health purposes. Several new usages have emerged since 2013 including advancing health research and practice, social mobilization, and facilitating offline health-related services and events. Research gaps exist regarding advancing strategic use of social media based on audience segmentation, evaluating the impact of social media in health interventions, understanding the impact of health identity development, and addressing privacy concerns.

Understanding individual differences in communication behaviors is crucial to achieve strategical communication during a public health crisis. To advance this knowledge, the current study explored how Chinese publics with different levels of functional, communicative, and critical health literacy sought and shared information in different forms (i.e. traditional media, social media, and offline word-of-mouth communication) and from different sources (i.e. government, news agencies, health professionals, the company, and other publics) during the Quanjian crisis, a public health crisis happened in China. Findings suggest that higher functional and critical health literacy were associated with higher frequency of seeking and sharing information of almost all forms and sources. However, communicative health literacy was not associated with seeking and sharing information of most forms and sources. The study contributes to crisis communication literature and practice by suggesting health literacy, as an individual factor, can be used to identify influential publics in crisis information transmission. The study also adds to health literacy literature by suggesting the need to develop context-specific operationalizations of communicative health literacy.