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Publications, Presentations & Reports--1999-2003

Hubbard Publishes Seven Essays on Diffusion of Innovations Theory

Visiting Assistant Professor Susan McGreevey Hubbard published seven essays in the February 2003 issue of Evaluation & Program Planning. Based on research conducted for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Hubbard's essays include: "The TIPS Evaluation Project: A Theory-driven Approach to Dissemination Research," "Use of Diffusion of Innovations Theory to Drive a Federal Agency's Program Evaluation," "TIPs Evaluation Project Retrospective Study: Wave 1 and 2," "A Qualitative Study of the Treatment Improvement Protocols (TIPs): An Assessment of the Use of TIPs by Individuals Affiliated with the Addiction Technology Transfer Centers (ATTCs)," "TIPs Evaluation Project Prospective Study," "Obtaining Valid Response Rates: Considerations Beyond the Tailored Design Method," "Application of Diffusion of Innovations Theory to the TIPs Evaluation Project Results and Beyond."

Parry-Giles & Blair Author Essay on the Rhetorical First Lady

Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles and UMD alumna Diane Blair, currently of the California State University at Fresno, published the lead essay in the Winter 2002 issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs, entitled "The Rise of the Rhetorical First Lady: Politics, Gender Ideology, and Women's Voice, 1789-2002." Their essay maps the rise of the rhetorical first lady from Martha Washington through Laura Bush, contextualizing the public and private documents of these political women within the gender ideology of their time.

Cai & Fink Publish Essay on Culture and Conflict

In the March 2002 issues of Communication Monographs, Professors Deborah A. Cai & Edward L. Fink published "Conflict Style Differences Between Individualists and Collectivists." In this article, Cai & Fink investigated the fundamental beliefs regarding cross-cultural differences in conflict styles. The sample consisted of 188 graduate students from 31 different countries residing in the U.S. Findings indicated that assumptions regarding the relationship of culture to conflict style preferences may not be valid. They concluded that conflict styles are highly multidimensional for both individualists and collectivists. Even though the five conflict styles can be subsumed under four types, the items measuring the five styles cannot be generated from any two-dimensional typology. Finally, the meaning of four of the five styles is different for individualists and collectivists: Dominating is the only style interpreted similarly by both groups. Areas for future research are considered. This article received the NCA Communication & Social Cognition Division's Article Award in 2003.

Tonn Publishes "Miss America" Essay

Professor Mari Boor Tonn' s essay "Miss America Contesters and Contestants: Discourse about Social 'Also-Rans'" appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, in 2003. The essay is a response from the 7th Biennial Public Address Conference to a discussion of contemporary feminism offered by Bonnie Dow of the University of Georgia. In her essay, Tonn argues that "increasing claims that we have entered a post-feminist era are, in my view, premature. While the Miss America pageant “soldiers on,” the ERA long ago fell short of ratification, never to be revived, Title IX has yet to reach full compliance at most educational institutions where women students now outnumber men, and Roe v. Wade, ironically decided on the day before the cease-fire agreement officially ended divisive U.S. involvement in the jungles of Vietnam, has since become this generation’s most contentious and bloody domestic battleground."

Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles Publish Book on Bill Clinton

Constructing Clinton: Hyperreality and Presidential Image-Making in Postmodern Politics, published in 2002, offers an analysis of the public image of Bill Clinton as it emerged from a series of texts. In the book, Professors Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles conclude that Bill Clinton's image demonstrated the inherent hyperreality of U.S. presidential politics, where discerning the "real" political leader from his or her image is impossible. Peter Lang Publishing published the book in their series Frontiers in Political Communication, edited by Bruce Gronbeck (University of Iowa) and Lynda Lee Kaid (University of Florida). This book received the 2003 Everett Lee Hunt Award from the Eastern Communication Association.

Aldoory & Toth Publish Study of Gender & PR

Professors Linda Aldoory & Elizabeth Toth authored "Gender Discrepancies in a Gendered Profession: A Developing Theory for Public Relations," in the Journal of Public Relations Research, 2002. Their analysis illustrates through literature and original research a beginning theory that explains the enduring gender discrepancies in what has become a gendered field, that of public relations. A survey of public relations practitioners reveals statistically significant gender differences in hiring perceptions, salary and salary perceptions, and promotions. These data support several previous studies that have shown over time gender discrepancies in hiring, salaries, and promotions. Using theory drawn from other fields as well as original data from a series of focus groups, authors construct concepts and theoretical propositions to help explain why there are still gender differences in a field that is made up predominantly of women.

Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles Publish Analysis of The West Wing

The May 2002 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Speech featured an analysis of the NBC television drama The West Wing, authored by Professors Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles. Their analysis examined the postmodern quality of the program's romantic rendition of the U.S. presidency, arguing that program presents a powerful and meaningful "presidentiality," defined as a discursive construction of the presidency with ideological and rhetorical relevance. The article is an updated version of a paper that received the Wrage-Baskerville Award from the National Communication Association's Public Address Division in 2001.

Department Faculty Featured as Media Experts and Analysts in 2002

Members of the Department of Communication faculty were consulted and quoted by numerous news media outlets in 2002 on many topics, including the Olympic figure skating scandal, the midterm elections, and the Trent Lott episode. Professors Kathleen Kendall, James F. Klumpp, Katherine McComas, Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Trevor Parry-Giles, Laura Drake Witz, and Andrew Wolvin were featured in the following news media sources: The Baltimore Sun, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Record (Annapolis, MD), The Boston Herald, The Diamondback, Modern Maturity, Food & Chemical News, ABCNews.com, NBC Nightly News, the Omaha World-Herald, WJLA (Washington, DC ABC affiliate, Channel 7), WTTG (Washington, DC Fox Affiliate, Channel 5), and Community Television of Prince George's County. In addition, The Washington Post featured an article about an event sponsored by the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership.

Parry-Giles Authors Book on Cold War Propaganda

Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles completed a 10-year study of Cold War propaganda with the publication of her book The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955, in 2002. In the book, published as part of Praeger Publishers Series in Presidential Studies, Parry-Giles challenges the scholarly assumption that the rhetorical presidency refers to presidential messages delivered only from the bully pulpit. By examining early Cold War discourse, she demonstrates how Presidents Truman and Eisenhower transformed the U.S. propaganda program into an executive tool reliant on presidential surrogates in the promulgation of a covert and monolithic Cold War ideology. In their review, Choice concluded that "Rekindled enthusiasm for such measures since 9/11 makes this fine book timely as well as relevant," while Benjamin Fordham (University of Massachusetts) in Presidential Studies Quarterly noted that Parry-Giles' book "is a useful account of the development of the official propaganda program. It makes for interesting reading as contemporary concerns grow about the attitude of the rest of the world toward the United States."

 Cai Publishes Chapter on U.S. & Chinese Negotiation

Professor Deborah A. Cai authored "Looking Below the Surface: Comparing Subtleties of U.S. and Chinese Cultures in Negotiation," published in Tiger's Roar: Asia's Recovery and Its Impact, edited by J. Weiss, G. Macapagal-Arroyo, & W.-J. Chen (M.E. Sharpe, 2001). In this volume, according to the publisher, "highly regarded Asia policy makers and opinion shapers provide an overview of a very different, post-economic crisis recovery Asia, and its implications for the rest of the world, especially the United States."

Cai Submits Report on Chinese Media to U.S. China Security Review Commission

On behalf of the University of Maryland's Institute for Global Chinese Affairs and the Department of Communication, Professor Deborah A. Cai (Principal Investigator) and Brecken Chinn Swartz (Project Manager) submitted a report on the Perspectives toward the United States in Selected Newspapers of the People's Republic of China to the U.S. China Security Review Commission. The report is available here (Adobe Acrobat file, 580KB).

The Department's Participation at the Annual Meeting of the International Listening Association Is a Tremendous Success

At the annual meeting of the International Listening Association in Chicago, graduate student Laura Janusik received the Ralph G. Nichols Listening Research Award for her top paper, "Teaching Listening." Graduate student Sungeun Chung and Professor Andrew Wolvin (with K. Halone of Clemson) placed second in the Nichols competition with their paper, "The Language of (Not) Listening. ").

Undergraduate major Colleen Marlatt won first place in the James I. Brown student research competition for her paper, "Music Therapy for Persons with Senile Dementia: Do We Really Understand the Depth of Appreciative Listening?" Undergraduate major Daisy Tillman placed second in the James I. Brown student research competition with her study, "Medicine and Music Therapy: Implications for Therapeutic Listening."

Graduate student Lisa Burns presented a paper, "Empathetic Listening: Engaging Students in the Basic Course." Laura Janusik, Sungeun Chung, and Andrew Wolvin presented a paper on their development of a listening inventory instrament. Laura Janusik presented a paper on the contributions of Carolyn G. Coakley to the study of listening.

Professor Andrew Wolvin was the keynote speaker at the International Listening Association’s research conference and was the first recipient of the new ILA " Outstanding Teacher of Listening Award."

Parry-Giles Publishes Hillary Clinton Essay

Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles recently published an analysis of news media coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This research, part of an ongoing project exploring the public image constructions of the former First Lady, appeared in the June, 2000 issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Parry-Giles examined coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton across several television networks. Analyzing both the discursive constructions of her persona and the visual depictions of Clinton, Parry-Giles concludes that television news making strategies reify a mediated collective memory of Hillary Rodham Clinton that is reductionistic, iconic, hyperreal, and emblematic of television new coverage concerning political women.

Parry-Giles’ essay was highlighted in the June, 2000 issue of Spectra, the National Communication Association’s newsletter. Each month, the editors of this newsletter select a compelling and timely research article from the Association’s journals to profile.

Parry-Giles Presents Research on Hillary Rodham Clinton

Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles was recently invited as one of the top young scholars in political communication to present her research at a gathering of such scholars held at the University of Texas in Austin. At the 2000 conference, Parry-Giles presented a paper entitled "Political Authenticity, Television News, and Hillary Rodham Clinton."

This research is a continuation of a larger research project examining the mediated constructions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In this particular essay, Parry-Giles analyzes news coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton during the early months of her successful U. S. Senate campaign in New York. Parry-Giles reveals the varied and often highly gendered discursive strategies used by the news media to authenticate or inauthenticate Hillary Rodham Clinton as a viable political candidate.

Parry-Giles’ essay was published in Politics, Discourse and American Society: New Agendas. The book is edited by Roderick P. Hart and Bartholomew Sparrow.

Parry-Giles Publishes Essay on Cold War Propaganda

Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles recently published an essay on the militarization of U. S. Cold War propaganda policies in Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History. The volume was published in 2000 by Texas A & M University Press and is edited by Martin J. Medhurst and H. W. Brands.

Parry-Giles’ essay is entitled "Militarizing America’s Propaganda Program, 1945-1955," and is a wide-ranging discussion of the evolution of early Cold War propaganda policies and discourse emanating from the U.S. Government. Drawing on declassified materials from the Truman and Eisenhower Presidential Libraries, some only recently opened to the public, Parry-Giles traces the shifts in propaganda policy in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Parry-Giles concludes that such shifts in propaganda policy led to militarized conception of propaganda that enhanced the rhetorical powers of the presidency. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 4th annual Conference on Presidential Rhetoric held at Texas A & M University’s George Bush Presidential Conference Center in 1998.

Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles Publish Analysis of Clinton Rhetoric

In the November, 2000 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Professors Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry-Giles published an analysis of President Bill Clinton’s speech commemorating the March on Washington. The speech, given on August 28, 1998, occurred within the context of the unfolding Lewinsky scandal, and Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles explore how Clinton rhetorically molded the collective memory of the civil rights movement to reconstruct his image in the wake of that scandal. Specifically, Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles conclude that Clinton transformed the occasion into a moment of political nostalgia to bolster his political and personal image. Ultimately, the address reflected several persistent tensions underlying the Clinton presidency that continue to demarcate his image in the public arena.

Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles Publish Reassessment of Political Communication in the U.S.

Arguing that scholars and commentators are too often fatalistic about politics in the U. S., Professors Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles recently published a forum essay rethinking this pessimistic view of political communication. Their work, entitled "Reassessing the State of Political Communication in the United States," appeared in the Winter, 2001 issue of Argumentation & Advocacy.

Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles maintain that academic political observers and media pundits too frequently condemn political communication as flawed or corrupted. Such commentators, they suggest, often misread existing political communication practices and display a nostalgic tendency to find in U.S. history a quality of political debate and rhetoric that has never existed. Political communication in the U.S., Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles argue, generally displays a focus on policy, an ability to elect high quality leaders, and an increasing democratization via technology and media.

A version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association’s summer conference on politics and the 2000 elections. A revised reprint of the paper will appear in the forthcoming volume entitled, Communicating Politics: Engaging the Public in Democratic Life. This book is edited by Lynda Lee Kaid, Dianne G. Bystrom, Mitchell S. McKinney, and Diana B. Carlin and will be published by Peter Lang Publishing.

McComas Publishes Two Articles About the Use of Public Meetings

The use of public meetings held for environmental decision making is the focus of two articles Professor Katherine McComas recently published. The first article, appearing in the February 2001 issue of Communication Theory, examines how government officials who conduct public meetings feel about this commonly used - yet frequently criticized - technique for public involvement. Among other things, the research found that officials were only moderately satisfied with public meetings, believing that some meetings occur too late in the decision-making process or that citizens doubt the credibility of officials conducting the meeting. This belief was in fact borne out in a separate study published in the January 2001 issue of Environmental Management. In this study, citizens who attended public meetings about a local waste site were asked to rate the credibility of government agencies conducting the meetings. The results revealed a widespread skepticism among audience members toward the agencies.

Aldoory Publishes Book on The Gender Challenge to Media

Linda Aldoory’s newly released edited book, The Gender Challenge to Media: Diverse Voices from the Field, challenges the traditional notions of media, ideology, and gender. This edited collection of articles, all written by graduate students, is a supplemental text for courses in communication, public relations, media, gender and diversity. There were several goals for this collection of essays and studies. First, it has graduate students as authors, who are in the middle of intensively researching and processing the current information on media and gender - this type of collection authored by graduate students has never been published. Second, it offers a diverse range of voices speaking about the intersections of identity, because authors are heterosexual, homosexual, European American, African American, Asian American, European, male and female. Finally, the goal of this book was to challenge future journalists, public relations practitioners, producers and other communication professionals as well as future scholars to think differently about their own communication contributions to society.

Grunig Publishes Book on Women in Public Relations

Associate Professor Larissa A. Grunig is co-author of an important new book, Women in Public Relations: How Gender Influences Practice. Co-authors are Elizabeth Lance Toth and Linda Childers Hon.

Professor Glen M. Broom of San Diego State University calls the book "an authoritative synthesis of the vast body of knowledge related to gender issues in public relations practice.... It is a 'must read' for educators and practitioners, both female and male." In the foreword, Kathleen Larey Lewton writes, "This book, and the massive research effort that led to development of this book, represent a significant contribution to the public relations profession, to public relations professionals, and to the organizations, companies, and causes that we serve."

The authors integrate the theoretical literature of public relations and gender with results of a major longitudinal study of women in the field, along with illuminating focus group and interview data. Topics covered include factors contributing to sex discrimination, how public relations stacks up against other professions on gender-related issues, the challenges facing female managers and entrepreneurs, the experiences of ethnic minority professionals, the salary gap, the glass ceiling, and how to foster solutions on individual, organizational, and societal levels.
 

Publications, Presentations, & Reports, 2004-present

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