Opening the Lines of Communication
The Visual Life: Sexting and Rethinking Communication
Photographs have been a way to capture a moment--perhaps a Kodak moment—for the future. Photos are about remembering: the timeless preservation of events, gatherings, people, and lives passed. In today’s media environment, this attitude is increasingly quaint and perhaps even old-fashioned. Fewer are the days of huddling together to say “cheese” for posterity. A quick snap from a cell phone camera can show friends who you met for dinner, how sweaty you got after a long bike ride, or how bored you look during a meeting. Stage a goofy pose, get caught in an awkward situation, or snap a once-in-a-lifetime interaction and instead of being filed in the family album, it becomes the latest posting on someone’s Facebook profile.
 Simply put, new technologies, especially camera-enabled cell phones, mean that photos can communicate in ways that we could not have imagined even a decade ago. Many times, a photo is not intended for posterity or for memory: it is for living in the present, it is a turn in the conversation, especially for today’s youth. Cell phones and other popular wireless devices, such as the IPod Touch, are having tremendous impact on communication. Read more>
Cross Current
10 Communication Strategies to Keep Marriages Strong
When couples promise to love, honor, and cherish their spouses until death do us part they are making a commitment they hope will lead to a strong marriage. Most people want to be in relationships where they care about and are cared for by their spouse, where they intend to persevere through the inevitable ups and downs, and where they have a long-term view of the relationship. One mechanism through which these goals are met is communication. Through the utilization of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies couples in committed marriages develop a sense of we-ness that sustains them through difficulties and over time.
 A wealth of research has shown that communication plays an essential role in maintaining committed, satisfying marriages. In our research over almost two decades, we have asked a large number of couples in a variety of ways what things they do or say to show commitment to their partners. Their responses have led to the identification of ten communication strategies that keep marriages strong. Read more>
Leading Edge Communication Research
To Catch a Liar
 Research consistently finds that people are not very good at distinguishing honest from deceptive messages, but the studies behind these conclusions are often not very realistic. With funding from the National Science Foundation, a lab headed by Dr. Tim Levine at Michigan State University has created almost 300 high-quality video tapes of truthful and deceptive interactions for use in deception research. We are finding that subtle differences in communication style can make a big difference in deception detection accuracy, and that some previous ideas about deception detection may be wrong. Our findings are leading to the creation of a new theory of deception that we call Truth-Bias Theory.
The ability to distinguish truths from lies has an incredibly wide range of applications from calling bluffs in poker tournaments to the effective interrogation of terrorists. Lie detection is relevant to journalists and juries, voters, and employers. Read more>
After the Storm: Communication and Service Learning
Hurricane Katrina hit coastal communities in Mississippi and Louisiana in 2005. After dealing with the immediate effects of the disaster, the region turned to rebuilding. Through a grant from Learn and Serve America, 30 Northern Kentucky University Communication students used communication principles and practices to help three Mississippi Gulf Coast communities collect oral narratives after the crisis, help community members explore the support they could offer to each other, help administrators understand the organizational culture of one at-risk school district, and perform other projects relevant to interaction and understanding after Katrina.
Learn and Serve America funds student projects that benefit communities. Over a two year period, two different groups of students donated nine days of their winter breaks, as well as over 100 hours of preparation, to use skills harvested from previous studies in social support, organizational culture, media literacy, research methods, and documentary production. Read more>
Videophone Technology Improves Communication in Hospice
 Hospice care is for terminally ill patients who have less than six months to live. This care is typically provided in the patient’s home by a family caregiver or friend who communicates and works with the hospice team. These teams usually include a medical director, nurse, social worker, and chaplain. Thus, hospice care is a very personal, intimate service, and its effectiveness is based on how messages are exchanged among these parties.
However, in some locations, especially rural or remote areas, this type of personal care is difficult to deliver. As a solution, the Telehospice Project used videophone technology. According to a study funded by the National Cancer Institute, hospice patients and their family caregivers benefit from improved communication with hospice staff. Dr. Elaine Wittenberg-Lyles, a communication researcher at the University of North Texas and a co-investigator on the Telehospice Project, reports that family participation in hospice team meetings led to an improvement in services and patient care. Read more>
Communicators Speak
Communicators Speak features conversations with professors of communication who are members of the National Communication Association. We hope that these interviews will provide you will valuable information and enhance your understanding of the role of communication in our world.
 Dr. Kris Drumheller, West Texas A&M University: Expressing Emotions at Work audio/video
 Dr. Maria Brann, West Viginia University: Disclosing Personal Information audio/video
Dr. Rajiv Rimal, Johns Hopkins University: Talking About Health audio/video
 Dr. Elissa Foster, Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network: Talking with Your Doctor audio/video
 Dr. Pamela Kalbfleisch, University of North Dakota: Talking about Mentoring audio/video
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Museum Park Communicates Environmental Messages
Public parks are often built to celebrate the values and institutions held sacred by a society. Urban parks, for example, often contain memorials and other monuments designed to commemorate the values of freedom, liberty, courage, and equality. Even national parks have this important communicative function. By calling forth certain feelings and attitudes, they remind individuals of the value of open, untamed space.
One particular park, in Raleigh, North Carolina, communicates in a manner that speaks to feelings and attitudes about the environment. Attached to the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum Park--along with the artworks housed on its grounds and the Park’s overall landscape design--are best understood as creative and invigorating forms of environmental communication. Only here, the messages are not overly technical or excessively emotional. Instead, the messages connect with the Museum's local urban and rural surroundings in ways that are educational and provocative for visitors. The environmental artworks in the Museum Park represent a model for other museums and public installations that seek to do more than simply display public art. This is because the Museum Park actually encourages visitors to think about their place in the natural world. As a result of experiencing the park's artworks, visitors may achieve a fuller understanding of nature at a time when citizens and their political leaders are wrestling with managing rapid growth and dwindling natural resources. Read more>
Choice and the 2004 March for Women's Lives
Abortion has been the focus of one of the most contentious and long-lasting battles of the contemporary U.S. culture wars. It is a battle that takes place largely through symbols as opponents of abortion insist that a fetus is a life whereas advocates for abortion rights demand that women  have the right to choose. Sara Hayden, a communication researcher at the University of Montana, argues that the 2004 March for Women’s Lives was a particularly productive event for abortion-rights advocates. Participants in this march offered a wide array of messages that brought new meaning to the demand for choice while also challenging key pro-life claims.
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to terminate a pregnancy was protected under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. Mainstream feminist organizations cheered, believing that women’s right to choose was guaranteed. Since that ruling, however, both courts and legislatures have chipped away at abortion rights, limiting public funding and imposing barriers to services. Thus, choice has assumed a narrow meaning in U.S. culture and law. U.S. women may have the right to choose, but that does not mean that they have access to abortion services or abortion providers. Recognizing the slow but steady attrition of abortion rights, pro-choice advocates seek to revitalize the meaning of choice. The 2004 March for Women’s Lives was an important event in that larger effort. Read more>
Keeping and Revealing Secrets
 Most people have secrets of some kind. It could be as simple as hiding the purchase of a new gadget from a partner or as serious as an affair. The variety of secrets people keep are illustrated in the popular website Post Secret where people from all across the world post their secrets anonymously for others to see. YouTube also provides another media outlet for people to reveal their secrets, although with less anonymity. While many secrets, such as pregnancy or a surprise birthday party, are positive, we tend to think of secrets as negative or dark. The question that researchers often focus on is: What makes some people want to tell their secrets and others continue to hide them?
People often reveal secrets because it is cathartic or makes them feel better, which can improve their health. Even though venting about a secret often feels good, many people still decide to keep secrets from those closest to them. Most research on secrets assumes that people want to purge themselves of the secrets that plague them. Yet, there are probably other reasons why people decide to disclose. Communication scholars Afifi and Steuber created a Risk Revelation Model in an effort to test the decisions that underlie people’s reasons to disclose (or not disclose) their secrets. They also uncovered different strategies people use to reveal their secrets. First, they surveyed 629 people about the secrets they were keeping from their family members, and the strategies they would use to reveal their secrets if they chose to do so. In a second study with almost 600 college students, a revised Risk Revelation Model was tested. Read more>
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