Suchergebnisse

This forum investigates two questions: How can scholars use comments outside their discipline to enhance their research? How can scholars from different disciplines integrate methodological differences to enhance group research?

Online support groups are a common way for people to receive social support. Utilizing online support sites allows members to connect with people in similar situations, without the need for geographic proximity. Many online groups rely on member-leaders, or individuals with personal experience, to lead groups. These member-leaders are often favored by members over professional leaders but often lack training in leadership. This project explored how member-leaders interact in an online support group. This article uses both interaction process analysis (IPA) and research on leader behaviors to understand how member-leaders communicate in online support groups. Results show that leaders primarily use task messages, with the majority of leader behaviors labeled as meaning attribution and use of self. Member-leaders primarily focused on perspective taking rather than discussion facilitation. An examination of the task and relational interaction profile in terms of leader behaviors is also explored.

Despite a presumption that laughter and a death penalty decision seem incompatible, transcript data of jury deliberations from both the guilt-or-innocence and penalty phases of the State of Ohio v. Mark Ducic trial demonstrate that jurors do laugh. Working from the disparate literature on laughter, we problematized laughter from a group communication perspective and analyzed its functionality in jury interaction. The authors identified and analyzed 51 laughter sequences across 414 transcript pages. Three categories of laughter functions (i.e., relational, processual, and informational) were identified; these categories were further detailed by 6, 10, and 10 subfunctions, respectively. Based on these findings, the authors revised their definition of laughter to incorporate its multifunctionality as vocalic and public emotional displays that (a) can be read as positive, negative, or ambiguous and (b) question, control, and regulate relationships, procedures, and information in the group. That laughter can be read in so many ways suggests that one role of laughter may be to create ambiguity to allow the group a chance to figure out what to do next.

Objective: There are significant points of alignment between a macrocognitive frame of teamwork and a communication perspective. This commentary explores these touch points in regard to use of teams in sociotechnical systems (STS). Background: The macrocognitive framework emphasizes a team's shared mental models whereas a communication frame emphasizes that shared meaning among team members is more frequently implicitly than explicitly recorded in their messages. Both acknowledge that communication (in macrocognition) or messages (in communication) serve as an index of team members' goal-directed behavior. The two approaches differ in the role of communication: as information exchange in macrocognition as compared with verbal and nonverbal symbols composing messages for which senders and receivers co-construct meaning. Method: This commentary uses relevant literature to explicate the communication position. Results: From a communication perspective, individuals are simultaneously sending and receiving messages, communication is continual and processual, and meaning construction is dependent on relationship awareness and development among communication partners as well as the context. Conclusion: The authors posit that meaning cannot be constructed solely from messages, nor can meaning be constructed by one person. Furthermore, sharing information is not the same as communicating. Application: Architects and users of STS should be interested in designing systems that improve team communication—a goal that is interdependent with understanding how communication fails in the use of such systems. Drilling down to the fundamental properties of communication is essential to understanding how and why meaning is created among team members (and subsequent action).

This study investigates how individuals perceive the message strategies of other team members and then explores how these perceptions are influenced by message function. Using a mixed-methods data collection, team interaction was coded using Bales's Interaction Process Analysis (IPA). Following the meetings, retrospective interviews were conducted to capture perceptions of team member contributions to weekly team meetings. To assess perceptual similarities and differences, team member perceptions were then compared to the IPA codes of meeting interactions. Findings advance knowledge of communication in team meetings, specifically, how and why team members interpret the same interaction in different ways. Study results have implications for improving member communication in task-focused team meetings.

AbstractFamilies constantly manage tension between autonomy from and connection to family members (T. C. Sabourin, 2003). Family conflict is an important maintenance behavior where this tension often plays out. Specifically, we hypothesized that the negotiation of family conflict between parents and children will be an important factor in the willingness of a young adult child to identify with family. Using a sample of young adults from 2 U.S. locations, regression analysis indicated that conflict styles mediated the association between family communication patterns and shared family identity. Specifically, the level of conformity orientation within the family emerged as moderator of the pattern of mediation. Additionally, findings suggested the avoiding conflict style may be particularly detrimental to shared family identity.

This volume considers the current research of group communication scholars, provides an overview of major foci in the discipline, and points toward possible trajectories for future scholarship. It establishes group communication's central role within research on human behaviour and fosters an identity for group communication researchers.

The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research considers the current research of group communication scholars, provides an overview of major foci in the discipline, and points toward possible trajectories for future scholarship. It establishes group communication's central role within research on human behaviour and fosters an identity for group communication researchers. This book establishes communication scholarship as essential to group research by exploring the various dimensions of communicating in groups and teams. Communication is fundamental to group research, and the deeper, more nuanced treatment of the subject in this handbook consolidates and expands theory and research in the area.

Intergroup argumentation is an important aspect of civic activism, but it has yet to be studied from an interaction perspective. Using group argumentation research as a foundation, this study analyzed intergroup argumentation complexity and strategy by applying the Conversational Argument Coding Scheme (Canary, Ratledge, & Seibold, 1982) to a Lawrence, KS, USA, city commission meeting. Analysis found that Wal-Mart officials spent the majority of their speaking time framing their positions (i.e., delimitors), whereas city commissioners spent most of their time seeking convergence, and the public spent more time than the other groups using generative mechanisms. Findings suggest the need to distinguish between argument effectiveness and argument complexity, an important theoretical implication for argumentation research.

During the record 2009 flood, the city of Fargo, North Dakota, United States held daily televised public meetings. Unknown to many citizens, the city also held private premeetings to prepare for the public meetings. The present study examined city leaders' naïve theories of meeting facilitation in light of a minimalist view of public meetings ( McComas, 2001 ). Interviews of city leaders during and after the flood, as well as meeting transcripts, were analyzed. Findings indicated that city leaders believed debate about controversial issues should be contained within private premeetings, where leaders planned how to be open with citizens during public meetings. City leaders also believed public meetings had to portray a calm yet urgent image for the public. City leaders used micro-level (e.g., humor, explicit vigilant messages, and metaphor) and macro-level (transparency) processes to communicatively accomplish their desires.