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A randomly assigned sample of 376 college students responded to a survey involving a between-subjects 2 × 3 experiment designed to assess the impact of age (older versus younger) and tattoo status (i.e., no tattoo, feminine tattoo, or masculine tattoo) on three dependent measures: credibility, attractiveness, and promiscuity. Older and younger women are perceived differently depending on tattoo status. Not wearing a tattoo may lead to a more favorable perception of older women than wearing one, but wearing a feminine tattoo may engender a more favorable impression of older women than having a masculine tattoo. But not having a tattoo may not be as helpful for the perception of younger women as it is for older women. Also, while younger women may be rewarded for gender role transgression with respect to tattoo status, this is not so for older women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed all Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication refereed convention papers from 1999 to 2008 with regard to author names and author institutional affiliations, in order to rank by productivity individual scholars and institutions globally. All refereed papers sponsored by twenty-seven AEJMC organizational units were examined by author name and affiliation to establish institutional productivity patterns and rankings based on the Carnegie Classification system, and individual productivity rankings per organizational unit. The link between top paper productivity and refereed regular paper productivity was assessed with regard to AEJMC organizational units. While top paper institutional productivity was substantially correlated with institutional refereed regular paper productivity, this was not the case for individual paper productivity. Findings are potentially useful for students, educators, and administrators by filling a void in the literature on leading institutions and individuals across specialties of journalism and mass communication represented in AEJMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated how two distinct perspectives apply to the role of gender in parents' memorials on The Compassionate Friends (TCF) electronic bulletin board; cyberspace as merely a mirror of societal gendered patterns of bereavement, and cyberspace as a medium or context in which societal gendered patterns of bereavement are neutralized. Data were evaluated to determine to what extent gender differences exist concerning instrumental versus intuitive styles of bereavement. Analytic categories used in assessing gender differences in parental bereavement style included the following: invoking spirituality, directing messages to the deceased, artistic expressions, and special powers accorded to the deceased. With some exceptions, the findings supported the perspective emphasizing the gender neutralizing aspects of cyberspace parental bereavement for the population studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lists the top-ranking doctorate-granting institutions in communication studies in the United States. Combination of the National Communication Association and International Communication Association awards from 1994 to 1998; Use of the rankings to assess the programs of particular doctoral institutions.

A postmodernist perspective is suggested as more appropriate than a modernist perspective for purposes of examining cross-cultural communication between African societies and the United States. By assuming a single universal truth and an instrumentalist view of communication, a modernist perspective portrays this process ineffectively as a one-way process of positive influence with the United States as benefactor while African societies are beneficiaries. However, a postmodernist perspective assumes multiple truths or realities and a constitutive view of communication, permitting two major conclusions: (1) cross-cultural communication between African cultures and the United States may have mutual positive influence, and (2) U.S. society can benefit from the appropriation of even more aspects of African cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the ways women utilize a website devoted to bereaved parents as a means to create a space in culture that allows expression of thoughts and feelings normally constrained by societal expectations. Not only do these women escape such silencing, they build community through interpersonal eloquence, defined here as expression of meaningful messages from the heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]