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Background. Little is known about how the excessive drinking culture entrenched in college social life influences the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the binge drinking experience among college students and how such fear plays in the mechanisms linking various risk factors with binge drinking intentions. Objectives. The main objectives of this study were to 1) develop and validate a self-report measure of alcohol-related FOMO, and 2) assess the role of alcohol-related FOMO in increasing binge drinking intentions through mediating the effect of alcohol expectancies and enhancing susceptibility to peer norms. Method. A college student sample (N = 490; 66.3% female) completed a one-shot survey. Selfreport data was analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation modeling along with mediation and moderation analyses. Results. Factor analyses supported an 18-item multidimensional scale tapping the alcoholrelated FOMO (ALFOMO). The scale demonstrated good internal consistency, satisfied the validity requirements and was free of gender bias. Additionally, ALFOMO was a significant focal predictor of binge drinking intentions. It significantly mediated the effect of alcohol positive expectancies and mediated and moderated the positive effect of peer descriptive norms. Conclusions. This paper presents the development and initial validation of the alcohol-related FOMO scale. The present study also provides the first theoretical and empirical investigation of the alcohol-related FOMO in relation to alcohol expectancies, peer norms, and binge drinking intentions. Results confirm that the ALFOMO scale is a promising measure and provide evidence for its indispensability in future research and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the senior population has been increasingly engaged with reading on mobile technologies, research that specifically documents the impact of technologies on reading for this age group has still been lacking. The present study investigated how different reading media (screen versus paper) might result in different reading outcomes among older adults due to both cognitive and psychological factors. Using a laboratory experiment with eighty-one participants aged 57 to 85, our results supported past research and showed the influence of cognitive map formation on readers' feelings of fatigue. Our findings also suggested that individual levels of technophobia was an important barrier to older adults' effective use of mobile technologies for reading. In the post-hoc analyses, we further showed that technophobia was correlated with technology experience, certain personality traits, and age. The present study highlights the importance of providing tailored support that helps older adults overcome psychological obstacles in using technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that explores citizen's engagement with a particular foreign policy issue on social media. It mentions that neither the scholarship on ‘foreign policy-media-public opinion' nexus nor soft power and public diplomacy bodies of literature sufficiently explain public engagement with foreign policy on social media. It further explores how social media impact citizens' engagement with the issue of Great Britain's departure from the European Union.

The article offers information on the communication strategies of entrepreneurs within social media networks and its impact on their firm performance. Topics discussed include information on the social networks in communication management; and the discussions on the conceptualization the communication of startups in social networks within the framework of communication management theory.

This meta-analysis examines the overall effectiveness of Internet supplemented health campaigns on behavior change in the United States. Results show that Internet supplemented health campaigns have significant but relatively small effects (d = 0.23) on behavior change. Moreover, further meta-regression analysis shows that campaign effect size was moderated by campaign topic, presence of audience segmentation, target behavior, behavior type, presence of theoretical foundation, and delivery channel. Aligns with the findings of previous meta-analyses, theorygrounded health campaigns were more effective (d = 0.30) than campaigns with no theoretical foundation (d = 0.16). Campaigns targeting adoption of new behaviors (d = 0.26) were more effective than those targeting cessation of undesirable behaviors (d = 0.10), while campaigns targeting addictive behaviors (d = 0.13) were less effective than those targeting non-addictive ones (d = 0.27). More importantly, the results of the meta-regression analysis shows supplementing the Internet as a delivery channel improves health campaign effectiveness. The results show empirical evidences that Internet can be an effective and cost-effective tool for health communication campaigns, and should be considered as an important supplement for campaigns in the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insight to a study conducted for examining message content of Tweets on social network site, Twitter regarding the ongoing Flint water crisis. It informs on audience-centric crisis communication research, and plurality of voices represented within Tweets centered around Flint's water crisis. It also informs on recommendations for incorporating social media in professional crisis and risk communication practices.

This study examines how ethical vegan identity is communicatively conceptualized and impacted by human-animal relationship(s) with participants' companion animal(s) (i.e., "pets"). This study not only showcases a plurality of voices from ethical vegans whom are also companion animal guardians (i.e., "pet owners"), but it also seeks to expand our knowledge of the communicative constitution and function of human-animal relationships as related to individual identity/ies. Thirteen participants were interviewed and data were analyzed using iterative qualitative analysis. Data illuminated propositions of the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI). Identity enhancements were discovered for participants' personal-enacted identity regarding companion animal adoption and personal-enacted-relational identity regarding companion animal agency and shared, specialized space. An identity gap was also discovered pertaining to personal-enacted identity regarding spaying/neutering and companion animal diets that conflicted with ethical vegan values. However, these were communicatively negotiated via personalrelational identity. These findings illuminate the dynamic and fluid nature of identity for ethical vegans whom are also companion animal guardians. Ethical vegan identity was communicatively constructed as independent of, yet interdependent on, identification as a companion animal guardian in this context, thus, consistent with theoretical propositions of CTI. Findings also reveal how identities are communicatively negotiated among CTI's four intersecting frames. Implications of these findings are discussed as related to extant theory and research as well as ways that identity and human-animal relationships can be further researched and theorized within communication studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how playing "Papers, Please" (PP), a serious game that puts players in the role of an immigration officer, affects attitudes toward immigration after repeated exposure. The results are compared to a control group longitudinally playing "The Westport Independent" (WI), a game that puts players in the role of a newspaper editor. Though PP and WI players' attitudes showed no difference at baseline and after the first play session, PP players showed decreased attitudes toward migrants after the second play session compared with WI players. PP players also showed decreased perceived behavioral control in helping migrants relative to WI players after the first play session, but PP players' baseline and second session perceived behavioral control scores showed no differences. Additionally, perceived behavioral control for helping immigrants significantly decreased among PP players after the first and second play sessions relative to baseline scores, but the first and second PP play sessions showed no differences in perceived behavioral control scores. WI players' scores did not change over time. Overall, preliminary findings imply that playing PP reduced attitudes toward migrants relative to WI players. The results are linked to the cultivation hypothesis and vicarious reinforcement effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a longitudinal analysis of media substitution between personal computers (PCs) and mobile phones using Nielsen's PC-Mobile 2-Screen panel data. Topics include the interrelationship between mobile phones and personal computers (PCs), theoretical and methodological contributions to existing research on media substitution, and the time displacement effect on television caused by home computers.

A survey (n=208) evaluates the role of social media message source (expert and peer) on publics' intent to comply with crisis preparedness directives issued thereon and further crisis information seeking in two crisis scenarios (severe weather and Zika virus). ANCOVAs indicate a significant difference in subjects' intent to comply with crisis preparedness directives in the Zika scenario as they are more likely to comply with protocol issued through an expert (professional) Facebook account than a peer (layperson) Facebook account. The findings add understanding to the complex nature of crisis preparedness decision-making process and provide opportunities for future research examining the effect of social media message source across different crisis scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One HPV vaccine was approved this July in China, which caused wide attention and discussion on social media Weibo. This study systematically analyzed information posted on Weibo to learn both the media discourse and public's reactions on this HPV vaccine. A content analysis was conducted on 382 posts. The posts were analyzed with respect to message source, tone, format, number of reposts, and information specific to HPV vaccine. Correlations between the aforementioned variables were also examined. The results showed a neutral or positive tone toward HPV vaccine in general, however, 30.8% of messages from individual sources hold a negative tone. Statistics was the most often used format. Comprehensive information on HPV vaccine, HPV and cervical cancer were presented by most of the messages (60%). However, the accuracy and effectiveness were lacking in half of the messages. The average numbers of reposts were 1083 and 8580 for individual and organizational sources. Higher numbers of reposts were associated with neutral tone, statistics format and complete and accurate descriptions for messages from individual sources. This relationship, however, didn't exist for messages from organizational sources. Health practitioners should pay attention to the inaccurate and ineffective issues of online information about HPV vaccine, especially when it is from organizational sources since it is highly disseminated without much scrutiny from online users. Moreover, when utilizing interpersonal source to disseminate health information, a neutral tone with complete and accurate account might be disseminated more widely at the current stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on metaphors has established a relationship between the verticality, brightness, and distance of stimuli and affect. This project expands the literature on metaphors by exploring the connection between pitch and valence. Specifically, the pitch-valence hypothesis assumed that receivers of spoken messages associate higher pitches with positive valence and lower pitches with negative valence. A study was conducted recording participants' reaction times in identifying positive and negative words in high and low pitches to see whether the pitch of a word significantly affected their response latency and accuracy and found some support for gender impacting participants' ability to associate high pitches with positive words and low pitches with negative words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces a discussion session titled "Communication and Technology Division Top Papers" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Papers in Sports Communication" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Student Papers in Public Relations" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Intergroup Communication Interest Group Top Papers" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Instructional and Developmental Top Paper Panel" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Media, Sex, and Porn" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Mass Communication Research at the Systems Level" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "International Communication Association (ICA) Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session III" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Faculty Papers in Ethnicity and Race in Communication (ERIC)" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Four Papers in Interpersonal Communication" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Promising Student Papers" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article offers information on the Plenary Interactive Paper and Poster Session of the International Communication Association on health communication, information systems and mass communication.

The article announces a discussion session titled "ICA Affiliate Journals: Communicationand Society" and "Studies in Communication/Media"-Presentation and Top Papers" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Student Papers in ERIC" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "CCA and KACA Joint Paper Session" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Papers in Organizational Communication" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Papers in Global Communication and Social Change" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Papers in Health Communication" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Best Papers in Information Systems Division" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "KACA & CCA Joint Research Paper Session: Complexity of Asian News: Government and Engagement" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article offers information on the discussion titled "Top Papers in Intercultural Communication," to be held during the International Communication Association's 2016 annual conference, featuring topics such as community storytelling in a Californian Ethnoburbia, and intercultural research.

The article announces a discussion session titled "ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session 1" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Competitive Papers in Global Media and Culture" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Top Faculty Papers in Public Relations" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session related to game studies to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Media-Related Health Communication Research" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "Audience Engagement With News" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

The article announces a discussion session titled "What Generates News Content?" to be held during the conference of the International Communication Association in 2016.

This paper aims to look into why transnational cultural flows become unbalanced on Crossing, an online platform founded in Taiwan, and how its media professionals encounter and interact with these flows. Through conducting both textual analysis of texts and paratexts of Crossing and discursive analysis of in-depth interviews with its executives and editors, I argue that media professionals working for the platform actively negotiate a variety of cultural flows and attempt to balance asymmetrical power relations between the flows. Integrating and building on the scholarly work on transnational cultural flows (Appadurai, 1996; Thussu, 2007, Straubhaar, 1988, 1991, 2005) and cultural intermediaries (Havens, 2006, 2013; Kuipers, 2011; Punathambekar, 2013; Glynn, 2014), this paper contributes to a more complex landscape of transnational media distribution in the digital age and further considers the political potential for challenging power dynamics of transnational media ecology in the process of media distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When someone wants to study how an issue is portrayed in the media, a common strategy is to perform a content analysis: the researcher gathers a significant sample of the texts from the corpus of all published stories on that issue and scrutinizes those texts. A significant sample might mean a sample that is large enough to be representative of the overall media landscape and therefore useful to make statements that can be generalized. However, in Communication studies, the distribution of media attention is usually uneven: a few stories grab almost all the attention, while the remaining stories are barely noticed by the public. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that a significant sample for Communication studies is a sample that prioritizes the articles with more impact on public opinion. This paper argues that internet data can offer a very convenient and easily available solution for the problem of determining the most significant sample. An increasing amount of people access news pieces through social networks. Therefore, we can use social network data to identify those articles that people pay attention to (and therefore are more valuable when it comes to the influence on public opinion). As a case study, this paper analyzes the corpus of stories (and associated social network data) related to the People's Climate March in New York City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper proposes news production as a four-stage system, based on Rob Stones quadripartite model of structuration. The four stages - (i) external structures; (ii) internal structures; (iii) active agency; (iv) and outcomes - are discussed by drawing on existing literature and arguments surrounding the factors influencing news production and journalistic practices. Conceptualising news production in such a manner facilitates a wide-ranging, holistic analysis rather than limiting the discussion to structure- or agency-related factors. The paper was motivated by concerns around sourcing practices, online work environments, the role of PR/passive news sourcing, and the decline of specialised reporting, and such perspective is evident is much of the discussion. However, the broad, macro nature of structuration theory ensures that such a conceptual approach may be applicable to many aspects of journalism studies, and the quadripartite framework can help to facilitate any analyses in which multiple, complex factors are under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The object of this paper is to examine how the digital enables knowledge decentralisation and political mobilisation in the context of higher education in the discipline of Women's Studies (WS) or Gender Studies in tier II cities in Tamil Nadu. Scholars have questioned the loyalty of current gender studies tertiary education in non-metropolitan locations to the originary politics of the feminist movement, pointing out that the State's "disproportionate stress on extension activity ... substantially diluted the earlier conceptualisation of women's studies as a critique of knowledge production" (Anandhi & Swaminathan, 2006). In this scenario, this paper hopes to explore the potential of the digital to complicate the binaries of theory/experience, academics/activism, feminism as politics/feminism as epistemology that the discipline of gender studies has always had to grapple with. Historically, the women's movement in India has had the comfort of „speaking for? underprivileged women (Niranjana, 2010). Can the digital, through peer knowledge production and sharing systems, social networks and pedagogic interventions democratise knowledge and enable political participation and mobilisation? Moreover, how can practices like social network „lurking? and refashioning feminist language contribute to this process? How do first-generation graduates pursuing tertiary education in WS position themselves Digital Natives - "strategic use(rs) of technology" (Shah, 2010)? These are some of the questions that this paper seeks to explore. Using the qualitative methods of in-depth interviewing and non-participative observation, this paper hopes to examine Tier II cities as key sites for the generation and articulation of knowledge-based political projects. It argues that WS scholars in these locations, operating from hybrid geographical and digital places, enable a decentering of feminist scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the use of social media and mobile communication by women in Saudi Arabia who have campaigned for years to urge the government to grant them the right to drive. Due to the globally unique ban on women driving in the kingdom, females always needed a male driver to transport them. The Saudi government announced in September 2017 that women will be allowed to drive from June 2018. The paper explores how social media promoted the cause and stirred debate over the issue, providing platforms for activists who were not able to get their messages across to the public and the international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smarthome devices such as Google Home and the Amazon Echo are becoming increasingly popular, giving users the ability to obtain relevant information using voice commands that are analyzed through online data collection and analysis. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how an individual's levels of privacy concerns impact their willingness to share information using these smarthome devices. Using a privacy paradox theoretical framework, this paper explored how users latently weigh internal risks and benefits when deciding to use these devices, and how their levels of trust in others and the companies impact what information is shared. Results indicated that those with higher levels of privacy concerns and lower levels of institutional trust are generally more wary about these devices listening in on their activities in their homes. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how people within a multicultural city conceptualise issues of significance to society through their understanding of mainstream news discourses amid their wider communicative practices, including face-to-face and mediated interactions. By drawing upon semi-structured interviews with diverse individuals in Australia, who are from a range of cultural and migratory backgrounds, this paper examines how participants construct racialised 'Otherness' and engage with difference. It draws upon the notion of political listening, paying attention to the anticipatory positions that open up the potential for mainstream media to transcend representational binaries that oscillate between silence and sensationalism. However, it also analyses the paradoxical forms of anti-Muslim sentiment that are simultaneously deployed by participants in their criticism of media. This paper concludes by considering how certain media outlets might better facilitate political listening, utilising the participants' conceptualisations of key spaces for enhancing everyday mediated recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether non-consensual sexual behavior directed from one person to another and involving the use of haptic technologies in virtual reality might constitute crimes based on the laws of Kansas, New Jersey, and California. It builds on Strikwerda (2015), who theorizes about the nature of sex crimes in VR, and discusses how conservative, liberal, and feminist legal philosophies of rape might inform the prosecution of certain acts in VR. The paper also offers recommendations for possible remedies for these acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the American social movements of the 1960s and 1970s talked about the technology of their time. Through an analysis of a sample of underground newspapers, it highlights how the American counterculture thought of technology in a prevalently negative way. It identifies three negative discourses: technology of war, technology of capitalism, technology of repression. These three views are effectively condensed into the famous expression attributed to Huey P. Newton: "the spirit of the people is greater than the Man's technology", whose meaning and diffusion is traced throughout the sample. Two, more marginal, views - technology for abundance and technology for revolution - are also analyzed. I then argue that these diverging visions of technology are also different visions of social change. The paper thus contributes to the debate on the relationship between social movements and technologies by historicizing it and emphasizing the symbolic role that technology is invested with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can public relations practitioners communicate ethically and what is the positive social contribution of public relations as organizational rhetoric? These recurring questions are discussed in this theoretical paper with the starting point in rhetorical theory. The paper adds the notions of fairness and rhetorical citizenship, as well as agnostic theory to the discussion. Taken together, the paper thus contributes to the further development of ethical grounding for public relations as a form of organizational rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]