As the number of Americans diagnosed with cancer increases each year, researchers focus on methods to increase cancer awareness. This current study focuses on African American women and the growing need to study breast health communication to increase breast health awareness. Currently African American women experience a higher death rate from breast cancer compared to their white counterparts. According to the American Cancer Society's Cancer Facts and Figures for African Americans Report published in 2007, African American women are 77% likely to survive five years after a breast cancer diagnosis as compared to 90% of their white counterparts. Among the factors that contribute to this disparity include socioeconomics and fear of breast cancer. The researcher has discovered a communication model that is not hindered by the aforementioned factors and allows ideal breast health messages to be disseminated among African American women. The communication model was created from the decentralization and centralization processes of the diffusion of innovation model, which allows for the use of interpersonal communication. The study found that interpersonal communication produces change and builds trust and respect. The researcher anticipates that future researchers will reproduce this model in other areas to tailor to specific health communication needs.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns will account for an estimated $1.5 billion in corporate spending in 2008 and industry analysts expect CRM to become part of mainstream brand communication strategies in the coming years. One campaign, called Product (RED), combines several companies offering various RED-branded products with the RED organization. Companies donate different amounts from RED products to the Global Fund, a nonprofit agency that aims to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. Through an extended-self theoretical framework, this study examines the attitudes and opinions of Millennial consumers — a group that has an estimated $50 billion in annual discretionary spending — toward corporate social responsibility (CSR), CRM and the RED campaign. Findings from focus group discussions indicate Millennials are receptive toward CRM campaigns and RED in particular, but they express concern about the motives of affiliated companies. And while they view CRM as an effective fundraising tool for nonprofits, they do not tend to base purchase decisions on a company's CSR or CRM initiatives. Additional findings and managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

This study investigated the degree to which affect valance and nonverbal channel influence the accuracy of emotion detection. Participants included 120 undergraduate students who completed both the vocal and facial portions of the Emotion Recognition Index. Preliminary analyses revealed the highest accuracy rate (98.33%) for positive emotions displayed through facial expressions while positive emotions displayed through vocal cues yielded the lowest accuracy rate (40.56%). Negative emotions were most accurately detected through vocal cues (66.55%) followed by facial expressions (63.67%). Given the results of these accuracy scores, a factorial ANOVA was conducted for the interaction of affect valence and nonverbal channel. An interaction effect was found accounting for 40% of the variance in emotion detection accuracy.

Using Petronio's (2002) Communication Privacy Management theory, the current study sought to explore the relationship between family communication patterns, privacy orientations, and students' perceptions of instructor disclosures. The study examined the degree to which students' privacy orientations and family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) are associated with their perceptions of the frequency, relevance, and appropriateness of instructor disclosures in the college classroom. The results indicate that two dimensions of family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) are associated with students' privacy orientations. Specifically, individuals from conversation oriented families tend to be more open and less private, yet individuals from conformity oriented families are more likely to be closed and private. Further, the results offer some support for the associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) and the frequency, relevance, and appropriateness of instructor disclosures in the classroom. While little support was found for the associations among students' privacy orientations and perceptions of instructor disclosures (i.e., frequency, relevance, and appropriateness), students with a weak privacy orientation are more likely to perceive instructors' disclosures as more frequent. Although privacy orientations did not mediate the association between individuals' family communication patterns and perceptions of instructor disclosures in the college classroom, family communication patterns and privacy orientations accounted for a unique percentage of the variance in students' perceptions of instructor disclosure frequency. Collectively, the results from this study contribute to the research on instructor disclosures by accounting for family communication patterns and privacy orientations as influential factors in the instructional context.

Social media has revolutionized the way people interact not only with each other, but also with celebrities. Websites such as Twitter and Facebook provide direct access and interactivity with athletes. Athletes have embraced social media for both personal and business purposes. Whether it is posting pictures from a restaurant or posting a link to their latest sneaker commercial, athletes have discovered ways to use social media to promote themselves and their favorite brands. Previous research on celebrity endorsements revealed several characteristics typically found in celebrity endorsements: source attractiveness, source credibility, and celebrity-product congruence. However, all research to date has been conducted on traditional media outlets, such as television and print advertisements. This research seeks to expand on previous research rooted in traditional media such as television and print to determine whether or not athlete endorsements through social media are effective. Effectiveness in this case can be defined as the consumer's attitude towards the ad, brand, or athlete endorser. The study also proposes a three-step model to illustrate how consumer's process persuasive communication such as celebrity endorsements in social media.

This study draws upon the paradigm of parasocial interaction and incorporates the Source Credibility Scale (McCroskey, Hamilton, & Weiner, 1974), the Measure of Online Communication Attitude (Ledbetter, 2009), and the Parasocial Interaction measure (Auter & Palmgreen, 2000) in order to examine the extent to which online communication attitudes foster such interaction and shape perceptions of media figures' and celebrities' credibility. Data from 593 individuals were collected, and hypotheses and research questions were analyzed using regression analysis on a usable sample of 343 participants. Results indicate that parasocial interaction is always a positive predictor, and communication apprehension is an inverse predictor, of source credibility. These findings allow for more research to be conducted in the realm of social media.

This study considered the relationship between everyday talk and communication media, geographic distance, and closeness in the context of friendships. Participants included 213 adults from two colleges and those collected from the site Facebook.com. All participants completed surveys which included questions on their everyday talk use with friends across Facebook and face-to-face media, along with self-reports of closeness, relational length, and geographic distance of those friendships. Pearson's product-moment correlations supported both hypotheses, suggesting friends' use of Facebook and face-to-face everyday talk is positively associated with closeness. A series of Hotelling's t-tests for correlated correlations showed a stronger correlation between closeness and face-to-face everyday talk than closeness and Facebook everyday talk. These results showed the different types of everyday talk that friends engage in, specifically that long-distance friends were more likely to use Facebook task, relational, deep, superficial, and informal everyday talk in their relationship. A series of 2 (participant sex) X 2 (communication media) repeated measures of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were also run. One ANCOVA was conducted for each of the five everyday talk types, showing five significant interaction effects between medium and distance. Specifically, local friends engaged in more Facebook everyday talk whereas long-distance friends engaged in more face-to-face everyday talk, clarifying previous nonsignificant findings between distance and relationship characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to explore student characteristics that may predict how students express dissent in the classroom. Goodboy (2011a) defined instructional dissent as a student's expression of dissatisfaction with a class-related issue. According to Kassing's (1997) model of organizational dissent, individual factors such as temperament, traits, and personality may influence how students choose to express dissent. Student characteristics explored include aggressive communication (Infante & Rancer, 1982; Infante & Wigley, 1986), tolerance for disagreement (Knutson, McCroskey, Knutson, & Hurt, 1979; McCroskey & Wheeless, 1976; Teven, McCroskey, & Richmond, 1988), and academic locus of control (Trice, 1985). Results suggest that verbal aggressiveness is the best predictor of dissent in the instructional context. Future research should continue to examine Kassing's (1997) model of organizational dissent in the instructional context.

In the summer of 2002, Mukhtar Mai was gang raped by four men in revenge for a crime her 12-year old brother was accused of. She became the first person in her country to put the tribal system of justice on trial and win. The international media took great interest in the case, but the media only focused on one side of the story. This study analyzes the international media coverage of the Mukhtar Mai rape case by reviewing the content of more than 100 published articles and wire stories. This study uses the Mukhtar Mai case to illustrate the repercussions of deviating from basic principles of journalistic ethics as presented in ethics codes observed by professional newspeople in the United States and in other countries that honor Western ideas of press freedom and responsibility.

In an industry where public perception is at an all-time low, it is vital to evaluate the effectiveness of newspaper codes of ethics. Studies have evaluated the role of codes of ethics in the ethical decision-making process, but none have looked at the overall effectiveness of having a code. This study is a quantitative evaluation of one newspapers code of ethics, in relation to individuals ethical differences, code applicability and code agreement. Conducted at all bureaus of the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, this study showed that employees think their code of ethics is effective mostly because it helps set guidelines and clear expectations of the employees. Although individual ethical differences (measured by locus of control) did not significantly predict effectiveness, age and tenure did have an effect, with the older and more tenured employees rating the code higher in effectiveness. Employees also commented on areas of the code with which they disagreed and revealed a discrepancy between their perception of code applicability to themselves as individuals and to those in other departments.