(Re)Introducing communication competence to the health professions

Despite the central role that communication skills play in contemporary accounts of effective health care delivery in general, and the communication of medical error specifically, there is no common or consensual core in the health professions regarding the nature of such skills. This lack of consensus reflects, in part, the tendency for disciplines to reinvent concepts and measures without first situating such development in disciplines with more cognate specialization in such concepts. In this essay, an integrative model of communication competence is introduced, along with its theoretical background and rationale. Communication competence is defined as an impression of appropriateness and effectiveness, which is functionally related to individual motivation, knowledge, skills, and contextual facilitators and constraints. Within this conceptualization, error disclosure contexts are utilized to illustrate the heuristic value of the theory, and implications for assessment are suggested

What is Good Communication?

This articles examines the question: What is good communication? The nature of good communication is both ambiguous and ambivalent. This claim can be taken as a reference to the characteristics that defame good communication, or as a reference to the state of scholarly knowledge about the concept of good communication. On its face, the statement seems clear, and yet, in claiming ambiguity and ambivalence, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Such are some of the subtleties of communication itself, and it is such subtleties that require a re-examination of the composition of good communication. The qualifier good suggests a nexus of ethics and pragmatic quality, and this serves as a useful starting point for embarking upon a discussion of communication competence. Communication competence is commonly defined in terms of a continuum of quality, ranging from bad to good. However, what constitutes bad and good is a considerably contested site in the field of communication and philosophy, as the question naturally suggests intersections with ethics and ideology. Any criterion upon which goodness and badness would be judged carries with it ideological implications, which in turn have implications for the scientific status of underlying theory and operationalization, as well as the practical application of any assessments derived from such a theory

Framing the Game: An Architectonic Analogue for Meta-Theorizing Academic Activities

A radical reformulation is proposed for explaining paradigm fragmentation. The broader topography of academic activities is conceptualized according to an academic game-theoretic analogue (GTA). According to this analogue, scholarly and academic activities reflect a competitive field of play and of plays. Criteria such as attention, compensation, awards, publications, tenure, and mobility become the scarce valued resources distributed in the game based on the plays that players enact. In an effort to reveal the heuristic potential of the theoretical analogy, these threads are traced across a broad array of humanistic and scientific theories and scholarship, including connections among Wittgenstein, Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Goffman, Foucault, Bourdieu and Lyotard

Toward Online Linguistic Surveillance of Threatening Messages

Threats are communicative acts, but it is not always obvious what they communicate or when they communicate imminent credible and serious risk. This paper proposes a research- and theory-based set of over 20 potential linguistic risk indicators that may discriminate credible from non-credible threats within online threat message corpora. Two prongs are proposed: (1) Using expert and layperson ratings to validate subjective scales in relation to annotated known risk messages, and (2) Using the resulting annotated corpora for automated machine learning with computational linguistic analyses to classify non-threats, false threats, and credible threats. Rating scales are proposed, existing threat corpora are identified, and some prospective computational linguistic procedures are identified. Implications for ongoing threat surveillance and its applications are explored

The Map is Not Which Territory?: Speculating on the Geo-Spatial Diffusion of Ideas in the Arab Spring of 2011

The process by which social movements move through time and space can be understood as a process of innovation diffusion of memes or ideas. This process of diffusion may be traceable through computational linguistics and map geocoding of the linguistic memes employed by such movements. A Visualizing Information Space In Ontological Networks (VISION) method is described and illustrated with web-based search results of keywords relevant to Arab Spring. Using map algebra, and with the potential for using computational linguistics, the intent is to demonstrate the feasibility of both the theoretical model of diffusion, as well as the relevance of the geospatial dimension in understanding another dimension of diffusion—the meaning space of ideas as they spread through new media. Such methodology holds substantial promise for understanding the communicative dynamics of social movements and social influence

Once Upon a Midnight Stalker: A Content Analysis of Stalking in Films

Media portrayals of crime have been linked to biased information processing and beliefs about society and personal risks of victimization. Much of this research has either focused on relatively holistic analyses of media consumption, or on the analysis of elements of only a few types of crime (e.g., murder, rape, assault). Research to date has overlooked how media portray stalking in interpersonal relationships. This study content analyzed 51 mainstream movies with prominent stalking themes to compare and contrast such depictions with the actual scientific data about stalking. By considering victim variables, stalker variables, relational variables, stalking behavior variables, victim response variables, and justice variables, this analysis illustrates how films have portrayed stalking as more gender equivalent, briefer, more deadly and sexualized, and more criminally constituted in stalker history and actions compared to actual stalking cases. Implications for the cultivation of attitudes about real-world stalking behaviors and recommendations for further research are discussed

The Impact of Criminalization of Stalking on Italian Students: Adherence to Stalking Myths

Although behaviors that we today identify as stalking have occurred throughout history, the recognition and systematic investigation of stalking are quite recent. Italy’s antistalking law is fairly new, and factors such as cultural myths, stereotypical beliefs, and definitional ambiguities continue to cause problems in the interpretation and recognition of stalking among the general public. This study examined perceptions and attitudes of 2 groups of Italian criminology students at 2 different times, before and after the implementation of Italy’s 2009 antistalking law. The Stalking Attitudes Questionnaire (McKeon, Ogloff, & Mullen, 2009) was administered to samples in 2007 and 2010. Results revealed significant changes in some beliefs and attitudes between the pre- and post-assessments. Interpretation suggests that the combination of Italian antistalking legislation and increased attention to research seem to have decreased students’ adherence to stalking myths

Cyber-harassment victimization in Portugal: Prevalence, fear and help-seeking among adolescents

Cyber-harassment is one of today's problems in adolescent health. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of cyber-victimization among Portuguese adolescents. It also explored its nature, patterns and victim's reactions of fear and help-seeking. A representative sample of 627 adolescents, aged 12-16, enrolled in schools from northern Portugal and Azores answered an online survey. Cyber-victimization was widely experienced by these adolescents, mainly among older adolescents. Results evidenced a high prevalence rate of adolescents (66.1%) double involved as both cyber-victim and cyber-aggressor. Although. not all adolescents reported fear (37%) or sought help (45.9%), persistent victimization increased fear: In turn, fear increased help-seeking behaviors. Cyber-victims were more afraid encountering unknown cyber-aggressors (vs. acquainted) and when victimized by older males (vs. younger females cyber-aggressors). Younger girls reported more fear and more help-seeking behaviors while older boys were more often victim-aggressors. The subgroup of victim-aggressors was both the target of a higher diversity of cyber-victimization behaviors than the victim-only subgroup and also engaged in fewer help-seeking behaviors. Those adolescents who sought help considered it helpful. Implications for educational, social and political practices are discussed. (c) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.- This research was partially conducted at Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and had the support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through the PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/76309/2011, funded by POPH - QREN - Typology 4.1 - Advanced Training, reimbursed by the European Social Fund, and national funds of MEC.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio