Strategic manipulation of district boundaries dilutes the Black vote and threatens the existence of White Democrats in Southern politics.

More than 50 years ago, the Voting Rights Act allowed for the creation of “majority-minority” districts in order to tackle racial gerrymandering in the South. In new research which focuses on South Carolina, Damion Waymer finds that while some of these Congressional districts have been drawn in a way which increases Black representation, still others are done so with the opposite effect. In addition, gerrymandering in South Carolina has also led to the almost complete marginalization of White Democrats in the state

2010 Exhibitors

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Extending Organizational Memory and Corporate Communications Research via Autoethnography/Autobiography

Culture, business, and communication are overlapping human phenomena. However, corporate communication methods have yet to embrace the complexity of organizational culture. Since the study of culture is anthropological in nature, we propose foregrounding autoethnography/autobiographical approaches and method to analyze corporate organizational culture. We argue that studying corporate communication, public relations, and society via the lenses of organizational culture and subsidiary organizational memory can provide unique insights into practice of corporate communication and the theorizing of organizational memory research. In this case example, we answer this question: In what ways can autobiographical/autoethnographic narratives of organizational members inform the theory, research, and practice in corporate communication

2009 Exhibitors

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2008 Exhibitors

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2012 Exhibitors

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2011 Exhibitors

Listings and Descriptions of 2011 Small Satellite Conference Exhibitor

Identifying Ugliness, Defining Beauty: A Focus Group Analysis of and Reaction to Ugly Betty

This article discusses the ideological construct “beauty” that permeates our society by focusing specifically on socially constructed ideals of beauty and ugliness as they are represented in media text, specifically, in the TV sitcom Ugly Betty. For this study we conducted focus group interview sessions to explore the influence an alternative representation of beauty and ugliness, as portrayed in the show Ugly Betty, has on college aged females’ definition and interpretation of beauty—typically questions explored using traditional experimental and other quantitative methods. Moreover, this study provides insights into tensions surrounding how beauty and ugliness are defined and the implications of these definitions for women

Chance or Choice? An Analysis of Assumed Biological Sex-Based Differences in Undergraduate Public Relations Course Teaching Distributions

In this study the authors explore the observed differences among the courses taught by public relations faculty at Carnegie doctoral institutions based on faculty members’ assumed biological sex. The findings indicate that rank faculty (assistant, associate, and full professor) females teach significantly more upper division courses than their male counterparts. The rank faculty males are teaching more introductory (100 and 200 level) courses than their female counterparts. If one follows the logic that upper division courses are more time and effort demanding for faculty, then these findings indicate that females are disproportionately represented as the primary instructors of record for the most labor-intensive core courses in the public relations curriculum. Whether this pattern is the result of chance or instructor choice, the authors hope that these findings encourage communication department chairs and other administrators to address what appears to be unequal faculty workloads based upon assumed biological sex differences