The study of health information seeking has become increasingly important in recent years due to the growing emphasis on the consumer/client relationship in the health arena. This trend implies a shift away from the development of health campaigns with one unitary message to a recognition that alternatives must be provided and options discussed. Indeed, health agencies are adopting the role of information-seeking facilitators through the creation of telephone services and sophisticated databases. A greater understanding of the public's needs, especially why people seek information, may help us to accomplish the many behavioral changes that will lead toward decreases in morbidity and mortality and a more balanced approach to wellness and prevention. This is especially important in the context of the revolution in access to information brought about by the many recent advances in databases and telecommunication systems, perhaps best represented by the advent of the Internet. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of these issues appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, practitioners, and researchers.

Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor is an edited anthology that explores the persona and speech-making of the country's first African American first lady. The result of these thought-provoking essays is an interdisciplinary text that explores the First Lady from a rhetorical and cultural point of view. Authors analyze her Democratic National Convention speeches, her brand as First Lady, her communication from her latest trip to Africa, her agenda rhetoric in Let's Move! and Reach Higher, and her coming out as a Black feminist intellectual when she spoke at Maya Angelou's memorial service. Readers will recognize Michelle Obama as a rhetor of our times-a woman who influences America at the intersections of gender, race, and class and who is representative of what women are today.

Drawing on the pedagogy, rhetorical theory, and student editor insights of The Argument Handbook, The Argument Toolbox is a very concise resource designed to help first year composition students, rhetoric and writing students, and first year seminar students build persuasive arguments in various genres. Like the more comprehensive text, The Argument Toolbox is organized and designed so that students can zero in on the content they need to respond to an assignment when faced with a blank screen, a hard deadline, and a skeptical audience.

Surveys have found that speaking in public is one of the worst human fears, even higher than fear of spiders, heights and even death! Making presentations and public speaking is an increasing part of working life. Whether it be speaking at a meeting or making a formal presentation to a potential funder, much can rest on the outcome of our efforts when we are on our feet. The book includes sections on timing, the audience, content, delivery techniques, using visual aids, dealing with nerves, question and answer sessions and tongue twisters. This book is for anyone from the novice who needs to cover all of the basics to the experienced speaker who needs a quick refresher in getting up and delivering a message.

Effective Speaking provides the hard scientific information about audience psychology, text preparation, presentation methods, voice production, body language and persuasive advocacy which will help would-be speakers improve their performance. The emphasis throughout is on practical self-help, on methods which have been shown to work, with clear explanations of just why they are effective.

Effective Speaking provides the hard scientific information about audience psychology, text preparation, presentation methods, voice production, body language and persuasive advocacy which will help would-be speakers improve their performance. The emphasis throughout is on practical self-help, on methods which have been shown to work, with clear explanations of just why they are effective.

eBook available with sample pages: 020347290X

Peace Journalism, War and Conflict Resolution draws together the work of over twenty leading international writers, journalists, theorists and campaigners in the field of peace journalism. Mainstream media tend to promote the interests of the military and governments in their coverage of warfare. This major new text aims to provide a definitive, up-to-date, critical, engaging and accessible overview exploring the role of the media in conflict resolution. Sections focus in detail on theory, international practice, and critiques of mainstream media performance from a peace perspective; countries discussed include the U.S., U.K., Germany, Cyprus, Sweden, Canada, India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. Chapters examine a wide variety of issues including mainstream newspapers, indigenous media, blogs and radical alternative websites. The book includes a foreword by award-winning investigative journalist John Pilger and a critical afterword by cultural commentator Jeffery Klaehn.

Soap operas and telenovelas are watched by millions of people around the world every day. As cultural, social, and economic phenomena, examining them will further our understanding of the role of global media content in the digital age. Moreover, as these programs continue to be exported and transformed at regional levels, and through digitalization, it is more important than ever to analyze where the genre has been, where it is now, and where it is going. This collection brings together original scholarship from an international and trans-disciplinary perspective. Chapters address timely issues, theories, and debates that are inextricably linked to soap operas and telenovelas as global industries, as sites for new audiences, and as hybrid cultural products within the digital landscape. Bringing depth and originality to the subject area, each chapter demonstrates the richness of these genres and their long-term significance as the televisual landscape evolves and becomes increasingly reliant on technological and creative innovations.

Soap operas and telenovelas are watched by millions of people around the world every day. As cultural, social, and economic phenomena, examining them will further our understanding of the role of global media content in the digital age. Moreover, as these programs continue to be exported and transformed at regional levels, and through digitalization, it is more important than ever to analyze where the genre has been, where it is now, and where it is going. This collection brings together original scholarship from an international and trans-disciplinary perspective. Chapters address timely issues, theories, and debates that are inextricably linked to soap operas and telenovelas as global industries, as sites for new audiences, and as hybrid cultural products within the digital landscape. Bringing depth and originality to the subject area, each chapter demonstrates the richness of these genres and their long-term significance as the televisual landscape evolves and becomes increasingly reliant on technological and creative innovations.

There is a timely and urgent need for a reasoned dialogue reassessing how Marxism can advance the study of human communication and transform the social world in which it is embedded. Indeed, ongoing world-historical events -- including the vigorously organized market globalization, the corresponding insurgent global anticorporate movement, and the conflicts engendered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- have underscored the importance of a thorough critique of global capitalism and its telecommunication technologies and practices. This important new collection, featuring essays by leading scholars and practitioners, provides a much-needed overview and assessment of Marxism's significance to contemporary thinking in communication and media studies. Contributors demonstrate how a Marxist perspective can be usefully applied to specific case studies in communication, providing valuable insights and understandings that are not obtainable using other approaches.

While victims of antebellum lynchings were typically white men, postbellum lynchings became more frequent and more intense, with the victims more often black. After Reconstruction, lynchings exhibited and embodied links between violent collective action, American civic identity, and the making of the nation. Ersula J. Ore investigates lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement, in effect an argument against black inclusion within the changing nation. Ore scrutinizes the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today. From the 1880s onward, lynchings, she finds, manifested a violent form of symbolic action that called a national public into existence, denoted citizenship, and upheld political community. Grounded in Ida B. Wells's summation of lynching as a social contract among whites to maintain a racial order, at its core, Ore's book speaks to racialized violence as a mode of civic engagement. Since violence enacts an argument about citizenship, Ore construes lynching and its expressions as part and parcel of America's rhetorical tradition and political legacy. Drawing upon newspapers, official records, and memoirs, as well as critical race theory, Ore outlines the connections between what was said and written, the material practices of lynching in the past, and the forms these rhetorics and practices assume now. In doing so, she demonstrates how lynching functioned as a strategy interwoven with the formation of America's national identity and with the nation's need to continually restrict and redefine that identity. In addition, Ore ties black resistance to lynching, the acclaimed exhibit Without Sanctuary, recent police brutality, effigies of Barack Obama, and the killing of Trayvon Martin.

The netted human we may call Homo Irretitus resides in a space made possible by technologies frequently referred to as new media, social media, emerging media, and Web 2.0. Traditional conceptualizations of audiences and producers are shifting so the very making of our social practices, spaces, and contexts in this brave new world of the World Wide Web, the work of Homo Irretitus in this intersectional space, must be interrogated. If we are to understand this space, we should approach it from varied vantage points. This book gathers scholars from both within and external to the core of new media studies, each of whom applies a unique theoretical perspective to the intersection of audience and production in the space enabled by emerging communications technologies. In doing so they help shed light on a variety of the tensions evident in the new digital spaces in which we create and recreate (and often produse) so much of our lives, our identities, and our selves. Focusing multiple spotlights on the intersection of audiences and production made possible by social software helps make clearer a more nuanced perspective than would otherwise be possible as well as opening up questions for further debate within the field.

Signs exist as fundamental markers of the urban landscape. Whether in the form of street signs offering directions, the airbrushed promises of advertising media or the vandalized detournements of street art, signs pervade urban spaces and provide a tangible 'text' upon which the logics of both cities and ourselves are written. Cities of Signs charts the way that signs exist as key elements of contemporary urban space, and explores what it means to live within these spaces, amongst cities of signs. This refreshing take on the way that urban space is lived and experienced is a timely contribution to the literature in urban studies, sociology and education alike. In decoding the cultural production at play in urban environments, Cities of Signs presents a dynamic approach to understanding how culture is produced and consumed within the cityscape.

Signs exist as fundamental markers of the urban landscape. Whether in the form of street signs offering directions, the airbrushed promises of advertising media or the vandalized detournements of street art, signs pervade urban spaces and provide a tangible 'text' upon which the logics of both cities and ourselves are written. Cities of Signs charts the way that signs exist as key elements of contemporary urban space, and explores what it means to live within these spaces, amongst cities of signs. This refreshing take on the way that urban space is lived and experienced is a timely contribution to the literature in urban studies, sociology and education alike. In decoding the cultural production at play in urban environments, Cities of Signs presents a dynamic approach to understanding how culture is produced and consumed within the cityscape.

This book tells the story of modern-day newspapers by exploring the digital transition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a microcosm of the industry. Drawing on the expertise of scholars and professionals across a range of areas, it explores the economic, political, and social context of the move of the largest daily newspaper (to date) from print to the Web. In doing so it paints a complete picture of the current shape of the newspaper industry. While the circumstances in New Orleans anchor the book, it also includes exploration of other for-profit and nonprofit business models for newspapers; differences in how communities handle news during a crisis; implications of the digital divide; and, how different communities believe a decline in print journalism impacts politics and the functioning of local government. By researching in real-time the metamorphosis of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the book shows what news organizations, journalists, news consumers, and professionals can learn about the future of the global newspaper industry. Is the newspaper industry in the midst of evolution or are its decisions sparking a revolution?

Argumentation in Higher Education offers professors, lecturers and researchers informative guidance for teaching effective argumentation skills to their undergraduate and graduate students. This professional guide aims to make the complex topic of argumentation open and transparent. Grounded in empirical research and theory, but with student voices heard strongly throughout, this book fills the gap of argumentation instruction for the undergraduate and graduate level.

Written to enlighten even the most experienced professor, this text contributes to a better understanding of the demands of speaking, writing, and visual argumentation in higher education, and will undoubtedly inform and enhance course design. The book argues for a more explicit treatment of argument (the product) and argumentation (the process) in higher education, so that the ground rules of the academic discipline in question are made clear. Each chapter concludes with practical exercises for staff development use.

Topics discussed include:

• The importance of argument
• The current state of argumentation in higher education
• Generic skills in argumentation
• The balance between generic and discipline specific skills
• Information communication technologies and visual argumentation

How can we best teach argumentation so that students feel fully empowered in their academic composition? Professors (new and experienced), lecturers, researchers, professional developers and writing coaches worldwide grappling with this question will find this accessible text to be an extremely valuable resource.

Richard Andrews is Professor in English at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Familiar narratives and simplistic stereotypes frame the representation of women in U.S. politics. Pervasive containment rhetorics, such as the distinction between women as mothers and caregivers and men as rational thinkers, create unique hurdles for any woman seeking public office. While these 'governing codes' generally act to constrain female political power, they can also be harnessed as a resource depending on the particular circumstances (e.g., party affiliation, geographic location and personal style). One of these governing codes, the metaphor, is an especially powerful tool in politics today, particularly for women. By examining the political careers of four of the most prominent and influential women in contemporary U.S. politics_Democrats Ann Richards and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans Christine Todd Whitman and Elizabeth Dole_Karrin Vasby Anderson and Kristina Horn Sheeler illustrate how metaphors in public discourse may be both familiar narratives to embrace and boundaries to overturn.

What Democracy Looks Like is a compelling and timely collection which combines two distinct but related theories in rhetoric and communication studies, while also exploring theories and ideas espoused by those in sociology, political science, and cultural studies. Recent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like is an attempt to foster a more coherent understanding of social change among scholars of rhetoric and communication studies by juxtaposing the ideas of social movements and counterpublics-historically two key factors significant in the study of social change. Foust, Pason, and Zittlow Rogness's volume compiles the voices of leading and new scholars who are contributing to the history, application, and new directions of these two concepts, all in conversation with a number of acts of resistance or social change. The theories of social movements and counterpublics are related, but distinct. Social movement theories tend to be concerned with enacting policy and legislative changes. Scholars flying this flag have concentrated on the organization and language (for example, rallies and speeches) that are meant to enact social change. Counterpublic theory, on the other hand, focuses less on policy changes and more on the unequal distribution of power and resources among different protest groups, which is sometimes synonymous with subordinated identity groups such as race, gender, sexuality, and class. Nonetheless, contributors argue that in recent years the distinctions between these two methods have become less evident. By putting the literatures of the two theories in conversation with one another, these scholars seek to promote and imagine social change outside the typical binaries.

This book tells the story of modern-day newspapers by exploring the digital transition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a microcosm of the industry. Drawing on the expertise of scholars and professionals across a range of areas, it explores the economic, political, and social context of the move of the largest daily newspaper (to date) from print to the Web. In doing so it paints a complete picture of the current shape of the newspaper industry. While the circumstances in New Orleans anchor the book, it also includes exploration of other for-profit and nonprofit business models for newspapers; differences in how communities handle news during a crisis; implications of the digital divide; and, how different communities believe a decline in print journalism impacts politics and the functioning of local government. By researching in real-time the metamorphosis of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the book shows what news organizations, journalists, news consumers, and professionals can learn about the future of the global newspaper industry. Is the newspaper industry in the midst of evolution or are its decisions sparking a revolution?

Scholars of journalism and media studies have illustrated the production of alternative media as a means for activists to generate dissent, while communication scholars have examined activists' performances and image events as challenges to dominant power structures. The approaches of both fields have contributed to academic understanding of social movements in modern society, but until now, their findings have emerged separate from one another. This book brings together both lines of research, and demonstrates the role of alternative media in the performance of resistance against power structures by contemporary activists. Specifically, the book explores the role of alternative media in the establishment of activist networks in local communities; the role of alternative media in the construction of strategies of resistance by networked activists; and the role of interactivity between local and global networks in production of alternative media content. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses concerning social movements within the fields of communication, media, and journalism.

Popular newspapers played a vital role in shaping British politics, society and culture in the twentieth century. This book provides a concise and accessible historical overview of the rise of the tabloid format and examines how the national press reported the major stories of the period, from World Wars and general elections to sex scandals and celebrity gossip. It considers the appeal and influence of the most successful titles, such as the &ltI>Daily Mail</I>, the &ltI>Daily Mirror</I>, the &ltI>Daily Express </I>and the &ltI>Sun</I>, and explores the emergence of the key elements of the modern popular newspaper, such as editorial campaigns, women's pages, advice columns, and pin-ups. Using a wealth of examples from across the century, the authors explain how tabloids provided an important forum for the discussion of social identities such as class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity, and how they scrutinised public figures with increasing intensity. In the wake of recent controversies about tabloid practices, this timely book provides the historical context to enable a proper assessment of how the popular press helped to define twentieth-century Britain.

This book examines the convergence of media in the largest residential virtual community to date in the gaming world: Second Life. This user content-driven platform has brought media makers and audiences together in interactive environments where news, entertainment, and art have become programming for virtual media networks with implications for traditional mainstream programming and distribution. New media moguls are emerging from Second Life and expanding to the larger Metaverse. This book explores media's role in reporting and reflecting the social, political, and economic issues within Second Life and beyond, and includes more than a dozen interviews of active Second Life residents.