Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Contemporary Rhetoric, Argumentation, Persuasion, Communication Theory. Objectives: Students will (1) learn the basics of the narrative rationality as a mode of judging rhetoric, and (2) observe the ways in which humans use narrative fidelity and narrative probability to judge stories.

In this paper, we engage with five Swedish universities' discursive articulation of, and responses to, an alleged post-truth crisis in communication, aimed at the public. Taking discourse theory as our point of departure, the aim is to analyse how universities are trying to maintain or restore trustworthiness against a backdrop of problems with…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine if, or to what extent, the soft skills of a principal, as perceived by their teachers, can predict a positive school climate at the middle school level in a large Independent School District (ISD) in southeast Texas. The theoretical constructs of attribution and emotional…

This project explores the impacts of emojis on students' impressions when used in a course welcome email. We adopt a 4 x 3 factorial design to determine how different emojis (i.e., [winking face emoji], [face-with-tears-of-joy emoji], [tongue-sticking-out face emoji]) impact students' impressions of credibility, immediacy, and liking. Data from…

Open access (OA) publishing presents university librarians, administrators, and faculty researchers with a paradox of both opportunities and challenges. For faculty researchers in particular, the decision of whether to pursue OA publication of their scholarship is driven by their perceptions of the credibility and quality of OA publishing. While…

The Explainer Video Project was developed to familiarize management students with evaluating explainer videos for credibility and quality. In addition, it provides students with unique options for creating video content. Today's workplace needs college graduates with entrepreneurial skills applicable to the gig economy enabled by online platforms.…

Pseudoscientific beliefs are widespread and can be damaging. If several studies have examined the factors leading people to accept pseudoscientific beliefs, no attention has been paid to the factors contributing to people's willingness to transmit these beliefs. To test whether the willingness to transmit pseudoscientific beliefs contributes to…

This article is the third installment in a series regarding the conduct, dissemination, and consumption of large-scale secondary research. See Part 1 on conducting secondary analysis (Sullivan et al., 2020) (EJ1239445) and Part 2 on practitioners' use of this research (Kulkarni et al., 2020) (EJ1248185). The purpose in this final installment is to…

Public health messages can be used to increase awareness about colorectal cancer screenings. Free or inexpensive images for creating health messages are readily available, yet little is known about how a pictured individual's engagement in the behavior of interest affects message outcomes. Participants (N = 360), aged 50 to 75 years, completed an…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether instructor disclosures of personal communication apprehension in the public speaking classroom are beneficial to students as they manage their own nervousness related to public speaking. Participants (N = 233) in the present study included students enrolled in public speaking courses at a…

Each year institutions of higher education receive greater pressure from the federal level, regional accreditation agencies, and state legislatures, to become more transparent and accountable for their actions. It is more important than ever, then, for colleges and universities to engage in authentic strategic planning that may be embraced by both…

The concept and theory of 'international-mindedness' has been much discussed and debated in recent years. The conceptualising of the character of 'international-mindedness' as practised by schools has begun to attract some scholarly attention, but one especially under-theorised aspect involves the often-derided 'Several Fs', or sometimes 'Five Fs'…

The U.S. is no longer one of the world leaders in mathematics. In the future, more graduates will be needed to fill more than a million mathematics-intensive positions. However, the number of post-secondary learners graduating with mathematics-intensive degrees has been declining since 1984. Therefore, there will not be enough graduates to fill…

Theories of language policy increasingly emphasise focusing on the specific contexts in which language management occurs. In government settings, policy seeks to shape how individuals interact with officials. Australian asylum procedure is an area where policy aims at tight control. I examine how communication is managed in this setting, in which…

Sender demeanor is an individual difference in the believability of message senders that is conceptually independent of actual honesty. Recent research suggests that sender demeanor may be the most influential source of variation in deception detection judgments. Sender demeanor was varied in five experiments (N = 30, 113, 182, 30, and 35) to…