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1 – 10 of 424Sucharita Belavadi and Michael A. Hogg
Uncertainty-identity theory serves as our guiding theoretical framework to explore subjective uncertainty, especially uncertainty about self and identity, and the ways in which…
Abstract
Uncertainty-identity theory serves as our guiding theoretical framework to explore subjective uncertainty, especially uncertainty about self and identity, and the ways in which communication within groups provides valuable social identity information to group members as a means to manage subjective uncertainty.
We review and synthesize research in communication science and social identity theory, specifically uncertainty-identity theory, to compare diverse understandings of uncertainty and the identity-shaping function of communication within groups.
Uncertainty inherent in dyadic interactions has received extensive attention in communication science. However, the identity-defining function of communication that flows within and between groups as a means to resolving uncertainty about subjectively important matters has received little attention in both social psychology and communication science.
We explore how communication that flows from in-group sources (e.g., leaders) serves to shape a shared reality and identity for group members while providing a framework for self-definition. We propose an agenda for future research that would benefit from an articulation of the importance of communication in the shaping and management of identity-uncertainty.
Uncertainty arousing rhetoric by influential in-group sources, such as leaders and the media can have serious implications for intergroup relations, as uncertain individuals seek distinctive and tight-knit groups and autocratic leaders under conditions of heightened uncertainty. The role that communication plays in shaping clear and distinct identities as a panacea for identity-uncertainty has implications for the intragroup normative structure of the group and for intergroup relations.
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Political parties and marketers have for centuries employed visuals as effective means of conveying their messages. Yet surprisingly, little has been written on the evident…
Abstract
Political parties and marketers have for centuries employed visuals as effective means of conveying their messages. Yet surprisingly, little has been written on the evident interplay between the visual rhetoric of political campaigns and destination image. Influenced by Foucault’s notion of subjectivity and drawing on critical discourse analysis, this chapter analyzes the visual rhetoric of the radical right-wing Swiss People’s Party campaign posters in order to explore the relationship between political rhetoric and destination image. It is concluded that while this image of Switzerland may be negatively influenced by the rhetoric of the party, the reflex of the state may inadvertently perpetuate cultural fundamentalism and exclusion.
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This chapter describes a theory of intergroup leadership. Research on reducing prejudice and intergroup conflict identifies a number of conditions, such as empathy, shared goals…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter describes a theory of intergroup leadership. Research on reducing prejudice and intergroup conflict identifies a number of conditions, such as empathy, shared goals, crossed categorization, recategorization, and intergroup contact, which can be beneficial. It also identifies social identity threat as a stumbling block – processes intended to reduce conflict often threaten people’s sense of having a unique and distinctive social identity and thus provoke a defensive reaction that sustains conflict. But social psychology says little about the role of group leadership in conflict resolution.
Methodology/approach
I summarize what we know from social psychology about conditions that attenuate intergroup conflict; then focus on social identity and influence processes to present a new theory of leadership across conflicting groups.
Findings
Prejudice and intergroup conflict reduction rests on effective messaging and influence, which is often a matter of intergroup leadership where a leader must bridge and integrate warring factions within a superordinate entity. The challenge of intergroup leadership is to construct an intergroup relational identity that focuses on collaboration and avoids identity threat. I describe a model of intergroup leadership and discuss strategies, such as identity rhetoric, boundary spanning and leadership coalition-building, that such leadership should adopt to effectively reconstruct social identity to reduce conflict and prejudice between groups.
Originality/value
This is a development and extension of a more narrowly focused theory of intergroup leadership in organizational contexts. It will be of value to social psychology, the behavioral and social sciences, and those seeking to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict through leadership.
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Purpose – This research is an analysis of expressions of masculinity among members of two social movements. The focus of the study is how racialized constructions of masculinity…
Abstract
Purpose – This research is an analysis of expressions of masculinity among members of two social movements. The focus of the study is how racialized constructions of masculinity shape similar discourses of victimization in the mythopoetic men's movement and the Militia of Montana.
Method – Content analysis of the movement members’ written work available to the general public is analyzed. A theoretical overview of masculinity and victimization is also utilized to illustrate essentialist narratives in masculinity.
Findings – This research raises questions about the lived experience of the racialization of masculinity in movements, the complexity of identity formation of movement members, and challenges assumptions about the limitations of essentialism in these types of social movements. Both movements employ language that explicitly and implicitly illustrate a perception of white male victimization. Attention to essentialism in each movement shows the contradictions of each movement, with attention to how movement members choose to construct their own identities.
Research limitations – This research is limited to the written words of some movement members from material generated by each movement, and therefore, this research does not contain interview narratives of the movement members.
Originality/value of chapter – Previous research has faulted each movement for essentialist notions of self and group. This work argues that group cohesion and success of these types of movements depends on the ability of members to create essentialist categories of masculinity to support their claims and interests.
Du Bois's interest in the Japanese empire points us in the direction of examining non-Western imperial policies and discourses and how they relate to racialization. For Du Bois…
Abstract
Du Bois's interest in the Japanese empire points us in the direction of examining non-Western imperial policies and discourses and how they relate to racialization. For Du Bois, Japan was an exemplar of a nonwhite empire. This chapter reconstructs a Du Boisian conception of race that identifies it closely with ethnicity, against the belief that the African-American intellectual held on to a merely biological conception of race. I argue that his thought evolved towards a social-construction approach in which race must be understood historically and in particular global contexts. By analyzing Japan's policies and discourses around the boundaries of the Japanese, I explicate how Japan carried out a process of self-racialization owing to its dialectical relationship with the West. It also racialized its colonial subjects in a process of in-group delineation according to Japan's imperial imperatives. The case of the Japanese empire demonstrates how a global/transnational approach to racialization is valuable. It also evinces how white supremacy and universalism are not the only logics of imperialism. Moreover, it shows that Du Bois believed white supremacy could be transcended. However, Du Bois was too idealistic about Japan's empire, ignoring how oppressive nonwhite imperial rulers can be toward their subjects even when there are phenotypical similarities between them.
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The literature on identity and identification can enrich our understanding of intergenerational behavior in organizations and society. In this chapter, I outline factors that lead…
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The literature on identity and identification can enrich our understanding of intergenerational behavior in organizations and society. In this chapter, I outline factors that lead the present generation to categorize future generations as part of their in-group, and circumstances under which people feel that it is consistent with their identity or self-concept to act on the behalf of future generations. Intergenerational identification is defined as the perception of “oneness” among generations such that multiple (two or more) generations consider themselves as part of a single group. I posit that intergenerational cooperation is more likely to occur when intergenerational identification is high. Finally, I elucidate the relationships among intergenerational identification, organizational identification, and intergenerational cooperation.
Monika Kopytowska and Łukasz Grabowski
Departing from the assumption that discourse is both socially constituted and constitutive, and that social reality is co-constructed by the institutions of mass communication…
Abstract
Departing from the assumption that discourse is both socially constituted and constitutive, and that social reality is co-constructed by the institutions of mass communication, this chapter takes under scrutiny media representation of the recent refugee crisis in Europe. The objective behind it is to maximise the validity of the Media Proximization Approach (MPA), drawing on the insights from Critical Discourse Studies, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics, in explicating how the media can potentially impact on the salience of issues and thus on public perception of problems and threats along with measures to be taken to deal with them. Examining the data from Poland, a European Union member state from Central Europe, criticised for its anti-refugee stance and refusal to accept the assigned quotas of migrants, and, importantly, the country ‘experiencing’ migrant crisis without refugees, we look at the role of word co-occurrence patterns in the discursive representation of refugees and immigrants in Rzeczpospolita daily and Niezależna.pl, the Polish right-wing press. The analysis, of both quantitative and qualitative nature, focuses on lexical associations of two nouns, uchodźca ‘refugee’ and imigrant ‘immigrant’, and their role as epistemic, axiological and emotional proximization triggers in the process of mediated construction of crisis and European security.
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Gwendolyn K. Lee and Srikanth Parachuri
The purpose of this original research is to explore whether firms redeploy the resources that were withdrawn from existing businesses and use them to enter an emerging product…
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The purpose of this original research is to explore whether firms redeploy the resources that were withdrawn from existing businesses and use them to enter an emerging product market. We studied 244 firms that have exited from at least one business and analyzed whether the firms entered the emerging product market as a new business. The inducements of resource redeployment vary with information cues in media rhetoric about emerging and shifting threats of substitution between the firm’s existing businesses and the new one. Through our hazard rate analysis of entries of firms that exited existing businesses, we examined the hypotheses that resource redeployment through exit and entry may be driven by an interaction of the volume of substitution rhetoric with the resource commitments that the firm had made in the domain of the new business as well as the market relatedness between the firm’s existing businesses and the new one. Our study makes conceptual and methodological contributions to the research on inducements, by theorizing how performance advantages of new over existing businesses vary with product evolution and by characterizing emerging and shifting threats of substitution with content analysis of media rhetoric. Our study suggests that prior work investigating corporate diversification provides an incomplete picture of the contribution of resource relatedness to firm value and firm decision-making.
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Cristiano Codagnone, Athina Karatzogianni and Jacob Matthews
Following recent terrorist attacks in the US and Europe, Western Muslims have been criticised for not taking a firm stand against radical Islam and extremist organisations…
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Following recent terrorist attacks in the US and Europe, Western Muslims have been criticised for not taking a firm stand against radical Islam and extremist organisations. Drawing on insights from narrative criminology, we challenge such assertions and reveal Muslims' narrative mobilisation against violent jihadism. Based on 90 qualitative interviews with young Muslims in Norway, we show how violent extremism is rejected in a multitude of ways. This narrative resistance includes criticising extremist jihadist organisations for false interpretations of Islam and using derogatory terms to describe them. It also includes less obvious forms of narrative resistance, such as humour and attempts to silence jihadist organisations by ignoring them. While narrative criminology has effectively analysed the stories that constitute harm, less attention has been paid to narratives that counter harm. We argue that stories that counter jihadi narratives are crucial to understand the narrative struggles of Muslim communities, whose outcomes can help determine why some individuals end up becoming religious extremists – while others do not. By distinguishing between factual, emotional and humorous counternarratives and describing silence as a form of resistance, we show resistance to extremism that is often concealed from the public and the state.
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