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The purpose of this paper is to explore a new research area: orally‐based information.

The study utilizes a social constructionist approach. The social constructionist meta‐theory, which holds that contributions to knowledge can be made orally, frames it.

The paper explicates how orality, or word‐of‐mouth transactions, conveys information; describes approaches for investigating orally‐based information; and articulates the need for future information behavior investigations that focus on orality.

The research exploration focuses on face‐to‐face oral data. It calls for increased attention to orally‐based information, and offers tentative suggestions for accomplishing this goal.

The results provide insight that assist in understanding how orally‐based information intersects with information behavior, knowledge management, information policy, cultural heritage, and professional development that involves orality.

The paper builds a theoretical foundation for increased understanding of the meaning and functions of orally‐based information.

Building on the “Great Divide” thesis (Goody, 1977; Ong, 1982), this study analyzes the conceptual relationships between the two main communication modes (orality/literacy) and cultural values.

The study adopts a purely conceptual approach to connect orality and literacy with nine cultural dimensions adopted from Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s (1961), Hall’s (1976) and Inglehart’s (1997) frameworks.

The analyses suggest that orality is associated with values such as high-context communication, poly-chronic time, public space proxemics, collectivism, hierarchical social structure, subjugation, past orientation, religiousness/traditionalism and survival cultural dimensions. Literacy is associated with opposing values, including low-context communication, mono-chronic time, private space proxemics, individualism, egalitarian social structure, dominance, future orientation, secularity/rationality, and self-expression cultural dimensions. The paper relies on modernization theory to explain the socio-economic implications and organizes the nine pairs of cultural dimensions according to the great divide between orality and literacy.

Theoretically, this study conceptualizes orality and literacy, analyzes their salient differences and examines their relationships with cultural values. While many studies have tried to explain the differences in cultural values from an economic perspective, this study offers an alternative view of cultural values’ variations across the world.

This paper aims to analyze the implications of orality for management practices in a developing country such as Iran.

This paper relies on the seminal theory of Walter Ong (1982) and a leading line of anthropological research to analyze the implications of orality/literacy for management practices in Iran. The authors first define orality and literacy as distinct modes of communication and examine their conceptual properties. Then, the authors draw on the existing literature to analyze the five main management functions impacted by orality.

The analyses suggest that the predominance of orality in Iran is associated with a wide range of management practices, including short-term or unstructured planning, spontaneous decision-making, fluid organizational structure, the prevalence of interpersonal relations, authoritarian and traditional leadership and behavior-based controlling mechanisms.

While most studies have focused on the impacts of cultural dimensions and economic variables, this paper offers a novel approach to analyzing management practices. More specifically, the paper suggests that in addition to the implications of cultural dimensions and economic variables, the mode of communication, namely, orality/literacy, could have significant implications for management practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how student learning materials, such as textbooks, are becoming more oriented toward multi-modal approaches using visuality and orality. While such approaches may help students to understand and then to reproduce taught materials, the objective of this paper is to question whether they are serving to promote students’ critical literacy.

The paper assesses the character of current textbooks and other means of student support, such as online learning management systems, and assesses how well they seem able to promote the critical literacy that requires ability in “reading against” and “writing back”. The paper goes on to identify ways in which some parts of the university see orality as preliminary and subordinate to literacy-focused communication, but elsewhere, the pinnacle of students’ work is artistic or creative attainments with lesser need to write complexly literate textual works.

As a means of trying to resolve inherent tensions between differing pedagogical assumptions and methods in the university, the paper proposes ways in which Ong’s (1982, p. 36) nine communication characteristics of “orally based thought and expression” may be able to offer insights into challenges of improving students’ critical literacy.

The inherent academic tensions within the university still remain insufficiently theorized. For example, the humanities and social sciences (still) place much store on developing students’ abilities in critical writing, while disciplines such as design or creative arts are much more focused on students’ creative outputs. The paper contributes to a better understanding of such scholars talking past one another.

Scholars in different academic camps often note the discrepancies in how their relative pedagogical tasks are to be understood, but typically, it is not clear to them how they might better relate to other parts of the university. The paper aims to elucidate the nature of academic differences that often appear to exist to provide insights into possibly new ways of seeing everyday teaching and learning.

Ong’s insights into literacy and orality when viewed through a prism of tertiary teaching and learning provide a practical means whereby students and other university stakeholders can develop a better appreciation of the character of the modern university.

The novel use of Walter Ong’s model of literacy and orality provides fresh ways of seeing challenges and disputes within the academic community and suggests new ways of seeing students’ work and their teachers’ expectations of them.

The era of globalization has increased the challenges for multinational corporations (MNCs) to retain legitimacy. In striving for legitimacy, MNCs increasingly engage in dialogue processes with their stakeholders. However, the era of globalization and the parallel rise of the Internet and the new “Web 2.0” have dramatically widened the range of options for such dialogue processes. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular make use of “social media” (e.g., Facebook, Weblogs, Twitter) which enable them to quickly generate attention regarding socially and environmentally harmful business practices by MNCs. In response, MNCs have started applying social media technologies for corporate communication purposes. However, given the novelty of these activities, we lack knowledge on how these organizations make use of social media. Therefore, in this chapter, we examine how MNCs and NGOs utilize one particular social media application, that is, Twitter, for dialogic stakeholder communication.

In our empirical study, we examine current practices of Twitter usage by MNCs and NGOs. We investigate a dataset of more than 3,000 Twitter articles from 30 MNCs and 30 NGOs in the German-speaking world. Our analysis is based on the “conceptual orality or literality” scale by Koch and Oesterreicher (1994).

The comparative analysis shows that on average MNCs and NGOs exhibit a surprisingly similar profile on Twitter. Both tend toward conceptual literality. However, the analysis of Tweets per organization reveals a much larger variance. At the extreme poles, while some NGOs (like Greenpeace Youth) make extensive use of the medium’s potential for conceptual orality, some MNCs (like Deutsche Börse) almost entirely adhere to conceptual literality. In other words, these MNCs promote a classical one-way model of communication and fail to make use of the dialogue-like qualities of the medium.

We analyzed a small number of organizations and we restricted our study to MNCs and NGOs in the German-speaking world. Furthermore, Twitter only allows for short messages with a maximum of 140 letters or signs. This, in turn, renders questionable whether the medium is suited to establish deliberative dialogues between MNCs and NGOs that are based on more elaborate arguments which can be expressed in the short format.

Our study addresses the lack of research regarding new possibilities for stakeholder communication in the age of social media. Moreover, the study methodologically contributes to the study of social media in the context of corporate communication by applying the scale of “conceptual orality or literality” to MNCs’ and NGOs’ Twitter usage.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by tutors who were providing remedial literacy support to New Zealand apprentices.

As part of a wider, triangulated study of employers, tutors, apprentices, and industry training coordinators, the author undertook a qualitative analysis of ten in‐depth interviews with apprentices’ literacy tutors.

It was found that three issues strongly affected what tutors could achieve for their students. First, tutors experienced substantial role ambiguity; second, apprentices were working in oral and experiential modes more than in print‐literate modes; and third, tutors found they had to employ an instrumental approach to their teaching in response to the situation they encountered. For example, this often meant serving as a scribe for their student rather than being able to focus on building the apprentice's print literacy.

It is possible that the difficult situation faced by these literacy tutors may be replicated in similar situations where funding is insufficient to build competence in literacy.

The constraints on what the tutors could actually achieve within tight funding limits meant that most students, while on track to successfully complete their apprenticeship, still remained of low print literacy.

The study reveals how tutors’ instrumental approach ran counter to their traditional ethical stance associated with building empowered, competent citizens who could participate fully in their civic, social and economic settings. It also shows how this literacy support enhanced the apprentices’ confidence, yet they probably became further reinforced in their little‐changed, oral work culture.

“Oral documents in concept and in situ, part I” aims to conceptualize and provide a means to empirically observe an oral document. Part II aims to report the results of continued analysis of the oral data gathered to increase understanding of one type of document, i.e. a managerial decree, which is also conceptualized and empirically observed. Additionally, the results further validate the oral document concept.

This study analyzes oral data by: exploring how they adhere to the articulation of the concept of an oral document; and reporting on an investigation that operationalizes the properties of documents to facilitate empirically observing managerial decrees.

The results reveal one type of oral document, i.e. a managerial decree, being used in practice. This outcome further validates and further clarifies the concept of an oral document. Additionally, three new properties of documentary practice are identified.

The method utilized limits the research results to identifying one type of oral document identified within a small sample of face‐to‐face oral data gathered from a single kind of context.

The identification of three additional properties of documentary practices contributes additional ways to identify documents. The method used to identify properties and documents may be repeated in similar research. The reification of the new type of oral document managerial decree allows for orality in organizational contexts to be discussed and trained on, with goals of increased management and staff understanding of and success in their oral communications.

This paper conceptualizes a new type of oral document (managerial decree). This paper also incorporates recommendations for future research.

Although research indicates the importance of oral information, our understanding of it remains limited. This paper accordingly aims to suggest that some utterances are oral documents and explore how to identify them.

This study analyzes certain oral artifacts through: exploring how research in social constructionism, information behavior, document studies and allied literatures facilitate the articulation of the concept of an oral document; and reporting on an investigation that operationalizes the properties of documents to facilitate empirically observing an oral document.

The results reveal an oral document observed in situ, which further validates the concept. Additionally, the results indicate that the method used, however systematic, prevents a full understanding of data gathered and that subsequent study of that data would generate further understanding of the oral document concept (presented in Part II).

The method utilized limits the research results to identifying a single oral document identified within a small sample of face‐to‐face oral data.

The reification of oral documents broadens the scope of information science and implies a need to understand them better, in order for practitioners to carry out their professional responsibilities to collect, describe, organize and preserve them.

This paper conceptualizes a major new object of study for the field – an oral document. This paper also presents recommendations for research that expands on the method used herein, and suggestions for continued analysis. Some of these techniques will likely also prove valuable in analyzing some informal online communication, which shares some characteristics with oral documents.

The essay studies the introduction and use of audio-visual media in contemporary Swedish courtroom praxis and how this affects social interaction and the constitution of judicial space. The background to the study is the increasing use of video technology in law courts during the last decennium, and in particular the reformed trial code regulating court proceedings introduced in Sweden in 2008. The reform is called A Modern Trial (En modernare rättegång, Proposition 2004/05:131). An important innovation is that testimonies in lower level court proceedings now are video recorded and, in case of an appeal trial, then are screened in the appellate court. The study of social interaction and the constitution of judicial space in the essay is based in part on an ethnographic study of the Stockholm appellate court (Svea hovrätt) conducted in the fall 2010; in part on a study of the preparatory works to the legal reform; and in part on research on how media technology affects social interaction and the constitution of space and place.