Josh Boyd

In Community We Trust: Online Security Communication at eBay

As e-commerce and virtual communities fundamentally change the way Americans do business and build relationships, how can people be assured of safety in unfamiliar cyberspaces? This essay focuses on online auction site eBay to understand how eBay has successfully attracted millions of users in spite of perceived risks and uncertainties. It argues that eBay is, in fact, a community (of commerce), and that the rhetorical construction of “community” on the site provides a foundation for trust between users. Based on trust theory, this essay isolates eBays “community trust” model as consisting of seven elements that work together to give users reasons to trust and to be trustworthy. Finally, the essay examines recent changes to eBays system, suggesting that so-called improvements for control might actually weaken the “community trust” system already in place–a warning to other sites that might imitate eBays community approach.

Organizational Rhetoric: A Subject of Interest(s)

At the heart of this special issue on external organizational rhetoric is the pursuit of unearthing the ways that complex organizations, performing as modern rhetors engaged in discourse, can work to make society a good place to live. One way that this can be achieved is by problematizing organizational rhetoric. To do so requires taking a critical stance that identifies the hidden ideographs and assumptions embedded within them. External organizational rhetoric scholars, aiming to foster a more fully functioning society, need to expose, smooth, and neutralize these assumptions and tacit constraints if there is to be continued progress in the study and application of the ways external organizational rhetoric, including public relations, might further contribute to society at large.

Selling home: Corporate stadium names and the destruction of commemoration

Abstract A citys primary benefits from professional sports franchises are civic pride and identification with its teams. The stadium or arena, as the physical “memory place”; for teams, has historically been named to commemorate the relationship among the team, the city, and the fans. This paper chronicles the rise in corporate naming and argues that sacrificing the commemorative name of a sports venue for a paid corporate name alters the identity statements of memory places, abbreviates the narrative about a city and its teams, and threatens the idyllic illusions about sports that fans have long chosen to maintain. As corporate naming spreads beyond sports, the substitution of commercialization for commemoration presents a growing threat to public memory places of many kinds.

Public and Technical Interdependence: Regulatory Controversy, Out-Law Discourse, and the Messy Case of Olestra

This essay characterizes regulatory controversy through communicative practices that bridge the technical and public spheres of argument. The case of Procter & Gambles efforts to gain approval and consumers for the fat substitute olestra, opposed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, serves as a vehicle for exploring the nature of regulatory controversy and the interdependence of public and technical argument. Out-law discourse, a discourse of dissent, ignores conventional standards of argument and is invited in regulatory controversy when extant arenas for argument are not flexible enough to accommodate dissent. This out-law discourse is explored through the tactics of objection and counteranalysis, and the essay concludes that regulatory controversy actually places a greater burden on corporate actors than on their out-law opponents.

Communitas/Corporatas Tensions in Organizational Rhetoric: Finding a Balance in Sports Public Relations

Sports public relations always serves two masters—both corporatas and communitas. In this article, a close textual analysis of the National Collegiate Athletic Associations (NCAAs) Stay in Bounds community relations program reveals that the NCAA is both a defender of amateur, communitas values, and a participant in professionalized, corporatas organizational rhetoric. This article offers a typology of the specific competing commitments of communitas and corporatas in sports rhetoric and argues that all sports rhetoric, from little league to big league, must negotiate with publics a balance between these extremes. This article is derived from an M.A. thesis written by Melissa Stahley and advised by Josh Boyd. An earlier version of the article was presented at the National Communication Association convention, Chicago, November 13, 2004.

Reflect and Improve: Instructional Development through a Teaching Journal.

This article recommends the teaching journal as a method of instructional improvement. Drawing on teacher education literature, the article reviews the concept of reflective teaching and then describes uses of the teaching journal for college instructors in descriptive, comparative, and critical dimensions. Teaching journals can improve the teaching not only of beginners but also of experienced instructors.

A quest for Cinergy: The war metaphor and the construction of identity

As organizations struggle to present a consistent identity to multiple and overlapping publics, metaphor provides one unifying possibility. This essay examines the case of an unlikely winner in a corporate dispute over control of Indianas PSI Resources, arguing that PSIs consistent portrayal of its “enemy” as a savage, using the war metaphors victimage ritual, contributed to a successful defense. In addition to demonstrating how metaphor pervaded one organizations discourse to present a consistent identity to stakeholders, the essay offers questions and conclusions about the efficacy and ethics of the war metaphor as a weapon of corporate persuasion, with a focus on the consequences of its polarizing nature.

Winning Is(n't) Everything: The Paradox of Excellence and the Challenge of Organizational Epideictic

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects. Through a case study of the National Collegiate Athletic Associations “Stay in Bounds” program teaching children to be good sports both on and off the field, the essay demonstrates the challenges of organizational epideictic through the paradox of excellence. It also provides suggestions for the management—but not elimination—of paradox in organizational epideictic, particularly directed at external publics.

Corporate rhetoric participates in public dialogue: A solution to the public/private conundrum

Contrary to critics’ charges, corporate rhetoric is not a private intruder into public dialogue; it is simply a new participant. This essay seeks to expose inconsistencies in scholarly treatment of corporate discourse and call attention to blurred boundaries regarding “public” and “private” discourse. Various types of contemporary organizations defy such easy labels, leading only to confusion and unreasonable demonization of so‐called “private” discourse. Rather than simply bifurcating all organizational discourse into “public” and “private,” critics need to use precision in describing organizational discourse and explaining why it is or is not a constructive contributor to what is rightly considered public dialogue.

Turning "smoking man" images around: portrayals of smoking in men's magazines as a blueprint for smoking cessation campaigns.

Published scholarship documents the prevalence and health risks of smoking among men. There is also a rich tradition of studying the normative influences of the media in constructing and propagating images of healthy/unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. To understand the construction of these media-propagated smoking images toward male audiences, this article studies all advertising and editorial content of 3 major mens magazines for 2001 using rhetorical and content analyses. The emergent themes construct the smoking man as sensual, in another place, independent, and mysterious. The authors recommend turning around these themes of the masculine “smoking man” for the purpose of strategic media planning and developing message-targeting guidelines for smoking cessation and prevention messages directed at men.