Nick Trujillo

Hegemonic masculinity on the mound: Media representations of Nolan Ryan and American sports culture

This article analyzes print and television representations of baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan to reveal how hegemonic masculinity is reproduced in mediated sport. The analysis concerns how the media have covered and commodified Ryan throughout his career. Five distinguishing features are analyzed: Ryan as the embodiment of male athletic power, as an ideal image of the capitalist worker, as a family patriarch, as a white rural cowboy, and as a phallic symbol.

Organizational Perspectives for Public Relations Research and Practice

In this article, the authors review three broad paradigms from organizational research—functionalist, interpretive, and critical—and some of the representative theoretical approaches within each of these paradigms. They discuss the implications of these various perspectives for research in public relations and illustrate these implications with examples of research from public relations literature. They conclude with a brief analysis of the public relations efforts of Johnson and Johnson during the Tylenol crisis and illustrate how organizational theory and research can inform our analyses of public relations research and practice.

Interpreting (the work and the talk of) baseball: Perspectives on ballpark culture

Baseball, as a cultural institution, is subject to many interpretations. This article reports the findings of one long‐term ethnographic study of the communicative actions and interactions of employees who work at a major league baseball stadium and it reveals how these actions and interactions create and maintain three dominant interpretations of ballpark culture: the ballpark as a site of capitalist work, as a community for symbolic family members, and as a theatre for social drama. The article also discusses how romantics, functionalists, and critics, as students of the game, interpret the meaning of baseball in American culture.

Sportswriting and American cultural values: The 1984 Chicago cubs

This essay looks at the American cultural values reflected in the institution of sport as articulated in the medium of sportswriting. Specifically, we examine the values displayed in baseball as expressed in sportswriting about the 1984 Chicago Cubs. We identify six sets of cultural themes—each composed of oppositional value orientations—including winning and losing, tradition and change, teamwork and individualism, work and play, youth and experience, and logic and luck. We examine the ways in which sportswriters use these themes as interpretive schema for describing and explaining the 1984 Chicago Cubs and conclude that sportswriting not only displays these cultural values but provides a vehicle through which pervasive but conflicting cultural values can be integrated.

Organizational communication as cultural performance: Some managerial considerations

This essay uses the metaphor of “performance” from an interpretive perspective as a guide to understand the nature of managerial communication. As developed from an interpretive perspective, “performances” are conceptualized not in the “bottom line” sense of organizationally productive behavior but in the “dramaturgical” and “cultural” sense of those situationally variable interactions in which managers and other members construct senses of organizational identity and reality. This essay develops three managerial performances of “rationality” “sociability,” and “authority” and illustrates these processes with observational data taken from a field study of managerial communication.

On Becoming Acquainted: A Longitudinal Study of Social Judgement Processes

This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of social judgements made during the acquainting process. A repeated measures design was employed to observe changes in four variables: affective reactions, uncertainty, trust and attraction. Results showed that all four variables and the relationships among these variables changed over time. Results also indicated few unsystematic differences across acquainting dyads; thus the changes over time could best be represented as a uniphasic process. Based upon the findings of this study, a four-stage model of social judgement processes during acquainting was proposed including: (1) uncertainty, (2) exploratory affect, (3) interpersonal growth, and (4) interpersonal stability.

Cop talk, police stories, and the social construction of organizational drama

This essay examines how police officers socially construct a sense of organizational drama when they label, valorize, and narrate their work experience. This social construction of organizational drama is illustrated with data collected from a four month observational study of a small police force, fictitiously named the “Valley View Police Department.”

Interpreting November 22: A Critical Ethnography of an Assassination Site.

This article critiques how the Kennedy assassination is interpreted by visitors to Dealey Plaza, the assassination site in Dallas, Texas. Specifically, it is based on an ethnographic study of Deale...

Reinventing Corporate Communications.

In Re-inventing the Corporation, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene offer one “look to the future” of corporate America and provede information about how corporations can change in new and positive ways during the current “information age.” In this essay, the authors urge a “re-inventing” of corporate communications in todays organizations. They believe that changes have occurred and continue to occur in corporate America which call for new ways of conceptualizing and operationalizing the process of corporate communications. Specific public relations and organizational communication concepts are discussed that they believe are vital to a comprehensive understanding of corporate communications and to a productive line of corporate communications research.

In search of Naunny's Grave

This article critically examines family stories and accounts about my grandmother that were generated after her death. In particular, I discuss three interpretations of the grandmothers identity that were represented in these stories and accounts: (1) the grandmother as giver, (2) the grandmother as server, and (3) the grandmother as body. In this article, I blend various forms of writing, including confession, impressionism, and critique, in an effort to reveal the emotions of family members (including myself), as well as my interpretations of their stories and accounts. Although this article is about a particular grandmother (who was also a mother, aunt, great grandmother, great great grandmother, cousin, and other family positions), the identities discussed here have implications for how women in general are interpreted by their family members.