Shawna Malvini Redden

How Lines Organize Compulsory Interaction, Emotion Management, and “Emotional Taxes” The Implications of Passenger Emotion and Expression in Airport Security Lines

Everyday nearly two million people use commercial air transportation in the United States. To fly, each passenger must perform a unique type of emotion management that may impact their entire travel experience. Using ethnographic observation and interviews, this project explores how airport structures—security queues in particular—serve to cue emotional responses for passengers and shape interactions with others. Specifically highlighted are the reflexive nature of emotions, how emotions “travel” among people and through contexts to influence communication, and the consequences of emotion management for individuals and organizations. In examining compulsory interactions between passengers and employees, the study forwards a new emotion management construct specific to customers—“emotional taxes” or the emotional performances customers must “pay” to negotiate a compulsory interaction.Everyday nearly two million people use commercial air transportation in the United States. To fly, each passenger must perform a unique type of emotion management that may impact their entire travel experience. Using ethnographic observation and interviews, this project explores how airport structures—security queues in particular—serve to cue emotional responses for passengers and shape interactions with others. Specifically highlighted are the reflexive nature of emotions, how emotions “travel” among people and through contexts to influence communication, and the consequences of emotion management for individuals and organizations. In examining compulsory interactions between passengers and employees, the study forwards a new emotion management construct specific to customers—“emotional taxes” or the emotional performances customers must “pay” to negotiate a compulsory interaction.

A Metaphor Analysis of Recovering Substance Abusers’ Sensemaking of Medication-Assisted Treatment

In this study, we examined metaphors invoked by people recovering from opioid dependence as they described the challenges and successes of using medication-assisted treatment. Metaphors provide linguistic tools for expressing issues that are confusing, complex, hidden, and difficult to state analytically or literally. Using data from eight focus groups with 68 participants representing four ethnic minority groups, we conducted a grounded analysis to show how recovering substance users communicatively constructed addiction and recovery. The primary medication, methadone, was framed as “liquid handcuffs” that allowed those in recovery to quit “hustling,” get “straight,” and find “money in their pockets.” Nonetheless, methadone also served as a “crutch,” leaving them still feeling like “users” with “habits” who “came up dirty” to friends and family. In this analysis, we tease out implications of these metaphors, and how they shed light on sensemaking, agency, and related racial- and class-based structural challenges in substance abuse recovery.

Narrating the Backstage of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication: A Synthesis

The five essays in this forum provide backstories about qualitative research in organizational communication. Although research journals, including Management Communication Quarterly, increasingly welcome qualitative research, most journal articles continue to be written in a deductive style that camouflages the messy, inductive processes by which most qualitative research unfolds (Tracy, 2012). Sharing the difficulties, foibles, uncertainties, tips, and tricks that make up “backstage” qualitative research behavior can provide great pedagogical value and help us learn from others’ experiences. Indeed, sharing these backstage moments—especially embarrassing or disheartening issues—provides social support as readers realize that other people, even senior or successful scholars, make mistakes and encounter challenges. Furthermore, vulnerably sharing backstage moments can encourage empathy from those who do not practice qualitative research and provide clarity about its challenges. In this introduction, we summarize the essays and offer questions to spur discussion and future research. Sarah J. Tracy, forum

CORRELATES OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL SERVICE COORDINATION IN COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS.

Because weak interagency coordination between community correctional agencies (e.g., probation and parole) and community-based treatment providers has been identified as a major barrier to the use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for treating drug-involved offenders, this study sought to examine how key organizational (e.g., leadership, support, staffing) and individual (e.g., burnout, satisfaction) factors influence interagency relationships between these agencies. At each of 20 sites, probation/parole officials (n = 366) and community treatment providers (n = 204) were surveyed about characteristics of their agencies, themselves, and interorganizational relationships with each other. Key organizational and individual correlates of interagency relationships were examined using hierarchical linear models (HLM) analyses, supplemented by interview data. The strongest correlates included Adaptability, Efficacy, and Burnout. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

‘Adults don’t understand’: exploring how teens use dialectical frameworks to navigate webs of tensions in online life

ABSTRACT As communication increasingly takes place online and via mobile technologies, young people are the fastest growing adopters of new online platforms. Consequently, communication scholars have begun to consider young people’s experiences online, comparing online and offline interactions, establishing how developmental stages affect youth’s engagement with online content, and documenting risks for youth’s experience online. We argue that much can be gained from a ‘tension-centered’ approach that highlights the competing demands of young people’s online engagement and problematizes current conceptions of risk. Through focus group interviews with teens, we examine current trends of online activity and re-conceptualize opportunities for conducting research with youth. Teens’ ‘local logics’ for negotiation webs of communicative tensions online reveal articulation of formal rules, which are later eclipsed by lived experiences. We offer strategies for parents, caregivers, and educators to more productively engage with youth about their online experiences, as well as implications for communication researchers.

A different type of dirty work: Hidden taint, intersectionality, and emotion management in bureaucratic organizations

ABSTRACT This study explores the intersectionality among identity markers, such as gender, race, and class, and emotion management in two bureaucratic organizations – municipal courtrooms and airport security checkpoints. We name and explore a new type of dirty work called “hidden taint,” which we describe as a larger, encompassing category of dirty work that involves the experience and dynamic co-construction of taint. Utilizing qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews, we compare how hidden taint is experienced in each bureaucratic context. The results focus on the relationship between (1) hidden taint and the co-construction of emotion norms and (2) hidden taint and power dynamics. This study extends communication theory by naming and describing hidden taint as a new type of dirty work, extending literature on emotion management and intersectionality by exploring their connection to dirty work in occupations with varying levels of prestige, and detailing how emotion management is co-constructed between employees and patrons in bureaucratic contexts.

The study of youth online: a critical review and agenda

ABSTRACT The increasing and pervasive use of online technologies, especially social media, has inspired scholars to investigate how the Internet influences communication. As young people represent the fastest growing adopters of new online technology, much of this research targets youth activity online. But how is the communication discipline taking up this issue, broadly? Typically left to new media and computer-mediated communication scholars, we argue youth online activity raises new and exciting possibilities for researchers across the communication discipline. In this paper, we present a qualitative content analysis of communication research about youth and the Internet. Our analysis of over 700 journal articles provides a clear picture of past and present trends in communication research of youth online activity. Furthermore, we discuss the top four content themes, including: uses and gratifications, engagement, identity, and the uniqueness of youth experience. Critically, we articulate how such research organizes and positions youth in meaningful ways, paving the way for issues of inclusion. We call for a shift from a “difference” framework to one that more explicitly considers “complexity” before suggesting opportunities for future research that crosses and unites subdisciplinary boundaries.

Markers, metaphors, and meaning: Drawings as a visual and creative qualitative research methodology in organizations

In this chapter, we argue that combining different qualitative research methods can facilitate the study of collective cognition in organizations, thus compensating the limitations of more traditional approaches. Using our own research experience in studying how designers develop new ideas, we explain how the combined use of ethnography, grounded theory and visual narrative analysis allowed us to gain a deep understanding of how material practices influence collective cognitive sensemaking in organizations. In particular, we show (1) how ethnography allowed us to map and unpack the material practices designers engage in when developing new ideas, (2) how interviews and grounded theory helped us articulate informants’ interpretations of these practices and reveal the underlying cognitive processes, and, finally, (3) how visual narrative analysis was useful to systematically track changes in the evolving collective interpretations, and by doing so to link together practices and processes in a longitudinal fashion.In this chapter we discuss a sampling technique that has been employed in recent works, but has yet to be delineated as a distinct methodology: “structural sampling.” Structural sampling allows the investigator to illuminate the inner-workings of a social system by interviewing actors in a variety of roles and making comparisons across multiple levels of analysis. We describe the technique of structural sampling and its purpose, elucidate the benefits and challenges of structural sampling, provide several examples to illustrate potential uses of this technique, and situate structural sampling in the context of extant qualitative research methodologies.

Developing effective interorganizational relationships between community corrections and community treatment providers.

ABSTRACT Weak service coordination between community corrections and community treatment agencies is a significant barrier in the diffusion of pharmacotherapy for treating opioid and alcohol use disorders. This analysis draws on qualitative interviews (n = 141) collected in a multisite randomized trial to explore what probation/parole officers and treatment staff believe are the most critical influences on developing positive interorganizational relationships between their respective agencies. Officers and treatment staff highlighted factors at both the individual and organizational level, with issues related to communication surfacing as pivotal. Findings suggest that future interventions consider developing shared interagency goals with input at all staff levels.