Aphasia websites: An examination of their quality and communicative accessibility

Background: Studies have examined Internet use as a source of information by various populations, however no study has examined the quality and accessibility of websites for people with aphasia, or their use of such sites. Aims: This study aimed to describe the quality, communicative accessibility, and readability of a sample of aphasia websites and to determine whether sites preferred by people with aphasia were those rated highly on measures of accessibility and quality. The perceptions of people with aphasia regarding the accessibility of the sites were compared with those of speech pathologists. The relationship between the quality and communicative accessibility of websites was analysed. Factors that may influence use of the Internet by people with aphasia and speech pathologists were explored. Methods & Procedures: Tools for measuring quality and communicative accessibility were developed and a sample of five websites was selected. Two participant groups (18 speech pathologists and 6 people with aphasia) assessed aphasia websites in terms of communicative accessibility. Speech pathologists also rated website quality. Spearman's rho was used to determine levels of agreement between variables. Outcomes & Results: People with aphasia and speech pathologists showed minimal agreement on their perceptions of communicative accessibility. However, when the preferences of websites (Aphasia Help and Speakability) were of a very high standard. There was a weak relationship between quality and communicative accessibility, however it was not statistically significant. Conclusions: Accessible websites are not necessarily of high quality, and quality websites are not guaranteed to be easily accessible. People with aphasia did not agree with speech pathologists as to what makes a good aphasia website. Therefore, people with aphasia should be involved in the design of aphasia websites since they are often the intended users. If Internet use by people with aphasia increases in line with other health populations, speech pathologist need to have the skills and confidence to recommend appropriate sites to their clients.

Communicative practices in online communication: A case of agreeing to disagree

Online communities have evolved beyond the realm of social phenomenon to become important knowledge-sharing media with real economic consequences. However, the sharing of knowledge and the communication of meaning through Internet technology presents many difficulties. This is particularly so for online finance forums where market-sensitive information and disinformation about exchange-traded stocks is regularly disseminated. The development of trust and the effect of misinformation in this environment are important in the growth of this communication medium. Forum administrators need to better understand and handle the development of trust. In this article, we analyze and discuss the communicative practices of a group of investors and members of an online community of interest. We found that conflict as a driver of knowledge sharing is an important consideration for forum administrators and designers.

Strategic planning as communicative process

This paper looks at how a strategic plan is constructed through a communicative process. Drawing on Ricoeur’s concepts of decontextualization and recontextualization, we conceptualize strategic planning activities as being constituted through the iterative and recursive relationship of talk and text. Based on an in-depth case study, our findings show how multiple actors engage in a formal strategic planning process which is manifested in a written strategy document. This document is thus central in the iterative talk to text cycles. As individuals express their interpretations of the current strategic plan in talk, they are able to make amendments to the text that then shape future textual versions of the plan. This iterative cycle is repeated until a final plan is agreed. We develop our findings into a model of the communication process that explains how texts become more authoritative over time and, in doing so, how they inscribe power relationships and social order within organizations. These findings contribute to the literature on the purposes of largely institutionalized processes of strategic planning and to the literature on organization as a communications process.

Strategic planning as communicative process

This thesis looks at the construction of a strategic plan within a British university (Unico). After a change in leadership, the well-known strategic planning sequence was adopted to set directions according to Unico’s three Missions, followed by the development of respective goals and measures. The evolving strategic content coincided with the development of Unico’s strategic plan. I was able to follow Unico’s planning efforts over 10 months, from first planning meeting to completion of its strategic plan. The main data source provided non-participant observation (n = 25) and ten versions of Unico’s strategic plan. Additionally, seventy-six interviews were held with participants at various points. In order to examine the strategic plan’s construction, I reconceptualised strategic planning as a communicative process consisting of oral talk and written text. Through this interplay strategic planning activities come in to being. Such reconceptualisation provided a conceptual framework to study the in situ interactions without neglecting contextual characteristics embedding the communicative process. Strategic plans are currently seen as promoting inflexibility and reinforcing the institutional nature of formal strategic planning. Adopting dialogism, as advocated by Bakhtin and Ricoeur, this research provides novel insights into the dialogic of strategy talk and strategy text, such as a strategic plan. Findings illustrated that a strategic plan production cycle provided a meaning making platform for its participants. Through recurrently amending the plan, its content became increasingly specific while at the same time reflecting agreed terminology. This thesis offers an alternative view on strategic planning, elaborates on the strategy-as-practice perspective, focusing on the under-explored area of individuals’ interactions at the micro level, and elaborates on the dialogic of text and agency/conversation, distinguishing between talk and text.

Strategic planning as communicative process

This paper examines the construction of a strategic plan as a communicative process. Drawing on Ricoeur’s concepts of decontextualization and recontextualization, we conceptualize strategic planning activities as being constituted through the iterative and recursive relationship of talk and text. Based on an in-depth case study, our findings show how multiple actors engage in a formal strategic planning process which is manifested in a written strategy document. This document is thus central in the iterative talk to text cycles. As individuals express their interpretations of the current strategic plan in talk, they are able to make amendments to the text, which then shape future textual versions of the plan. This cycle is repeated in a recursive process, in which the meanings attributed to talk and text increasingly converge within a final agreed plan. We develop our findings into a process model of the communication process that explains how texts become more authoritative over time and, in doing so, how they inscribe power relationships and social order within organizations. These findings contribute to the literature on strategic planning and on organization as a communication process.

The blurring boundaries between synchronicity and asynchronicity:new communicative situations in work-related Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is one of the most popular communication technologies in virtual teams, enabling interactions to intertwine whole working days, thus creating the sense of copresence for team members who are geographically dispersed. Through close linguistic analyses of naturally occurring data from a virtual team, this article discusses the implications of two novel communicative situations enabled by instant messaging: presence information and the persistence of transcript. The preliminary findings of this study indicate that these new communicative situations require the flouting or rethinking of previously existing interactional norms and that communicative practices employed by the team members are not yet conventionalized/normalized, the expectations and interpretations of interactional rituals and timing vary highly, even within the same virtual team.

Online vs. Offline Gossip as a Source of Corporate Communicative Advantage

In a world that may be described by information revolution, it is becoming more and more important to discover the diffusion of information and news in a new technological environment. We are not dependent but, more in control of receiving and forwarding information in this technology driven environment. What we can find is that in today’s interpersonal communications, even corporate communications, gossip-like information gain a more important role. Starting from the psychological notion of gossip we asked the question how gossip occurs, evolves and disperses on the internet, what the main criteria of its diffusion and how these maybe taken into service of a company. The power of gossip derives from its biological basis that is communication advantage. The “newsmonger” maybe described with good memory, being up-to-date even in non-gossip like situations. The spread of info is faster and more precise among people with similar professions or of common interest. The content of the gossip adopts to the intellectual level of its audience. We conducted multiple research methods in order to discover about the nature of gossip of corporate interest: content analyses of blogs (N=10) and forums (N=10); online in-depth interviews (N=10); and individual consumer narratives (N=100). Our research shows that companies may lead and use gossip in an online context for their own communication intentions, however, corporate presence in terms of online gossips has to fulfill requirements in order to remain acceptable: that are specific language and place, openness, being direct about expressing intention and origin. In our paper we are going to present our major results and theoretical model

Factors associated with critical care nurses' communication with non-communicative patients in the ICU

Hospitalized individuals are isolated from their familiar environment at the onset of illness. Those individuals who are non-communicative are detached from the world and from life, as they previously knew it. Although nurses have long since recognized the importance of communication, patients still report the lack of iy. This study was done to identify factors influencing critical care nurses to communicate with their noncommunicative patients. The overall results of the study indicate that nurses are aware of the importance of verbal communication with patients who may be intubated, paralyzed, unconscious, comatose or neurologically impaired and are not deterred by them. Despite these results, some significant observations emerged identified. CCRN certified nurses and nurses with more years of experience were less likely to have verbal communication with noncommunicative patients. Nurses with children, spouses and those working full-time were more likely to communicate with non-communicative patients.

Getting to the point: The influence of communicative intent on the kinematics of pointing gestures

Postprint

Teaching morphology trough communicative approach and cooperative learning in Secondary Education: practical proposal

We will be presenting the following practical proposal that will consist of two sessions implemented with different courses of Secondary Education (ESO) of the Colegio Círculo Católico (Catholic School Group), located in the city of Burgos. Each session lasts 55 minutes. These sessions focus on the morphology of the Spanish language. Its design has been carried out by keeping in mind the theoretical basis of the communicative approach and cooperative learning.

The Communicative Dimension and Security in Asia-Pacific: A communicative-viewing proposal for reform of the Japanese Intelligence Services

The postwar development of the Intelligence Services in Japan has been based on two contrasting models: the centralized model of the USA and the collegiality of UK, neither of which has been fully developed. This has led to clashes of institutional competencies and poor anticipation of threats towards national security. This problem of opposing models has been partially overcome through two dimensions: externally through the cooperation with the US Intelligence Service under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security; and internally though the pre-eminence in the national sphere of the Department of Public Safety. However, the emergence of a new global communicative dimension requires that a communicative-viewing remodeling of this dual model is necessary due to the increasing capacity of the individual actors to determine the dynamics of international events. This article examines these challenges for the Intelligence Services of Japan and proposes a reform based on this new global communicative dimension.

The Role of Perceived Social Support, Resilience, and Depression on Communicative Participation in Head and Neck Cancer Survivors

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-08