Volume 8, Issue 3 - June 2013Print | Email

Sexual Tensions: Disagreements about Same-Sex Marriage in the LGBTQ Movement

Ganesh_photo_1There are now 14 countries around the world where same-sex marriage is legal and it is also legal in parts of Mexico and the United States. Across the world, activists continue to expend considerable energy in lobbying and campaigning for the cause in the face of continued vigorous conservative and often religious opposition. It seems, however, that the tide is turning. Polls in these, and other, countries have demonstrated a consistently rising level of public support for same-sex marriage across political ideologies, genders, ethnicities, class and age.

Yet, the rising global swell of support obscures a highly significant and pivotal tension, one on which communication scholarship can shed considerable insight, and that is the continued debate and discussion within LGBTQ circles as to whether gay marriage is an appropriate goal for the movement. A recent study in England, for example, highlighted that only 40% of people who identified as LGBTQ in the UK thought of gay marriage as a priority, and only half thought of it as personally relevant to them. In New Zealand, where I live, a 2007 survey showed that nearly as many LGBTQ people supported the abolition of marriage altogether as did those who supported the legalisation of same-sex marriage.


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Cross Current

An Underutilized Approach to Minimize Cheating

Henningsen_photo_1Cheating on papers, projects, and exams in college is a serious, common problem. Previous communication research has not examined a potent resource in the fight for intellectual honesty.

Regardless of the major or the institution, about 50% of undergraduates at U.S. colleges and universities will cheat at some point. Cheating, formally known as academic misconduct, is a constant concern for faculty members. Academic misconduct takes many forms, including cheating on exams and plagiarism. With the advent of the Internet in the classroom, academic misconduct has gotten more technologically savvy and more difficult to detect.


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Instructor's Corner: Let’s #Hashtag That and Come Back to It

Instructor's CornerFirst-year students are all about communication, but usually on their own terms. E-mail is passé, but text messages, social media interaction, and generally life online is their comfort zone. In an attempt to engage these techno-savvy freshmen, we challenged our students to interactively communicate in the classroom using the microblogging platform Twitter combined with Paper.li, a content curation service.  

The idea was to find the best way to foster a sense of community in first-year students arriving at university from diverse backgrounds. First-year experience (FYE) programs have become the norm in American universities to help students promote good study habits and overall wellness, but perhaps more importantly instill a sense of belonging and community which is crucial to keep students motivated to finish their degrees and enhance their overall academic and social experiences.
 

 


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Instructor's Corner: Electronic Textbooks or Paper Textbooks: What Are Students Reading? Or Are They Reading at All?

Instructor's CornerThere is a growing movement by students, parents, and professors protesting the high price of traditional paper textbooks and denouncing the weight and strain of carrying textbooks. According to a United States Government report, textbook prices have increased at over twice the rate of inflation in the last couple of decades. According to another report, the average student spends between $700 and $1,000 per year on textbooks while the cost of e-textbooks can be as much as 50% lower than paper textbooks.
 
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The Limits of the Passion of, and for, Tim Tebow

Butterworth_photo_1Shortly after the 2013 National Football League (NFL) Draft, the New York Jets released quarterback Tim Tebow from the team.
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Cultural Studies in the Past, Present, and Future Tense–Notes on An Interview with Lawrence Grossberg

Larry_Grossberg_headshotOne of the lessons I learned from my former colleague, James Carey, is that the history of “communication studies” always asks communication researchers to pose certain kinds of questions in the present, though that history seldom is acknowledged or is what the research ostensibly is about.
 
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A Prank and Its Possibilities

Hassert_image_5In the course of everyday life, in order to survive and prosper individuals must communicate with groups, interact with institutions, negotiate with corporations, and navigate their way through bureaucracies.
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Flash Memory: A History of Flash Mobs

Walker_photo_1In 2003, writer and cultural critic Bill Wasik stunned the world with his newest experiment, the MOB Project, which flooded the streets of New York City with strange performances quickly labeled “flash mobs” by participants and local media.
 
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Living up to the Promise of Brainstorming

Jordan_photo_1Why do the outcomes of collaborative brainstorming often fail to live up to its promise? What patterns of talk characterize successful communication in collaborative brainstorming sessions?
 
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Home Page | Sexual Tensions: Disagreements about Same-Sex Marriage in the LGBTQ Movement | An Underutilized Approach to Minimize Cheating | Instructor's Corner: Let’s #Hashtag That and Come Back to It | Instructor's Corner: Electronic Textbooks or Paper Textbooks: What Are Students Reading? Or Are They Reading at All? | The Limits of the Passion of, and for, Tim Tebow | Cultural Studies in the Past, Present, and Future Tense–Notes on An Interview with Lawrence Grossberg | A Prank and Its Possibilities | Flash Memory: A History of Flash Mobs | Living up to the Promise of Brainstorming 
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