Communication & Journalism

Youth suicide is a serious public health problem in the United States. School environments, and the attention of school adults, are promising but minimally studied avenues for promoting mental health among students. The 2013 New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey data were analyzed to identify ways in which the school environment influences suicide attempts in a sample of Hispanic students. Factors examined were: relationships with school adults, speaking a language other than English at home, being born outside the United States and not having enough to eat. Odds ratios were used to measure relationships. Factors influencing suicide attempt were similar for boys and girls. The odds of suicide attempt declined by approximately one third as measures of positive relationships with school adults increased. Post-high school education plans also were protective. Being born outside the United States and not having enough to eat increased the odds of past-year suicide attempt. Speakin...

This study examined the 2013 New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey (NM-YRRS) to determine whether cultural connectedness and positive relationships with adults protected against suicide attempts among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth and whether these relationships differed by gender. The sample included 2,794 AI/AN students in grades 9 to 12 who answered the question about past-year suicide attempts. Protective factor variables tested included relationships with adults at home, school, and the community. The language spoken at home was used as a proxy measure for cultural connectedness. Positive relationships with adults were negatively associated with the prevalence of past-year suicide attempts in bivariate analysis. However, language spoken at home was not associated with the prevalence of suicide attempts. Multivariate analysis showed that among girls, relationships with adults at home, at school, and in the community were independently associated with lowe...

Suicide is a leading cause of adolescent death and has increased in recent years. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that relationships with adults at home and in the community had on the probability of suicide attempts of Hispanic teenagers in New Mexico. Data from the 2019 New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey were analyzed to identify the ways in which relationships with adults influenced suicide attempts among Hispanic adolescent students. The examined factors included: relationships with adults in the home and in the community and with same-age friends, and participation in hobbies or organizations outside of school. The resiliency factors were similar for male and female Hispanic students. As positive relationships with adults at home or in the community increased, the probability of suicide attempts decreased by 37–54%. Positive relationships with same-age friends were also associated with reduced suicide attempts. Community organization involvement and...

Nearly nine in ten U.S. adults struggle to navigate and use increasingly complex healthcare organizations as well as the information they provide. However, healthcare organizations are not yet widely addressing the need to make their services and health information easier to navigate, understand, and use. There are many known health literacy approaches that could address this need but few are being utilized. The purpose of this study was to expand knowledge about the facilitators and barriers to adoption and implementation of health literacy initiatives in healthcare organizations. A rich body of literature on health literacy; organizational change; diffusion of innovations; and adoption, implementation, and dissemination of innovations in healthcare exists. However, there has been little research examining the elements necessary for adoption and implementation of health literacy initiatives in healthcare organizations. Sixteen qualitative interviews with individuals who lead health...

This essay argues that if “decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of (Native) land”(p. 7), then autoethnography committed to decolonization should first and foremost center Native struggles over land and life. For this task and given my own position as a postcolonial immigrant on Native lands, I elaborate an immigrant of color autoethnography to demystify the discourses that privilege select postcolonial immigrants such as myself over Indigenous people and render me as a desirable minority and settler. I start this project unpacking my journey as an international student through the higher education apparatus in the United States as I narrate how the material structures and academic knowledge that circulate within the university (re)produce the devaluation of indigeneity. Then I shift my attention to my time in Albuquerque, a border city that excludes Indigenous people through a host of policies even as international students are welcomed to mak...

This dissertation examines South Asian racialization in the United States after the 9/11 attacks. Using a comparative racialization framework, it proposes South Asian racialization as entangled with neo-orientalism, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism— which Andrea Smith (2006, 2012) has called the three pillars of white supremacy—and undergirded by heteropatriarchy. An examination of the Oak Creek shooting and the discourses surrounding it demonstrated that neo-orientalism rendered Sikh Americans as interchangeable with Muslims by constituting them as ‘Muslim-looking’ (Ahmad, 2004), even as it coerced the former to instantiate their difference from Muslims through an aggressive performance of heterosexual patriotism and by reducing who is a Sikh along ethnic and gendered lines. Anti-Blackness as a central logic of policing produced Sureshbhai Patel, an Indian immigrant visiting his son in Alabama, as a ‘skinny Black guy,’ which exposed him to police violence. However, the respo...

The present study attempts to contribute mainly to the development of conceptual tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of texts in order to better integrate “sociological and linguistic positions” (Weiss and Wodak, 2003, p. 9). Thus, I propose an innovative approach to the analysis of a specific American television show, Boston Public, in order to explore the representation of ethnicity in this particular type of media discourse. The method suggested is an interdisciplinary one where elements of discourse analysis, interpersonal communication and media studies are combined. It is argued that this framework provides the necessary tools to go beyond the mere quantitative examination of the number and types of roles played by minorities on television to include a necessary qualitative description of the types of relationships that are being established among members of different races. The results suggest, among other things, that this show does not present informal, close relationships between Blacks and Whites as a relevant element of American society.

The present article attempts to contribute to a multidisciplinary
approach to communication phenomena that emphasizes the interplay among cognition, discourse and society. I propose an examination of the role that these three elements play in argumentation and meta-discourse as a useful starting point for understanding, first, how arguments are formed and second, the role that meta-discursive devices play in this process. In the first two sections I conduct a brief review of literature on the concepts of argumentation and meta-discourse to show how a socio-cognitive approach can enlighten our understanding of both. This model is then applied in the analysis section to look at a plenary session at the European Parliament. I conduct a socio-cognitive
discourse analysis, based on which I identify different relevant paths followed by speakers when constructing arguments: (re)framings, (re)definitions, quotations and references to previous events. The findings demonstrate how the different levels of meta-discourse – intra-textual, inter-textual and
contextual – are equally relevant for argumentative communication. Through meta-discourse, speakers invoke knowledge about both the ongoing interaction and other past or future communicative events. These other discourses,
however, are not only constituted by the actual words uttered, but they
encompass the context and situation models (Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983)
that allow participants to make sense of them.

This paper offers a careful look at the relationships between discursive constructions of minorities and discriminatory policy making in order to better account for the ways hegemonic cultural standards are prevalent in Europe, not only in prejudiced discourse, but also in apparently neutral practices such as institutional law making. By examining the different discourses surrounding a particular controversy—Italy's so-called “Maroni census”—I illustrate how public rhetoric and policies regarding contemporary Europe's different ethnic groups reduce racism and discrimination to the blatant deployment of essentializing categories. As a consequence, European institutions are fostering a European identity that, by refusing to acknowledge the existence of dividing, discriminatory lines, is reinscribing the inequalities that come with society's reliance on those same lines