I feel so honored to have received one of Texas State University’s highest accolades: the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. These presidential awards are intended to recognize and reward superior accomplishments, to provide models of excellence for fellow faculty, and to encourage all faculty to continue to perform, improve and advance their teaching, scholarly/creative activity, and service.
I am excited to share some new workplace wellness research published in Management Communication Quarterly! This study provides insight into how employees make sense of multiple meanings surrounding free wellness time at work. In contrast to other research that focuses on workplace health initiatives that take place outside of work hours, which has found that employees define health differently from management, our study demonstrates how employees talk about wellness through both organizational and employee discourses. Read more here.
Check out my latest publication in the Journal of Health Communication! In this study, our research team, led by Yaguang Zhu, showed the effect that two communicative features–social sharing and social competing–of wearable fitness trackers have on physical exercise. Do you “social networkout?” Read more here.
I am thrilled to share that my work with Ashley Barrett is now published in Communication Monographs. The study examines how conceptions of identity and meaningful work are influenced by Norway’s changing economic and political environment. Through interviews with 27 Norwegian workers, we show how employees safeguarded their traditional, collective workplace values, yet were simultaneously confronted with modern – more masculinized – workplace performances ushered in with the oil era. We hope you enjoy the piece, which you can read here.
My thesis advisee, Vanessa Salazar, and I won the Top Interactive Display Award in the Organizational Communication Division at the International Communication Association Conference! It has been such a pleasure working with Vane, and I’m thrilled our poster was selected as the winner.
Tricia Burke, Yaguang Zhu, and I recently completed a study exploring how work colleagues influence each other’s health behaviors. Specifically, our research employed the social ecological perspective to examine co-worker communication about workplace wellness. We found an indirect effect of colleagues’ social influence on health behaviors through co-worker social support and organizational socialization. This shows that both health-related communication as well as the organizational environment itself are related to employees’ health behaviors. You can read our manuscript, titled “Let’s work out: Communication in workplace wellness programs,” here.
Today I had the pleasure of participating in Texas State’s first Health Scholar Showcase. Recently, I have joined an interdisciplinary team of Texas State faculty and clinicians who are all interested in the intersection of social media and mental health. As technology advances, people are increasingly using social media. Mental health issues are also on the rise, now affecting 1 in 5 US adults. Studies show a relationship between these two phenomena, and clinicians on our team have also reported this link. But, these observations are, of course, anecdotal, and much of the research conducted is correlational and meta-analytic. Our team is dedicated to understanding if there is a causal relationship between social media use and mental health, particularly subclinical ailments, like mild-to-moderate depression. If there is a relationship here, why? Does consuming content lead to mental health issues? Or, does creating content? We know that these are complex questions, and we have assembled a complex team to carry out this innovative research project. I’m so proud to be a part of it!
Excited to share that our publication, titled “Understanding healthcare providers’ professional identification: The role of interprofessional communication in the vocational socialization of physicians,” is published in the new Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice. This project originated from Brenda MacArthur’s masters thesis at Texas State, advised by Dr. Melinda Villagran. I was thrilled to join them on the project, which shows the crucial role of interprofessional communication—communication between physicians and other healthcare providers-in fostering professional identification among physicians.
I am excited to share a framework for studying social media that I have written along with Jeff Treem, Casey Pierce, and Diana Biffl. In this article titled, ““What We Are Talking About When We Talk About Social Media: A Framework for Study,” we review various definitions of social media and note that much of the confusion regarding social media comes from conflation between social media types, platforms, and activities. To facilitate investigations of social media, we debunk common social media myths and review the relationship between social media and several prominent sociological concerns. We conclude by reflecting on directions for future research on social media. I hope you enjoy the read!
I partnered with colleagues in departments of Kinesiology and Health Education and Communication Studies at the University of Texas to explore wearable fitness devices from a communication perspective. Although studies have investigated how the technical features of wearable fitness trackers promote physical activity, we understand less about how communication surrounding such devices may contribute to their success. Our findings, which you can read here, show how and with whom people communicate fitness tracker messages and explains the effects of sociomaterial practice on interactions between wearable fitness device users.
