Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations Revista

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Travelling Methods: Tracing the Globalization of Qualitative Communication Research Romanian Journal of Communication Researching emotional labour among Public Relations and Public Relations consultants in the UK: a social phenomenological approach

Older People and Mobile Communication in Two European Contexts Revista românã de Comunicare ºi Relaþii Publice

Volume 15, no. 3 (30) / December 2013 Vol. 15, no. 3 (30) / December 2013 / December (30) 3 no. 15, Vol.

Qualitative Research in Communication

Guest editors: Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDEVOL Corina DABA-BUZOIANU Loredana IVAN

Travelling Methods: Tracing the Globalization of Qualitative Communication Research

Researching emotional labour among Public Relations consultants in the UK: a social phenomenological approach N.U.P.S.P.A. College of Communication Older People and Mobile Communication in Two ISSN 1454-8100 and Public Relations European Contexts Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations Public and Communication of Journal Romanian Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 1

ROMANIAN JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Volume 15, no. 3 (30) / December 2013

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Scientific Committee • Delia BALABAN (Babeº-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) • Alina BÂRGÃOANU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Camelia BECIU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Lee B. BECKER (University of Georgia, US) • Felix BEHLING (University of Essex, UK) • Hanoch BEN-YAMI (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) • Diana CISMARU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Nicoleta CORBU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Alina HALILIUC (Denison University, US) • Kathy HAUGHT (Rider University, US) • Dragoº ILIESCU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania; TestCentral) • Loredana IVAN (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Adrian LESENCIUC (Air Force Academy “Henri Coanda”, Brasov, Romania) • Mira MOSHE (Ariel University Center of Samaria, Israel) • Sorin NASTASIA (Southern Illinois University, US) • Nicolas PELISSIER (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) • Dana POPESCU-JOURDY (University of Lyon 2, France) • Remus PRICOPIE (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Dan STÃNESCU (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania) • Panayiota TSATSOU (Swansea University, UK) • Anca VELICU (Institute of Sociology, Romanian Academy) • Tudor VLAD (University of Georgia, US) • David WEBERMAN (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) • Alexandra ZBUCHEA (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania)

Editorial Board Paul Dobrescu (editor in chief) Elena Negrea-Busuioc (editor) Cristian Lupeanu (layout)

Editor College of Communication and Public Relations – NUPSPA 6 Povernei St., Sector 1, Bucharest Tel.: 201 318 0889; Fax: 021 318 0882 [email protected]; www.journalofcommunication.ro

The Journal is published three times a year. The journal has been indexed by ProQuest CSA, EBSCO Publishing, CEEOL, DOAJ, Cabell’s Directory, Index Copernicus and Genamics Journal Seek. This journal is recognized by CNCSIS and included in the B+ category (www.cncsis.ro).

The titles of the articles have been translated into Romanian by the publisher.

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Contents

Qualitative Research in Communication Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDÈVOL, Corina DABA-BUZOIANU, Loredana IVAN Qualitative Research in Communication. Introductory remarks /9 Bryan C. TAYLOR, Thomas R. LINDLOF Travelling Methods: Tracing the Globalization of Qualitative Communication Research /11 Liz YEOMANS Researching emotional labour among Public Relations consultants in the UK: a social phenomenological approach /31 Valeriu FRUNZARU Workplace health and safety committees in Romania. The gap between law and reality /53 Diana-Luiza DUMITRIU Who is responsible for the team’s results? Media framing of sports actors’ responsibility in major sports competitions /65 Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDÈVOL, Loredana IVAN Older People and Mobile Communication in Two European Contexts /83

Book review Ioana SCHIAU Review of The Interpersonal Communication Book, 13th edition, Joseph A. Devito. New York: Pearson, 2012, 432 pages / 101

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Sumar

Cercetãri calitative în comunicare Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDÈVOL, Corina DABA-BUZOIANU and Loredana IVAN Cercetãri calitative în comunicare. Introducere /9 Bryan C. TAYLOR, Thomas R. LINDLOF Metode în miºcare. Globalizarea cercetãrii calitative a comunicãrii /11 Liz YEOMANS Studiul muncii emoþionale la consultanþii de relaþii publice din Marea Britanie: o abordare socio-fenomenologicã /31 Valeriu FRUNZARU Comitetele pentru sãnãtatea ºi securitatea în muncã din România – între legislaþie ºi realitate /53 Diana-Luiza DUMITRIU Cine este responsabil de rezultatele echipei? Mecanismele media de atribuire a responsabilitãþii pentru rezultatele din competiþiile sportive majore /65 Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDÈVOL, Loredana IVAN Vârstnicii ºi dispozitivele mobile de comunicare. Douã contexte europene /83

Recenzie Ioana SCHIAU Recenzia cãrþii The Interpersonal Communication Book, ediþia 13-a, Joseph A. Devito. New York: Pearson, 2012, 432 pagini / 101

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Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol* Corina Daba-Buzoianu** Loredana Ivan***

Qualitative Research in Communication. Introductory Remarks

Questions regarding communication practices in everyday interactions and how people at- tribute meanings to the communication acts are issues frequently addressed by social-science researchers and practitioners. Qualitative research may reveal possible answers, as it tends to be concerned with meanings (Willig, 2013). That is, with how people make sense of the world and how people experience events:

Qualitative researchers tend to be concerned with the quality and texture of the experience, rather than with the identification of cause-effect relationships. […] The objective of qualitative research is to describe and possibly explain events and experiences, but never to predict. (ibid, p. 51-52)

This approach can also contribute to addressing social problems from a perspective that might complement other methodological approaches. Not only the academia is interested in qualitative approaches to social problems, but also policy makers and practitioners demand and appreciate them for decision making. It is of most importance, in any case, to guarantee the quality of the research. Particularly, we can identify three specific dimensions that are becoming an increasingly important issue: the quality of methods, the quality of data, and the quality of data analysis (Silverman, 2004). There are different ways of understanding how, and what, can we know. That is, there are different epistemological approaches that lead to differentiated research objectives, and to the use of different methods and methodologies. In consequence, and as s argued by Denzin & Lincoln (2005), the field of qualitative research is defined primarily by a series of essential tensions and contradictions. These are reflected in the different ways handbooks of qualitative research are designed and organized. Qualitative inquiry is a multidisciplinary field due to differentiated epistemological approaches. Existing tensions, contradictions and hesitations make worthy to establish appropriate contexts for dialogue and cross fertilization. Under our point of view, the International Conference “Qualitative Research in Communication” (QRC) provided such a context. This issue gathers a selection of papers presented at the International Conference “Qual- itative Research in Communication” celebrated in October 3-4, 2013 at the National Univer- sity of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. The QRC conference was

* Open University of Catalonia, Interdisciplinary Internet Institute (IN3), Bacelona, Spain, [email protected] ** National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected] *** National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected] Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 10

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designed to explore qualitative research as a method of inquiry which enriches the understanding of communication and of social phenomena. It also aimed to provide a venue for discussing and assessing theories and methods currently used in qualitative research in communication, as well as future trends likely to impact the work being done in this field. The conference focused on sharing and examining qualitative research methodologies, research topics, questions and applications, with a consistent emphasis on their merits and limitations as inquiry tools deployed in the study of communication. The conference was not limited to methodological aspects, and welcomed studies that focus on the results qualitative research in communication. This was the first of a biannual series of conferences co-organized by the National Uni- versity of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania (via the Center for Research in Communication), and by the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw, Poland (via the Academic Counseling Studies Society) and gathered 43 peer-reviewed, high level contributions. The reader will find a set of different perspectives in this issue. First, Bryan C. Taylor and Thomas R. Lindlof explore the globalization of qualitative communication research methods by analyzing them as artefacts of globalization. Second, Liz Yeomans develops a phenomenological approach to research emotional labour in a given context, public relations consultants in the UK. Third and still in the labour environment, Valeriu Frunzaru approaches to tensions and contradictions regarding workplace health and safety committees in Romania by means of in-depth interviews. Fourth, Diana-Luiza Dumitriu conducted textual and visual discourse analyses to bring new empirical evidences on how mass media frame sport actors’ responsibility by focusing on the Romanian women handball team. Finally, Mireia Fernán- dez-Ardèvol and Loredana Ivan focused on interpersonal communication and, by means of semi-structured interviews, analyzed the relationship older people have with and through mobile communication in two different European contexts.

References

1. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. 2. Silverman, D. (2004). Who cares about „experience”? Missing issues in qualitative research. In D. Sil- verman (Ed.), Qualitative research: theory, method and practice (2nd ed., pp. 342-367). Sage Publications. 3. Willig, C. (2013). Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill International. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 11

Bryan C. Taylor* Thomas R. Lindlof**

Travelling Methods: Tracing the Globalization of Qualitative Communication Research

Abstract

Existing discussion of the relationships between globalization, communication research, and qualitative methods emphasizes two images: the challenges posed by globalization to existing communication theory and research methods, and the impact of post-colonial politics and ethics on qualitative research. We draw in this paper on a third image – qualitative research methods as artifacts of globalization – to explore the globalization of qualitative communication research methods. Following a review of literature which tentatively models this process, we discuss two case studies of qualitative research in the disciplinary subfields of intercultural communication and media audience studies. These cases elaborate the forces which influence the articulation of national, disciplinary, and methodological identities which mediate the globalization of qualitative communication research methods. Keywords: Globalization; Qualitative research methods; Communication discipline.

Qualitative researchers currently work in an era of self-conscious ‘globalization.’ Like all humans, they are affected by recent transformations (e.g., the ‘compression’ and ‘flattening’) of space-time relationships in international politics, economics, and society attributable to technological innovation and neo-liberal hegemony. Uniquely, however, these phenomena encourage qualitative researchers to understand and perform their work differently. Our purpose in this essay is to better understand how these differences affect qualitative communication researchers. We begin by identifying three discourses which configure the relationships between qualitative research and globalization.

1. Globalization as a topic of qualitative research

Conventionally, qualitative researchers orient to globalization as a confluence of changing conditions which affect their chosen objects of study, and which provoke the revision of existing theory and methodology (Brown & Labonte, 2011; Featherstone, 2006; Gille & O’Ri- ain, 2002; Quilgars, et al., 2009; Ramabrahmam &Hariharan, 2005; Sreberny, 2008). These conditions include the increasingly fluid movement of material and symbolic phenomena (e.g., bodies and information) within and across national borders, the erosion of the regula- tory state by multi-national corporations and international regimes of aid and development,

* University of Colorado-Boulder, USA, [email protected]. ** University of Kentucky, USA, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 12

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the use of new media by cultural members to expand their social networks, the acceleration of transactions created by the increased access of cultural members to shared information sources, and an increasingly-standardized global landscape of (predominantly Western, but increasingly hybrid) cultural meanings and artifacts created by converging media corporations. In this discourse, globalization is depicted as a complex and urgent phenomenon, one whose material, symbolic, and cognitive components are to be explained. Three issues have been especially salient for qualitative researchers. The first involves the types, amounts, and effectiveness of influence exerted by interdependent actors engaged in international exchange (e.g., categorized as causality, co-constitution, and/or indeterminate ‘flow’). A second issue involves the tendencies towards integration / homogeneity and differentiation / heterogeneity that are experienced by groups subject to the forces of contemporary globalization. A third issue involves the rise of international social movements challenging neo-liberal hegemony. Here, successfully-adapted qualitative research is depicted as uniquely capable of captur- ing the granular integrity of subtle, complex, and local activities conducted in relation to contemporary globalization. Cultural subjects are viewed as mobilizing their available resources to interpret their increasingly jagged and fluid forms of experience. Those resources enable them to conceptualize and interact with changing conditions (Burawoy, 2001), and to forge specific forms of connection and disconnection which serve their situations. As a result, qualitative methods are held to generate inductive knowledge which usefully complicates the macro-level abstractions and universalism of dominant globalization discourses.

2. Globalization as a transformation of the ethical and political contexts of qualitative research

This second discourse addresses the consequences for qualitative research generated by what de Sousa Santos (2006, p. 397) has termed “insurgent cosmopolitanism. “ de Sousa San- tos defines this condition as resistance practiced by “social organizations and movements representing those classes and social groups victimized by hegemonic globalization and united in concrete struggles against exclusion, subordinate inclusion, destruction of livelihoods, and ecological destruction, political oppressions, or cultural suppression . . . “ These consequences are also tied to the post-colonial atonement of cultural anthropology (with its attendant “crisis in representation”) famously performed in landmark volumes authored by Clifford and Marcus (1986) and Marcus and Fischer (1986). This discourse emphasizes the historical complicity of qualitative researchers in facilitating the global hegemony of Western culture and modern institutions (e.g., urbanization and industrialization). Specif- ically, their work presumptuously objectified the manifold cultural Other as primitive and ex- otic, depriving it of its rightful agency and voice (Sullivan & Brockington, 2004). As a result, qualitative research has been hoisted on the petard of its espoused values of empathy (verstehen) and diversity. Practitioners and participants alike have recounted the irony of how, in practice, those ideals contribute to ethnocentric knowledge which inhibits their very fulfill- ment. One example here involves the dependence of the ethnographic interview on distinctly Western, liberal-democratic assumptions concerning the inherently ‘private’ individuality of speakers, their related existence in separate ‘publics’, and their subsequent possession of relevant ‘opinions’ and ‘attitudes’ (Gobo, 2011, pp. 423-427). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 13

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This discourse expresses the mixture of anger, sadness, resolve – and also cautious opti- mism – felt among indigenous peoples and their scholarly advocates, as the former seek to move beyond their historical experience of degradation and exploitation under imperialism, and to develop distinctively de-colonizing structures of critical qualitative research. Jointly enacted with sympathetic researchers, those structures may realize a constellation of alternative values, including: spirituality, embodiment, openness, equality, accountability, respect, collaboration, and empowerment. Two prominent exemplars here include Smith’s (2005) and Bishop’s (2005) manifestos for qualitative research of/with the Maori people of Arotearoa / New Zealand, based on master principles such as tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) and whakawhanaungatanga (extended family-like relationships, based on consistent displays of cultural appropriateness and shared commitment to mutual well-being). Depicted in this discourse, researchers use qualitative methods to engage distinctively local inflections of counter-hegemonic and post-colonial discourses. These inflections manifest as, for example, participants’ vernacular conceptions of cultural performances and research ethics which they have deemed sufficient to honor – and perhaps recover – what has been com- promised and displaced by the twin juggernauts of modernism and (neo-) imperialism (Lin- coln & Denzin, 2005, pp. 1118-1121). Here, qualitative researchers must develop improvisational skills required to negotiate emergent challenges posed by cultural members even to their ethically- and politically-sensitized positions [e.g., in fieldwork conducted among groups who have been historically victimized by a researcher’s home culture (Uddin, 2011)].

Qualitative research methods as artifacts of globalization Our third discourse is also concerned with global change and post-colonial politics. Dis- tinctively, however, it depicts qualitative research methods as a commodity circulating in a global geography of knowledge flows (Alasuutari, 2004). This condensed image requires some unpacking. First, it establishes that qualitative methods possess material status as artifacts fashioned and exchanged in particular international economies. Commentary here establishes the local heritage of qualitative methods as ‘inventions’ produced during the 19th and 20th centuries by British, Western European, and North American scholars. Although these methods were orig- inally intended to solve particular problems faced by those scholars, they have nonetheless been “exported” to other nations and cultures, where their use has constrained the potential for cultivating plural and mutually-implicating systems of cultural knowledge (Gobo, 2011). Second, this image politicizes the forces of supply and demand which structure this international knowledge economy. Here, commentary underscores the hierarchies of legitimacy and authority which have privileged the import of Western-based theory and methods to develop scholarly institutions in the nations of the global East and South. These structures have produced several undesirable outcomes, which disadvantage non- Western scholars seeking to access and influence the mainstream institutions of contemporary social science (Liu, 2011; Ryen & Gobo, 2011; “World Social Science Report – Summary,” 2010). Six outcomes are especially relevant. The first involves the normalization of Western epistemologies which universalize culturally-specific qualities of human subjectivity and agency (e.g., of rationality, individualism, separation, competitiveness, and strategic calcula- tion). A second outcome involves the centralization of advanced academic training among institutions of higher education located in North America and Western Europe. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 14

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A third outcome involves several developments associated with the academic publishing industry. One of these is the centralization of academic publishing by and for scholars inhab- iting those regional markets. This concentration of activity includes the publication of textbooks and citation indices, two genres which may further institutionalize ethnocentric knowledge of theory and methods. One consequence of this centralization is that academic publishing dominated by Anglophonic writers and speakers, a condition which affects the ability of academic journal editors to recruit “international” reviewer boards, and to mentor non-Western authors (Chenail, et al., 2007). Another consequence affects indigenous scholars who are either independent, or who are not affiliated with educational institutions that are able to pay the rapidly-growing costs of journal subscription and monograph-acquisition, which are set by multinational publishing firms. These scholars are often shut out of this professional archive. Looking beyond the publishing industry, a fourth outcome of Anglo-American domination of international social science involves the privileging by research funding and publication gatekeepers of the unique experience of Western cultures, even when that experience reflects incomplete knowledge. A related presumption is that global audiences should already be familiar with those experiences (i.e., it is the experience of other cultures which requires contextualization). Fifth, the hierarchy of core-periphery relations among Western and non- Western researchers has discouraged members of the latter group from recognizing their shared interests. Ideally, these scholars would organize to develop greater capacity for alternative scholarship through forums such as professional associations, journals, and regular conferences and symposia (Hsiung, 2012). A final – and perhaps most pernicious – outcome here involves the hegemonic assumption that American and European societies represent pin- nacles of human development (if not also virtue), to which other global cultures should as- pire –a presumption which inflects their local development of self-knowledge and theory. These six outcomes interact with other, even-larger circumstances influencing the global production of qualitative research (World Social Science Report, 2010). For our purposes, seven of these circumstances are especially relevant. First (and most obviously), global regions and states display uneven types and degrees of political, economic and cultural development. This unevenness creates divergence in national conceptualizations of general scholarly missions – for example, whether research should reflect the ideologies of nationalization or privatization, or how it should shape state policies. Specific national priorities for research topics and methods are affected as a result. Similar unevenness is displayed in the development of national infrastructures for research funding (with the lion’s share commonly flow- ing to the natural sciences and engineering disciplines), and thus in the capacity for different disciplines to effectively pursue their research priorities. Additionally, international NGO’s are increasingly engaged in the funding of short-term and applied research projects, which may inhibit local scholars from conducting longitudinal and basic research. Fourth, non-West- ern nations face continued challenges in repatriating their cultural members who have received advanced scholarly training in the West – although we may note the competing benefits of diversity created for Western institutions by their increasing employment of these non- Western scholars (Lincoln & Denzin, 2005, pp. 1121-1122). Fifth, international research collaborations continue to display undesirable patterns of core-periphery relations, and asymmetrical exchange between their participants. For example, Western and/or urban scholars commonly assume the privilege of designing research projects and analyzing data, while allocating data collection tasks to non-Western and/or ru- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 15

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ral researchers. Sixth, international scholars enjoy uneven access to communication technologies which facilitate these kinds of collaboration, and also subsequent opportunities for research publication. Finally, global institutions of higher education vary in their conceptions of academic- disciplinary identities (discussed further below), and in their composition of related units. This variation is further complicated by persistent efforts to promote “interdisciplinary” education and research, resulting in mergers or other kinds of restructuring of social science disciplines. From these premises, this third discourse chains out a number of implications concerning qualitative research methods and globalization. One is that this history of methodological “movement” (Koro-Ljunberg, 2012) might have been (and thus may yet be) otherwise, had different power relations structured the allocation of opportunities and burdens to participat- ing actors. Another implication is that qualitative research methods may be relativized as merely one discourse introduced into existing cultural systems that are always-already characterized by multiple forms (e.g., animistic geography) and practices (e.g., ritual prayer) through which cultural members have historically generated, tested, and shared knowledge of their realities. This insight invites a heightened level of reflexivity among qualitative researchers: that they might bracket and investigate the status of their own methodology within complex “ecologies” of knowledge operating among the cultural groups they study. In this view, qualitative researchers should examine how their “methods” are actually produced and consumed through specific interaction that occurs among various actors, practices, and resources, with all such phenomena considered to possess equal legitimacy. This position rejects uncritical embrace of either pro-Western or post-colonial positions regarding the supremacy of political interests surrounding qualitative research encounters (Ryen, 2011). Instead, the relevant question is not whether Western-based qualitative methods, in either their traditional or “alternative” forms, “work” in various non-Western contexts. As practices that generate material effects for their participants, this capability is taken granted. Rather, an arguably more important question is: What do / should we desire that “work” to be? This question begs yet another: How is that work subsequently accomplished by the participants in research encounters? It is also assumed in this view that knowledge claims are contingent: it is thus more valuable to document the distinctive character of “glo- calized” encounters which produce particular “hybrid” and “creolized” configurations of knowledge, and to assess their implications for the needs of qualitative research stakeholders (Gwyther & Possamai-Inesedy, 2009).

3. Interval: Our Agenda

Our discussion to this point has reviewed contingencies affecting the globalization of qualitative research methods. There are at least two benefits of completing this inventory. The first is that such knowledge inhibits further reproduction of uneven power relations in the conduct of qualitative research (e.g., the enforced subaltern mimicry of dominant discourses), and fosters the development of alternative relations capable of generating diverse, sophisticated, and reflexive knowledge about human society and culture. The second benefit is that this knowledge permits the stakeholders of social science disciplines to better understand the historical practices and current status of those disciplines. As a result, these stakeholders Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 16

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may be better able to steer the evolving future of global social science as a massive, influen- tial enterprise. Successful stewardship, it would seem, requires increased self-awareness. In this essay, we are primarily concerned with cultivating this third discourse to better understand the globalization of qualitative communication research methods. Our motives in pursuing this goal are complex, and thus warrant disclosure. We are U.S. (and also white, male) communication scholars (albeit with divergent training and sub-disciplinary affiliations) who are also the co-authors of a qualitative research methods textbook franchise (Lindlof and Taylor, 2010). Founded by the current second author, this franchise is now nearly twen- ty years old, and has generated three editions which have enjoyed commercial success in our home-nation market – and which have now attracted minor interest among British and West- ern European readers. We have only fragmentary information about the volumes’ reception beyond these regions. In producing these volumes, we have aspired to comprehensively represent the relationship between the communication discipline and qualitative research methods. Thus far, we have enacted that responsibility by surveying a variety of topics. These include the historical emergence of qualitative research within the discipline, the range of epistemologies and theories which animate disciplinary research, and the multiple, disciplinary subfields which var- iously engage the traditions of qualitative research. Along the way, we have attempted to address issues of post-colonial ethics and politics – particularly in considering the implications of the crisis of representation for the writing and publication of qualitative communication research. Increasingly, however, we have recognized both the opportunity and the responsibility to better represent the international diversity of qualitative methods, as they are actually practiced by communication researchers. As a result, we have undertaken the reflection required to revise material in this volume that is unnecessarily mono-cultural. In this process, however, we have struggled to develop sufficient resources. There is no shortage, for example, of discussions setting the agenda for critical-cultural studies of communication in the current era of globalization (Hegde, 1998; Shome & Hegde, 2002). Many of these discussions indict the parochial qualities of existing communication theory and research conducted by U.S. scholars (Gunaratne, 2009; Shome, 2006). And an increasing number of these works assert alternate strategies for representing the integrity of local, indigenous communication (see Chen, 2009). These discussions revise traditional conceptualizations of phenomena such as space, identity, bodies, gender, nationhood, technology, militarism, and discourse. Their discussion of concrete methodological issues, however, is generally scant, indirect, or nonexistent. Meanwhile, current discussions of these issues, as exemplified by the works cited throughout this paper, have been largely authored by scholars outside of the communication field, and/or address the distinctive situations of other disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology, education, and psychology). Thus, we seek in this essay to develop a richer account of the globalization of qualitative communication research methods. Generally, we define these methods as the specific forms and practices uniquely suited to the inductive and reflective generation of culturally-grounded knowledge about the myriad performances of human symbolic expression. As a result, we proceed in two stages. First, we summarize the global status of the communication discipline, in light of arguments developed above. Second, we provide two brief case studies which enable closer analysis of the contingencies which interact to shape the global flow of qualitative communication research methods. Our goal throughout is to expli- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:55 PM Page 17

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cate the conditions which shape the potential relationship between global communication scholars and qualitative research methods.

4. The Global Communication Discipline: A Sketch

Is communication a global discipline? And if so, in what ways? For a variety of reasons, the answers to these questions are uncertain (Craig, 2008; World Social Science Report, 2010). One reason is that communication is a relatively young academic enterprise (i.e., approximately a century old) that has enjoyed less time than other disciplines to develop coherence – measured, at least, by traditional indicators such as paradigmatic consensus, unified pursuit of specific topics, and the degree of cross-citation displayed by the field’s leading journals. During this period, communication has grown rapidly and unevenly, both within and across nations and regions. While that growth has undoubtedly been influenced by American and European scholarship, this influence has not been unidirectional, or determinate: across the world, the character of “communication” research and education vary widely (see Adoni & First, 2008; Martin-Barbero, 2008; de Beer, 2008; Eadie, 2008; Mowlana, 2008; and Thomas, 2008). This condition poses significant challenge for projects such as this one. As Kim, Chen & Miyahara (2008, n.p.) note, “Any attempt to generalize about [disciplinary] conditions and patterns in [a given region] immediately comes up against vast differences and anomalies that arise from [its] diverse cultures, languages, religions, and traditions.” This condition is due in part to the distinctively interdisciplinary heritage of communication scholarship. Historically, multiple research traditions in the fine arts, humanities and the social sciences (e.g., film history, performance studies, media effects, etc.) have either affiliated with the study of communication, or have been incorporated by the communication discipline (e.g., as subfields). This mass of diversity organized under the banner of communication has contributed to the discipline’s global visibility, but has also tested its capacity for managing fragmentation and entropy. Equally important, the configurations of these components at institutions of higher education have often been influenced as much by local needs and preferences, as by conformity to a single, consistent disciplinary identity. Historically, the advocates of an independent communication discipline have asserted the converging topics of various research traditions (e.g., linguistics, psychology, anthropology, etc.) as sufficient basis for self-organization. This claim, however, is not honored by all scholarly cultures, some of whom prefer to view communication as a less-stable ‘field,’ inciden- tally composed of overlapping interdisciplinary agendas. As a result, competing interests may succeed in determining the identity of any particular communication unit. And, to complicate matters further, political and economic interests in emerging nations have historically linked the imperatives of societal development to the creation of mass (and now ‘new’) media infrastructures. State, corporate, and religious authorities have subsequently invoked this linkage to control the development of these infrastructures, the agenda of national media scholars, and the institutional production of communication professionals to serve local industries of journalism, telecommunications, broadcast media, public relations, marketing, and advertising. As a result, communication programs around the world vary widely in their political relations with state institutions, and with the sub-state actors vying to influence and replace them. One example here involves whether and how communication programs integrate the missions of intellectual development and professional training, and the Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 18

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extent to which that integration is experienced by their stakeholders as complementary or competitive. To this point, we have traced the myriad conditions which shape the international flow of qualitative communication research methods, including the evolving status of communication as a global discipline. We may conclude this inventory by noting six additional factors which may affect this relationship, including: – The role of professional associations in cultivating international networks of communication researchers, and methodological traditions; – The institutionalization of methodological forms and practices among communication researchers affiliated with particular subfields or areas of study, based on shared problems and shared habits of solving them; – The role of international and interdisciplinary journals in serving as proxy forums for the development by communication-affiliated readers of methodological agendas; – Intergenerational networks of advisors and advisees, and synergy among long-time local colleagues, which may combine to shape the methodological identity of a particular communication program (or a regional cluster of programs); – International variation among communication scholars in access to external funding sources, and in constraints imposed by those sources on their categorization and use of ‘legitimate’ theories, topics and methods; and finally, – Variation in institutional requirements for the research performance of communication faculty, which may influence the topics, theories and methods they select by for use in their own – and in their students’ – research. How might this inventory be revised to produce a more concise narrative of the global flows of qualitative communication research methods? As we have noted, existing literature in the discipline is largely silent on this question. Some scattered clues however, indicate how various factors may converge in particular moments and places, for particular groups of communication scholars, to open and foreclose articulations of their national, disciplinary, and methodological identities. In the field of media studies, for example, Ndela (2009) has discussed the successive impacts of colonialism, development, pro-democracy movements, and the HIV/AIDS crisis on the development of sub-Saharan African audience research. Here also, Murphy and Kraidy (2003) have discussed the role of globalization in stimulating new associations between the methods of audience ethnography and the subfield of international communication. In the field of discourse analysis, Chinese scholar Shi-xu (2012), has criti- cized the “repressive” circulation of “irreverent, over-simplistic” (p. 490) Western theories and methods, and has argued for an alternative project of “Cultural Discourse Studies” that is both more “locally grounded . . . and globally minded” (p. 485). In this next section, we extend these contributions by discussing two separate cases. For each case, our guiding questions include the following: How do these artifacts display the identification of associated researchers with the following three entities? – The professional, academic discipline of Communication – The traditions and practices of qualitative research methods – Local, regional, national, and international cultures Answers to these three questions scale up to address one that is overarching: How do these cases display articulations within and between these categories of identification which improve our understanding of the global flows of qualitative communication research methods? Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 19

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5. Case Study I: Intercultural Communication in Western Europe

Our first case study is taken from the on-line, open-access publication Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung (Forum: Qualitative Social Research; hereafter, FQS). This peer-reviewed, multilingual journal was established by a group of German social scientists in 1999, and focuses on “empirical studies conducted using qualitative methods, and in contributions that deal with the theory, methodology and application of qualitative research” (http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope). The corpus for this case involves a 2009 “thematic issue” of FQS devoted to the topic of “qualitative research and intercultural communication” (http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/ fqs/issue/view/30). This particular thematic issue yielded 26 articles authored or co- authored by 34 distinct scholars. The reported national residence of these authors spanned 7 countries in Great Britain and Western Europe1, with the majority (56%) living and working in Germany. Their reported academic affiliations included 13 fields and disciplines2, with the highest percentage of authors (38%) affiliating with Education. In their introduction to this thematic issue (Otten, et al., 2009), the guest editors note that these submissions provide the opportunity to deepen readers’ understanding of several topics, including: comparison and contrast of interdisciplinary conceptualizations of culture, and of their applications in qualitative research; the mutual accommodation of tradition, topic, and methodology required in qualitative studies of intercultural communication; and the potential for increased clarity and coherence generated by mapping the intercultural communication field against qualitative research traditions. Space does not permit full discussion of the content of these articles, which includes discussion of founding figures (e.g., Edward T. Hall); interdisciplinary influences (e.g., cultural anthropology); theoretical traditions (e.g., phenomenology); methodological approaches (e.g., autoethnography); practical issues (e.g., the selection of language used in multilingual interview contexts), and specific research findings pertinent to the study of intercultural communication. Instead, we focus here on the ability of this corpus to illuminate the articulation of qualitative research methods with localized manifestations of the communication discipline. As a result, we treat three distinct themes. Our first theme involves the triadic – and mutually constitutive – relationship depicted in these articles between the phenomena of intercultural communication, qualitative research, and globalization. This theme captures the ways in which phenomena nominally attributed to any one of these categories frequently exceed its apparent boundaries to implicate and co- constitute phenomena associated with another category. As a result, we are able to see how a particular field of communication inquiry distinctively activates the global potential of qualitative research methods. This theme is apparent in several arguments made in the issue’s articles. At a basic level, for example, intercultural communication has historically been concerned with the constitution of identity and difference within and around the geo-political “container” of the nation- state. As a result, it is uniquely sensitive to the dislocating and de-territorializing impacts of contemporary globalization. Additionally, as demonstrated by the profile of issue contributors, the international scope of this topic facilitates the development of a global infrastructure of related research and education. The distinctively European composition of these authors will be discussed further below; suffice for now to note that it is international (although not exhaustively so). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 20

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A third argument demonstrating this theme of co-constitution involves the significance of cultural reflexivity for each of the three topics. Simply stated, the discourses of qualitative research, globalization, and intercultural communication each emphasize (although in different ways) the importance of relativizing the cultural particularity of knowing and acting subjects in order to produce accurate knowledge and successful relationships. Qualitative research and intercultural communication, for example, have long shared the icon of the ‘stranger’ confronted with the existential and logistical challenges of displacement, learning, and adaptation that arise from contact with the ‘foreign’ Other. Indeed, qualitative research methods may constitute an especially rigorous, academic-professional protocol for the performance of what is otherwise. . . intercultural communication. As a result, several authors in this special issue note that qualitative researchers of intercultural communication are themselves culturally-situated and -implicated knowers. In order to uphold the ethical and political commit- ments of contemporary cultural theory (e.g., towards “coexistence and social justice in a multicultural world”; Aneas & Sandin, 2009, n.p.), these researchers must continuously mon- itor the influence of their primary acculturation (e.g., as nationalism, ethnocentrism, or racism) on their evolving understandings of – and relationships with – research participants (Aneas & Sanden, 2009; Otten & Gepper, 2009; Trahar, 2009). This imperative of reflexivity articulates with an ontology emphasizing the phenomenal qualities of mediation, partiality, fluidity, multiplicity, simultaneity, interdependence, and emergence. These conditions only intensify as qualitative intercultural communication researchers engage “the social fact of rapidly changing patterns of global mobility and the emergence of [highly ephemeral] transnational / transcultural spaces” (Otten & Geppert, 2009, n.p.; see also Schroer, 2009). Such developments problematize key conventions of intercultural communication research, such as the comparison of apparently distinct national cultures, the classification of researchers’ positionality in relation to their chosen sites (e.g., as “insider” or “outsider”; Sheridan & Storch, 2009), and the preference for studying speech over media cultures (Hepp, 2009). For Hoffman (2009, n.p.), these developments have effectively collapsed conventional boundaries between the topic and context of intercultural communication research, with unfortunate consequences for methodological integrity. “Global trends in structural change involving higher education, international migration, academic mobility patterns, interdisciplinary trends and demographic changes in the populations of many countries,” Hoffman argues, have all converged to undermine the strength of “national, institutional, disciplinary or even departmental traditions regarding research design, comparative methodology, and instruction in the use of research methods.” Our second theme in this case study involves the implications for tracing the global circulation of qualitative communication research methods posed by the interdisciplinary profile of these contributors. That is, if this special issue depicts the relevant identities of British and European researchers claiming some ownership of the study of intercultural communication, it is clear that there is no exclusive correspondence between this research program and the discipline of communication. Instead, we see that the complex dimensions of this topic (e.g., psychological, social, political, etc.) and its tendency for related phenomena to manifest in particular institutional spheres (e.g., of business, education, politics, etc.) have historically invited scholars from implicated fields and disciplines to invest in its research. Conflating these two categories with a third category of “perspectives,” Otten and Geppert’s list of the provenances of intercultural communication research (2009, n.p.) includes psychological and cognitive anthropology; symbolic and interpretive anthropology; sociolinguistics and ethnog- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 21

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raphy of communication; post-colonial theory and critical-cultural studies; and social practice theory. As a result, note Otten and Geppert (2009, n.p.), intercultural communication “can be considered as a specific sub-area of the cultural and social sciences” writ large. Sheridan and Storch (2009, n.p.) note similarly that, in studies of transnational phenomena, “there is an interdisciplinary dynamic in which theories from social science still set the larger framework [for studying] processes of cross-cultural adaptation and intercultural communication” [emphasis added]. Clearly, the communication discipline is not depicted here as a primary or dominant “home” for this topic. Our third and final theme concerns the ways in which this corpus displays the overlapping cultural conditions of British and Western European academics, whose work subsequently depicts some shared traditions and concerns. We hesitate to proceed here, because this framing may suggest that our discussion is regressing to reduce and essentialize these authors, as if the significance and implications of their work is determined by our attribution of a particular (inter-)national profile. Instead, we seek to use the concept of geopolitical affil- iation to explore the potential significance of this artifact for our guiding questions. We are clear that any such proposed explanation must remain sensitive to the variety of – and interaction between – identity formations which may influence configurations of methodological and disciplinary discourse. That said, these articles display concerns and influences which may be characterized as distinctively Western European – and particularly, German. A seemingly trivial example here involves patterns of sources cited in these articles. U.S. and Anglophonic readers may be struck by their extensive citation of German-only publications (both journals and volumes; see Bua, 2009), as well as their relatively infrequent citation of journals published by leading North American professional groups such as the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, the Broadcast Education Association, or the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communi- cation. A more significant phenomenon suggested by these patterns is the role of particular figures and sources who may serve as locally-preferred portals to the international universe of academic knowledge on a given subject. Take for example the following excerpt from Kruse’s (2009, n.p.) discussion of the ethnomethodological concept of indexicality:

Garfinkel’s work refers extensively to the work of Karl Mannheim, which was unable to find any reception in Germany for a long time. It was only through the work of Ralf Bohnsack, which refers in its discussion of the documentary method to the work of both Garfinkel and Mannheim, that Mannheim was able to be recovered.3

For our purposes, the significance of this passage lies in its development of a particular relationship between its author, text and readers. Through this relationship, the concerns of a particular regional group of scholars (i.e., 20th and 21st-century German sociologists) are foregrounded as a frame for conceptualizing the relationship between intercultural communication and qualitative research methods. Reading the articles through this lens, other distinctively German institutions emerge as potential mediators of this relationship, including: disciplinary research traditions (e.g., of Bildungsgangforschung, or empirical study of learner development in education; Evers, 2009); methodological techniques [e.g., “structure formation,” derived from 1980’s-era German educational psychology (Weidemann, 2009) and degree programs (e.g., the Diplomwirtschaft- shispanistik, whose curriculum joins the study of business, culture, and foreign languages (Berkenbusch, 2009). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 22

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Another dimension of this theme involves the persistent concern of these researchers with the situation of international immigrants and refugees, particularly those from the nations of the Middle East (Thielen, 2009), and the global South and East (Sheridan & Storch, 2009). This concern may be characterized as distinctively Western European in that the dense proximity of nations in this region, their (for several) historical status as former empires, and the recent rise in economic migration, asylum-seeking, and ethnic tensions associated with the formation of the European Union, have all converged to prioritize this issue for European communication scholars (McQuail, 2008). These dynamics create unique research sites [such as “reception classrooms” in primary school systems in the Catalan region of Spain (Vera, et al., 2009)]; recurring methodological issues (such as the reluctance of members of formerly Communist cultures to sign informed consent forms; Sheridan & Storch, 2009); and distinctive patterns of findings (e.g., that multi-lingual immigrants choose which language to speak in a given context based on its ability to accomplish relevant social purposes; Temple and Koterba, 2009). Additionally, these articles display the unique character of geopolitics associated with complex national histories in this region. That is, for U.S. readers, some of whom remain desensitized to the significance of imperialist history and subnational sovereignty movements, overt discussion in these articles of post-colonial responsibility (Trahar, 2009) and of complex entities such as cross-border universities (Hiller, 2009) and jointly-governed, autonomous regions (Bua, 2009) may feel distinctly “foreign.”

6. Case Study II: Moroccan Media Audience Studies

Our second case study focuses on the adaptation of the global discourse of qualitative research methods to studying Moroccan audiences for transnational television. A relevant back- drop for analyzing this case are the institutional challenges of studying media audiences in the Arab world – challenges which reflect the low priority accorded the social sciences generally in the Middle Eastern academy. Chief among these challenges are the meager funding for research activity; an insufficient base of research infrastructure (e.g., library collections and journal subscriptions, computing capacity, data networks); faculty and staff that are chron- ically underpaid and poorly trained, by Western/Northern standards; academic freedoms that are absent, lax, or only intermittently protected; and burdensome government regulations that often slow down, if not impede, the conduct of certain types of research, such as public opinion polling, that may be considered too politically sensitive (Amin, 2008). The long-term accumulation of these deficits has had systemic impacts throughout the region (Amin, 2008; Matar & Bessaiso, 2012; Sabry, 2008). These include: the stifling of innovation and intellectual entrepreneurship; the lack of media research that aims to critique (or help reform) the unequal relations of power, rights, and resources in the societies; and the still-unfulfilled quest for legitimacy of the idea of independent inquiry. Such conditions undoubtedly shape indigenous notions of what it means to be a scholar in the Arab context, particularly in relation to the Western normative model of scholarly actors functioning effectively and semi-autonomously in the public sphere, with an “invisible college” of peers providing significant input and supervision regarding the quality of their performance. The legacy of imperialism imposes further challenges for the emergence of qualitative communication research – a legacy that can be traced through a long period of U.S.-dominated agendas of research programs and methods. As Amin (2008) notes, the Western re- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 23

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search expertise imported into the region during and after the post-independence years of the 1960’s and 1970’s aligned closely with the nation-building concerns of Middle Eastern governments. The pragmatic, capital-intensive business of constructing broadcast systems and measuring their audiences left little room for the “luxury” of communication theory (p. 71). Even today, among those regimes that encourage the training of faculty and graduate students in audience research techniques, the intent is to “[push] research into narrow channels . . . media research that promotes politically established goals of national development and national unity” (p. 70). Given the background reviewed here, it is perhaps unsurprising that knowledge of qualitative methods – and their theoretic counterparts of cultural, critical, feminist, and post-colo- nialist studies – were virtually unknown in the Arab world until recently (Abdel Rachman, 1998; Amin, 2008; Matar & Bessaiso, 2012). A few intrepid media scholars have since gone into the field in certain Arab countries (e.g., Kraidy, 2003), and cultural anthropologists increasingly advocate for ethnographies of the lived experience of Arab media audiences (Abu- Loughod, 1997; Zayani, 2011). In addition, rapidly emerging signs of modernity throughout the region – viz., liberalized media regulations; the rising popularity of transnational media content articulating secular values and alternative political viewpoints; and the volatile (and still ongoing) transformation of civil societies following the populist Arab uprisings of 2011 – are creating more favorable opportunities for the study of globalization and media. As discussed earlier in this paper, the project of expanding knowledge of the range of methodological possibilities for locally defined purposes is critical to securing stakeholder involvement in, and support of, the qualitative research enterprise. This project is illustrated in Douai’s (2010) effort at retrospectively making sense of the uses of qualitative methods within the particularities of the Moroccan cultural milieu. Written at a moment defined by “a growing need for Arab media researchers to outline some of the opportunities and challenges facing audience research in the region” (p. 80), Douai conceives the goal of his analysis as “[helping] move the burgeoning field of Arab media studies and research forward by sharing the insights gleaned from field research.” This article is in fact one of the first explicitly “methodological” analyses of its kind to be addressed to the core membership of this subfield. Pursuant to his stated goal, the author first enacts an overview of the major audience research traditions from the 1940’s to the present, and concludes the section by arguing that a commitment to employing any of the theoretical approaches to the media audience – but especially those that privilege the localized, social negotiations of textual meaning – requires an alert, reflexive awareness of how study participants understand and react to the visible signs of the research process and the tactical actions and perceived motives of investigators. Douai then introduces two field research projects conducted in Morocco in 2002 and 2008. The first project concerned Moroccan adolescents’ motivations for viewing non-Moroccan television programming, while the second focused on the perceptions of international broadcasts, most prominently the U.S.-sponsored station Al-Hurra, by a more general Arab audience. Performing the roles simultaneously of principal investigator and native culture member (describing himself as “of Moroccan origin [with] strong family and friendly connections in the country”; p. 82), Douai generated data from more than 700 participants through a combina- tion of survey questionnaires, focus group interviews, and personal interviews. Douai’s account of the practices he deployed in the two studies is initially striking for its faithful rendition of the traditional, instrumental narratives of qualitative research. The article reconstructs a series of familiar rituals for normalizing the research intervention, such as: the Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 24

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systemization of a “recruitment process” involving a “contact person” from the community and the gradual development of a “diverse pool” of participants; the identification of neutral (or benign) “sites” for meeting with participants (e.g., coffee cafes); the use of a script designed to “educate” focus group members in a preferred social “etiquette” for engaging each other; the tactical gambits (well-practiced explanations, queries, gestures, etc.) used during meetings with participants to achieve their “empowerment” and assure their “comfort.” That these rituals succeeded so well in accomplishing their instrumental purposes may be testament to the cross-cultural durability and malleability of the methods, to the disciplined resourcefulness of the author, and just as importantly, to the willingness and ability of Moroccan people to yield that specific performance of themselves which Douai was seeking to capture. However, the author also depicts on-the-ground encounters with the cultural members that disrupted, or otherwise called into question, the efficacy of the canonical, globally circulating narratives of qualitative research. With respect to the issue of time, Douai recalls a “serious problem” occurring during several of the focus group interviews, in which some participants would arrive late, sometimes very late, to their appointments. Late arrivals, he explains, often unduly prolonged the length of the meeting, to the detriment of the others, and “tend to subtly disseminate a spirit of chaos, disorganization, and even rebellion among the rest of participants” (p. 83). Trying to reconcile the Arabs’ customary “relaxed attitude” toward punctuality, with the imperative of focus group time management, Douai opts for the middle ground: Em- phasizing the virtues of arriving on time, while preparing for “a good deal of flexibility . . . when dealing with study participants.” Globalization, he notes, is gradually shifting Arabs’ behavior away from the traditional “polychromic” sense of time, but apparently not enough at this point to reformulate the group interview in a more culturally-fitting manner. Douai describes his struggle to recruit Arab women and thus capture their discourse concerning the U.S.-supported news channel Al-Hurra. Here Douai admits that all of his initial contacts were men until he began to realize that the participant pool consisted almost entire- ly of men; he then tried using a female contact to recruit women, “but this strategy failed too” (p. 84). Douai attributed the failure to two phenomena. First, he discovered through anecdot- al sources that Moroccan women generally prefer light entertainment shows over watching news channels, and therefore a solicitation to talk about Al-Hurra television was of no interest to them – “a significant finding in itself since it bespeaks of how patriarchy and traditional and cultural mores persist in Morocco probably in defiance of modernity” (p. 84). Second, the intended café settings for interviewing women proved to be problematic due to wide- spread cultural codes that couple attributions of “’loose, unwonted behavior” (p. 85) with public places like coffee houses. Douai asks, “Why talk about cafés as a site of research?” He answers this question by way of a digression about the distinctive roles played by the café in the geography of Moroccan life, as a dark, cool refuge for pausing during the day, sipping a drink, socializing, viewing television – and as such, for the author, “observing what people are watching in a café simulates perfectly their daily media routines.” Be that as it may, Douai actually provided an answer to a different question: Why talk about a site of research as a café? To that question, qualitative researchers spend their entire careers learning and relearning a simple truth: Social scenes will eventually yield their secrets to us, and will do so without our bidding, but only if we take our time, pay our respects, and are willing to lose ourselves for a while. Finally, under the rubric of cultural issues, Douai considers the threat of confrontational participants. Antagonism expressed toward the United States – aroused by Douai’s questions Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 25

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about Al-Hurra – occupied many of the interviews and often forced the author into a defensive posture, but doubts about the legitimacy of the project also provoked pointed questions with broad implications for doing qualitative research in the region. The topic of the interviews (popular media) and the method itself (structured conversation), struck many of the Mo- roccans – particularly those unfamiliar with the traditions of social science – as too quotidian and too socially intrusive, respectively. Reflecting on why they harshly challenged the value of the study and his own motives, Douai (2010) cites a “culture of suspicion” that tends to thrive in a repressive regime. Douai writes, “A political culture that mostly does not value these respondents’ votes in elections is largely to blame for encouraging an unprecedented level of cynicism regarding the serious contribution of research to society in general” (p. 85).

7. Discussion and Conclusion

The project developed in this paper cannot escape a paradox which pervades the study of globalization. This paradox is created as researchers instinctively call on social science traditions to explain large-scale patterns, all the while knowing that doing so may misrepresent local forces which facilitate and materialize the otherwise nebulous phenomena of globalization. The concept of glocalization, of course, has been developed precisely to hold this di- alectic of universalizing and particularizing influences in contemporary cultural activity. We rely now on this concept to reconcile the impulses displayed in this paper: Leveraging existing research to tentatively model the global circulation of qualitative communication research methods, and testing this model through the exploration of case studies. This invocation permits us to proceed with a discussion of the results, focusing on principles which may be derived from this test, and their implications for further research of this topic. Four seem especially relevant. Our first principle involves the difficulties posed by working only with textual materials. While recent sea changes have expanded the permissible formats for methodological reflection, much public discussion of qualitative research continues to conform to its traditional purposes: reinterpreting foundational texts; reporting findings; advocating for particular procedures, etc. Outside of FSQ journal projects exploring the “centers and peripheries” of international qualitative research which we discovered in conducting this study (see Mruck, et al., 2005; Puebla, et al., 2006), we have not yet found robust forums devoted to discussing the geopolitics of qualitative communication research methods. As a result, we are left to speculate about a particularly reflexive use of qualitative methods which may compensate for these limitations. Specifically, we envision the development of an interview protocol which could be used with communication researchers to elaborate the convergence of topical, national, and disciplinary identifications which influence their practice of qualitative research. Our second principle emphasizes the tensions of glocalization that are especially depicted in the case of the FSQ thematic issue. Considering the forces of expansion and disloca- tion it displays, we note how interdisciplinary claims on the ownership of communication topics enlarge the scope of traditions, concerns, and techniques that stakeholders consider appropriate for their qualitative study. Additionally, we see how the international implications of a communication-related topic increase the geographical range of its stakeholders, and the complexity of their total national identifications. Nonetheless, as displayed in the generical- ly Western European and specifically German features of this case, the potential resources em- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 26

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bodied in this context can only be activated by speakers grounded in local cultures and histories. This contingency ensures that the globalization of communication research methods will likely proceed as something of a conversation between strategic projects that reflect the specific purposes of specific groups engaging specific conditions. No single voice, it appears, can emerge to speak either as or for all of the stakeholders of this process, and no single group can legislate its future. Third, these case studies offer sobering reminders about the influences that are inevitably exerted by the state on the global circulation of qualitative communication research methods. While images of the state in these case studies initially appear quite different, deeper scrutiny suggests another claim. That is, while the FSQ case suggests the virtues of liberal democracy (e.g., its ostensible commitment to supporting academe as a resource for developing institutional reform) in facilitating both interpretive and critical study of intercultural communication, and the Moroccan audience studies case suggests the negative power of the au- thoritarian state in poisoning citizen trust of legitimate inquiry, the state maintains its power in each. That is, whether state power orients in a productive/enabling or coercive/constrain- ing manner toward the conduct of qualitative communication research, its globalization will remain tied to expressions of state power – e.g., as the infusion of funding, the attribution of legitimacy, etc. Finally, these cases illustrate how the co-constitution of contemporary globalization and qualitative communication research occurs simultaneously on at least two levels. This condition arises from the fact that qualitative communication research engages communication both as a topic and a method. That is, communication researchers employ qualitative methods to gain greater knowledge of communication-related topics, but the modes of that usage are inherently symbolic, discursive, and interactional (e.g., in researchers’ ongoing negotiation with cultural members of access to and inclusion in important scenes of activity). As a result, “globalization” – with its attendant legacies of Western imperialism and counter-hegemonic social movements – is an especially sharp condition for qualitative communication researchers, who must engage those legacies through embodied micropractices such as designing and conducting interviews, and reconciling relations between various sources of data. In this way, we may anticipate that interpretive and critical research of globalization by communication scholars will continue to be inflected by this persistent reflexivity, vivid immediacy, and obdurate materiality. In conclusion, while this modest effort cannot exhaust the significance of these cases (let alone completely answer our larger questions), we hope it will inspire continued discussion and study of these issues. We are convinced that doing so can generate significant benefits for the advancement of both a global communication discipline, and its practice of qualitative research.

Notes

1 Austria; Finland; Germany; Ireland; Spain; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. 2 Applied Research; Communication and Media Studies; Cultural Studies; Education; Engineering; Health Sciences; International Affairs; Legal Studies; Languages (e.g., Modern and Romance); Linguistics; Man- agement; Psychology; and Sociology. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 27

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3 This excerpt reflects the first author’s rendering of a garbled translation of the original German passage generated by Google software (i.e., embedded in its proprietary Chrome web-browser, as well as online at: http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT). While space does not permit further discussion of the significance of this software for either the production of this essay, or the globalization of qualitative communication research methods, the topic is worth pursuing.

References

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Liz Yeomans*

Researching emotional labour among Public Relations consultants in the UK: a social phenomenological approach

Abstract

‘Social phenomenology’ (Schütz, 1970; 1978) and its concept of the ‘lifeworld’ has received limited attention in the research methods literature. Few contemporary researchers, with the exception of Aspers (2006a; 2006b; 2009) and Svensson (2007) have developed procedures for undertaking social phenomenological research in occupational settings. I developed a social phenomenological approach to explore, from an emotional labour perspective, how public relations (PR) consultants experienced, practised and understood their everyday interactions with clients, colleagues and journalists (Hochschild, 1983). If emotion is understood as a relational practice, the analysis of socially-constructed discourse is essential to access emotional meaning structures within occupational cultures such as public relations. I adopted an iterative analytical process whereby I interviewed, twice, a sample of six participants. From transcript analysis I produced a ‘description of practice’ document for participants to check (Aspers, 2006a; 2009). ‘Bracketing’ (Husserl, 1963/1913) involved writing self-memos throughout the research process, and finally, a self-reflexive account. Thematic analysis of findings resulted in a rich understanding of emotion management and identity work in public relations. This paper demonstrates that an iterative and reflexive analytical process that involves participants in co- creating social reality, is a compelling approach to understand the ‘lifeworld’ of social actors in occupational settings. Key words: social phenomenology; emotional labour; public relations (PR).

Phenomenological research, stemming from the philosophy of Husserl (1963/1913), Hei- degger (1962) and Merleau-Ponty (1962) has followed several distinctive paths, many of which are linked to psychological and psychoanalytical studies. Moreover, the research methods for pursuing phenomenological psychology are well-developed and documented (e.g. Colaizzi, 1978; Moustakas, 1994; Giorgi, 2009) and applied in a range of settings. Much phenomenological literature is found in clinical, and particularly nursing settings where relationships between nurses and patients are investigated with reference to a central phenomenon, for example, the experiences of nursing handover in a hospital (Hopkinson, 2002); and caring (Staden, 1998). These studies focus on the ‘essences’ of lived experiences, ‘essences’ being one of the most common terms used in phenomenological research to describe the commonalities of shared experience (Patton, 1990). Phenomenological approaches, however, may also be used to investigate social and cultural phenomena. Bentz and Shapiro (1998, p. 100) classify Alfred Schütz’s ‘social phenom-

* Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 32

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enology’ as belonging to cultural-social phenomenology in that it is “an analysis of the essential structures of any lifeworld”. Schütz (1970; 1978) gave prime focus to the concepts of the lifeworld (from Husserl’s phenomenology); understanding (Weber’s verstehen); and the taken-for-granted natural attitude in the everyday life experienced by social actors. Within the lifeworld, meanings are intersubjectively shared. The lifeworld has a practical orientation whereby social actors make sense of their own actions and others through a common stock of knowledge that is learned through different socialising sources – through teachers, parents and others. Socially-derived knowledge, is, moreover, unquestionably accepted and divided into spheres of ‘knowledge about’ (the what and how) and ‘knowledge of acquaintance’ (the ‘what’ scaling down to mere ignorance). The lifeworld is structured by experienced typifications that form a common-sense, taken-for-granted understanding of objects, people, events, and acts which have a particular ‘thematic relevancy’ to the individual. This allows for the same object or thing to be interpreted differently within the lifeworld. Such typifications are bounded by time and space so that the lifeworld is stratified into “zones of actual, restorable and obtainable reach” – ‘reach’ referring to direct experience and perception (Schütz, 1978, p. 259). The social world therefore comprises people with whom we share experiences as well as those who, while co-existing in time, are outside spatial reach while still holding an influence over us (e.g. in a work setting this could be predecessors or former colleagues or managers). Within much of the literature on interpretative research methodology, social phenomenology as articulated by Schütz receives limited attention, although Hughes and Sharrock (1997) and Holstein and Gubrium (1994) credit Schütz’s influence in the development of the more empirically-driven ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). As Holstein and Gubrium (1994) observe, while ethnomethodology shares similar characteristics with social phenomenology, it is not a mere extension of it. Ethnomethodology espoused by Garfinkel (1967), investi- gates the accomplishment of ‘social order’ (i.e. norms, rules and values) through “members’ practical, everyday procedures” (Holstein and Gubrium, 1994, p. 264). In terms of analysis, the focus of ethnomethodology shifts away from Schütz’ ‘shared meanings’ and definitions in the lifeworld to a “locally visible sense of order” or how accepted norms, rules and values are adhered to, or not (Holstein and Gubrium, 1994, p. 265). How- ever, both social phenomenology and ethnomethodology emphasise the importance of meaning, language and discourse in social actors’ everyday practice (Holstein and Gubrium, 1994; Hughes and Sharrock, 1997). Therefore, in examining emotional labour among public relations (PR) consultants, my study took an interpretive philosophical stance and a social phenomenological approach specifically because my interest was in the lifeworld of PR consultants, including nuanced and contradictory accounts of experience in managing professional relationships. A social phenomenological research procedure is explicated by Aspers (2006a; 2006b; 2009) and this was the primary procedure that I adopted. However, I necessarily drew on a range of sources to develop my approach. For example, both feminist (e.g. Hertz, 1997) and phenomenological interviewing share an interest in reciprocal, or collaborative relationships between the interviewer and participant so that reality is co-created to provide a coherent account of everyday life. Achieving a spirit of collaboration with my participants was of key concern in this study to establish a deep understanding of their experiences and knowledge of professional interactions. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 33

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1. Phenomenological Studies in Public Relations

Daymon and Holloway assert that the phenomenological approach is “almost never” (2002, p.146), used in public relations research, although in their second edition (Daymon & Hol- loway, 2010) they cite Yeomans’ (2008) phenomenological study of employees’ experience of organisational communication and learning in a healthcare setting. Health workers, as an occupational group, were found to attach their own, socially-situated meanings to the healthcare organisation’s aspirations to become a ‘learning organisation’. Krider and Ross’s 1997 feminist study is also an exception. The findings of this study, involving seven women participants within a public relations firm, exposed the conflicts between the ascribed and achieved roles of women public relations practitioners. This study was based on a broad aim which was to “gain a greater understanding of the daily work experiences of female public relations practitioners” (1997, p. 438). Participants’ key concerns centred around the ‘negotiation between roles’ of being a woman, being a daughter and being a woman in public relations. Insofar as this study is approached from a feminist PR perspective, and uses the phenomenological approach to provide a detailed account of the ‘essence’ of women practitioners’ experiences within a PR firm, it has some relevance to my own inquiry. However, while Krider and Ross’s article provides a coherent rationale for a phenomenological research perspective within the public relations literature, there is no attempt to interpret the findings within the broader context of feminist or gender studies. In other words, there is no theory against which these findings can be judged. This could be regarded as both a strength and weakness in the phenomenological method in that, in its purest form, phenomenology does not seek to explain phenomena but create understanding of the lived experience: the researcher does not seek to impose an objective analytical framework because this potentially separates analysis from the lived experience (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998). Although small- scale phenomenological studies do not seek to generalise beyond the experiences of those taking part, it would seem to be a missed opportunity to overlook other studies that illuminate human experience in similar ways and place these experiences within a broader realm of ideas related to social structure. Indeed Aspers (2009, p. 6), while acknowledging that ‘first order constructs’ (an account of actors’ shared meaning structures of a phenomenon) can never be omitted and are important for grounding the study, the researcher’s ‘second-order constructs’ (theoretical reference points) “must communicate in two directions”, first, to the actors in the field, and second to the ‘scientific community’. This was the approach I took in this study. Svensson (2007) offers a useful social phenomenological explication of the intersubjective (shared) meanings in marketing work revealed through narrative analysis. The question “what is marketing work?” was pursued with the aim of “de-reifying” the textbook marketing management approach which Svensson critiques for constructing marketing work “beyond human life and social practice” (p. 272) and as a “set of neutral (in terms of ideologies and values) tools” (p. 273). Svensson argues that a “social phenomenological gaze” (p. 272) enables marketing work to be constructed as a social and discursive activity. To arrive at a social definition of marketing work, he used a case study approach. Interviews with agency and client teams and observations of their interactions during meetings enabled the accomplishment of marketing work to be examined during the development of a lawnmower campaign. The micro-level themes were then examined to identify the social structure “wherein and in relation to which micro practices take place” (p. 283), or as Svensson puts it “marketing work Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 34

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is entangled within the tensions of different narratives within society” (p. 284). Thus, marketing work was interpreted as bounded within a “narrative archipelago” (p. 284) where the narratives of postmodernity, instrumental reason and neo-liberalism were navigated by marketing practitioners. Svensson’s work readily demonstrates the use and value of social phenomenological research in that it not only reveals marketing work as social and discursive practices but it then enables these everyday micro practices to be “interdiscursively” (p. 283) re-examined for references to their socio-cultural context as an explanatory framework. In his critique of social phenomenological approaches, Porter (2002) would appear to support Svensson’s (and Aspers’) approach in linking the “individual interactions and interpretations” of social actors to structure. Porter argues that subjectivist accounts alone are not enough and lead to “analytic superficiality”. Subjective understandings must therefore be linked to the “structural positions within which those individuals are located” (Porter, 2002, p. 57). My study, which examined emotional labour in the everyday experience of public relations consultants, drew on a social phenomenological approach that placed the ‘lifeworld’ at its centre by exploring the meaning structures or “web of meanings” (Aspers, 2009, p. 3) shared by actors in the lifeworld (Aspers, 2006a; Aspers, 2009; Svensson, 2007). Aspers’ (2009) empirical phenomenology was used as a guide. His approach starts with a research question, follows up with a preliminary study and then identifies a theory as a scheme of reference. The theory in my study is emotional labour theory (explained below) while drawing on the micro-level occupational context of public relations. Porter’s (2002) point of integrating structure with the analysis of subjective accounts was addressed by relating my findings to macro-level discussions of the rise of the service sector in the UK, the role of public relations in promotional culture (see Miller & Dinan, 2000) and the processes of ‘feminisation’ and ‘pro- fessionalisation’ in public relations (see Fitch & Third, 2010).

2. Emotional Labour

Yeomans (2013) cites the work of Mann (2004), Mastracci, Newman and Guy (2006) and Smith and Gray (2000) whose studies suggest that those occupying semi-professional and professional occupations, such as public relations, fulfil the tenets of Hochschild’s ‘emotional labour’. Emotional labour requires face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public; workers managing their own emotions and displays of feelings to elicit a desired emotional response in other people; and finally, they allow the employer, through ‘training and supervision to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees’ (Hochschild, 1983, p. 147). Although the “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1983, p. 57), or the social and cultural demands and expectations, of professionals are not as highly ‘routinised’ or ‘scripted’ (Leidner, 1993) as service workers in low-pay areas of the economy, there is nonetheless a pressure for professionals to adhere to the implicit feeling rules embedded in the professional ethics, norms and expectations of their own sphere of public interaction, including direct clients (Anleu & Mack, 2005; Bolton, 2005). Yeomans (2013) argues that such expectations may place demands on the professional to perform differential emotional tasks according to ascribed gender roles (Hochschild, 1983) while aligning their performances with the gendered (i.e. masculine) notion of ‘a profession’ (Bolton & Muzio, 2008). Thus, there is a tacit requirement for PR consultants to work on their own identities in performing relational work with clients, journalists, Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 35

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colleagues and agency managers within the contexts of a ‘professional project’ and a ‘femi- nised’ profession (Fitch & Third, 2010) where women occupy the lower ranks and men the top of agency structures (Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2010; 2013). Emotion in public relations is a neglected area of scholarship (Yeomans, 2007; 2010; 2013). Using emotional labour theory as a frame of reference (Bolton, 2005; Hochschild, 1983) my study paid attention to the relational work of PR practitioners who worked for re- gionally-based UK consulting firms, with the aim of exploring how PR consultants experienced and understood their everyday practices in managing professional relationships.

3. Methodology

3.1. Sampling The research setting. The setting for the research was the PR consultancy environment, which is part of the professional services industry. It is a service “sold in a competitive market to clients who need to be convinced about its effectiveness…” (Pieczka, 2006, p. 304). Fo- cusing on the experiences of PR consultants, as opposed to in-house practitioners (i.e. those employed in public, private or voluntary sector organisations), brings clarity to the study because winning and keeping clients is a key focus of PR consultants’ work. Therefore an individual’s capacity for fostering relationships takes on a different significance within consultancy work than perhaps it does in a corporate communications environment. Consultancies, agencies and freelancers comprise an estimated 8,600 practitioners in the UK, of which 59% are women (Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2005). PR consultants provide services to a wide range of businesses and public sector organisations. PR consultants operate both as strategic advisers to organisations and as ‘technicians’ (Dozier, 1992) who implement public relations plans. Eighty-eight per cent of PR consultants’ activity is media relations (Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2010), securing maximum, appropriately-timed and targeted editorial coverage for a product, event, idea, or issue. The sample for the study comprised public relations consultants working in two major cities for public relations services in the north of England. Sample size and sample criteria. A total of six participants took part in the study, following the discussion in Creswell (2007, p. 126) in which samples ranging from three to 10 participants are recommended for phenomenological research. A range of sampling strategies is available in qualitative research; however in phenomenology, it is important to investigate a phenomenon among those who have experienced it. To arrive at a suitable sample for study, providing rich insights, sampling was based on key criteria and stratification. Participants were recruited on the basis of the following criteria: – reflective of the largest age grouping of workers in the PR agency sector. According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, this is 25-34 (Chartered Institute of Public Rela- tions, 2010). My participants were aged between 23 and 32. – worked as PR consultants in a PR firm; – provided services to clients and journalists in an account handling role; and – were willing to participate in the research project during two phases of fieldwork, including diary-keeping during the first phase. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 36

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The sample was stratified purposeful to enable comparisons to be made between male and female participants. Four female and two male PR consultants were recruited. This sample only roughly reflected the gender division in the PR agency population (59% female; 41% male). As discussed below, identifying male participants who met the other criteria was a difficult task, due to the position of many male practitioners at senior levels in agencies. Within an established PR consultancy, a client account team may comprise junior account executives (entry level), account executives, account managers, and account directors. Account directors are usually the ‘team leaders’, have the main responsibility for client contact, and generally have more seniority in the job. Table 1: Attributes of participants in the study

Male/ Highest educational Length of PR experience Role Location Type of PR firm female qualification at the time of interview

Account director M MA degree City A Independent 10

Senior account F BA degree City A Independent 4 manager

Senior account International network, F BA degree City B 5 manager* part of World PR

Account manager F MA degree City A Independent 5

Senior account International network, F MA degree City B 2 executive* part of World PR

Account manager M BA degree City B Independent 1

* these participants were part of the preliminary study

Table 1 demonstrates participants’ attributes, including agency role, sex, highest educational qualification, location, type of PR firm and length of experience in PR at the time of the first interview. I have excluded parents’ occupations from this table to protect anonymity; however parental occupations were examined as an indicator of social class. As anticipated from previous experience, identifying suitable male participants became a challenge as many ‘traditional’ PR firms that I contacted were wholly populated by female PR consultants. ‘Traditional’ here refers to PR firms that have relationships with print and broadcast media. The issue of gender segregation in PR, where men occupy the top of agencies while the majority of those working in account handling roles are female, had been highlight- ed in surveys over several years (e.g. Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2010; 2013). In- terestingly, however, within the latter period of this study (2011), the newer agencies specialising in ‘social media campaigns’ were found to attract more male employees, and to some extent were regarded as male domains of PR expertise. After several months of unfruitful searching, I recruited a second male participant who worked for a social media PR consultancy.

3.2. Preliminary Study Aspers’ (2009) framework for social phenomenology research suggests conducting a preliminary study. My preliminary study involved two participants and this took place within a locally-based consultancy to test the interview and diary-keeping methods. The preliminary Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 37

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study participants were sought through a contact who occupied a senior management role within his consultancy. Two female participants were recruited, ‘Gill’ and ‘Alison’ (these are pseudonyms). In-depth interviews were conducted with these participants to test both the interview schedule and the online diary completion. Follow-up interviews were then arranged to further explore some of the topics in the first interview transcripts as well as topics arising from the online diary entries. During my second visit, feedback was sought from the participants to ensure that the timing of the online diary was appropriate to their working day, and that the online format was relatively easy to respond to.

Problems and modifications arising from the preliminary study. Interview setting. The setting for the preliminary study was the office premises of the agency. Interviews took place in the boardroom which, although quiet, served as a reminder to participants that other issues demanded their attention. Neither participant was particularly relaxed and indeed at times Gill showed concern that she was not giving me the ‘right answer’. Despite reassurances that there were no ‘right answers’ and that the interview was exploratory and part of a preliminary study, Gill remained a little defensive and seemed un- comfortable with the wording of some of the questions. On reflection, Gill’s preoccupation with being promoted, which became clear towards the end of the first interview and during the second interview, may well have caused her to think that one of her senior managers would see her interview transcripts. Access to participants. In light of the comments above, my route to both participants, via their senior manager, could be regarded as unconducive to building trust. Therefore I decided to recruit further participants through academic colleagues, not through agency managers. While this approach constrained future sampling to Public Relations University programmes alumni, it did ensure that I was seen as an independent researcher and not a researcher ‘sponsored’ by management. Preliminary interviews and diary keeping methods. While access to participants was one of the key issues identified in my preliminary study, there were also problems concerning the interview schedule and the online diary keeping. The interview schedule used in the preliminary study was generally found to be productive in engaging participants in discussing their journalist and client relations, although some questions required further explanation, such as those relating to ‘culture’ and ‘management style’. Additionally, questions concerning relationships with colleagues were not included in the initial schedule. For Gill, the absence of a question about colleagues was a critical omission: her preoccupation with promotion and internal relations meant that she was particularly concerned with how she presented herself to her bosses, peers and (junior) account teams. The interview schedule was subsequently modified to include a question on ‘managing relations with colleagues’. On reflection this was an important modification, given that all participants were within the 23-32 age group, aspiring to higher levels in their career and regarded their bosses as significant players in their lifeworlds. The online diaries, which were set up through the online survey tool SurveyMonkey, were successful in that they were submitted daily by both participants over a period of five days. However, the diary method was not very successful at eliciting emotional responses to the events described on each day. Both participants completed their diaries at the end of the day when they were filling out agency time-sheets. Agency time-sheets require the consultant to Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 38

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account for time spent on their clients’ work by describing the PR activity (e.g. ‘phone call to journalist’) and how long it took to complete. Consequently, the diaries were seen by participants as much the same activity: descriptive rather than reflective, to be completed in 10 minutes. Thus, the diary entries were more useful as a means of gaining emotional responses in the follow-up interview when participants were asked to reflect on their diary notes. Further to this experience, I simplified the wording of the online survey and reduced the number of questions to three key questions in preparation for further fieldwork. Presenting myself and the project. Fontana and Frey (1994) raise the question of introducing yourself appropriately to the participants and others in the research setting. The potential problem here was not so much explaining myself as a researcher and academic (and perhaps, reassuringly to participants, as a former PR practitioner) but explaining the study in such a way that participants might see a beneficial outcome. ‘Emotional labour’ is an unfamiliar term and may carry negative associations: I had concerns that the use of the term ‘emotion’ within a professional setting could also be regarded negatively and produce defensive responses. Ad- ditionally, there is a great deal of popular discussion in PR practice around the concept of ‘emotional intelligence’ and I did not want my study to be confused with this concept. My focus was therefore on ‘managing professional relationships in a PR consultancy’. This title still retained the relational focus, however emotions and feelings were not foregrounded and were instead embedded in the questioning on relational practice, especially in follow-up questions, for example: “How did it feel to sell-in a story to a journalist for the first time?”

3.3. Main Study: Data Collection Phenomenological study primarily includes the collection of information through in-depth, long interviews of up to two hours (Creswell, 1998); although as shown in the work of Svens- son (2007), other data sources might include non-participant observation and other qualitative methods. Interviews, however, were the primary information source for this study. Interviews. The purpose of interviewing is to build up a trusting relationship with the participant in order to gain understanding (Fontana & Frey, 1994). The phenomenological interviewing approach highlights the need for a reciprocal, or collaborative relationship between the interviewer and the participant, so that the interview itself is viewed as a “social encounter” (Dingwall, 1997 cited in Fontana, 2003): here, the interview takes a dramaturgi- cal turn in that impression management and role-playing take places on both sides. Reality is co-created to provide a coherent and cohesive account of everyday life. If the relationship between interviewer and participant is particularly successful, then it moves from “I-thou” to “we” (Seidman, 1991). Semi-structured, face-to-face long interviews were held with six participants aged between 23 and 32 working as account handlers in PR agencies based in two major cities in the north of England. Initial interviews were undertaken between August 2008 and May 2011. A second, follow-up interview was also conducted with each participant. Follow-up interviews with three participants took place one year after the first interview had taken place; this was not ideal in continuing a spirit of collaboration but on the other hand it allowed for reflection given that all three participants had been promoted, moved jobs, or both. The first long interview within this study was used to establish initial face-to-face contact, build rapport and to elicit descriptions of the ‘lifeworld’ from participants own perspec- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 39

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tives (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). (See Interview schedule, Appendix B.) The setting for the interview varied between participants. Further to the preliminary study, which took place within an agency setting, participants were invited to choose a suitable place to be interviewed. Two chose a café in which to meet, a third chose her agency boardroom and a fourth chose a meeting room at my university. Follow-up interviews of between 20 and 50 minutes with each participant enabled me to clarify and develop my understanding of the participant’s perspective, as well as negotiate meanings, using the interview transcript and the online diary entries as the basis for subsequent conversations. Follow-up interviews were undoubtedly more successful where there was the opportunity for face-to-face discussion: out of the six follow-up interviews, three took place over the telephone, with one phone conversation lasting 50 minutes. Approach to interviewing. In discussing feminist approaches to interviewing, Creswell suggests that sequential interviews entail “self-disclosure on the part of the researcher [which] fosters a sense of collaboration” (1998, p. 83). Within my study, self-disclosure became imperative, particularly over the telephone in order to maintain a friendly, conversational style, keep the momentum going and avoid awkward silences. I reported on the progress of my study, ‘complained’ about the problems of fitting it around my other work (this was an effort to explain the long gap between interviews in some cases), and talked about university and PR matters. Rapport was maintained by congratulating participants on their promotions and other achievements. I also reminded them of the importance of my topic and that interpersonal relations in PR were not discussed in the textbooks, which they would be familiar with as PR graduates. In the second face-to-face interview with Gill, my self-disclosure regarding my role as a manager meant that Gill appeared more able to reveal her own difficulties in displaying her frustrations in front of her team. I increasingly became aware, as the interviewing progressed over time, of performing relational practice that might be termed as ‘emotional labour’. This theme was extended in my reflexive account. Writing from a feminist perspective, Hertz (1997) questions whether the distinction between the researcher and participant can be maintained where such a collaborative relationship is sought. To overcome this, the interviewer needs to be reflexive: “acknowledge who she is in the interview, what she brings it, and how the interview gets negotiated and constructed in the process” (Fontana, 2003, p. 58). Self-reflective and reflexive account. Following Polkinghorne (1989), a self-reflective account was used both as preparation for the interviewing (see below) and in the analysis (Moustakas, 1994). Within phenomenology, this process is known as ‘bracketing’, or ‘epoché’; terms derived from Husserl (1963/1913) that involve setting aside preconceptions and prejudices. Bracketing involves setting aside common-sense judgements and looking at a situation as if for the first time. ‘Bracketing’ in preparation for interviewing. As Moustakas (1994) acknowledges, this suspending of belief can prove a difficult task. For example, although I had never worked within a public relations agency, I worked in public relations for eight years and had been a public relations lecturer for 13 years. It was therefore inevitable that I had acquired some of the language, attitudes and tacit knowledge found within a PR agency environment. While this experience may be useful in gaining access to and building rapport with participants, assumptions are easily made if interactions and interpretations are not reflected upon and perhaps, valuable information overlooked. For example, my study participants referred to ‘selling-in’ stories to journalists. Although I knew what this process involved, I had not experienced it Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 40

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myself (at least not on an everyday basis) and in terms of understanding emotional labour during social interactions, I felt this process needed further exploration. Questioning the process of ‘selling-in’ led to interesting revelations of the interactional ‘games’ used by PR consultants and journalists as well as the emotional demands of this process on the PR consultant where there was potentially a ‘non-story’ while at the same time an imperative to ‘gain coverage’ for the client. My attitude towards PR consultancies was something I had to be aware of too: my experiences as a placement tutor (a ‘placement’ is a 48 week period of internship in the UK) had not always been positive. PR consultancy staff sometimes have different views about what constitutes a ‘good experience’ for a student, and viewed from an educator’s perspective the relationship can seem exploitative of the student. The particular issue of unpaid internships, especially in public relations firms, has become a controversial topic in the national and trade press (e.g. Malik & Syal, 2011; Eleftheriou-Smith, 2013). Indeed, the exploitation of a (largely female) workforce in the public relations industry was the concern that initially drove me to research the topic of emotional labour. Therefore, consciously writing about these preconceptions and prejudices enables reflexivity in analysing and interpreting field notes and interview transcripts. Participants’ CVs and online diaries. Other research methods were considered that suited the phenomenological approach. Therefore as well as interviews, CVs (curricula vitae) were collected for this study to gain details of participants’ educational backgrounds. This understanding of participants’ biographies (or versions of biographies) relates to Schütz’s emphasis on the lifeworld and how an individual finds him/herself in a particular situation at a given point in time (Wagner, 1970, p.15). In terms of participant socialisation, for example, I observed from the CVs that participants were graduates in the humanities, PR, media or psychology and some had undertaken postgraduate studies. By examining parents’ occupations I observed that all were from middle-class backgrounds; therefore participants shared common cultural and social capitals (Edwards, 2008) which they were able to bring to their professional roles. The benefits of the participant diary to a qualitative study are that detailed accounts of events and feelings as they are happening can be gathered; also “the charting of events over time allows the identification of patterns and changes in diarists’ accounts of [organisational] processes” (Symon, 1998, p.114). What is clear from Symon’s discussion on participant diaries, is that diaries need to be carefully designed and introduced to participants to be accepted. There also has to be a de-briefing session for the researcher to understand the process of keeping the diary from the diarist’s viewpoint and for the diarist to feel that their diary- keeping is recognised as important. Diaries can be seen as too time-consuming and if the benefits are not made apparent, can easily be abandoned within the first week of diary completion. However, the commitment required from participants in keeping diaries and in being interviewed suggests that a deeper relationship between the researcher and participant could potentially be built leading to a fuller, more mutual understanding of the participant’s ‘lifeworld’. It was anticipated in this study that participants might welcome diary-keeping as an opportunity to reflect on their professional careers and may even use the diary-keeping to contribute evidence of self-reflection for Chartered Practitioner status with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations1. However, not all members were CIPR members and professional status and recognition may have been sought by participants through other means. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 41

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So, while a modest commitment to diary keeping was displayed by the two preliminary study participants, this commitment appeared to be abandoned after the first day by three out of the four other participants. The abandonment of the diary took place despite my careful face- to-face briefing explaining the purpose of diary-keeping to the project as well as daily email reminders and prompts to complete the online form during the agreed research period. The following table demonstrates the frequency of online diary-keeping among the study participants: Table 2: Frequency of participants’ online diary completion

Participant Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

1 = Gill x X x x x

2 = Alison x X x x x

3 = Emma x

4 = Pamela x

5 = John x

6 = Graham x X x x x

Beyond the daily email reminders, I felt unable to further pursue the three participants who did not keep their diaries maintained. Pamela’s diary entry referred to her return to work after a bout of swine flu’ and “going through my 900 emails” on her first day back in the office. John’s diary entry reflected on a crisis with a client, and Emma’s diary entry reflected on a difficult situation whereby an account executive (who worked as her assistant) had re- signed, which created problems for Emma in client handling. All three were feeling under pressure in their work and it seemed unreasonable to pursue them. On reflection, the main problem I identified in gathering diary data was my lack of physical proximity. I was based in City B and my three non-completing participants were based in City A. Even though the diary-completion was due to take place online immediately after the first interview, I had not arranged a return visit soon enough to prompt my participants into action. Neither was I on the doorstep ready to drop by at any time as a casual visitor, which Symon (1998) observes can be an important factor in diary completion. Interestingly, the three City B participants all completed their five diary entries, albeit briefly. However, as discussed earlier, the diary entries should be regarded within the context of this study as enabling further discussion and reflection at the second interview, rather than being artefacts requiring discrete textual analysis.

3.4. Analysis of Interview Transcripts The purpose of phenomenological research is to understand the lifeworld of participants in their own terms. Aspers (2009, p. 6), following a social phenomenological approach, recommends that in analysing transcripts, researchers should be looking for actors’ meaning structures (what people mean when they use certain kinds of words); their own theories; what ‘ideal types’ they construct among themselves and “in what kind of practices they are involved”. These ‘first order constructs’ should result in a detailed description of the lifeworld that it recognisable by the participants in the study (Aspers 2006a; 2009). ‘Second order constructs’ combine these descriptions with explanatory theory. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 42

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I analysed 12 interview transcripts in total: first, to identify the meaning structures for each participant to produce an individual account of practice; and second, to produce a collective, or intersubjective, account of managing professional relationships. As each participant’s construction of practice could be regarded as a ‘case study’ in its own right it was important to safeguard this individual account. In examining the ‘meaning of learning’ among university students, Greasley and Ashworth (2007), for example, demonstrated how each student embodied a distinctive approach to learning. In my study, distinctiveness could be examined particularly in relation to how each participant constructed their identity as a PR professional. The coding of transcripts was carried out using NVivo 9 software. This enables the researcher to code, categorise and thematise all texts, in this case interview transcripts and self- memos that were made during the analysis stage. ‘First-order’ themes. A total of 117 categories were identified from just under 400 coded items in total across 12 transcripts using NVivo 9 qualitative analysis software. Some categories were labelled by topic according to the subject matter and others analytically, meaning that I placed my own interpretation on a word or statement (Richards, 2005, p. 87-88). Other category labels arose in vivo directly from the texts analysed (e.g. “family atmosphere”) to create a category using the words of participants. For ease of discussion, the first order concepts were clustered under more prosaic topic headings or themes, numbered from 1-5 below. 1. Agency working culture 2. Client relationships 3. Journalist relationships 4. PR selves 5. Gender and relationships

4. Research Quality and Ethical Considerations in the Study

In qualitative research, positivist notions of validity and reliability are exchanged for interpretive concerns with validity or ‘authenticity’ of accounts or descriptions of a phenomenon; and reliability or ‘trustworthiness’ of the research process. Creswell (2007) recommends that two out of a possible eight validation strategies should be used for establishing ‘accuracy’. Two validation or authenticity strategies were employed for this study: member checking and clarifying researcher bias.

4.1. Authenticity: Member Checking ‘Authenticity’, becomes an ethical issue, especially in feminist research, which seeks to equalise the balance of power between the researcher and the participant. For this reason alone, it is important that participants are able to share, comment on and negotiate the researcher’s explanation of a phenomenon to enable an authentic picture to emerge. This process is known as ‘member checking’ which Lincoln and Guba (1985, p. 314) regard as “the most critical technique for establishing credibility”. Within this study, full, verbatim transcripts from the first interview were sent to each participant, together with a list of themes for further exploration in the second interview. Only Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 43

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two participants (Participants 3 and 6) read the transcript. Participant 3 declared that the themes I had picked out from her interview transcript were “true” from her own reading. Par- ticipant 6 did not comment on the themes I had picked out for further questioning, although did reveal surprise at his own, halting conversational style. Other participants declared they did not have the time to read the transcripts. Descriptions of themes or ‘first order constructs’ (Aspers, 2009) of the intersubjective (shared) understandings of managing professional relationships in PR were then sent back to interviewees for further checking. This second process is the most critical, since, at this point, participants can reflect on the accuracy of the account and choose to challenge it if, for them, it does not portray an accurate picture. Participant responses to first-order constructs as ‘a description of practice’. A 2,500 word ‘description of practice’ document, which was itself a product of ‘typifications’ as ‘first-order constructs’ was mailed in hard copy to five out of the six participants in this study, together with a return envelope. (The sixth participant could not be traced.) The ‘description of practice’ described how practitioners typically handled professional relationships. Three out of the five participants responded by email with brief, supportive comments agreeing with the description as being an accurate picture of agency life. One commented that in hindsight he would stress that agency culture and processes played an important role in shaping how relationships were managed, including whether clients were ‘challenged’ or not. A fourth participant returned the hard copy of the document with hand-written annota- tions that indicated her drive to emphasise specific aspects of the job. One annotation de-em- phasised the description of the activities involved in ‘building rapport’ (i.e. getting to know and socialising with the client), placing greater emphasis on adopting the mental attitude of ‘empathising with the client’ – an approach which may be regarded as an aspect of PR consultants’ emotional labour. A second annotation corrected one statement to assert that agency directors also expected female, not just male practitioners to ‘challenge’ clients. This point about challenging clients was interesting because it touched on sensibilities concerning the notion of ‘profes- sionalism’ and offering what is termed PR counsel or advice to the client – as well as who is offering it. This, in turn, raises issues about the gendered notion of providing PR as a service that complies with clients’ demands, or the more assertive notion of a profession where there is an expectation of challenge, as well as more subtle variations of these two opposing ideas or images. The perceptions of consumer public relations as ‘fluffy’ in the ‘description of practice’ prompted an irritated response from this participant, even though the perceptions had arisen directly from practitioners engaged in this type of PR (as opposed to perceptions from outside the public relations industry).

4.2. Authenticity in the Researcher’s Own Voice: Acknowledging Position and Bias A further validity issue and ethical consideration is authenticity in the researcher’s own voice. As Gergen and Gergen explain, self-exposure through autoethnography (Ellis & Bochn- er, 1996) creates challenges in the reflexive act: the reader is asked to accept this as a “con- scientious effort to ‘tell the truth’ about the making of the account” (Gergen & Gergen, 2000, p. 1028). Both Adkins (2002) and Skeggs (2002) warn against the dangers of the qualitative researcher rendering her participants and the field as ‘fixed’, while researchers may themselves be deemed (by their peers) as ‘fixed’ or unreflexive. In discussing scholarship concerning the Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 44

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reflexive position of the researcher, Adkins (2002) infers that there may be an “ideal self of late modernity” that is found in a “vision of the self with a mobile relation to identity” (p. 346). Such ‘mobility’ implies that the researcher is able to overcome aspects of self-identity such as age and sex. The politics of reflexivity is visible, as Skeggs (2002, p. 365) suggests, when reflexivity becomes the tool of “experimental individualism” whereby race, gender, class etc. are used as resources that can be both ‘attached’ and ‘detached’ by the “resourceful self”. At worst, in the quest for ‘authority’ in research practice, research participants may be used as resources for “self-formation and self-promotion” (p. 369). As a counter to this, Skeggs (2002, p. 369) calls for “accountability and responsibility”, and in particular, to the research participants themselves. Within my reflexive account, I was conscious of my part in the co-created nature of the interviews, including biases or prejudices. I did this through acknowledging my position as researcher and academic; as a woman in relation to other women and men in the study; as someone from an older generation as my participants; as a possible future contact or colleague in the professional sphere of PR; and as someone who was aware of the presence of ‘others’ who might judge me occupying both the academic and professional spheres. Klein- man (2002), citing her own research practice in the sociology of emotions, argues that Hochschild (1983) legitimised emotions in social research. Such ‘legitimisation’ has enabled researchers to reflexively access their feelings and attitudes throughout the research process to inform greater understanding of themselves and others. Throughout the research journey I discussed my feelings to enable me to reflect on and analyse the positions outlined above as well as reflect on my self-identity in the process of co-creation. To assess the quality of a phenomenological study, Creswell (2007) lists several questions that might be used in evaluation. These are concerned with: demonstration of the author’s understanding of the philosophical tenets of phenomenology; whether there is a clearly articulated phenomenon to study; whether the author uses recommended data analysis procedures for phenomenology; whether the overall essence of experience of the participants is conveyed (including the context in which it occurred); and whether the author is reflexive throughout the study. These questions were addressed in the study.

4.3. Reliability or ‘Trustworthiness’ in the Research Process Reliability relates to faithful transcriptions of interview recordings, including “the trivial, but often crucial, pauses and overlaps” (Creswell, 2007, p. 209) and the use of multiple coders (using a codebook) to analyse transcript data to arrive at mutually-agreed codes which can then be collapsed into broader themes which are also subject to mutual agreement. While verbatim transcripts, including pauses and participants’ hesitations and ‘re-edits’ were achieved in this study, I had to rely on my own coding, interpretation and thematic development as sole author. In such circumstances, there needs to be a demonstrable ‘audit trail’ so that any internal and external assessor is able to view the data analysis process. This process is perhaps more “transparent and accountable” (Fielding, 2002, p. 162) using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) software such as NVivo than using a manual approach. For reasons of space, the full set of tables showing the coding and ‘first order’ categories and themes are not included here. However, the table presented at Appendix C shows 40 ‘first order’ categories or concepts (narrowed from 117) which are organised under three ‘second order’ themes to guide analysis and discussion. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 45

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4.4. Participants’ Consent, Confidentiality and Anonymity Ethical considerations of gaining participants’ informed consent, while providing assurances of confidentiality and anonymity were part of the research process. At the beginning, a letter inviting participation outlined the central research focus (i.e. ‘managing professional relationships in a PR consultancy’), the research process and possible implications/benefits of research findings (i.e. implications for PR education). The letter also provided assurances of confidentiality and anonymity. Similar assurances were provided in a consent form and this provided the opportunity for participants to withdraw from the research process.

5. Conclusions and Limitations

The research project described and critically discussed in this paper is a small-scale, in- depth qualitative study which examined the lifeworld of six PR consultants working in the northern region of England. As such, the study cannot make claims beyond these boundaries except in relation to existing theory, which in this study drew on literature in emotional labour, gender studies and public relations. It is not difficult to imagine that a similar study conducted in a large agency in a major capital city may well reveal subtly different meaning structures among PR consultants, which may in turn suggest a different emphasis in the emotional labour performed within the job – for example, identity work could be revealed as much more important within a highly competitive milieu. The researcher’s own influence, including their ‘stocks of knowledge’ (Schütz, 1970; 1978) will also have a bearing on the co-creation process and result. In terms of the research theory and methods adopted, the social phenomenological approach is relatively flexible and could well include a greater variety of methods, including focus groups, or observation, to triangulate sources of data, another one of Creswell’s (2007) validity strategies. However, such possibilities for a similar type of inquiry should not invalidate the research design outlined in this paper which is deemed appropriate for an exploratory study. My use of an iterative or cyclical process of interviewing and analysis over a period of time between researcher and participant in the co-creation of meaning is a compelling feature of the social phenomenological approach developed in this study.

References

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Appendix A: Interview Schedule for Long Interview ‘Managing Professional Relationships in Public Relations’

1. Your background Q. Tell me more about your background before you started work. [Education/family] 2. Career history Q. Describe your career path and how you came to do the job you are doing. 3. Motivation for working in PR consultancy Q. What drew you to public relations consultancy work? 4. Your workplace and colleagues Q. What words would you use to describe the company you work for in terms of its culture and management style? SQ. Can you give me an example of that? Q. Describe the typical interactions you have with your line manager/team/colleagues SQ. When do you know that you have done a good job as far as your manager is concerned? Why? Give me an example. SQ. When do you know that you could have done a better job as far as your manager is concerned? Why? Give me an example. SQ. How do you respond to your manager if there is a problem? Q. How do you respond to your team members if there is a problem? SQ. How does that make you feel? Q. When does being a woman/man influence the way in which you interact with your manager/team leader? SQ Do you think you interact differently than any of your colleagues? 5. Clients Q. How would you characterize the clients you work with? Q. Tell me about the kind of services you provide to your clients. Q. Describe the typical interactions you have with your clients. Q. Give me an example of a good client/difficult client? SQ How do you deal with your (“good”/”difficult”) clients? SQ. How do you feel when a (difficult) client asks you to do that? SQ. How do you feel when a (good) client asks you to do that? SQ. What goes through your mind when a client doesn’t like/likes the service you provide? SQ. How do you handle the client if there is a problem? SQ. How does that make you feel? Q. When does being a woman/man influence the way in which you interact with clients? SQ. Can you give me an example of that? 6. Journalists Q. How would you characterize the journalists you deal with? Q. Tell me about the types of interaction you have with journalists Q. Tell me how you deal with (“friendly”/”difficult”) journalists? S.Q. How do you feel when (difficult) journalist talks to you like that? S.Q. How do you feel when (friendly) journalist talks to you like that? Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 50

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SQ. What goes through your mind when a journalist doesn’t like the service/response you provide? SQ. How do you handle the journalist if there is a problem? SQ. How does that make you feel? Q. When does being woman/man influence the way in which you interact with journalists? 7. Being professional Q. What does it mean to you to be professional in public relations? SQ. Tell me more about how you view this [relationship management role of the PR consultant?] Q. What do you like about your job? Q. What do you dislike about your job? SQ. How do you handle what you dislike? Q. How far does working in consultancy allow you to be ‘yourself’? SQ. When do you feel you can most express ‘yourself’? SQ. Do you think this is true for your colleagues? 8. Finally, can you think of situation where you have consciously changed your feelings or attitude towards a client, a journalist or a colleague in order to maintain a good relationship? Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 51

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Appendix B: Developing second-order themes from first-order concepts

First order concepts Second-order themes

Competitive environment “Family atmosphere” Open plan office Agency bosses’ management style Typical account handling structure Traditional PR vs social media Client business sectors 1. Negotiating understandings of PR within the Client demands PR agency office environment Good client relationship Client preference for a man or a woman Journalist demands Good journalist relationship Gender not important to journalists Image of PR industry Women’s perceptions of men in agencies

Managing as a male Family background Educational background Career progress Agency motivation Training and mentoring 2. What it means to be a PR agency What to wear in the office professional Work and personal life Being a manager Being the “middle man” Being yourself “Different personalities” Being professional

“Adapting yourself” Bringing in new business “Brainstorming” Empathising with the client “Managing clients’ expectations” Colleague relationships 3. Performance and emotions in PR agency Managing bosses and “managing upwards” interactions Managing juniors – keeping it professional Selling in and pitching to journalists Enjoyment and taking pride in agency work Embarrassment, shame and hurt pride Disappointment, frustration and anger with clients and journalists

* The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is the oldest member organisation for public relations practitioners in the UK. It was founded in 1948 as the Institute of Public Relations and received a Roy- al Charter in 2005 in recognition of its leading role as a professional body. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 52 Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 53

Valeriu Frunzaru*

Workplace health and safety committees in Romania. The gap between law and reality**

Abstract

In order to increase the workplace health and safety, the EU Directive 89/391/CEE and the Romanian law 319 of 2006 introduced the principle of the balanced participation of the employer and employees in health and safety committees. The findings of the in-depth interviews with members of two committees and employees from two Romanian companies show that the workplace health and safety committees with balanced participation of the employers and employees are organizations that do not respect the letter and the spirit of the EU and the Romanian laws. Moreover, workplace health and safety committees do not fit well with the employees and employers’ attitudes, values and knowledge. Thus, based on research findings, some recommendations can be developed so that these committees function according to regulations. Keywords: workplace health and safety committee; balance participation; in-depth interview.

1. Introduction

Workplace health and safety committees (WHSC) correspond to the EU policies on the awareness and improving the social dialogue on health and safety at work. This issue is one of the most important areas that EU policies address in the field of social protection which concern employment, as well. In this regard, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has as main objective to make common labour market safer, healthier and more productive. This agency is concerned about raising the awareness on the importance of worker’s health and safety at work, about developing a culture of prevention and improving the partnership between employees, employers, governments and EU bodies. These three major goals correspond to the EU Directive 89/391/CEE on the introduction of measures to encourage im- provements in the safety and health of workers at work. This directive “contains general principles concerning the prevention of occupational risks, the protection of safety and health, the elimination of risk and accident factors, the informing, consultation, balanced participation in accordance with national laws and/or practices and training of workers and their representatives, as well as general guidelines for the implementation of the said principles” (Art. 1). As a member state, Romania should respect the acquis communeautaire and the rules regard-

* National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected]. ** This paper is based on a research conducted within the project “Strengthening the organisation and operational capacity of workplace health and safety committees in Romania”, financed by Norway Govern- ment. Partners: Norway Union Confederation, Democratically Romanian Trade Union Confederation, CNS Cartel Alfa, CNSRL Frãþia. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 54

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ing health and safety at work, as well. In order to fully transpose the acquis communeautaire in the area of workplace health and safety, in 2006, one year before Romania’s accession to the European Union, law 319 of July 4th 2006 on workplace health and safety was passed. Also in 2006, law 307 on fire prevention was passed together with a series of Government Decisions on the employee’s workplace health and safety against specific hazards. Maybe the most important novelty brought by law 319 of 2006 is that it introduces the principle of the balanced participation of the employer and employees in the workplace health and safety-related issues. Actually, article 18 in the law reiterates almost word by word article 11 in the 89/391/CEE directive, which states that employers shall consult workers and / or their representatives regarding safety and health at work. The balanced participation is realized through the WHSC that is an institution with equal numbers of employers and employees’ representatives. The members of the WHSC should have a minimum level of training in work safety, that is, they should have graduated at least a science high-school or a technical high-school and a 40-hour training course on workplace health and safety. Therefore, if within the company there are no workers with this kind of training, then, the WHSC cannot exist, even if, according to the law, the presence of this institution is compulsory for companies with more than 50 employees. The WHSC gathers at least quarterly, and the time dedicated to its activity is clearly specified and is considered as working hours. The WHSC responsibilities are mainly consulting and monitoring, as it does not have decision power. Thus, according to article 67 of the en- forcement norms of law 319/2006, the WHSC “analyses”, “follows”, “proposes”, “debates”, or “performs checks”. The WHSC is a place where the representatives of employees and employers meet and discuss the balance participation issues regarding health and safety at work. Therefore, the WHSC is active and efficient if there is a high level of awareness among employees and employers regarding health and safety at work, employees are active in order to elect their representatives in the committee, and if employers respect the employees’ rights to be trained and to participate in the committee activities during the working hours. The WHSC is not a completely new institution in Romania. The history of WHSC starts during the communist regime, with the “safety technical commissions”. But, if in the communist regime, the safety technical commissions were rather focused on identifying technical solutions to solve safety-related issues, in the law 319/2006, the focus moves onto social dialogue between employers and employees in order to assess the situation and propose solutions to the existing workplace health and safety issues. The involvement of unions in the activity of workplace health and safety committees has decreased in time. The safety technical commission in communism was supposedly supported by the union. Also, it was made up of delegations of mass and popular organizations in the company. The rules of the application of the law 319/2006 solely mention the employees’ representatives without referring to unions. Does this change of perspective, based on the acquis communeautaire, have an impact in the real world? If we consider Eurostat data, Romania is still one of the EU member states with high level of deadly work accidents and severe work accidents per 100000 employees (Eurostat, 2006). The activity of the WHSC should diminish the number of psychically and physically affected employees within the job. Therefore it is very important to know how the WHSC operates in order to offer solutions to improve its activity. Another question that needs to be answered is what the role of the unions regarding health and safety issues should be. Therefore the paper focuses on the communication between employees, committee and union. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 55

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2. Employee participation, trade unions and the committees

Balance participation in the WHSC means that workers’ and employers’ representatives, in equal number, analyse and propose solution regarding workplace health and security issues. The WHSC is a democratically elected body place where employees’ representatives discuss with the employer’s representatives any suitable topic from small issues, like the necessity of using crash-helmet, to the big issues, such as long time strategy of the company that has a health and safety dimension. Therefore, the employees may be consulted or they can participate in the decision process, either in what regards minor issues or even in discussing major issues. Carole Pateman (1970), analyzing the relationship between democracy and participation, considers that we can find “full”, “partial” or “pseudo” participation, and there is a “depth” and a “width” of this kind of involvement. The intensity of participation of the workforce in decision at all levels of organization is underlined also by Mick Marchington (2005), who talks about “degree”, “scope” and “level” of participation. A qualitative distinction regarding the role of the employee in the company decision is stressed by Hyman and Mason (1995) that make a distinction between employee participation and employee involvement. The first concept refers to “state initiatives which promote the collective rights of employees to be represented in organizational decision-making, or to the consequence of the efforts of employees themselves to establish collective representation in corporate decisions, possibly in the face of the employer resistance” (Hyman & Mason, 1995, p. 21). If employee participation supposes an in- consistent interest between employees and employers, employee involvement refers to practices and policies that emanate from management that provide employees with the opportunity to influence the decision-making on matters that affect them. Therefore, in the Hyman and Ma- son (1995) point of view, the difference between these two concepts consists in the quality and the quantity of the relationship between employers and employees. The industrial relationship has been subject to change in the last decades, therefore we can talk about a transformation of the employee participation:

“Where participation used to be based on the mutual recognition of a social compromise between two parties with different interests, it has evolved into a participation based on the mutual recognition of the company’s needs and aims. Participation is thus no longer constructed as a means for promoting individual or collective wage earners’ interests, but as a contribution to the success of the company and of the individual on the premises of the company” (Busck et. al., 2010, p. 286).

Thus we can say that employee participation is when the employer yields the power of decision, voluntary or obliged by law, to employees or their representatives. The employee influence could be direct, when individual, groups or general meetings take part in decisions, or indirect by (elected) representatives such as WHSC’ members. Accord- ing to the Romanian law 319/2006, employees’ representatives in the WHSC are elected for two years by employees among the employees’ representatives with specific workplace health and safety responsibilities, namely the employees that have minimum training in the health and safety issues. Taking into consideration the acquis communeautaire, the Romanian laws, the literature regarding employees’ participation, the first research question of this paper is: Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 56

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RQ1. How do employees participate in the WHSC? Except for trade union movements, there is no tradition in Romania of workplace democracy. Thus, one can expect to find a blurry distinction between trade union role in workplace health and safety and employees representatives in the WHSC. As I mentioned, before the law 319/2006, union members were forced by law to be part of the WHSC. Thus a WHSC cannot have any the workers’ representative who is a union member. The role of the unions has changed in the last decades. Researchers stress the fact that we are witnessing the reassessment of the traditional industrial action (Bogg, 2012), which can take place by the decentralization of collective bargaining (Ilsøe, 2012), a process whose broader impact is the change of the welfare state (Trampusch, 2010). The modification in occupational structure and the social composition of the labour force across the world in the last decades has caused difficulty for unions to recruit workers (Watson, 2008, p. 293). More- over, as Michael Barry and Adrian Wilkinson (2011) stress, the employers’ desire for more decentralized and deregulated systems of industrial relations, influenced both the ideologies and the laws. Therefore, in the last years, unions and the employers’ associations “became unfashionable as neo-liberal inspired rhetoric came to dominate public policy debates surrounding industrial relations in the 1980s, and as employers sought a range of «flexibilities» as they confronted uncertain and more competitive economic conditions” (Barry & Wilkinson, 2011, p. 155). Chris Howell (2012) has a similar perspective that mentions that nowadays states are becoming more interventionist in restructuring the labour market in the interests of a post- Fordist flexibility. Beyond occupational structure, social composition of the labour force and the ideologies change, the globalisation and the harsh economical competition create huge pressures on the labour market, because capital can move to another country with a lower-priced labour force. Beyond bigger salaries, high standards regarding workplace health and security issues raise the cost of the labour force. Within the EU, this kind of social dumping is tackled by the acquis communeautaire that meets the problem only within the community, member states being in the position to deal with the competition with the cheaper labour force from export-oriented East-Asian economies. In the last years, the economic crisis has put a higher pressure on labour force and trade unions have been threatened by the spectre of unem- ployment and plants moving to other countries. Beyond the challenges that unions face, the findings of a survey realised in UK show that “where trade unions have an input into health and safety committees and where there are representatives are to be preferred to those where there is no such trade union input or no representatives” (Nichols et al., 2007, p. 211). Similar results were obtained in a research realized by Andrew M. Robinson and Clive Smallman (2013) who emphasize that the WHSCs will become more effective when the union membership is stronger. Employee participation is associated with lower levels of injuries, and the level of participation positively correlates with the extent of trade union membership in the workplace. The present Romanian laws do not mention any role of the trade unions in the WHSC, but there is not any incompatibility in being a committee member and a union member. The balanced participation of the employees’ representations and the employers’ representation within the WHSC is a new way of social dialogue that corresponds to a new kind of employee participation. This participation corresponds to a democratic workplace where the union from the legal point of view does not have a role to play. Taking into consideration the weak- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 57

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ening of the trade unions and the positive relationship between trade union implication and the decreasing in the number of work injuries we arrive at a second RQ: RQ2: What is the role of the union in the committee? The answers to the research questions will be used to offer solutions for the committees to operate better. The employee participation will be analyzed taking into consideration the communication between employees, employees’ representatives in the WHSC, employer’s representative in the WHSC, and trade union.

3. Methodology

In order to assess the activity of WHSC so as to offer solutions to improve their activity, I carried out two case studies on two Romanian companies operating in petro chemistry. In order to reach this goal, I conducted in-depth interviews with the members of the two WH- SC (both employees’ and employers’ representatives), with employees who are not members of these committees and a top manager of one of the companies, hereunder called company A, an interview which was not recorded at his request. I did not succeed in having an interview with a management representative of company B, as an important event for the company took place, during the time I have conducted the interviews. Company A is one of the largest Romanian producers of agriculture fertilizers. It was established in 1969, and after the fall of the communist regime a period of ups and downs followed. It was privatized in 1995 and closed down in two periods: September 1997 – June 1999 and November 2006 – September 2008. During communism, the company employed 2500 – 2700 people, and currently less than 800 people are employed. For the nearby town whose population is approximately 50 000 the company is an important source of jobs. Company B is one of the largest companies in south-east Europe specializing in crude oil, liquid oil and petrochemical products handling for import/export and transit. Company B has a long history, operating since 1898 under various names. The company employs more than 1300 people and is situated in one of the largest cities in Romania. It was difficult to find companies that accept that their WHSCs should be evaluated. In this endeavour I was helped by Romanian trade unions involved in the research project (see the endnote). The two companies from the study are similar from the point of view of size (both are large companies), history (both with a long history, one even older than 100 years) and high risks for the employees and environment (an explosion may destroy the city they operate in). An important difference is that one is a private stock-based company, whilst the other one is state-owned. As I mentioned, the goals of the interviews with representatives of the two companies were to assess the effectiveness of the WHSC, focusing on the communication between committee members, employees, union, and employer. The ultimate goal is to offer solutions for strengthening the organizational and operational capacity of WHSCs. Each quotation will be accompanied by the subject’s general data: the company he/she works for and his/her role in the company (employee, committee member on behalf of the employees or the employer, committee secretary). If the quotation includes the opinion of the interviewer, he will be expressed as VF and the interviewee as S. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 58

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Except for the management representative of Company A, there were no refusals that interviews should be recorded on a tape-recorder. There were moments when some interviewees stated “I’ve already said too much” or “I can’t say”, but they occurred whenever the dialogue was rather open, critical, without trying to smooth reality, as it happened mainly during the interviews with the secretaries of workplace health and safety committees.

4. Findings

WHSCs need to carry out their activity, in the context of the evolution of workplace health and safety, changes in the law, the difficulty to survive in the economic area (especially for company A), the decrease of living standards and the lack of jobs. As it results from the interviews conducted in both companies, WHSCs exist at formal level, but only in company B does the committee act close to the spirit and letter of the law. Some employees’ representatives in the WHSC of the Company A, asked about how they perceived the activity of the committee, answered ‘from the book’ using clichés:

“I find the activity good. It is welcome. Positive” (Company A, employees’ representative in the WHSC no 1).

However, when asked about what he does when he has any proposal regarding important changes in the company with effects on safety, the same WHSC member states that he does not use the committee, but addresses the management directly:

“S: Yes. In this case, I write a report and submit it to the management. And action is taken as regards workplace health and safety. V.F.: But have you met in the committee recently? S: Yes, we have. But it was not anything special, it was a discussion to the point” (Company A, employees’ representative in the WHSC no 1).

As it results from the previous quotation, the interviewee has a desirable answer as regards the WHSC meetings, which, according to the law, should take place on a quarterly basis, at least. But since he does not have the answer to a possible question related to the committee meetings, he adds that it was rather a vague discussion, not focused on a clear point. Actual- ly, in company A no meeting took place exclusively on topics related to the activity of the WHSC. The reason is the committee members are very busy and it is difficult for all of them to attend the quarterly meetings:

“It is very difficult to gather the people. You saw that today. Each has a responsibility in an area and it is very difficult… we can never gather them all.” (Company A, secretary in the WHSC).

The WHSC is legally gathered if half plus one are present and decides with at least two thirds of the present members. Therefore, the issue is not that of the all members attending, but their majority. Moreover, the WHSC was supposed to operate before the publication of law 319 of 2006. The application norms of this law did nothing but clarify specific aspects in the activity of Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 59

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the committee, as specified in the General safety norms associated to law 90 of 1996. Asked when the WHSC had been set-up, the secretary of the committee in Company A stated that this happened after the appearance of law 319 of 2006. Finally, we can say that there is a difference as regards the way WHSCs operate in the two companies. In contrast with company A, in company B, the WHSC exists not only formally, because the law requires the establishment of such an institution, but it is active, the committee members debate issues related to workplace health and safety in the meetings they hold on a quarterly basis. A common element of the two companies is the fact that some of the employees are not aware of the committee, let alone their rights and duties to get involved by assessing and making proposals for the improvement of the workplace health and safety status. Most employees interviewed did not know about the WHSC. In order to find out how many know of this committee, a survey should be carried out. Three conclusions regarding the communication between the employees and the committee resulted from the discussion we had with the interviewees in the two companies. Accord- ing to the interviews carried out with people in company A, employees should not come up with complaints or proposals to the committee or the company management as they are not to skip hierarchical steps. Secondly, the employees do not have the knowledge required to make proposals aiming at the installation performance. Finally, the employees’ requests are perceived by some interviewees as not associated with proposals of solutions and/or assumption of responsibility. An employer’s representative in the WHSC of company A considers that the role of the committee is to mediate the relationship between the employees and the company management. The employees’ requests may only refer to work conditions or hygiene materials and not technological aspects, and the hierarchy must be respected “army-style”:

“We, too, have some competence levels. An employee cannot just say this is done like that, because he doesn’t know. He says what he needs at his level. So you take it in steps. From the level of the technical manager who knows it. Well, you need to do this and that. Or he claims, fights for money to refurbish something worth millions of dollars or Euros. But at shop-floor level, there are issues that may very well be solved not necessarily by the manager, [but] by the shift leader, the line manager, the supervisor like me, and then the technical manager. This is our hierarchy – Army-style.” (Company A, employees’ representative in the WHSC no 2).

It is natural for some issues requiring fast remediation to be solved at the level of line managers. Solving numerous issues cannot be postponed until the quarterly meeting of the workplace health and safety committee. Such delay could lead to accidents or the interrup- tion of the company activity. But one of the WHSC’s duties is to analyze requests formulat- ed by employees as regards working conditions and the way in which appointed people and / or the outsourced service carry out their duties. Also, the WHSC analyses the employees’ proposals regarding the prevention of work accidents and occupational illnesses. The employees, regardless of the position in the hierarchy, are entitled to make proposals to improve the workplace health and safety state. Subsequently, the issue is not limited to finding solutions to technical and / or safety problems, but to the employees and management’s attitudes towards common accountability and social dialogue on workplace health and safety between the two parties. The employees’ demands are associated with those of the union, which, according to a manager and the committee secretary of company A does nothing but request rights, and do Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 60

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not develop solutions or assume responsibility for specific decisions. The interviewee in the management of company A (without being tape recorded) associated workplace health and safety committee with something old and with unions’ demands. The workplace health and safety committee should not be associated with a no-stake game, in which the employees and their representatives demand and the employers answer their demands. As an employee in company A stated about the open attitude of the management: “I think they, too, want to receive good ideas, so as not to have headaches. Eventually, they may not like having such deficiencies.” Related to the employees’ demands, the committee secretary of company A replies iron- ically:

“S: Let them use the same structure like the one in the union. When it is about the union, they only have rights and no responsibilities. V.F.: But the committee is something which belongs both to the employer and employees. S: Yes. And then they show up very quickly. Whenever you ask their opinion, if it’s good, it’s good, if not, they run away from responsibilities.” (Company A, secretary in the WHSC).

Even though questioned about the communication between employees and the WHSC, an employees’ representative in company B answers by referring to communication in the hierarchical structure of the company.

“At least from my point of view, communication is excellent between the employees and the plant management and between the plant management and the company management. Whenever we had the opportunity and some managers had the time, we were never turned down regardless of who was managing the company.” (Company B, employees’ representative in the WHSC no 1).

It is difficult to refer to such communication type when many employees have not yet heard of this institution. Under these circumstances, the employees’ proposals addressed to their line manager are related only to their tools or the soap quality. As for how communication between the employees and committee could be improved, an employees’ representative in the WHSC of company B underlines the need to invite some union representatives to the committee meetings, which would increase the number of opinions or information referring to workplace health and safety. In comparison to involving the employees’ representative in the WHSC who, generally, has a management position, involving the main union leaders has the advantage that they are accessible: on the one hand, there is no refrain when one expresses his/her demand or com- plaint to the superior, and on the other hand, they have more time to deal with such issues:

“Shall I go to the boss!? Maybe he is busy, maybe he is upset, phones ring, problems… And the boss forgets. The numerous duties and responsibilities a boss has in a company like B with a very complex activity… there is this chance to forget.” (Company B, employees’ representative in the WHSC no 2).

To conclude, I would like to underline that not only the employer or his representative needs to be open to social dialogue and treat issues in a culture of responsibility and prevention, but also, the employee needs to assume these rights and duties. The active and responsible attitude of employees is a sine qua non condition in this respect. Regarding the union involvement in the WHSC, on the one hand, the employees highlight- ed the fact that whenever there was an issue related to workplace health and safety, they ad- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 61

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dress the union representatives, who, in turn presents the issues to supervisors or to the management directly. On the other hand, there is a debate within the companies if the union members should be members of the WHSCs. Following the interview performed with the WHSC secretary in company A, the outcome was that there are dilemmas referring to the relationship between the union and committee, including at the level of the Labour Inspectorate. The same dilemma is experienced by an employer’s representative in the WHSC of company A who is a union member and did not wish to be part of the committee (!). In company B the situation is the opposite. The WHSC secretary considers that the committee should not include union members as they do not meet the specific responsibilities of the WHSC members (for example, they would not show up at meetings and they had to be rescheduled):

“S: We had a union leader a few years ago, but I, for one, did not like the way he got involved. They were too busy doing something else. VF: Why? S: I don’t know, I was under the impression that they did not support me in my workplace health and safety activity. The employees’ representatives have always supported me.” (Company B, secretary in the WHSC).

Beyond the importance of the WHSC secretariat in selecting employees’ representatives in the committee (“we wanted him to be a representative”), one can notice her dissatisfaction for the presence of union representatives in the committee. Union members are employees’ representatives, as they are elected by the employees to represent their interests. Therefore, their presence in the WHSC would be legitimate, if there are no other ways to select employees’ representatives with specific workplace health and safety responsibilities, respectively the employees’ representatives in the WHSC. However, we must make a distinction between the role played by the union, which is an employees’ institution, and the WHSC, which is a form of social partnership between the employees and employer. We could say that as far as workplace health and safety are concerned, the two institutions may compete. The employees’ representatives in the committee (either union members or not) may obtain specific rights in their dialogue with the employer and / or the employer’s representatives, rights which can be obtained through union pressure, as well. If the employees’ representatives in the WHSC are only union members, then the committee is a place where the union meets the company management. This problem is even more sensitive as the employees do not use the WHSC, but the union even for solving workplace health and safety-related issues. A member of the committee in company A presents how employees’ demands are communicated in the company:

“He [the employee] goes to the union member, complains, the union member addresses me or the plant manager… Of course the union member complains to me and I start telling them [the management] we need this and that. At management level: «Ok, there is no money, wait a bit, I don’t-know-what» And there is a fight. That man cannot work there. In this case, I take the employee’s side, you know.” (Company A, employers’ representative in the WHSC no 1).

Therefore we can conclude that unions do not have a clear status in their relationship with the WHSC. Legally, union members can be members of the WHSC, as well; therefore a committee cannot have any representative of the union. But the findings show that unions enjoy notoriety and trust, and employees go to the union to complain or to make proposals regard- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 62

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ing the workplace health and safety issues. Therefore in our recommendations we have to consider both the law and the social reality.

5. Discussions

The issue of the efficient activity of the WHSC is situated in the broader framework of the transition of Romanian institutions from the fall of the communist regime to the EU accession. Romanian sociologists have shown particular interest in the radical social changes in this period, focusing, on the one hand, on the external and internal factors which determined these changes and, on the other hand, on the gaps between the new institutions and the Ro- manian cultural background. This duality between shape and substance, between western values and institutions either borrowed or imposed from the exterior and the Romanian cultural background led to changes that Constanin Schifirneþ included in tendential modernity. As it results from the name, Romanian modernity is perceived as “a trend, an ideal to reach in the affirmation of their nation”, “which coexists with social structures, institutional forms and the old background” (Schifirneþ, 2007, p. 205). The Romanian WHSCs are institutions operating (or which should operate) as a consequence of the EU acquis. Having researched the existence and efficiency of these WHSCs we can draw the conclusion that de jure the committees exist in both companies, but de fac- to neither the spirit, nor the letter of the law is respected. The communication with the employees has set-backs. There is no organized, formal manner to take-over proposals and inform employees on the decisions the WHSC makes. The members of the WHSC do not meet in their capacity as members of the committee, but rather as simple employees of the company. In some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between the status of employees’ representative in the WHSC and the status of employee in a management position (as are all the WHSC members in the two analyzed institutions). Moreover, employees’ representatives in the WHSC were not elected by the employees, as the law stipulates, but they were nominated by the secretary of the WHSC. We notice that, as far as the activity of the WHSC is concerned, Romania would likely be situated in the world of neglect, as described by Gerda Falkner et al. (2005). These authors give the example of Greece and Portugal which are countries that neglect EU requests as they are late in adopting and implementing European laws. In the case of the southern EU states, the logic of adapting to the EU requirements is not that of cultural correspondence, as happens in northern countries, or following political interest like in Germany, but interests inside the government. These countries are late to adopt European laws and the adoption is “pro forma” (Gerda Falkner et al., 2005, p. 322). Similarly, according to Frank Schimmelfen- nig and Ulirch Sedelmeier (2005, pp. 224-225), Europeanization within new member states in central and east Europe resided rather in the formal, legal and institutional adoption of EU rules than in the implementation thereof. The approach was not constructive from the institutional point of view and did not lay emphasis on identifying with or corresponding to Eu- ropean values. In order to improve committee activity, employees and employers should be informed regarding the importance and functioning of the WHSCs. They have to be aware of the fact that balanced participation in the WHSCs is useful for workers’ safety and security and for prof- itability of the company, as well. Moreover, it is necessary to clarify the status of the employ- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 63

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ees’ representatives in the WHSC which is confused with that of the employee in a management position or the trade union member. These recommendations are for all types of companies, regardless of the organization culture or the profit they make. Ragnvald Kalleberg (1993, p. 20) speaks of a change in the management culture, from one in which decisions are made at top level to one in which the decision-making process is decentralized. This type of organization culture is a more democratic one, based on horizontal relations, where employees do not say as one of our interviewees: “This is our hierarchy – Army-style”. And the employer perceives social partnership to improve the state of workplace health and safety as a source of earning. Is this desired change possible? Can we improve the activity of the WHSC so that this institution should become a democratic space of the partnership between employers and employees? I consider that this is possible, but the issue is to what extent and how long will take for this wish to become reality. Robert Putnam et al. (1993/2001), after analysing the influence of the negative cultural determinism on the development of southern Italy, states that: “institutional history moves very slowly. As for setting-up institutions (not just the mere draft- ing of necessary laws), time is measured in decades” (Putnam et al. 1993/2001, p. 207). This research has its limits as it focuses only on two large companies. Therefore future work in which more companies are studied will add to the analysis of the activity of the WHSCs, especially investigations on small and medium-size companies. The qualitative research can be accompanied by a survey to investigate the employees’ attitudes and values regarding the health and safety in work and balance participation in WHSC.

References

1. Barry, M. & Wilkinson, A. (2011). Reconceptualising Employer Associations under Evolving Employ- ment Relations: Countervailing Power Revisited. Work, Employment and Society, 25, 149–162. 2. Bogg, A. L. (2012). The death of statutory union recognition in the United Kingdom. Journal of Indus- trial Relations, 54, 409–425. 3. Busck, O., Knudsen, H., & Lind, J. (2010). The Transformation of Employee Participation: Consequences for the Work Environment. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 31(3), 285-305. 4. Eurostat. (2006). Indicators on health and safety at work. Retrieved November 12, 2013 from http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=hsw_ind&lang=en. 5. Falkner, G., Treib, O., Hartlapp, M., & Leiber, S. (2005). Complying with Europe. EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. Howell, C. (2012). The Changing Relationship Between Labor and the State in Contemporary Capital- ism. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 12, 1–11. 7. Hyman, J. & Mason, B. (1995). Managing Employee Involvement and Participation. London: Sage Pub- lications. 8. Ilsøe, A. (2012). Signs of Segmentation? A Flexicurity Perspective on Decentralized Collective Bargain- ing in Denmark. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 33, 245–265. 9. Kalleberg, R. (1993). Implementing Work-environment Reforms in Norway. The Interplay between Lead- ership Labour and Low. Olso University, Sociology Department. Report no. 29. 10. Marchington, M. (2005). Employee involvement: Patterns and explanations. In B. Harley, J. Hyman & P. Thompson. (Eds.). Participation and Democracy at Work: Essays in Honour of Harvie Ramsay (pp. 20-36). London: Palgrave. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 64

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11. Nichols, T., Walters, D., & Tasiran, A. C. (2007). Trade Unions, Institutional Mediation and Industrial Safety. Evidence from the UK. Journal of Industrial Relations, 49(2), 211-225. 12. Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory. London: Cambridge University Press. 13. Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R.,& Nanetti, R. Y. [1993](2001). Making democracy work? Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Iasi: Polirom. 14. Robinson, A. M. & Smallman, C. (2013). Workplace injury and voice: a comparison of management and union perceptions. Work Employment & Society, 27(5), 1-20. 15. Schifirneþ, C. (2007). Forms without substance. A Romanian brand. Bucharest: Comunicare.ro. 16. Schimmelfennig, F. & Sedelmeier, U. (Eds.). (2005). The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Eu- rope. London: Cornell University Press. 17. Trampusch, C. (2010). The welfare state and trade unions in Switzerland: an historical reconstruction of the shift from a liberal to a post-liberal welfare regime. Journal of European Social Policy, 20, 58–73. 18. Watson, T. J. (2008). Sociology, Work and Industry. London: Routledge. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 65

Dumitriu Diana-Luiza*

Who is responsible for the team’s results? Media framing of sports actors’ responsibility in major sports competitions

Abstract

Media are no longer just a witness to sports events, facilitating our access to them, but have become the most powerful judging platform for sports competitions, serving as a guide for their interpretation and evaluation. The present study focuses on media framing of sports actors’ responsibility when it comes to major sports competitions. Who is responsible for the team’s performance and results? In analysing media discourse, framing effects of sports events coverage will be examined from two inter-correlated dimensions, textually and visually. Based on an event-related corpus of on-line press articles from four national newspapers, this case study covers two major sports events: 2010 European Women’s Handball Championship and 2011 World Women’s Handball Championship. The discursive analysis of the press articles shows that, if winning competitive settings favour the emergence of a personification effect, building up sports heroes on both textual and visual dimensions, the responsibility of failure is rather diffused towards a collective referent. However, the visual component of press articles, along with the indirect strategy of addressing the responsibility issue throughout reported speech techniques, works as an alternative to the personification effect. Keywords: responsibility; visual framing; competitive situation; personification effect; media discourse.

1. Introduction

Today our sports experiences and social imaginary attached to this field are grounded in the general approach of sports as media product. Most of our sports experiences are, in fact, mediated ones, as the public visibility and accessibility towards sports actors and events is mainly provided by media. While gaining their centrality inside the world of sports, media ended up transforming that world (Whannel, 1992, p. 3) and speeding up its commodification process. Sharing the public dependency constrains, as well as the entertaining component, sports and media are “inextricably linked together in a symbiotic relationship” (Valgeirsson & Snyder, 1986, p. 131), which is best described by its commercial nature. Both sports and media build on attracting and retaining large audiences and, in so doing, they join their forces in providing us with a hybrid experience of sports events as both competition and entertaining shows.

* National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected]. The author is a beneficiary of the Doctoral Scholarships for a Sustainable Society Project, co-financed by the European Union through the European Social Fund, Sectoral Operational Program of Human Re- sources and Development, 2007-2013. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 66

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The sports-media dyad is defined by the reciprocity of the structuring effect (Bourdieu, 1998) that both social fields exert upon each other. In order to gain public visibility, sports events need to be “mediazable”, meeting the general condition of a media show and reflecting the “spectacularization effect” of media upon the sports ethos. This implies correlating the competitive content with a spectacular form in order to provide an attractive media product for the audience. The need to build up on the “fun factor” (Kellner, 2003, p. 3) of sports events converts them into one of the most popular genres of entraining shows and, thus, a valuable asset for media’s continuous chase for rating points. The boomerang effect of this structuring force of media upon the form and content of sports events was the “vortextual” character of mega-events (Whannel, 2002) like Olympic Games, Wolds Cups or World Championships. This refers to the rapid diffusion of all elements connected to an event towards a large and heterogeneous public and to the referential value of these events for the public agenda. Me- dia are therefore the first actor affected by the vortextual effect of sports mega-events as they generate a reconfiguration of media’s agenda on both its form and content. However, media are no longer just a passive witness of sports events, facilitating our access to them in terms of a simple reproduction act, but rather an active agent who provides us with a whole new experience of the sports event as media product. The actual sports event becomes the input for its media corollary version, which goes further from simply broadcasting the event to actually redefining it. Hence, the competitive act itself becomes the hard core of a wider construct covering pre and post-event aspects, contextual elements or backstage information, generating what can be called ad-hoc event-related media agendas. Seen as the “ultimate meritocracy” (Bell, 2009, p. 54), sports are defined by their evaluative nature and, therefore, are object to a dominant evaluative approach. Who was the best? What explains one’s superiority over the other? What or who lies beyond sports success or failure? Before our individual judgment call, when it comes to a sports event or actors, there is another filter that we cannot escape from if our sports experience is a mediated one: the media reconfiguration of the event, which covers a consistent interpretative component. Media do not simply reflect the competitive act, but rather “represent a version of it, a form of selective construction” (Whannel, 1985, p. 58). Therefore media act as a judging platform for sports competitions, praising winners and denouncing losers. The process of informing about and redefining the competitive act are overlapping and serve as the most accessible guide for sports events’ interpretation and evaluation. Therefore we can speak about a constant framing process of sports acts, which audiences cannot avoid if their sports experiences are, de facto, mediated ones. The law of public visibility rules at every level of sports dynamics. In this context, media provide us with a general frame for judging the competitive responsibility, building up the first “public trial” of a sports act. The focus of this study is hence on media’s strategies of addressing the competitive events in terms of responsibility. Who is (made) responsible for the team’s performance and results? What are media’s tools for enforcing an attribution schema for the competitive outcome?

2. Sports events as object for media framing

As sports and the media are “engaged in a complicit, mutually dependent commercial relationship” (Nicholson, 2007, p. 208), sports competitions have gained their autonomy and Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 67

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their own place on the celebrity market. Sports events have entered the transformative pressure of the commodification process, providing us with both the competition’s tension, as well as the entertaining sports show. However, the mediated experience of a sports competition relies on a media framing process that redefines the actual sports act and brings out a hybrid media product which is meant not only to cover the informative needs of the audiences, but also a more silent interpretative dimension. In serving this latter purpose, journalists “are consequently pushed to engage in discursive practices that frame the action in terms of what their audiences expect and are instrumental in directing viewers toward specific understandings of the on-field action” (Desmarais & Bruce, 2010, p. 339). Live broadcasting or press articles, all media products relate to a sports event by redefining it and providing us with a selective reconstruction of the actual event. What seems to be an objective report of the competitive act is, therefore, far from being a neutral representation. But why and how does this media framing work when it comes to sports events? The interdisciplinary ground of framing conceptualization (Goffman, 1974; Gamson & Modigliani 1989; Entman, 1993; Scheufele, 1999; Reese, 2001; Shanto, 2005; de Vreese, 2005) makes it object to a chameleonic theoretical use and to a wider thematic addressabil- ity in terms of research fields. In speaking about sports events as media constructs, we are facing a “double life” (Kinder & Sanders, 1996) of the framing process, which is present in both media discourse, as well as the audiences’ own way of redefining the events. The main principle beyond the framing act involves stressing out or making silent aspects that social actors find more or less relevant in addressing a specific referent. Defined as “interpretative packages” (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989) or “schemes of interpretation” (Goff- man, 1986), frames act as organizing and selective principles through which some aspects gain primacy over the other, building up an interpretation guide for the whole information context and content. We can therefore speak about a selective act driven by an emphasis-exclusion principle (Gitlin 1980: 7) or about a present-salience dyad that shapes one’s position towards an issue. All in all, framing means “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating context” (Entman, 1993: 52) in order to bring out a particular evaluative position in defining a certain issues. This dialectics of discriminating aspects based on perceived relevance is, to some extent, implicit for any cognitive process of trans- mitting or receiving a message, due to our selective information management approach. How- ever, intentionality can convert framing into a powerful tool of influence and persuasion, providing a specific way to understand an issue or an event that might serve one’s interest. In addressing the media framing, the present study will cover both frame-building and frame-setting aspects of the media discourse (de Vreese, 2005) in order to understand how media build up the responsibility map of a competitive situation and to discuss the consequences of media attributional position in terms of public praise or incrimination of sports actors when it comes to competitive outcomes. While presenting a sports event, media cannot escape addressing the responsibility issue, as defining the event implies referring to its causal resorts, moral judgments and to a corollary prescriptive approach (Entman, 1993) of sports actors’ positions. But how explicit or salient are these aspects in media discourses? Due to their gatekeeper position between the large audience which cannot have an un- mediated access to a sports event and the event itself, the sports journalist is expected to “transmit information pertaining to the results of sports events, to provide behind the scenes information of particular teams or sporting events and to use his knowledge and background to give opinions which will help the public interpret the sports news” (Smith, 1976, p. 14). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 68

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There is a high level of consent on this symbolic superiority position of sports journalist which explains his involvement in building up interpretative guidelines for sports acts. This legiti- mating position is based on his access to actors and events that most of us cannot come across with, as well as on his expertise, which compensates for the audience’s untrained manner of understanding the competitive technical and tactical dynamics beyond the sports show. However, the most powerful effect of media framing comes from the fact that their intentionality is not actually explicit and, in most cases, the audience is not even aware of its presence and influence. Therefore this selective principle of bringing some things forward to the detriment of others “can be linked to the magician’s sleight of hand-attention which is directed to one point so that people do not notice the manipulation that is going on at another point.” (Tankard, 2006, p. 95). Media play a central role in bringing sports actors under the spotlight and making them subject to public scrutiny, as media are the ones that hold the reins for both public visibility and sports events’ framing. But why are media interested in addressing responsibility issues when it comes to sports events? What do media gain by activating this attributional component of framing sports events? Responsibility is the outcome of a judgmental process that media have to involve in while redefining the sports event. A judgmental position is based on three main premises: a privileged access to information, which allows media to evaluate the causal resorts of sports outcomes, a normative reference, which is strongly related to the moral dimension of a judgment and a referential role of media in influencing individuals’ positions towards a certain issue. Moreover, media’s play in reaffirming the social norms and values provides a strong argument for their informal role as moral instance that audiences accept and relate to. Judgmental call on who is responsible and how far goes his responsibility favours media’s persuasive function over the informative one, consolidating their privileged position in grounding the dominant representation upon a certain event or issue. Responsibility judgments reach also an emotional trigger that makes the audiences take a side and, therefore, generate debate. Unlike informative media approaches of sports events, evaluative ones give people something to speak about, generating new media subjects. Responsibility issues are also a perfect stage for conflictive regrouping of sports actors and for personalization, rising up heroes or “scapegoats”. From the narrow field of neo-television (Casetti & Odin, 1990), to the wider one of neo-media, judgmental position is a resourceful approach in terms of audience interest. People seem to positively respond to critical positions, especially when they have that seductive conflicting premise for a future public polemic. Moreover, there is this generalized preference and need for a causal understanding of sports events. To what or to whom do we own the competitive success or failure? How can the competitive outcomes be explained? The responsibility component of media’s discourses built around a sports event comes to address this comprehensive imperative of the public, providing it with an evaluative approach of the competitive situation. The present study aims to analyze the framing mechanisms activated by media discourses in order to determine what or who is responsible for the outcomes of a competitive act. Yet, responsibility does not only cover a review of causal triggers, deciding upon one’s area of responsibility, but is also important in framing the sports event itself. This is because sports competitions involve a wide set of aspects and actors that may influence the actual course of action and, therefore, besides identifying who can be made responsible for the outcome of a sports event, responsibility should be addressed in a more relative and relational way. Who Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 69

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played the key role in turning the scales in one’s favour? Whose contribution made the difference between the opponents? Who should be brought to the fore and made responsible for the competitive outcome, whether we speak of a positive or a negative one?

3. Event-related analysis of responsibility framing: the corpus of the study

International sports competitions constitute a resourceful context for analyzing the media framing of responsibility. Due to their symbolic value in terms of the identitary capital they capitalize on and to the high level of public visibility, these sports events manage to make their way up to the public agenda, and, implicitly on the media’s agenda. Integral parts of nations’ “soft power” (Nye, 2004) confrontations, sports competitions are staged as a global entertaining show. The overlapping of the warrior and the entertaining ethos respond to media’s dominant infotainment orientation, while their “great potential in terms of narrative capaci- ties” (Hilvoorde, Elling & Stokvis, 2010) is suitable for the emotional involvement that defines audiences’ expectations towards media products/constructs. The two sports events that the present study is focused on have a referential value for Ro- manian recent sports history. They are both related to the Romanian feminine handball field, which has been seen as one of the most competitive national sports teams in terms of international achievements. This performance criterion in selecting the two events is strongly related to their value in terms of public interest and media coverage. The higher the chances for ending the competition among the leading teams, the higher the public interest in that sports competition. Moreover, given the limited access to the event itself, most people are left with its mediated form, whether they look for a live broadcasting of the event or for a piece of information about its course and outcomes. The 2010 European Women’s Handball Championship (7-19.12.2010) and the 2011 World Women’s Handball Championship (2-18.12.2011) are defined by a significant affective reac- tion of the Romanian public opinion. Similar in intensity, they differ in the nature of their re- sort: while the first one stands out as a historic performance – the first European medal in the team’s track record and one of the fewest for Romanian sports teams, the second one was seen as one of the most shameful competitive performances in an international sports competition. It should be noted that the social definition of the two events is hardly dependent on the achievements’ expectation level. The analysis is built on these two event-related case studies, covering a corpus of 600 press articles, all of which have been selected from the on-line version of four national newspapers (two general newspapers – Adevarul and Evenimentul Zilei and two sports newspapers - Gazeta Sporturilor and Prosport1). Given the fact that media’s reconfiguration of a sports act follows a tripartite structure (Richardson, 2007): the competitive context as the setting of action, the competition itself and the outcome of the competition, the time frame of the selected articles was set to cover the period between the official conference2 before the event and one week post-competition. This way the study addresses the extended represen- tational dynamics built around a sports event, from the pre-competition expectations, that act as anchors in evaluating the team’s performance, to the retrospective analysis of the event as a whole competitive unit. So, the time period included for 2010 European Women’s Hand- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 70

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ball Championship was between 5.12.2010 and 24.12. 2010, while for the 2011 World Women’s Handball Championship was between 25.11.2011 and 24.12.2011.

4. The methodological grounds of media responsibility framing of sports events

The study is structured on two levels of analysis: a macro-dimension that addresses the thematic framing of the event and a micro-level analysis that focuses on the actual content of the articles, laying stress on the responsibility framing strategies. On the first level we want to identify how media reconfigure the competition in terms of selected themes or what the media are writing about, as first framing tool of the sports act. After understanding the wider framework of the thematic selection, we will circumscribe the analysis of responsibility framing to the actual articles that have a direct evaluative purpose. These evaluative articles cover two main categories: an ad-hoc evaluative set of articles released shortly after the end of the game and a post-event evaluative set of articles that involve a more analytical approach and discussion of the game. It should be said that most ad-hoc evaluative articles combine the actual live texting of the game (a hybrid form of written text live broadcasting of the sports act) and the first evaluative comments regarding the game. What we were interested in was to identify the media strategies of framing the responsibility of the competitive outcomes and for this purpose we took in consideration both the textual, as well as the visual component of the article, as they work together in building up the articles’ message as a whole. Thus, the main framing mechanisms that were used as guidelines during the articles’ analysis were: the thematic selection of the articles, the headlines, the main photo attached to the article, the selection of quotes, the selection of actors and the concluding statements of articles, whether they were at the beginning or at the end of the article. However, this was quite a flexible analysis guide, as any other inductive aspects that we considered to be relevant for the purpose of this study were added to provide us with a more comprehensive image of media’s responsibility framing of sports events.

4.1. The macro dimension of media responsibility framing Although most media framing analyses tend to favour the micro-level, based on a bottom- up approach of the corpus, what we want to do instead is to address the macro-dimension of the responsibility framing analysis per se, not just as a cumulative construct of gathering up the observations made on each article of the corpus. But what role does this macro-dimension play in understanding media responsibility framing? First of all, the thematic selection, although is the first framing mechanism used in redefining an event, it is also one of the most salient ones in terms of its intentionality. People are more attentive and reactive to how (thus to the micro-level dimension) media reflect an event rather than going for what media choose to speak/write about. Secondly, only the thematic selection can provide us with the wider image over the framing of the whole event as a unit of action. By doing so, it raises the question of the event-related responsibility, as complementary construct to the sequential responsibility of each game taken individually. At the end of a sports competition this overall event-responsibility be- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 71

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comes the central criterion in evaluating sports actors’ performance, while the sequential game by game responsibility becomes secondary in addressing the sports event. The thematic media construction of the two competitions, the 2010 European Women’s Handball Championship and the 2011 World Women’s Handball Championship, are very similar, even though in terms of their social significance they had a converse effect: a historical success versus a historical failure. The algorithm of the thematic reconfiguration of the competition is based on a three-phase construct that we can find on both larger and smaller scale, as it follows: pre-competition, actual competition, post-competition phases on the larger scale of the event itself and pre-game, actual game, post-game phases on the smaller scale of every game act taken individually. However, there are some overlapping phases that generate a hybrid category of multi-thematic articles. On the one hand, we have an overlap of similar phases between the larger and the smaller scale of the competition, which is the pre-competition phase with the pre-game phase of the first match, the actual competition phase with each actual game taken one by one and the post-competition with the post-game phase of the last match. We can also add an apparent disjunctive overlap of the larger scale and smaller scale overlap, as the actual competition phase covers all other small scale phases, because it integrates every game as an individual unit. On the other hand, on the smaller sale of the sports event, there is a recurrent overlapping process between the post-game phase of the previous mach with the pre-game phase of the next match in line. This structure itself generates some sort of convergence in terms of thematic framing strategies. The most important thematic framing strategy in addressing the responsibility issue of a sports competition is the use of portrait articles. During the pre-competition or pre-game phase their role is to bring forward those actors that are perceived to have a decisive contribution to the competitive performance of the team. Thus, they reveal the public expectations regarding who will be the first to bear the responsibility for the competitive outcomes. How- ever, in the post-competition and post-game phase, portrait articles have a more explicit contribution in terms of responsibility attribution. If we were to compare the two sports events, there are more portrait articles for the successful competition than for the unsuccessful one. How can this be explained and which are the implications of this fact in terms of responsibility framing? The evaluative function of the portrait articles and their use as responsibility framing strategy are rather related to positive outcomes. After a winning game, media tend to look for and, moreover, build up heroes, as this image of the sports actor fits the characteristics of the contemporary mediated celebrity hero (Boorstin, 1978). There is some kind of cyclical relation: heroes bring victories, as well as victories give raise to heroes. But why do media turn to this personification effect of responsibility when it comes to positive sports outcomes? There are two complementary types of arguments in explaining media’s position. The first one refers to the market logic and the wider commodification process that sports has been subject to. From this point of view, building up heroes and giving them the credit for a success means supplying the celebrity market with fresh new commodity and, moreover, exploiting the entertaining potential of the sports act as show and as one of the most prolific “creators of contemporary myths” (Tolleneer, 1986, p. 234). The second argument relates to a less commercial purpose, as heroes and their stories serve also important social functions such as providing us with role-models, principles and ideals to relate to (Klapp, 1962, 1964). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 72

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Due to the overlapping effect between the post-game phase of a match and the pre-game phase of the next match, the portrait articles end up playing a dual function: while attribut- ing the responsibility to an actor, media also convert him in the key-person that the result of the next game depends on. So, not only does the new born or the reaffirmed hero bear responsibility over the present game outcome, but he becomes the decisive person in the upcoming game too. To some extent, media end up generating expectations in terms of responsibility mapping of the next games. Looking on both small and large scale, we can identify: potential heroes who media propose in the pre-game/competition portrait articles and who do not confirm, short-term heroes who are attributed the responsibility for one game outcome and event- crowned heroes that post-competition portrait articles bring forward. For the 2010 European Women’s Handball Championship only two of the short-term heroes have also become event crowned heroes, due to their constant and consistent contribution during the competition. How does this thematic strategy of portrait articles work for negative outcomes and unsuccessful sports events? Looking at the dynamics of portrait articles in media’s coverage of both sports events, it can be noticed that for the 2011 World Women’s Handball Champi- onship, there was a descendent curve, with some pre-competition potential heroes and few pre-game potential heroes proposed by the media until the Romanian team’s chances for reaching a good result faded. Thus, it might be said that, on the thematic dimension, media used only the projective function of the portrait articles framing strategy when negative outcomes were at stake. The second aspect that we find to be relevant for the macro-dimension of responsibility framing is the use of reactive articles as the main thematic category in media coverage of a sports competition. In terms of thematic approach of the responsibility issue, probably the most common association would be the journalist’s analysis of the game, which is evaluative in nature and argumentative in structure. However, this is rather an ideal type, in webberian sense. The most prominent approach of the responsibility issue is related, for both competitions, with reactive articles, commuting the evaluative role to other actors besides the journalist himself. Moreover, there is a pattern of turning to these reactive articles by using them as the foundation for journalists’ own evaluative position. Most of the times, the reactive articles were “one statement – one actor” type of articles, presented as individual positions towards the responsibility issue. After a flash exposure of these reactive articles, which follow one another after a simple juxtaposition principle, there comes the journalists’ analysis that integrates most or even all of them, generating what we can call a collage article. Who are the actors selected for the reactive articles? What are the other effects in terms of responsibility framing? How do these collage articles address the responsibility attribution issue? These questions would be better answered in the next section, because we need to refer to the content of the article, and, thus, to go to the micro dimension of our analysis.

4.2. The micro dimension of responsibility mapping of sports events Due to the evaluative nature of competition itself, it is very difficult to find a pure descriptive or informative press material that covers the event. However, the evaluative component can vary significantly and along with it the responsibility framing of the competition’s outcome. Before looking into some micro-dimension strategies of media responsibility attri- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 73

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bution, it should be reaffirmed that the aim of this study was not to identify and address an exhaustive set of media framing strategies, but rather to focus the discussion on those that are most prominent and consistent in media discourses addressing these two case studies. There- fore, in the next subsections we will cover the following strategies: the polyphony strategy, the positivist argument strategy and the visual framing strategy, each of them integrating several framing mechanisms.

4.2.1. Using polyphony to create the “pluralism of opinion” effect This first media strategy of framing responsibility for competitive outcomes is strongly related to the macro-dimension strategy of using reactive articles in evaluating the responsibility issue. Media strategic use of polyphony brings out two important framing mechanisms that are meant to answer who are those who evaluate the competitive act and how their evaluation is presented in the articles. Thus, we are speaking about two complementary selective actions that media use in building up an evaluative position towards the competition: selection of actors/ sources and selection of quotes. Besides identifying the dynamics and triggers of the polyphony strategy, we will also address its effect for responsibility framing. In terms of actors’ selection we can identify three main categories: the front stage actors (players and coach), the institutional actors (representatives of the Romanian Handball Fed- eration) and the expert type of actors (other coaches, former great handball players, handball club presidents etc.). Among the players, media favour the team’s captain based on both her representative role, but also her conjoined expertise and experience power, as she was playing for one of the top handball club teams in Europe. However, it should be noted that her role is very important in the pre-competition phase and during the first games, her visibility facing a gradual decrease in favour of short term heroes and event-crowned heroes. Another category of players that receive a greater public exposure is the injured player, media building up alternative narrative lines that cover her story. Moreover, injured players are integrated into a wider frame of sacrifice which is consistent with the symbolic value of sports competition as a “surrogate for war” (King, 2008). These actors are used to dramatize the competitive dynamics and to create a particular type of heroine who sacrifices herself for the good of the team, thus having a major contribution in terms of responsibility for the overall outcome. “Thriller in tears! Paula Ungureanu was badly injured!” (prosport.ro, 13.12.2010), “Sorrow siblings: Oana Manea and Adina Fiera were injured” (gsp.ro, 7.12.2012), “Victory with sacrifice” (adevarul.ro, 13.12.2010) are headlines that move the focus from the actual result to its costs. It is not the performance itself of the injured players that justifies their hero position, but rather their sacrifice that, based on a strong emotionally component, makes media overestimate their actual contribution and responsibility for the game result. In the case of players’ selection, when positive outcomes are at stake, there is a clear responsibility framing strategy, media bringing forwards the “voices” of those whom they find to have had a significant contribution to the competitive outcome. However, this responsibility relation is not so obvious when it comes to the coach and even when it comes to selecting players for negative outcomes. In the latter situations, media turn to an indirect way of responsibility attribution, by bringing the actors in the public eye and thus forcing them to refer to their part in the overall performance, but also to play the role of responsibility set- ters, providing us with their perspective upon the causes and the main actors responsible for Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 74

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the games’ results. The constant use of post-game interviews with the coach reflects this subtle responsibility framing strategy. A significant part of the reactive articles are based on exposing a third person’s opinion and evaluative position towards the competitive acts. To legitimize these positions, media turn to the expert type of actors whose opinions are expected to be easily accepted by the public, as their expertise has already been proven by their professional achievements. If we look closer to who was selected to provide this type of expert argument, we can notice that there is a dominant figure of a former coach of the Romanian team (Gheorghe Tadici) used by the media for two reasons: his uncontested expertise as coach, based on his results with both the national team and his club teams, but also his critical position towards the actual coach and the institutional actors, which brings along a constant conflictive potential that media try to speculate for infotainment reasons. In pointing fingers towards an actor or another for the outcomes of a game, the use of experts’ arguments is an effective strategy that, apparently, keeps the journalist backstage. More- over, by presenting different actors’ position towards the competitive performance (players, coach, institutional representative, experts), media gives the impression of a deliberative space that provides the audience with complementary interpretations and responsibility attribution logic. Moving the focus from who the actors are, to how their arguments have been presented and integrated in media’s discourses, we noticed a strategic use of the reported speech, due to its authenticity effect. Most reactive articles are “one statement – one actor” type, with a similar structure that involves a first paragraph of indirect reported speech in which the journalist selects and provides us with a short presentation of the actors’ position and a second part of the article that covers the actual statement of the actor in a direct speech manner. In using sports actors’ statements, there are three framing mechanisms that media usually turn to: the actual selection of the statement, the selection of those aspects presented in the first paragraph – which has a conclusive role for the whole article – and the selection of the small fragment of statement used as headline and, thus, acting as the master frame of the article. Most headlines from both competitions are built on this selective reporting speech mechanism: “Vãrzaru: ‘The individualist manner of playing did not help us at all!’” (adevarul.ro, 18.12.2010), “Cristina Neagu: ‘We have fought with all our heart!’ ” (evz.ro, 19.12. 2010), “Tadici: ‘Tolnai was sensational, but the defence did not help her at all!’” (gsp.ro, 18.12.2010), “Gaþu: ‘If we prove that we have learned from the defeat against Denmark, we will reach the semi-finals’” (prosport.ro, 11.12.2010), ”Radu Voina has analyzed Romania’s performance: ‘Significant lack of combativeness!’ ” (gsp.ro, 6.12.2011), “Ramona Farcãu: ‘We have tested different game formulas against Cuba’ ” (adevarul.ro, 5.12.2011), “Tadici blames Voina: ‘Five-six players should not have been part of the team for Brazil’ ” (prosport.ro, 14.12.2011) etc. All these headlines are framing the responsibility for the competitive outcomes by turning to a selective use of the reported speech. This is how the persuasive function of the reported speech is being augmented, as the “less the volume of the quoted segment, the more the function of the quotation shifts from ‘reliability function’ to ‘attitude function” (Smirno- va, 2009, p. 83). Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 75

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4.2.2. The incontestable power of the positivist argument Serving the same intention of objectifying the responsibility attribution as the expert argument, media rely on the positivist argument to provide a more measurable dimension of their evaluative position. But how does this argument work? The positivist arguments respond to the public trust in the statistic proof and to the general illusion that “numbers don’t lie”. Therefore, journalists are seeking to reveal that numbers can provide a solid justification in the process of responsibility attribution. It is not only about the success rate of the attacks (e.g.“Romanian team’s performance was strongly dependent […] on Cristina Neagu, who made it to 11 goals”- evz.ro, 16.12.2010; “Romanian team […] was the first to reach out more than 40 goals in the present edition of the European Championship”- adevarul.ro, 12.12.2010, “The efficacy of Romanian shoots was below 50%”- evs.ro, 9.12.2011), the percentage of goals saved by the goalkeeper (e.g. “Talida Tolnai was again incredible, fabulous, brilliant, with an unbelievable percentage of 53%!” – gsp.ro, 20.12.2010, “Romania looks worse than ever in defence: the World Championship numbers”- prosport.ro, 10.12.2011 ) or the number of unforced mistakes made by the players (e.g.“[…] Look: 24 technical unforced mistakes! It’s unbelievable! 14 goals received on fast breaks!”- gsp.ro, 11.12.2011), but also about track record placement of the performance or failure (“The tricolor handball players, the best result at a European competition”- evs.ro, 20.12.2010, “Romania has a 100.000 share bet of winning the World handball Championship”- gsp.ro, 12.12.2011, “Romania finished on 13rd position the World Championship. The poorest performance in the last 10 years” – adevarul.ro , 12.12.2011). All these numbers bring credibility and accuracy to the media evaluative position and, to some extent, limit the problematisation and the perceived subjectivity of the responsibility discussion. Another interesting aspect regarding the strategic use of the positivist argument for responsibility framing is media’s tendency to focus on individual statistics during the actual competition phase and on the team’s statistics in the post-competition game. This practice generates a personification effect that builds up heroes for positive outcomes and brings “scapegoats” forward when negative outcomes are at stake. Inside the time frame of the competition, most statistic arguments related to the team have a different function, as they are rather used in the pre-game phase. Their role is to anticipate the game evolution based on previous confrontations and on a rational comparison of the teams in terms of track record (e.g. “Perfect balance for Romania-Serbia confrontations. If we take together all the games against the ex-Yugoslavia, Romania has played for 80 times against our neighbours […], with a perfect balance of 36 wins for each team.”- adevarul.ro,12.12.2010). This is how expectations are rooted in statistic facts.

4.2.3. The visual framing of responsibility Along with the headlines, although “less obtrusive and more easily taken-for-granted” (Messaris & Abraham, 2001, p. 216), the images attached to the articles provide a visual framing tool for responsibility issues. In addressing this aspect we focus the analysis upon a nar- rower corpus of articles that covers the ad-hoc evaluative position and the post-game evaluative analysis of the team’s performance, that is 80 articles out of 200. Only the main image of the article was included in the visual analysis of the responsibility framing. The elements that we took into consideration were the actors and the way they are represented. For the first dimen- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 76

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sion we looked for a pattern or a typology of actors that can be built in trying to explain the mechanism of actors’ selection in the overall responsibility framing strategy. In approaching the second aspect, we used a tripartite framing scheme (Dumitriu, 2012), built on the warrior and the spectacular ethos of the sports act: the war framing, the show framing and the hybrid construct of war-show framing. The war framing is defined by the focus on the confrontation between players, stressing out the physical contact and effort involved in the sports competition. The show framing is concerned with redefining the competition in terms of spectacle and thus, presenting celebration moments or media contexts of communication such as pre or post competition press conference, which respond to the infotainment function of the sports event as media object. Finally, the war-show framing combines the two dimensions of the social imaginary of sports events, presenting the competitive confrontation as show by using a dual visual structure with a close-up view on the game dynamics and the spectators in the background. The presence of the audience redefines the sports competition as show act, serving both competitive aims, but also entertaining ones (see sample pictures 1). Sample pictures 1.

War framing example Show framing example War-Show framing example

In terms of actors’ selection, we noticed that media favour war and war show framing build around a single player from the team. Therefore visual framing directs the attention and, implicitly the responsibility, towards players. But who were the actors that media brought forward? Were there different visual approaches of winning and losing competitive situations? Most of the photos focus on a 1 to 1 confrontation situation in which our player is in attack, which leads to an overrepresentation of the offensive position of our team. The main effect of this dominant visual representation on the responsibility issue is the personalization of the entire confrontation between the two opponent teams. This approach is convergent with media’s strategy of building up heroes, as, in many cases, the photo attached to the article plays a dual role: to recreate the competitive situation and to illustrate the image of the hero. Due to the general preference for individual actors, we focused our attention to the “exceptions” in order to see if there is an arbitrary selection of actors or, on the contrary, the visual elements play a specific role in the overall framing of the competitive act. An interesting aspect that we noticed was that most of the images in which our team was in defence were used in articles referring to defeats. Thus, the defence position is, indirectly, associated with an inferiority status in terms of the symbolic power balance between the two teams and, also, as the Achilles’ heel in explaining the negative outcomes. Strongly related to this observation is the fact that, unlike attack situations, which are generally focused on one player, defence ones are rather collective snapshots (see sample pictures 2), diffusing the responsibility from individual to the team. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 77

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Sample pictures 2.

Individual Framing example Collective framing example (positive outcome, attack) (negative outcome, defence)

Another aspect related to this individual-collective dimension refers to the time-frame of the competition. The visual analysis shows that, although a minority, the images that bring forward the whole team or a significant part of the team are to be found in the pre-competition phase (mainly connected to pre-competition press conference context) and, for the successful competition, that is the 2010 European Championship, in the last competitive act and in the post-competition phase, testifying to the team’s joy and to the celebration moments. The most consistent interval of the actual competition (game by game) is dominated by individual or pairs of players’ images, redirecting the public to a more personalized representation of the competitive acts. A similar dynamics in time can be noticed when analysing the three visual framings, as the show framing is mostly used in the pre-competition and post-competition phase. More- over, the show framing was more frequent for the successful sport event, because it can better reflect both the emotional intensity and the spectacular dimension of the celebration moments. During the actual competition evolution, the show framing of the games was rather related to photos that were focused on the individual players emotional reactions of tension release (see sample pictures 3). This type of individual show framing can be found when defeats were at stake, acting as a way of stressing out the disappointment and sadness of the defeat. Show framing has a low evaluative potential for the post-game phase, but can activate this function in the post-competition phase. Sample pictures 3.

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Despite this polarization effect of the show framing at the beginning and the end of a competition, we could not identify a clear pattern in using the war and the war show frame. The only observation that needs further attention and validation in other similar studies is that when difficult and decisive games are at stake (games defined by a high physical effort and tension generated by the small difference between the two opponents), media seem to favour war framing over the war show framing. This is because the war framing is focused on the intensity of the competitive act primarily as physical confrontation. Finally, the last visual aspect that we want to address is the use of coach’s photo mostly in articles related to defeats. By bringing the coach forward especially when addressing losing contexts, media end up adding a responsibility framing effect to the image. The public is given a strong orientation towards the coach as first person to be blamed for the negative outcome. Another element that strengthens this visual framing effect is the mere fact that photos of the coach are rather few in the media coverage of a sports event and thus, when they appear, the intentionality of the selection is easier to be identified than in the players’ case.

4.2.4. Speaking out loud: the direct evaluation of the responsibility issue Before discussing the issue of media’s explicit approach of responsibility for the competitive outcomes, it should be mentioned that this section will not cover an in-depth discursive and argumentative analysis of media’s evaluative discourse, but rather an overview of how media build up these positions. A first observation refers to the fact that media’s evaluative position tends to be more explicit and argumentative when it comes to defeats. Victories bring out a more consistent emotional discourse, favouring the impact of the game and its symbolic value, but, most of all, the rise of heroes and the dramatic stories of the sacrifices behind the achievement. Contrari- wise, media adopt a more critical position towards defeats, looking for explanations and, moreover, for who is to be blamed for the negative outcome. The discourse is more rational, gathering data and arguments to sustain the journalists’ position and discussing the impact of the result in terms of factual effects on the competitive evolution, on the ranking, the qualification for future competitions or on the overall track record of the team. Thus, it minimizes the emotional effect in favour of a more pragmatic approach. The second aspect that we will discuss takes further the comparative analysis of media’s explicit evaluative position towards successful versus unsuccessful competitive situations. Most arguments in explaining the team’s success or great achievement at the end of the 2010 European Championship refer to attitudinal aspects such as “determination”, “team cohesion”, “willpower”, “total engagement”, “concentration” etc. Moreover, there is an interesting oscil- lation between bringing out heroes that had a decisive contribution to the final result and diffusing the responsibility to the collective team referent. In the post-competition phase, critical media analysis leaves room for infotainment interviews oriented towards the emotional impact and the personal significance that the achievement has upon individual actors, as well as towards backstage elements of the competition which is reframed as a heroic story. The media coverage of the 2011 World Championship involved a more critical approach, which generated several evaluative analysis meant to lay stress on the causes of the team’s failure. While during the actual competition phase media’s position was rather built on statistic arguments and experts’ own evaluations of the team’s performance, in the post-competition phase a new category of articles came out: the summative evaluative articles (e.g. “Prosport analysis! Romania looks worst than ever in defence: the World Championship Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 79

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numbers”- prosport.ro, 10.12.2011; “A sharp analysis after the World Championship in Brazil: ‘It will be hard to go to the Olympic Games’”- prosport.ro, 22.12.2011; “The analysis of the World Championship in Brazil: We played with our hearts, but with our goal un- protected”-gsp.ro,15.12.2011), which extend the intermediary collage articles. The aim of these articles was to provide a structured analysis of the causes that led to the failure. To some extent, they bring together all those post-game responsibility aspects, capitaliz- ing on the statistic and expert arguments. From the poor performance of the goalkeeper, the low efficiency of the old generation players, the bad management of the games’ ending, to the contested selection of players, the uninspired strategic approach of the game or the lack of physical training of the team, causes are listed and discussed in detail. Implicitly, for each cause there is a corollary responsibility attribution, whether it is the goalkeeper, a particular field player, the coach or the Romanian Handball Federation management. Despite the nom- inalization of actors responsible for the competitive outcome, this summative coverage of all possible causes of the team’s failure has a reverse effect, as it ends up diffusing the responsibility between all the actors that were mentioned earlier. All in all, each actor has his share of responsibility and the actual existence of so many individual responsibility referents explains the team’s failure, as cumulus of all these negative inputs.

5. Conclusion

This study focuses on the responsibility framing of sports competition. In so doing, it analyses the main media strategies used in building up an evaluative position towards the competitive situation and in deciding who is to be praised or blamed for the competitive outcomes. Based on two case studies, we identified the most prominent framing strategies that media turn to in addressing the responsibility issue of a sports event and provided a general two-dimension model of analysis that combines the macro-dimension of framing the event as a whole unit of action (selection of what to speak about in covering a sports event), with the micro-dimension of the framing mechanism (how media actually speak about the sports event). The results stress out the convergence of the framing strategies on both the macro and the micro-dimension towards a personification effect, mostly directed to individual players. This effect is even more powerful when it comes to positive outcomes, as media focus on rising up heroes who can serve both evaluative purposes, in terms of responsibility attribution, as well as entertaining ones. This comes in line with the fact that the media coverage of positive outcomes is rather emotional, while the coverage of the negative one seems to be more rational, bringing out a more critical and argumentative discourse. Rather than explicitly expressing their evaluative position towards a sports act, journalists build this responsibility mapping of the competitive situation by turning to more elusive framing strategies such as visual framing, thematic framing or polyphony framing strategy. This keeps the journalists in the background, while creating the impression of a deliberative approach. Moreover, in order to objectify and legitimize an evaluative position, media use the positivist argument and the expert opinions as main coordinates on which they end up building the summative (mostly retrospective) post-competition analysis. Thus, the focus is moved from the journalist to ‘other voices’ that are brought to express a certain view and provide a certain interpretative scheme for the sports act. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 80

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Media’s intension to address causality as a composite construct (covering a wide spectrum of aspects that contribute to the outcome of a competitive act) has a reverse effect of diffusing the responsibility between all these possible factors and actors involved in explaining the competitive dynamics. Although the study has pointed out the complex construct of responsibility framing, by referring and connecting complementary framing strategies and mechanisms, further research is needed in order to provide an in-depth analysis of each of these strategies and to test their overall impact on the public opinion.

Notes

1 The URL for each newspaper included in the analysis : http://www.adevarul.ro/; http://www.evz.ro/index.html; http://www.gsp.ro/; http://www.prosport.ro/. 2 There was an official conference organized by the Romanian Handball Federation before the Roman- ian handball team left for each major competition

References

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17. Reese, S. D. (2001). Framing public life: Abridging model for media research. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world (pp. 7-31). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 18. Richardson, J., (2007). Analysing Newspapers: an Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis, Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan. 19. Scheufele, D. A. (1999). Framing as a Theory of Media Effects. Journal of Communication, Vol. 49 (1): 103-122. 20. Smirnova, A.V. (2009). Reported speech as an element of argumentative newspaper discourse. Discourse & Communication.Vol 3(1): 79–103. 21. Smith, G.J. (1976). A Study of a Sports Journalist. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol.11(3): 5-26. 22. Tankard, Jr., J.W. (2006). The Empirical Approach to the Study of Media Framing. In De Fina, Anna, Schiffrin, Deborah & Bamberg, Michael (Eds.), Discourse and Identity (pp.95-106), New York: Cam- bridge University Press. 23. Valgeirsson, G., & Snyder, E.E. (1986). A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Newspaper Sports Sections. In- ternational Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 21 (2-3): 131-139. 24. de Vreese, C. H. (2005). News framing: Theory and typology. Information Design Journal + Document Design. Vol.13(1): 51-62. 25. Whannel, G. (1985). Television Spectacle and the Internationalization of Sport. Journal of Communica- tion Inquiry. Vol. 9: 54. 26. Whannel, G (1992). Fields in Vision – Television sport and cultural transformation. London: Routledge. 27. Whannel, G. (2002).Media sport stars, masculinities and moralities. London: Routledge. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 82 Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 83

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol* Loredana Ivan**

Older People and Mobile Communication in Two European Contexts

Abstract

We analyze the relationships seniors have with mobile communications in two different European contexts, Romania and Catalonia. By means of a qualitative approach, we describe the ways older individuals incorporate mobile phones in everyday life communication practices, and the motivations supporting these decisions. To understand motivations for using a given communication device –as the mobile phone– we took into account the channels individual has access to; individual’s personal interest on using available devices in everyday communications; the location of the members of the individual’s personal network; and the pricing system that determines the cost of mediated communication. The empirical analysis is based on two case studies conducted in Romania and in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Catalonia) in different moments, between 2010 and 2012. Participants were 60 years old or over. Information was gathered by means of semi-structured interviews that were recorded and transcribed, while a common methodological design allows an enriched insight. Besides gender, we take into account heterogeneity of ageing for a more nuanced analysis. This paper constitutes the first step in the exploration of common trends in the relationship seniors have with mobile communication in different European countries. Keywords: Mobile communication; Older people; Multiple-case design; Romania; Catalonia.

1. Introduction

Older population is growing steadily and will continue to grow in the next 50 years. Ac- cording to The World Health Organization (2012) the global population over 60 years will double in 2050 and will reach a level of 22% of the whole population, an expectation of 2 billion people. The growing of elderly population is a challenging topic, particularly in Eu- rope, where most of the countries are expected to reach 30% of the population over 60 years in 2060 (Eurostat, 2011). The so called “grandparent boom” is expected to follow a different pattern in Western and Eastern European countries. The higher percent of elderly is nowadays in Western European countries where the ageing growth started in the 20th century and slowly progressed. However, the new demographic projections show an eastward shift of the ageing process, with Romania and Latvia estimating to reach the highest median age after 2040.

* Open University of Catalonia / Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Interdisciplinary Internet Institute (IN3), Barcelona (Catalonia), Spain, [email protected]. ** National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), Communication Depart- ment, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 84

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Societies with increased number of elders face numerous challenges in terms of social security policies (Biggs, 2001), health care (Zweifel, Felder & Werblow, 2004), consumer and economic behaviour (Bloom, Canning & Fink, 2010), technology use (Charness & Boot, 2009), communication patterns (Tinker, 2002; Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000). Regarding mobile communication, age plays an important role regarding type of use and communication patterns (Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol, Qui & Sey, 2006). Still research on mobile communication is mostly focused on teenagers, young people and adults while analyses on the elders are limited (some exceptions are Ling, 2004, 2008; Oksman, 2006; or Zickuhr, 2011). Ageing is also related to socio-cultural aspects, with particular values and life styles within a society. Yet the current literature on elders and mobile communication use remains rather local and no studies, as for the authors’ knowledge, have been conducted cross-culturally. Furthermore studies within the Eastern European countries are scarce and besides the official statistics of mobile phone adoption (Eurostat, 2010; ITU, 2012), there is hardly any evidence of the appropriation of mobile communication in these countries. The aim of this paper is to contribute with empirical evidence to better understand the mechanism of the acceptance and use of mobile telephony in interpersonal communication among older people. For doing so we develop a qualitative empirical research in two different cultural settings: Romania (rural and urban areas) and in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain – urban area). Preliminary results of the research are presented and discussed here. Independent case studies are interesting per se, while the multiple-case design we propose here allows for understanding differences and similarities, which allow more robust results (Yin, 2003) and enrich the analysis at a European level. Contexts of the two case studies show similarities in demographic terms but divergences in terms of mobile phone diffusion. The proportion of population over 60 years in Romania and Catalonia is similar (20.3% and 22.8%, respectively; INS 2010, Idescat, 2011) and close to the European (UE27) average (23%, Eurostat, 2013). However, mobile phone adoption is significantly different. Last available data for Romania and the EU27 refers to 2010 (Euro- stat, 2010) and indicates that Romania ranked the last in terms of adoption, with 75% mobile phone users in the whole population (16–74 years old) in front of the 87% of the EU27. The same year, in Catalonia mobile phone users accounted for the 93% of the population (Idescat, 2010), showing similar levels than Scandinavian countries – which are above EU27 average. Adoption among older people follows a similar pattern. On the one hand, within the 55 – 64 age group, mobile phone users account for a 62% in Romania, 79% in the EU27 and 88% in Catalonia. On the other, in the 65-74 age group adoption was 35% in Romania, 62% in the EU27 and 75% in Catalonia. A study using cluster analysis based on Eurostat data on mobile phone adoption at a country level (Fernández-Ardèvol, 2011a) found that Romania was placed in the fourth cluster, together with five other countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedo- nia, Greece and Poland). This particular cluster gathers countries where adoption of mobile telephony by elderly is markedly below the average, with 62.5% users in the 55-64 cohort and just one third (35 %) in the 65-74 cohort. On the other hand, Spain was placed in the third cluster (together with Cyprus, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, and Slovenia). Third cluster was below the sample average but close to it, with 78.1% users in the 55-64 cohort and 56.3% in the 65-74 cohort. When the demographic predictions for the next 50 years and the current data on mobile phone adoption for elderly are used, the two selected countries become a relevant case to Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 85

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study the future of mobile communication in Europe. In addition to the inherent interest of comparing different European contexts, as diffusion of mobile communication is unbalanced between Romania and Catalonia (Spain), we will be able to detect what practices and discourses are present beyond adoption rates. This should inform about trends that are not only based on specificities of the diffusion stage. The qualitative methodological approach we propose is appropriate for achieving the research goals, given the need of empirical evidence on the intersection of mobile communication and ageing. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the analytical framework, whereas Section 3 describes the research method. Section 4 presents obtained results while conclusions are discussed in Section 5.

2. Elderly Use of Mobile Phones in Interpersonal Communication

The available evidence points that elderly have general positive attitude toward the use of mobile phone in interpersonal communication and the device became gradually incorporated in all activities of their everyday life (Ling, 2008). They begin as sceptical users who preferred to wait until the members of their personal network have started to use the mobile phone (Wong, 2011). Most of them have been pressured to adopt the device by their family members for safety reasons (Conci, Pianesi & Zancanaro, 2009). Elders can receive a new mobile handset as a present or an used one previously owned by a family member (Neves & Amaro, 2012). In case the elderly did not decide by themselves about the mobile phone they use – as it was given by their adult children –, there raise important questions of mobile phone ownership, cau- tion in using it independently and intergenerational power (Crow & Sawchuk, 2012). Regarding the services used by elderly, voice calls constitutes the most popular service and SMS are regularly used among those bellow 70 years with a lower acceptance rate compare to voice calls (Kurniawan, 2008). Here we find also the highest age gap as youth double the average regarding some services (photos, video sending, Internet browsing). The differences in mobile services used among elderly are prominent between the age cohort below 65 years and the age cohort 65 to 75 years. Seniors over 65 are more reluctant to adopt the mobile phone in their lives compare to their fellows bellow 65 years of age and show hardly any use of mobile services besides voice calls (Fernández-Ardèvol, 2011b). Thus, different communication patterns could emerge when investigate the mobile phone use in the two age groups: younger and older seniors. Vital trajectory could shape this relationship, as it is not the same to become old having a mobile phone in your pocket than starting to have your first mobile when you are retired from work. The acceptance of mobile telephony by elderly seems to mostly follow an utilitarian approach rather than a hedonistic one (Conci, Pianesi & Zancanaro, 2009). Adolescents tend to adopt the mobile phone to strengthen the social ties within their network, whereas elderly are more motivated by the instrumental value of mobile phones in terms of safety and security. Empirical evidence (Kurniawan, 2008) suggests three main aspects that drive elders’ mobile phone adoption: (1) people feel safe and less vulnerable when they are alone at home, or when they go out alone and they feel secure they can contact someone in case of an emer- gency; (2) the mobile phone gives them the possibility to better organize their lives, from the use of alarm clock to the use of reminders to compensate for memory failures; (3) it is a tool for information and micro-coordination to enhance efficiency in daily activities. The utilitar- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 86

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ian view of the role of mobile phone could lead to a more rational behaviour in using mobile phone services in the case of elders. There is evidence that they deliberately use missing calls and alternatively call on mobile and landlines to minimize the costs (Fernández-Ardèvol & Arroyo Prieto, 2012). Yet, using the mobile phone has a positive impact on elders’ self-independence and self-esteem (Oksman, 2006). Thus, the perceived usefulness of mobile phones, the internal motivation and the need of self-actualization are considered to shape the mobile phone adoption and use in this particular age group (Tang, Leung, Haddad & McGrenere, 2012). Furthermore, their level of engagement and activity in social and professional life could influence both the perception of mobile phone usefulness and individual’s need of personal independence in using ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies). Never- theless, the personal need for independence influences the level of accepted assistance in using the mobile phone. The so called “assisted users” (i.e. Fernández-Ardèvol & Arroyo, 2012) depend on others (children, grandchildren, relatives or friends) to a certain degree for using their mobile phones. Their level of dependence goes from not being able to send photos, videos and Internet browsing to not being able to read or send SMS, to increase credit airtime on prepaid phones or even to add a new number in the phonebook. Assisted users uti- lize the mobile in the way they are told to use it and feel not enough control on their device. As a result, the perceptions of the mobile phone utility, appropriation and limitations are fil- tered through control person’s eyes. For the elderly, one limit of the mobile phone, debated in the literature, concerns the lost of personal autonomy and the increased dependability in interpersonal communication (see Abascal & Civit, 2001). In addition, elders might be concerned that mobile phone use could endanger the traditional communication patterns with family and friends and could diminish their economic resources. We explore the distinctive characteristics of older mobile phone users by looking into two different contexts: Romanian and Barcelona. Specifically, we first study the frequency of mobile phone use relative to landline communication and the most frequently used mobile services. We then analyze behavioural patterns: When, where, how, with whom do they communicate via mobile phone? Finally, we investigate their history of using mobile phones and whether there has been any pressure from family and friends to adopt mobile communication and also the problem of assistance and control in using their own devices. We want to address also some peculiarities that emerged in the two case studies that could be relevant in research elsewhere.

3. Method

Data analyzed in this paper come from two case studies that follow the same methodological design and goals to allow for an enriched insight (Yin, 2003). We used a flexible, interactive research design to take account of the specific circumstances in which the research was carried out (Maxwell 2005: 7). Main research tool was semi-structured interviews, com- plemented with direct observation of interviewees’ mobile phones (if they carried it with them the moment of the interview). Firstly, semi-structured interviews were voice-recorded and transcribed for further text analysis. Conversations followed an open, flexible outline. They focused on the communication channels used by the individual (mainly landline, mobile phone, and Internet) and the common uses of these communication channels with a specific focus on mobile phones. From Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 87

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a more generic point of view, individuals were asked about the problems or drawbacks of mobile telephony as well as the advantages or benefits. The conversation also considered motivations, opinions and personal experiences regarding the decision to have a mobile phone. In addition, mobile phone users were asked about which specific services they used, how the mobile handset was used and how it was adopted in their everyday life. Secondly, the interviewee’s mobile phone was directly observed. We took a picture of the mobile phone, if the participant carried it with them the moment of the interview (not repro- duced here). This allowed us to observe how the owner handled the device, and observed the way participants answer them if a call happened during their interaction with researchers. The interest was not the device itself. The picture allowed the researchers to have a short impression on the matching between the participant’s discourse regarding their proficiency in using the device and their actual ability to do it. Participants were 60 years old and over, while individuals studied were identified by means of a snowball sampling process. In the case study of Romania, heterogeneity of mobile phone users was achieved by conducting fieldwork in urban and rural areas: in the city of Bucharest, in two small towns (with less than 20.000 inhabitants) and in other two rural localities. On the other hand, in Catalonia, fieldwork concentrated in the metropolitan area of Barcelona and heterogeneity was sought in terms of housing: participants living in their own private house- hold and participants in retirement homes. The interviews analyzed here correspond, first of all, to 16 interviews conducted between June and August 2012 in Romania. With a length between two and a half to three and a half hours, the language of the interviews was Romanian. Secondly, to 47 interviews conducted between October 2010 and March 2011 in Barcelona. Conversations were held in Catalan or/and Spanish and their length was shorter, one hour in average. These interviews are part of a wider fieldwork in Romania and Barcelona. In this exploratory study we only include mobile phone users in the sample, although social perception of mobile phone might be also relevant to be investigated in the non-users group. All the participants also had land line phones at the time we conducted the interviews, except of 10 participants in Barcelona. Tables 1 and 2 show, for each case study, the most relevant characteristics of the sample analyzed here. In what follows we will refer to participants by indicating their place of residence. We will discuss evidences regarding individuals in each case study and do not assume any general- ization of results to Romania or Catalonia.

4. Results

The first analysis of the interviews confirms that elderly participants have integrated mobile phone in daily routine and have a general positive attitude toward the use of mobile phone. In Romania, they reported to use mobile phone in two thirds of their mediated conversations, while for the remaining third they use the landline phone. In Barcelona, for most participants the landline is the most important telephone in terms of number of calls and their length. Some participants from that city decided to dispense with the landline; all of them but one live in a retirement home and made the decision when they moved to the residence. The respondents preferred to use the mobile phone in various situations from micro-coordination to emotional support, and with a variety of social actors (family, friends, acquain- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 88

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tances, relatives). We found evidence that the pricing system is shaping decisions on the communication channel individuals will use in their everyday life (as Donner, 2008). In both case studies we therefore found evidence to support the utilitarian view in the use of mobile phone and the rationale in calling by combining fixed and mobile phones. In Romania, participants used the landline for longer conversations after 6 p.m., or in weekends, due to the cost advantages offered by providers. They call on fix phone those relatives not having a mobile phone and on mobile phone the ones who have it; and they would use landline for longer conversations in evening time and in weekends to reduce the costs.

When I call somebody who has a fix phone, I use the fix phone when I am at home…. Look, like now I didn’t find something and I was about to call her by mistake from my mobile phone to her fix phone (Woman, 63, college educated, Bucharest)

In Barcelona the logic is the same. However, there are slight practical differences in the strategy as the pricing system shows differences in each country. At the time of fieldwork, landline flat rates had already became popular while mobile telephony cost mainly depend- ed on actual consumption. Next two examples correspond to heavy users:

My son tells me “mobile phone to mobile phone, otherwise it’s very expensive” (Woman, 78, secondary studies. Barcelona). If I’m at home I pick up the landline, as it costs me nothing, I’ve got a flat rate (Woman, 64, secondary studies, Barcelona).

Internet, when used, is a complement to other communication channels more popular among elders. In Romania, only those with relatives abroad use Skype but participants from the 65+ cohort hardly use any Internet: They lack the skills and are completely dependent on others to communicate with family abroad. Because calling in another country has obvious economic barriers, elders from the 65+ cohort would feel frustrated and helpless when relatives move abroad and communication is interrupted.

Interviewee: First of all, I cannot use the Internet. But my son is talking by Internet with my daughter from Germany. Interviewer: And you, how do you talk with her? Interviewee: Through them: my son says to me…”I’ve talked with Flory, she said this and this”. She calls me only on my birthday to congratulate (Man, 73, secondary education, Bucharest)

In Barcelona, Internet is popular among younger participants although Skype is barely used. Just one participant reported using Skype frequently. She used to communicate with her international network of friends and colleagues (woman, 66, college studies). Another woman, who already had Internet connection in her mobile phone, explained she managed to talk to her son on Skype in her mobile phone once both were on holidays – abroad and in different continents (64, secondary studies). Her main motivation to explore the use of Skype in this specific situation was to make a voice call in a situation in which other channels were dis- carded due to their high cost. Finally, only one participant had relatives abroad, she was a Ger- man woman who moved to Catalonia in the eighties (also 66 and college studies, as above). Even though she went online daily, she had never used Skype. She explained she did not need it as she had a special flat rate for calls within the European Union associated to her landline. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 89

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Still, participants use the mobile phone not only for micro-coordination and for safety and security reasons but also to offer and receive emotional support, in confessions, cheerful conversations and enjoyable moments. The evidence suggests that hedonistic approach in mobile communication is also found with elderly in both case studies. In Romania, reported call duration goes up to 30 minutes per call and people seemed not to regret it. Some individuals in Barcelona report a similar behaviour on the mobile phone. Consistent with other studies on gender and mobile communication (i.e. Iqbal, 2010), we also find evidence that women tend to engage more in longer and supportive conversations, whereas men use mobile phones mostly for micro-coordination.

With family and friends it is great especially when they are in the same network [phone company] …we talk like crazy. I talk long time with my friends, we support each other we give advice. For example when I am at the market, I would call and say: there is this and this product. If you want you can come. Do you want me to buy it for you? (Woman, college educated, 64, Bucharest)

Both case studies also confirmed that voice calls constitutes the most popular service among participants. In addition, younger seniors are the ones who most use SMS. In Roma- nia, all the participants in the 60-65 age group reported using alarm clock while few reported the use of the mobile phone calendar. In addition, only people in this age group who were college graduated reported using other mobile phone services, particularly photos. In Barcelona the trend is similar, with younger seniors reporting wider use of featured applications. Two participants had data subscription on their mobile phones and reported more sophisticated uses (women, 62 and 66 years old, secondary studies both). One of them used the instant messaging service WhatsApp but she could only use it with her daughter because her friends did not use it. The mobile communication gap between the two elder cohorts seems to be larger regarding specific mobile services than in terms of device ownership. In this sense, one particular finding on younger seniors in Romania concerns sending SMS to congratulate friends and relatives for their birthdays. Participants felt responsible to send such congratulation SMS in order to maintain the relation with that person while they would send also hundreds of SMS on Easter, Christmas and other celebration days. The recipients include not only family members and close friends but also large numbers of ex co-workers. In ex-communistic countries, as Romania, it is common to work in the same organization and have the same co-workers for 20 or 30 years. Therefore, maintaining strong relationships after retirement could be a widely spread practice. The mobility of the mobile phone is sometimes challenged, as observed in Barcelona. Some older participants did never bring their mobile phone out of home but used it as if it were a fixed phone. We mostly observed this behaviour among seniors who moved to a retirement home and changed their home landline for a new mobile phone subscription. One woman, for instance, kept it always plugged in and used to take care of being in the room in established hours to receive calls planned ahead (64, primary school).

4.1. Forgetting the Mobile Phone The fact that mobile phones are incorporated in participants’ daily routine is shown also through stories about the moments they forgot it – at home or elsewhere. In Romania, participants reported “the event” as a total lost, struggling to recover the device by any means. How- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 90

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ever, they would seldom take the way back to pick it up. Among participants from Barcelona, however, forgetting the mobile phone at home did not seem to create such a strong feeling.

When I forget it I feel terrorized because I have all the time the feeling that someone would call and I am not there or that I would have something important to say and I will not be able to do it (Women, 63, college educated, Bucharest). To me, really, it’s another tool, but I don’t distress if I leave it [at home]. (…) If I needed to call somebody, even if I don’t have the mobile phone, I can manage (…) entering in a bar, or a phone booth or a place like this (Man, 65, secondary studies, Barcelona).

However, a common observation in both countries is that, for people who worry about the safety of a family member, forgetting the telephone is experienced as even more dramatic event and they would fail doing their duties until they recover it.

If I would ever forget it at home, be sure that I would come back and take it, because I want to solve things without worry. When you have a family member who is ill [his wife] and there is nobody at home, you have to call once or twice per hour to be sure that she is ok and whether she needs something (Man, 73, secondary education, Bucharest).

4.2. Hello – “I am on the bus now” Talking on the mobile phone in public transportation seems to be an issue that preoccu- pies elders from urban areas, both in Romania and Barcelona. They are not necessary worried that using mobile communication in public could endanger their privacy, but what concerns them is they are forced to share others’ private experience, which will make them feel uncom- fortable. Specific results for each case study are reported in what follows. Romanian participants reported having a clear view of the educational level and social status of a person by looking to the kind of private information they share when talking on the phone in public transportation. A “respectable” person should always limit their conversations, as going in too much detail would definitively embarrass others.

I am quite embarrassed, I don’t like to have long conversation in the tram, I answer short and lapidary… I stick to the necessary information (Woman, 62, college educated, Bucharest) I see them [the young people] in the bus: they listen to music and they continuously send and receive SMS. They tape incredibly fast and boys are talking about girls. Then, there are uneducated people, gipsy who desperately listen manele music and their conversations are funny: “How are you dude? Where have you been? I looked all over you. Why didn’t you answer to me?”… /Man, I haven’t heard/…” I have a new song that you have to listen” (Man, 73, college educated, small town Romania).1

The discourse about the “uncivilized” people who discuss private issues in public is framed in terms of gender, race and ethnicity: The inappropriate conduct is attributed mainly to youth, uneducated, Romani (Gipsy) and women. Participants believe that someone’s social status could be depicted just by looking to the way they use the mobile phone in public places. In Barcelona, some less-experienced older seniors seemed to be less aware of the m-etiquette issues. They described unexpected situations in which the mobile phone rang. They explained what they did, but they report no embarrassment, as in the two situations described by a very basic user: Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 91

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One day, during a visit in Sant Joan de Déu [hospital], it rang and I turned it off. (…) [Another day] I said to my brother ‘I’m in mass, I’ll call you.’ He called me back later on (Woman, 76, primary studies not completed, Barcelona).

4.3. Master the Telephone Some participants started using the mobile phone when they were over 60, others much earlier. In any case, they gradually accommodate to the new technology. In Romania, all the participants except one reported receiving their first mobile phone as a present from their children. Interestingly, in almost all cases the phone was an older model that belonged to their children. As a result, the idea of damaging the phone and suffering the consequences of being stigmatized by their own children appeared in their discourses.

At the beginning I would hold it as if I had a bomb in my hand. When it rang I would have the feeling that I was going to drop it and something bad would happen. Then I tried and I discovered new options. Even now I discover new things and I did not manage to master it (Woman, 63, college educated, Bucharest).

The worry about breaking the device also appears in Barcelona but only among basic users that need assistance to use it, regardless whether the mobile phone was a present or not. Ac- quisition of the first mobile phone is diverse among participants. However, those who had their first mobile phone more recently, that is being already seniors, are those who report more often receiving it as a present from their children. Elders who are still working or those who are socially or professionally active seem to progress rapidly from unskilled to explorative users. This is because the mobile phone is a tool for accomplishing other tasks for which they are expected to use it. The need to show their expertise in the working environment urged them to accommodate with the mobile phone and we found that elders in the sample who went back to work were using more mobile phone services than those who were retired in pension. Moreover, in Romania, women who were in charge of taking care of their grandchildren were also more familiar with using the mobile phone. They reported calling their children and being called several times per day. In addition they were the participants who reported the most frequent use of photos on their mobile phone. In Romania, a number of participants received pressures from their children to accept the phone for safety / security reasons, so children would not have to worry about them when out of home. Participants’ level of submission in those cases is relevant to express the fact that elderly rarely gave up their “freedom”, their agency.2 They are not passively accepting their adult children to take control of the way they use mobile phones. Participants in Romania mostly do because they feel children are experts; in Barcelona, they explain they understand their children’s worries. The way children take control of their parents’ devices by giving them their older phones is a good example of intergenerational power, as in this example from Romania.

When I retired, my daughter told me: ‘Mother you are old, you need a phone so we can reach you’ (Women, 69, college education, small town Romania).

In the urban areas, elders are caching up with the mainstream in achieving at least basic skills to use the mobile phone. Romanian participants in the rural areas are mostly assisted users. This might be reinforced by the fact that rural areas are characterized by higher per- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 92

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centages of population above 65 and lower educational levels and, therefore, elders are less exposed to information and communication technologies. The same is valid for some older seniors living in Barcelona who were introduced into mobile telephony in recent time and have a low educational profile.

I don’t press the red button, because I can see it is red. Sometimes, by mistake I press the red button…because it was in the left side in my old phone. I [sometimes] lose the number or it is not possible to open it. Sometimes I go wrong because I forget that red is in the left and green in the right side. Look, up to now I lost 100 points, or minutes as they call it. At TV they say we could call somehow and send 2 Euros to help a person…What should I do? (Woman, 70, secondary education, rural Romania) I know I must open [the clamshell handset] when I got a call and then I must close it. (…) What happens is that I don’t know how to work in (sic) it, not at all. (…) It is him [her son] when I have to put credit, he does it for me (Woman, 76, almost illiterate, Barcelona).

Although the level of mobile phone acceptance in the rural areas is similar to the urban settings among participants in the Romanian case study, elders living in villages reported a higher need of assistance. In this sense, the use of mobile phone in interpersonal communication is strongly controlled by their children who had moved to urban areas. In most cases, children do not only gave them the phone but also pay the bills and decide what numbers to include in the phonebook. Children practically administrate, manage, the device in these cases. This high level of dependence results in keeping the elder alienating from the phone and creates the opportunity of secondary level of assistance. Therefore, “warm experts” (Bakard- jieva, 2005), those who support individuals in their everyday use of technology, are found beyond the family sphere. With children being gone, daily operation on mobile phones is carried out through others in the neighbourhood perceived as more skilled: post office workers, school teachers, local elites or younger neighbours.

I took the card [the prepaid card], I put it [new credit] in the telephone on Friday and Monday I had nothing. They stole my money [the mobile phone company]. When I called them they said I had used them but it was not truth. Dominica [a friend] called them and made a scandal because this had also happened to her twice. But I thought it was Adela [the person from the post office who actually inserted the card in the phone] who took them” (Woman, 70, secondary education, rural)

In Romania, the issue of control and ownership among elders and their children is reflected also in the disadvantages using the mobile phones. They mentioned difficulties in keeping the battery properly charged all the time; and frustration when somebody important to them calls and the phone runs out the battery. We believe that such problems also arise because elders use old phones that have been already exhausted by their initial owners (usually children). In some cases, we found that the phone menu was initially set up in English and the language was never changed into Romanian, creating extra difficulties to elders so to accommodate to the device.

4.4. Health Concerns Finally, all participants in Bucharest addressed concerns of mobile phone use and health issues. They were willing to learn more about the health effects of mobile phone use. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 93

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There are questions about the influence on our health. The specialists are going to research if there is any effect. I don’t talk so much, but my daughter, she talks for hours plus she is working on a computer at work. I believe in time a person could be negative influenced by this (Woman, college educated, 63, Bucharest).

In Barcelona health was not such a burning question, as few participants raised the issue during interviews. However, those who worried about it took practical decisions to prevent negative effects. Some mentioned they did not leave the mobile phone in the nightstand. Oth- ers explained they “wear” the device in specific places when on the move (not close to the heart, for instance). One woman even had a “protector stick” in her mobile handset to reduce radiations. She explained she kept the stuck piece in the three mobile phones she had since the first one she bought 12 years before the interview (63, college educated, Barcelona). While we need to explore their health concerns in depth, the current findings indicate that participants mostly worry about the long term effects radiations can cause. Notably, Roman- ian participants also worried about (their) children’s health; and these concerns seem to be more important than effects on their own body. In sum, initial findings of this ongoing fieldwork confirm some of the findings already available on elders from other countries. In Romania findings raise important questions on ownership and control in using mobile phones in interpersonal communication, as well as on the use of mobile phone in public places. In both countries participants showed different levels of mobile phone expertise. In Ro- mania less autonomous users tend to live in rural areas and tend to be older; while in Barcelona, they also tend to be older and with lower educational level. It is not age itself what explains expertise of use and the relationship with and through mobile phones, but personal trajectories and previous experience with ICTs.

5. Conclusion

The interviews conducted with elder mobile users in Romania and Barcelona allow us to conclude that we find similar mechanisms than those described in previous research on elders’willingness to use mobile communication. This result is confirmed even though the different level of mobile communication diffusion in each country. Safety and security together with the need to organize daily routine appeared in participants’ discourses. Mobile phones are used in com- bination with other communication channels. Besides, pricing system shapes the effective use of mobile communication in reaching everyday life goals of interpersonal communication. Al- though we find support for the utilitarian view of mobile phone in the case of elder users, our data suggest that, at least in the urban areas elders are using mobile communication to enjoy themselves. Some of them reported having long conversations, supportive talks, and enjoyable moments with their friends on the mobile phone. Consistent with pervious findings, women described – more often than men – having long conversation while men reported more micro-coordination through the mobile phone. It might be that women are more willing to accept mobile phone use for socializing with others, whereas men admit more mobile phone’s utility in coor- dinating with others. Furthermore, the gathered information suggests few aspects that might be relevant for the future research in the area of mobile communication. First, some participants felt pressured to maintain their social relations using mobile phone. In Romania, this specifically applies for SMS to congratulate several others on their birthday Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 94

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and others important celebration (Christmas, Easter). Particularly, younger participants from the urban areas (aged 60 to 65) sent a high number of SMS to congratulate not only family members but also former co-workers and relative distant others. Although this might be a pe- culiarity of the Romanian cultural context, we believe that this pattern will be found in other ex-communist countries, in which people have worked for more than 20 years in the same firm and with the same co-workers. Second, mobile phones are personal, portable, pedestrian devices (Ito, Okabe, & Matsu- da, 2006) for a majority of participants. However, in Barcelona few older seniors used to keep the device always in the same place, as if it was a landline, challenging the embedded idea of mobility. In contrast, participants in both case studies who need to be always reachable, as those who are taking care of close relatives, would stress if they forgot the mobile phone at home. Nevertheless, the common discourse among participants is that they can manage if they occasionally forget bringing the device with them. Third, participants argued on the appropriation of mobile phone use in public places, as in public transportation. The way mobile communication reshapes the relation between public and private has been largely analyzed by Ling and Pedersen (2005). Particularly, Fortu- nati (2005) argues that mobile phone use in public reframes people’s identities and could alter people’s efforts of self-presentation. In Goffman (1959) terms, they would offer something from their back-stage and they will generate embarrassment and disapproval. The interviews point in this direction. Participants described themselves as embarrassed to get into detail in public, when talking on a mobile phone, and also reluctant to accept others who do so. In addition, the lack of ability to control your private sphere when talking on a mobile phone in public becomes a social stigma. Among participants in Romania, young uneducated people, gipsy and women are associated with such conducts. The leak of private issues into the front stage is socially sanctioned also in the realm of mobile communication. In contrasts, while this perception is common in Barcelona, some older seniors seem not to be aware of the social sanction of inappropriate use. Fourth, our data draws attention to the fact that gaps in using mobile communications are maybe higher within the elderly group that between the younger elders and other age groups. We found different skills in using mobile phone between younger seniors and older seniors, as well as between more active elders (professionally and socially) and less active elders. Particularly relevant for the Romanian case and for countries with high percentage of rural population or elderly living in isolation, our data suggest that some elders will never become autonomous users and will always be assisted users. This is observed in rural areas in Roma- nia or among older elders in Barcelona. In these cases, different layers of assistance appear (children, and tertiary persons – when children are not available) and increase senior’s reluctance to use mobile communication. Fifth, we address the problem of ownership and control in using the mobile phone. In Ro- mania, most part of the respondents got their phones from their children while some of the children even paid their mobile communication expenses. This raises the question of intergenerational control and agency of use. Interviewees were willing to give up the control in using the mobile phone to their adult children. The relation between elder users and their ma- ture children who assist them seems relevant also in discussing the perceived advantages and disadvantages of mobile communication. A similar issue arises in B\arcelona among low- skilled mobile phone users, who tend to be the oldest, more dependent participants. Howev- Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 95

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er, maybe because of their higher level of dependency, they did not challenge agency and intergenerational control. Finally, Romanian participants were particularly worried about effects of intensive mobile phone use on health, but more on the heath of their children than on their own. In Barcelona, health concerns did not appear to be that important and worries were focused on the self – not on children. This issue will be further developed in a separate paper. Main conclusions are two. First, even though we are able to identify specific characteristics in both contexts of research, the two case studies conducted in Europe show common trends of use and appropriation of mobile telephony among older people. Second, and more important, heterogeneity of older mobile phone users must be taken into account for an accurate analysis. Elders who are more active (professionally and socially) describe higher autonomy in mobile phone use. However, it is not age but life trajectories and personal circumstances what shape that use.

Notes

1 Manele is a music style from Romania, generally associated with the Romani (Gypsy) minority, though not exclusively. Manele are a strongly disputed genre in Romania, with many representatives of Romanian upper-middle and intellectual class opposing this musical movement (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Manele, accessed 25 October 2012). 2 A 96 years old woman in Barcelona reported not using the mobile phone her son gave her as a present some months before the interview because she wanted to keep being independent. The way she expressed it was related to who paid the bill, as it was her son who would pay the mobile phone while it was she who assumed the costs of the landline.

Reference

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34. Tinker, A (2002), The social implications of an ageing population The Biology of Ageing, 123(7), 729-735. 35. Wong, C. Y. (2011), Exploring the relationship between mobile phone and senior citizens: A Malaysian perspective. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI), 2(2), 65-77. 36. World Health Organization (2012), Ageing and Life Course http://www.who.int/ageing/about/facts/en/ind ex.html [28 March 2012]. 37. Yin, R. K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. (3rd edition) SAGE Publications. 38. Zickuhr, K. (2011). Generations and their gadgets. Pew Research Center. 39. Zweifel, P., Feldr, S. & Werblow, A. (2004). Population ageing and health care expenditure: New Evi- dence on the “Red Herring”. Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance: Issues and Practice, 29(4), 652-666. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 98

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Annex

Table 1. Sample structure, Romania case study (N = 16).

60-65 cohort 66+ cohort Women 4 4 Gender Men 4 4 Bucharest 4 4 Residence Small town (< 20.000 inhabitants) 2 2 Rural 2 2 Secondary level or less 4 4 Education Higher level (college graduated) 4 4 Internet 5 2 ICT Fixed phone 3 6 TOTAL 8 8

Table 2. Sample structure of mobile phone users, Barcelona case study (N = 47).

60-74 cohort 75+ cohort

Women 20 10 Gender Men 12 5

Own home 29 8 Housing Retirement home 3 7

Up to secondary 10 13 Education Secondary studies or more 22 2

Internet 23 1

ICT Fixed phone 28 9

No fixed phone 2 8

Of them, living in a retirement home 1 8

TOTAL 32 15 Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 99

Book review Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 100 Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 101

Ioana Schiau*

Review of The Interpersonal Communication Book, 13th edition by Joseph A. Devito, New York: Pearson, 2012, 432 pages

The topic of interpersonal communication has recently gained increasing acknowledge- ment as a separate field of study in the broader family of communication studies, in a change of perspective that now takes our daily one-on-one interactions into account as the relevant, micro-scale acts that represent the foundation of all larger-scale communication – be it corporate, mass media, or online social media. Despite numerous handbooks, encyclopaedias and essential volumes on the topic which became available on the market throughout the years, one book stands apart, and has now reached its 13th edition and continues to inspire and inform young academics in universities worldwide. Joseph A. Devito’s “The Interpersonal Communication Book” is a well-structured and fundamental book on interpersonal communication, which covers topics as broad as relationships, conflict and communication ethics, and proves the key point that interpersonal communication is many-faceted, depending on dimensions such as individual appre- hension, assertiveness or adequacy. We cannot speak of a general thesis that the book defends, but rather of separate conclusions for each unit, ranging from the idea that self-disclosure in a relationship at its early stages is perceived as riskier by women, as compared to men (in the part dedicated to the self in communication), to newly found support for the theory that all verbal and nonverbal communication is intentional and a matter of choice. This updated book appears to be a truly complete view of the literature and research in the field of interpersonal communication. At the same time it is a very practical compendi- um, as it openly offers suggestions for effective communication when considering ethics, diversity and power in interpersonal communication, as well as differentiating between face-to-face and mediated (computer-mediated) interaction. Thus, most noteworthy, the 13th edition of the book is brought up to date and adjusted to strongly highlight the concept of choice in communication. Devito clearly stresses how to adapt our skills in order to make better choices in communication, irrespective of the context (personal, social, professional) and, at the same time, directs readers towards bettering their social interactions through a rich palette of interpersonal skills. There is also an updated focus on culture and interpersonal communication, with aspects of cultural diversity integrated in all major units of the book. The author successfully and diligently walks the readers through the specifics of interpersonal communication, and demonstrates that it is a process through which individuals define themselves and their interaction partners, through ever-changing and periodically redefined

* PhD student, Communication Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Adminis- tration, Bucharest, Romania, [email protected]. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 102

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relationships. The book is well supported by the creative use of literature and detailed evidence of studies and research, which makes it a significant contribution to the field. “The Interpersonal Communication Book” is organized in separate parts and subunits, addressing key aspects of interpersonal communication, such as the Preliminaries to Interper- sonal Communication, Interpersonal Messages, Interpersonal Relationships, each separate part being a comprehensive theoretical review. Within the first part, a unit that is worth reading is “Perception and the Self and Others in Interpersonal Communication”, dwelling on such specific dimensions as self-disclosure and “impression management”, testing students to see how accurate they are at people perception. The second part of the book is structured to deal with verbal, nonverbal, emotional and conversational messages. In terms of verbal messages, special attention should be paid to the subunits discussing ethics in communication and lying, in particular. The section on nonverbal communication guides readers through the main principles of nonverbal communication and ends with an interesting test for students –“Do you avoid touching?” which should perhaps, more effectively than any theory cited, prove to students that there are very different nonverbal customs in the world. The book makes use of charts, graphs and photographs that contribute to the clarity of the information provided, while at the same time it prompts readers to make comparisons and perhaps find valuable new research questions of their own. Such examples are the graphs detail- ing “body availability” (areas where touching is permitted) for male and female college students in the USA (S.M. Jourard) and “areas and frequency of touching” in Japan versus the USA (Dean C. Barnlund), in the unit on nonverbal communication. The book seems to differ in structure from other similar works in the field – as Kory Floyd’s “Interpersonal Communication” (Floyd, 2013), to name just one of the books that have recently entered the Romanian market – in the sense that it has a more organic view on matters. There is a difference in approach which can be noticed by simply looking at the table of contents. While Floyd’s book seems to have a slightly more scholarly (verging on arid) notion on how to organize its information, Devito’s book is intuitively and psychologically ordered. Parts and units such as “perception, the self and others”, “emotional messages”, “interpersonal conflict and conflict management”, “interpersonal relationships”, which allow for a clear and easy to memorise overview of all the dimensions of interpersonal communication. The chapter on the self raises questions about self-disclosure, which is ultimately presented as a matter of choice. In fact, the concept of choice is presented in a variety of contexts, demonstrating that there are right and wrong decisions when it comes to developing a communicational relationship, ranging from the conscious choice of a “life position” (such as the “I’m OK, you’re OK” script), to decide how to respond to a partner’s silence. In the updated version, each new chapter opens with Interpersonal Communication Choice Point Videos (which students can access online, on MyCommunicationLab.com). The information in the section is presented as a related scenario which students can follow and after- wards observe different endings for the scenario, to see how their different choices end. In terms of new didactic instruments used, the updated version of the book has clearly become even more interactive, containing side boxes (such as the “Ethics in Interpersonal Commu- nication” boxes, containing “Ethical Choice Points”) that encourage students to think how they would act in day-to-day situations. A truly interesting subunit of the book analyses listening and silence – in other words, the things we tell each other when we do not speak. Devito makes clever use of literature to point out that Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 103

Book review 103

silence is an aspect that we can connect to nonverbal communication, and which can be seen di- chotomously, either as creating walls and isolation, or as serving a complete and independent function in itself, while listening is a skill that is a must for communicational proficiency. The book also addresses the very opposite of silence, namely the human voice and impression forming based on one’s tone and voice volume. It is, thus, a paralanguage cue that Devito analyses, and cites studies that prove that we are able to judge age, sex and, most sur- prisingly, even social status (upper, middle, lower class) with remarkable accuracy. Howev- er, studies cited prove that, when attempting to ascertain one’s personality based solely on paraverbal, voice interpretation, we are often in error – thus once more raising questions about subjectivity and its interference with our power of analysis. However, since this is ultimately an all-comprehensive textbook, it does not extensively explain the interconnections of all the aspects, triggers, contexts and effects of interpersonal communication. There are, nonetheless, indicators of how each unit connects to the next, in practical terms. For instance, in the part covering nonverbal communication we find indicators of how nonverbal behaviour connects with status roles and power indicators. Touching is, in most cultures, dependent on status, determined by what Nancy Henley (cited in the book) calls Body Politics, wherein those with higher power status can touch those with lower power status and not vice versa. Conversely, in the part covering issues of interpersonal relationships, we find a unit dedicated to power in interpersonal relationships, which details the power aspect that all relationships have and the “power play” we all engage in. The 13th edition is also available in an innovative physical format of an unbound binder (and thus allows students to integrate their own notes and bring to class only the needed sections). Despite the fact that it has become a classic guide to interpersonal communication, one new edition after another, the book does risk becoming engulfed by the very generous offer of textbooks on the subject that are available in bookstores and libraries. The next editions must continue the clear line of innovation of the 13th reprint, in order for the book to remain one of the best ranked textbooks.

Reference

1. Floyd, K. (2013), Comunicarea Interpersonalã, Iaºi: Polirom. Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 104 Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 105

Call for papers

Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations www.journalofcommunication.ro

The Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations (RJCPR) is now seeking manuscripts for its upcoming issues. We welcome scholarly contributions from the broad field of communication studies, from public relations research, as well as from related areas. RJCPR also accepts relevant contributions for its permanent book review section. Prospective authors should submit original papers which meet the customary academic standards in the social sciences. These materials should be methodologically sound, thoroughly argued, and well crafted. They must not have been published elsewhere, or be currently under review for any other publication. All manuscripts are subject to a blind review process before publication. The author(s) name(s) should not appear on any page except the title page of the submitted paper, and electronic identification data should be removed before submission.

Important Dates: The Journal is issued three times per year, in April, July, and December. Here are the submission deadlines: • April issue: March 1; • July issue: May 1; • December issue: October 1.

Submission Submissions must follow the Guidelines for Authors, available on the Journal’s website (www.journalofcommunication.ro/guidelines). For further inquiries, please contact the editor, dr. Elena Negrea, [email protected] More information on the Journal of Communication and Public Relations can be found at www.journalofcommunication.ro Revista_comunicare_30.qxd 12/13/2013 2:56 PM Page 106 Coperta_revista_comunicare_30.qxd 13.12.2013 14:20 Page 1

Older People and Mobile Communication in Two European Contexts Revista românã de Comunicare ºi Relaþii Publice

Volume 15, no. 3 (30) / December 2013 Vol. 15, no. 3 (30) / December 2013 Vol. 15, no. 3 (30) / December

Qualitative Research in Communication

Guest editors: Mireia FERNÁNDEZ-ARDEVOL Corina DABA-BUZOIANU Loredana IVAN

Travelling Methods: Tracing the Globalization of Qualitative Communication Research