Shoot the messenger...

Parts of the readings for this week dealt with the development of effective health messages. Kreuter and colleagues talked about the effectiveness of health communication and ways to improve its quality. They introduce a model of health communication planning that considers the source, the message, the channel factors, the receiver, and the destination of a message in respect to communication and how these components might be affected by culture. The article highlights that source credibility depends on expertise and trustworthiness. As much as I agree with that, I do think we need to differentiate here, because expertise can be different things to different people. For me, growing up in a biomedical world, expertise is defined differently than for someone who grew up around traditional healers. It was also interesting to read how messages are perceived differently depending who narrates them, showing cleary that receivers of messages try to identify themselves with the narrator, hence, cultural attributes might become important.

Donohew and colleagues talked about messages targeted at high sensation seekers (HSS) and low sensation seekers (LSS) and how messages need to differ in order to achieve best results. I am not sure how I feel about tis article yet. As much as I believe that different adds, TV shows, newspapers, ...any form of media as a matter of fact, appeal to different people, I don't know about grouping them in HSS and LSS only. Just seems very odd.

The Steptoe article...why was that in the readings Mohan? Maybe as a bad example of how not to do research? I will share my anger in class, I am sure you had some sort of reason to throw that in the readings.

I loved the article by Susser & Stein. It allowed so much insight on the different perceptions and ideas about HIV/AIDS and female condom use. It allowed the reader to be part of the conversations. However, I wondered, how come the donor agencies have money to give for the use of male condoms, bit not for female condoms? Is it because they are more expensive? They would fulfill the same purpose. If I were the women that were interviewed, I'd be mad. People coming in to show how the condoms work but then not bringing any samples along to pass out.

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems with w...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

The Margins Review · Culture-Centered Approach

Search This Blog