Elizabeth Hintz

University of Connecticut | UConn · Department of Communication

We utilize RDT 2.0 to analyze 424 narrative accounts by voluntarily childless (“childfree”) Reddit users of bingo-response interactions to explore how discourse constrains and enables meaning creation. Contrapuntal analysis revealed competing Discourses of Reproductive Normativity (DRN) and Reproductive Autonomy (DRA). We identified both dialogical...

Chronic pain is a significant and costly public health issue which is affected by political, organizational, and interpersonal social processes. Although medical pain scholarship has long examined communication constructs and processes, communication research and theory have remained largely absent. Scholars of communication must lend their researc...

Guided by normative rhetorical theory, this study utilizes thematic analysis to explore narratives about sterilization consultations posted by childfree patients and medical providers to Reddit. This study explores the multiple meanings of sterilization , the paradoxical dilemmas competing conversational purposes create, and the communicative pract...

Interactions between female patients with chronic pain and their medical providers in which providers question or contest the “realness” or nature of their illness experience (e.g. “It’s all in your head”) have been reported extensively in the extant qualitative literature, particularly for poorly understood (“contested”) chronic pain syndromes. Ma...

Guided by the theory of communicative (dis)enfranchisement (TCD), this study analyzes 738 narratives describing negative (n ¼ 381) and positive (n ¼ 357) patient-provider interactions recounted by 399 female-identifying patients residing in 22 countries who are living with poorly understood chronic overlapping pain conditions (COPCs) such as fibrom...

One in ten U.S. patients has an internally implanted medical device.Yet, lax regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)has resulted in the approval of medical devices disproportionately harming women, including Bayer Pharmaceutical’s Essure, a permanent female sterilization device. Victims of Essure often suffer adverse events, inclu...

This longitudinal study explored associations between communication resilience processes, job-search self-efficacy, and well-being for a sample of US adults who involuntarily lost their jobs during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the communication theory of resilience (CTR), we tested four possible models regarding how the enactm...

The communication theory of resilience (CTR; Buzzanell, 2010 Buzzanell, P. M. (2010). Resilience: Talking, resisting, and imagining new normalcies into being. The Journal of Communication, 60(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01469.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2019 Buzzanell, P. M. (2019). Communication theor...

Abstract Objective: This study reports the feasibility, acceptability, and outcomes of a longitudinal, communication pilot intervention for patients with inherited cancer risk and their partners. Methods: Couples were recruited through social media and snowball sampling. At Time 1 and 2, 15 couples completed a structured discussion task about fa...

This study offers a prescriptive review of the current status of Reddit in communication research. We analyze the characteristics of studies utilizing Reddit in the field of communication, examine the functions of Reddit within those studies, and identify future directions emerging from the analysis. Findings describe characteristics (e.g. methodol...

The exploration of discourse has been enormously generative to critical family communication scholarship (CFC), as scholars have both studied discourse in and of families as well as theorized about what discourse is and does. The heuristic value of discourse to CFC moves us to offer an agenda for future CFC research that asks family communication s...

This brief study applies the four tenets of the communication approach to social justice (CSJ) to illustrate how a social justice sensibility can be promoted via communicative micro-practices during a qualitative research study. By analyzing ethically important moments (which revealed both participants’ motivations for research participation and so...

This work extended the communication theory of resilience by examining how individuals construct anticipatory resilience through narratives of disruptive life events. Guided by postmodern antenarrative theory, we analyzed the emplotment of 25 individuals’ narratives of disruptive events to understand how participants make sense of these events and...

Guided by communication theory of resilience (CTR), we analyze 453 narrative accounts by Reddit user healthcare workers (HCWs) of their experiences with COVID-19-related personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages between March and May 2020. Via thematic analysis and sensitized by CTR concepts, we examine PPE shortages as a disruptive trigger eve...

This essay lays initial groundwork for a theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD), which explores what occurs when individuals’ experiences, identities, and relationships are discredited (i.e., not treated as “real”) by others and how such talk disempowers them and alters their perceptions of future interactions. Five key assumptions of TCD...

Individuals identifying as involuntarily celibate (i.e., "incels"), who are unable to have sex despite wanting to, often later no longer wish to identify as incels. This transition requires former incels to perform facework to reconfigure these otherwise rigid identity categories. Guided by performative face theory, this study analyzed 77 narrative...

Voluntary childlessness (VC) is a family communication issue which has garnered media attention for over 30 years. Guided by framing theory, in the present study we analyze media frames of voluntary childlessness in the United States between 1989 and 2018 to critically examine the formation of discourses governing childfree families over time. Guid...

Background Pharmaceutical companies have rationalized rapid increases in spending on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) by highlighting the educational potential that such efforts have for patients. Others have argued that profits and influence, not educational benefits, are the true motivators for the expansion of DTCA. It is critical that phar...

According to the communication theory of resilience (CTR; P. M. Buzzanell, 2010), people reintegrate from disruptive events and construct a new normal through five interrelated processes: (a) crafting normalcy; (b) affirming identity anchors; (c) maintaining/using communication networks; (d) constructing alternative logics; and (e) foregrounding pr...

Chronic pelvic and genital pain conditions (CPGPCs) often go undiagnosed and untreated in women for years after symptom onset. This is due, in part, to communication challenges experienced by patients such as difficulties describing pain and the stigmatized nature of CPGPCs. However, studies have yet to explore how early messages about menstruation...

This essay draws upon Donovan’s conceptualization of “communication as work” to explicate types of communicative work undertaken by the authors – two patients with vulvodynia, a poorly understood chronic genital pain condition – during patient–provider interactions prior to diagnosis. Uniquely positioned as patients-turned-scholars, we extend the r...

Grounded in communication privacy management (CPM) theory, this study explores the criteria female U.S. military veterans rely on when creating privacy rules regarding (non)disclosure of their mental health information with others as well as how female veterans manage privacy boundaries. Interviews with a diverse sample of 78 female veterans recent...

Background: Healthy People 2020 has made achieving health equity one of its overarching goals; another goal is increasing the number of accredited local agencies that have Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs). Community Health Improvement Plans are meant to serve agencies as guiding documents for multiple years. Objectives: This study invest...

This activity extends the rich pedagogical scholarship on impromptu speaking by integrating visual imagery into the impromptu speaking exercise. The goal of this semester-long series of exercises is to provide students with the opportunity to apply effective delivery skills across general purposes of speaking, receive feedback, and thus develop the...

Many research studies have offered ethical guidelines for the recruiting of participants, solicitation of informed consent, and harvesting of data from communities and individuals. However, few guidelines exist for returning research findings to participants although participants often desire access to the results of the studies in which they parti...

Background: Healthy People 2020 has made achieving health equity one of its overarching goals; another goal is increasing the number of accredited local agencies that have Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs). Community Health Improvement Plans are meant to serve agencies as guiding documents for multiple years. Objectives: This study inve...

This study uses intersectional methodology to critically explore vulvodynia, chronic female genital pain, as it disrupts norms governing gender roles in heterosexual sex and reproduction. Interviews with 26 women with vulvodynia illuminate core tenets of the critical interpersonal and family communication (CIFC) framework, which include power; priv...

Purpose: Healthcare systems have long struggled to attract and retain patients within the competitive marketplace. Physiotherapy clinics, not immune to market pressures, also struggle to be competitive within a consumer-driven model of healthcare. To provide insight into how physiotherapists may bet- ter promote themselves, this study sought to exp...

This manuscript uses Goldsmith’s (2004) normative model of social support to explore conversations women have with a romantic partner about vulvodynia. Twenty-six women with vulvodynia participated in semi-structured interviews in which they described conversational goals, discussed challenges, and offered advice to others managing vulvodynia. As t...

With funding for public health initiatives declining, creating measurable objectives that are focused on tracking and changing population outcomes (i.e., knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors), instead of those that are focused on health agencies’ own outputs (e.g., promoting services, developing communication messages) have seen a renewed focus. This...

Nearly one half of women between the ages of 40 and 44 who do not have children are voluntarily childless, or “childfree” (Pew Research Center, 2015). Many childfree women (and men) request sterilization from medical providers (Richie, 2013). Childfree women and men who request sterilization face questioning about their nul- liparous status, risk o...

With funding for public health initiatives declining, creating measurable objectives that are focused on tracking and changing population outcomes (i.e., knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors), instead of those focusing on health agencies’ own outputs (e.g., promoting services, developing communication messages) have seen a renewed focus. This study a...

Businesses participate in social media to have a voice in the conversations that take place about them online. Many business leaders believe social media marketing is simple and inexpensive. That is a misconception. Digital advertising costs money, and many platforms will not allow unpaid posts to reach large audiences. Companies spend millions of...