Stephen M. Croucher

• PhD
• Professor at Massey University

This study explored the extent to which fear of COVID-19 was related to ethnocentrism in 10 Global South nations: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, South Africa, and Singapore. Based on a representative sample of 2963 participants, results revealed ethnocentrism and fear of COVID-19 are positively correlated. In addition...

Filipinos are the second fastest-growing Asian population working in dairy farming, healthcare, construction, and other industries in New Zealand. Like other immigrants, Filipinos experience basic and advanced intercultural transformation as they communicate and interact with people in the country. Croucher and Kramer’s cultural fusion theory propo...

Weaknesses in instructor communicative behaviors negatively affect online learning. The purpose of this study was to understand how instructor clarity and computer-mediated immediate communicative behaviors influence student dissent in the asynchronous online classroom. Distance learning is not new to career and technical education; however, the CO...

China’s Belt and Road Initiative has galvanized new Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. The presence of the new Chinese migrants (Xinyimin) has not gone without resistance in Indonesia. This study examines the effects of history of intergroup conflicts and contact on the formation of threat perceptions toward the Xinyimin in I...

This informative Research Handbook brings together a unique combination of methodological, philosophical and theoretical perspectives to present a comprehensive overview of communication and prejudice research

The association between argumentativeness and extraversion, while well established in the United States, has not been examined cross-culturally. Therefore, this study conducts a cross-cultural comparison of this association with nationally representative samples from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. The results confirm previou...

Content analysis is a research technique used to gather and analyze content of a text to make replicable and valid inferences from the text. This type of analysis enables researchers to describe, categorize, and make inferences about communication messages qualitatively and quantitatively. This chapter provides a tutorial for conducting such an ana...

Purpose This study aims to examine the extent to which organizational dissent predicts perception of workplace bullying. As previous studies have reported inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results regarding the interaction between the reporting of bullying and demographic variables, these variables are examined in the New Zealand context. Or...

Vaccination is key to developing herd immunity against COVID-19; however, the attitude of Nigerians towards being vaccinated stalled at the 70% vaccination target. This study engages Theory of Planned Behaviour to analyse the tone of Nigerian YouTube headlines/titles, and the tone of YouTube users’ comments to examine the causes of COVID-19 vaccine...

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered prejudices, systemic inequities and critical feelings about governmental institutions around the globe. Since the start of the pandemic, the 12 nations that make up South America have had more than 67 million cases and 1.3 million fatalities. Public trust in and willingness to speak out about government responses...

This study explores how belief in social media outlets is an important aspect of agenda melding in an online environment. In this study, the researchers employ agenda melding as a theoretical lens to explore how belief in social media outlet can predict support for the proposed Border Wall. The researchers surveyed 232 people to find out how belief...

ABSTRACT This study investigated the extent to which patient self-advocacy predicted COVID-19 vaccine hesitance in the U.S. (n = 1987). Results indicated being vaccinated, increasing age, and higher education were each positively related to increased vaccine non-hesitance. Also, those who sought more information and who were more assertive about th...

Background This study applies the Patient Self-Advocacy scale to investigate vaccine hesitancy in New Zealand. Due to New Zealand’s very limited tertiary hospital system and vulnerable populations, the Government’s strategy to address COVID-19 has been to prevent the virus from entering the nation and to eliminate it when it does cross the border....

Math anxiety is a psychological burden that can hinder individuals across their lifetimes. However, the current literature lacks a valid measure of math anxiety that can be used across instructional modalities and among non-student populations. As such, it is difficult to assess math anxiety in virtual learning environments, track math anxiety acro...

Applying a skills-based approach to media and information literacy (MIL), this study explores the MIL competencies of teachers in multi-ethnic schools in Yunnan Province, China. A focus group approach was used. Results showed: (1) teachers have limited access to media and information technologies; (2) teachers do not show much of an understanding o...

More than 5.89 million people have died from COVID-19. Due to COVID-19, there is a need for organizations to reconsider their structures and systems in response to increased remote working and decreased face-to-face (FTF) interactions. This study analyzes organizational relationships, specifically the supervisor-subordinate relationship. This study...

This study examines the understudied daily lives of Westerners in China, focusing on 35 American migrants’ experiences of being stereotyped as the foreign Other during their daily interactions with Chinese locals as an illuminating case. The interviewed Americans’ narratives reveal that the perceived stereotyping, triggered by their race and/or nat...

This study investigated COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and support for employer vaccine mandates and support for termination for non-vaccinated employees among a national sample in New Zealand. A total of 1852 individuals participated in the study. Results indicated participants who are able to get vaccinated are less likely to support employer mandate...

Purpose In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares t...

Twitter is a powerful tool for world leaders to disseminate public health information and to reach citizens. While Twitter, like other platforms, affords world leaders the opportunity to rapidly present information to citizens, the discourse is often politically framed. In this study, we analysed how leaders’ of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing g...

Teachers routinely face dissatisfying work conditions and may express their frustrations to their peers. This study explores the extent to which causal attributions of work-related doubt, occupational commitment, and intention to quit influence teachers’ willingness to voice their concerns about their occupation. Through a survey of 210 teachers in...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant changes in how people communicate with, and participate in, organizations. This study used structurational divergence to explore the extent to which, during the time of COVID-19, organizational members experienced communication tensions between superiors and subordinates. This study of 956 participant...

As of May 2021, more than 14.7 million people have been infected and nearly 409,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Brazil. During the pandemic, there were countless cases of discrimination, racism, prejudice, and violence towards Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian population. Using integrated threat theory (ITT), this study investigates prejudice towards A...

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased discrimination, stigma, and racism toward individuals of Asian descent. Little research has concentrated on public perceptions regarding who is to blame for the spread of the virus. This study extends integrated threat and attribution theories by examining the extent to which prejudice against Asians is r...

As of July 2021, more than 153 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 globally. Russia has 5.5 million cases with more than 135,000 deaths; while Kyrgyzstan has nearly 132,000 cases and 2000 deaths. While the virus hit the two nations at different times and with different severities, the two nations, as with so many others, both experienc...

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen health preventive behaviors to prevent spread of the virus become highly politicized in the United States. A clear division exists between Democrats favoring health preventive measures and Republicans often defying such measures. Amid increasing fear of the virus, the 2020 United States presidential election became ce...

This chapter explores the perception Finns have towards refugees. In particular, building off intergroup threat theory (ITT), this chapter describes the extent to which Finns perceive refugees as a threat to Finnish society. Researchers have proposed Finns might perceive immigrants (and refugees) as threats because they share less cultural and phys...

Building off of the previous two chapters, this chapter looks at the refugee experience from the point of view of the refugee. While the overwhelming majority of integrated threat studies have been conducted from the point of view of the dominant culture, and a few from the point of view of an immigrant or minority’s perspective, none have explored...

This chapter provides a brief review of historical migration to Finland, discusses the legal aspects of migrating to Finland and the rights of immigrants and refugees, current trends in migration to and from Finland, and analyses how other Nordic nations (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden specifically) have responded to the refugee crisis. Through this d...

For a full picture and for more developed insights into the intergroup relations between Finns, immigrants, refugees, and other migrants, it was important for us to look beyond the experiences of refugees and ethnic Finns and to examine the position of other immigrants living or residing in Finland. Thus, this chapter explores the perception immigr...

This chapter draws four overall conclusions from this project. First, the intergroup interactions between Finns, refugees, and immigrants represent cultural fusion in action. In particular, the results of this support the assertions of cultural fusion theory. Second, this research reveals new theoretical and methodological lines of inquiry for inte...

This chapter outlines the myriad push and pull factors that led to the refugee crisis, describes the scale of the migration, and discusses how the European Union (EU) nations and the EU as a whole responded to the crisis. Four push factors are described: the change in migration policy in Macedonia that opened up the Balkan route to the EU, the war...

Oltre che ad innescare una crisi sanitaria globale, la pandemia COVID-19 ha fatto emergere in molti paesi fenomeni di sinofobia. Il presente studio esamina il pregiu-dizio anti-cinese in Italia nel contesto della pandemia COVID-19 alla luce della teoria integrata della minaccia (Stephan e Stephan, 2000). Tra i fattori considerati nello studio come...

Following the global outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), different countries took different approaches to informing their citizens about the pandemic and planned local public health initiatives. We use online participant panels in 4 affected countries – the US, Spain, Italy, and New Zealand – to explore the extent to which prejudice to...

Teacher communication behaviors have enormous impacts on students’ learning processes and thus have attracted extensive scholarly attention (Mazer, 2013). Teacher confirmation is the process through which teachers communicate to students that they are endorsed, recognized, and acknowledged as valuable individuals (Ellis, 2000). In primarily US-base...

This book combines various theoretical approaches to explore how Finland and its people responded to the European Union (EU) refugee crisis. Combining interviews with Finns, voluntary migrants to Finland and refugees in Finland, the text presents differing perspectives on migration in this country. Key themes addressed in the text include the exten...

This study investigates the re-entry acculturative experiences and challenges facing foreign-educated returnees working at Chinese universities. Fifteen returnees from five universities in a southwestern province of China participated in semi-structured interviews. The study, using the ABC theoretical framework, highlights the acculturative process...