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Journal Article 1: Cobb, S. (2018). “I’d Like Y’all to Get a Black Friend”: The politics of race in friends. Television & New Media.

Abstract: When Aisha Taylor joined the Friends cast in as Charlie Wheeler, she crossed a prime-time boundary—the segregation of American television shows by race. At the same time, Charlie had to be co-opted into the show’s gender dynamics. This article argues that Charlie epitomizes the ongoing postracial politics of respectability and hyper-class mobility that construct black women’s limited entry into postfeminist womanhood, as well as into the, still, rarefied white world of the “mainstream” American sitcom. Charlie seems to trouble, if temporarily, these racial limits by being both Ross’s equal in terms of education and employment and by being a temporary part of the group through her relationships with Joey and Ross. Comparing her with Ross’s previous girlfriend Julie, this article will also consider the ways that the problematic representation of Ross’s girlfriends of color structure the postfeminist tropes of fate and retreatism central to Ross and Rachel’s happy ending.

Journal Article 2: Cannoni, E., & Bombi, A. S. (2016). Friendship and romantic relationships during early and middle childhood. SAGE Open.

Abstract: Ideas about romantic relationships have been studied in adolescents. This article extends this study to younger children. We asked two hundred seventy 5- to 11-year-olds to draw “two children who have a romance” and “two children who are friends,” and we subsequently interviewed each participant about the characters’ relationships. The drawings were coded with three scales of Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR), an instrument by Bombi, Pinto, and Cannoni. Interviews were categorized by the characters’ age and identity and by the distinguishing features of romance and friendship: location, intimacy, activity, personal characteristics, and emotions. Scale scores were compared with variance analyses, whereas the categories frequencies were submitted to chi-square. Results showed that all participants were able to distinguish the two relationships, even if the descriptions increased in detail with age. Girls provided more information than boys about romance, but were less inclined to talk about their own romantic experiences.

Journal Article 3: Wang, B., Taylor, L., & Sun, Q. (2018). Families that play together stay together: Investigating family bonding through video games. New Media & Society.

Abstract: Video games have been a major form of people’s entertainment, and they have entered people’s family life. However, what we know about the effects of video games on family relationships is still rare. This study investigated the effects of video game co-playing among family members on family satisfaction and family closeness. In total, 361 parents recruited from Amazon Turk completed online questionnaires. The results showed that the more frequently family members play video games together, the better family satisfaction and family closeness they have. Families with poor family communication benefit more from co-playing than those with effective family communication. Family satisfaction mediated the relationship between video game co-playing and family closeness. Game features that facilitate family relationships were discovered through open-ended questions. Participants typically enjoyed playing video games with family members, and social benefits are the most salient in family settings.

Journal Article 4: Heinz, M. (2018). Communicating while transgender: Apprehension, loneliness, and willingness to communicate in a Canadian sample. SAGE Open, 8.

Abstract: This mixed-methods study draws on quantitative and qualitative data on interpersonal communication measures and experiences of Canadian transgender people under the framework of Meyer’s minority stress model. Based on administration of three surveys (Willingness to Communicate; Personal Report of Communication Apprehension; and University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] Loneliness scales), the participants in this study rated higher on communication apprehension and loneliness and were less willing to communicate than broader population means. The 44 participants identified key communication stressors in interactions with cisgender individuals and generated recommendations to facilitate less stressful communication climates. Communication climate, social isolation, and cisnormativity emerged as fundamental themes affecting interpersonal communication dynamics.

Journal Article 5: Urjani, C. (2017). Interpreting “Filler pause” in interpersonal communication: A study of situational comedy the big bang theory. Journal of Creative Communications, 12, 122–133.

Abstract: Humour as represented vis-à-vis situational comedy in general forms an important aspect of interpersonal communication. Though the reception of humour is often ascribed to personal taste, the extent to which an audience will find something humorous depends upon a multitude of factors, including benchmarks of culture and context. Regardless of the factors, it is observed that situational comedies elicit laughter through non-linguistic strategies. ‘Fillers’ mark one of the non-linguistic strategies of interpersonal communication. These have varied functions in all possible socio-cultural environments as well as in discourse construction. In addition to being universal in nature, ‘Fillers’ also facilitate the interpretation process and understanding. Using Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (2002), the study examines the selective communication situations with their interpretation process and understanding (cognitive effects) between the characters of American sitcom The Big Bang Theory. The article contends that ‘filler pause’ (termed as such in this article) used in a situational comedy have a function to play, namely, they tend to break down the formal barrier in an interpersonal communication and act as a humour trigger.