A Rain

Biographic Data

ID48399
NAMEA Rain
GIVEN NAMESA
FAMILY NAMERain
SIGNATURERAIN A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Arizona
ORCID0000-0002-1639-8557
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS79
TOTAL CITATIONS382
AUTHOR COUNT79
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2006
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX11

  • Exploring an Extended Theory of Planned Behavior to Motivate Intentions to Remove Anthropogenic Food Sources in Residential Areas

    Open AccessTaylor A Foerster, Rain Wuyu Liu et al.ARTICLEHuman Dimensions of Wildlife2026

    Anthropogenic food sources in residential areas, including unsecured trash, bird feeders, and fruit trees, can attract wildlife and increase negative human-wildlife interactions. While agencies recommend behaviors to reduce attractants, research on factors driving residents’ intention to comply remains limited. This study applies and extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by testing core constructs (attitude, perceived behavioral control, a…

  • Media Depictions of Minority Groups

    Open AccessMuniba Saleem, Ian Hawkins et al.ARTICLEMedia Psychology2026

    After more than five decades of research on media depictions and outgroup evaluations, there remains a need for a comprehensive analysis that includes both positive and negative portrayals across a wide range of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. This meta-analysis of 60 studies from 49 articles fills this gap, revealing that negative media depictions of racial and ethnic minorities (k = 56, n = 16,476) lead to unfavorable evaluations of these…

  • Face concerns, the communication medium, and supportive conversations

    Open AccessA Rain, Eric Tsetsi et al.ARTICLEJournal of Social and Personal…2026References: 23

    We adopt a dynamic dyadic systems approach and use the impression management model to examine how a support seeker’s concerns with a face threat and the communication medium influence supportive conversations. Using secondary data ( N = 176 dyads), we identified seven conversational motifs involving five-turn sequences of talk between seekers and providers that appeared regularly during conversations. Motifs involving the discussion of feelings w…

  • Support Seeking Behavior During Supportive Conversations

    Open AccessA Rain, Corey A Pavlich et al.ARTICLECommunication Research2025

    An experiment was conducted to better understand how impression management concerns and the communication medium influence the messages produced by support seekers during supportive conversations. Support seekers were primed to anticipate a positive face threat (or not primed) and then completed a supportive conversation with a peer either face-to-face or using instant messaging. Seekers primed to anticipate a face threat were more likely to use …

  • Incivility in Online Discussion as a Collective Phenomenon

    Open AccessA Rain, Kevin Coe et al.ARTICLESocial Media + Society2025References: 8

    Drawing from dynamic systems theory, we examine how incivility is collectively constructed in an online discussion community. Using secondary data consisting of comments shared over a 3-week period to an online news community, we identified three sequences that reflect collective incivility practices. Whereas the persistent incivility sequence included a large proportion of uncivil comments, incivility occurred infrequently in the sporadic incivi…

  • Supportive communication as a collective phenomenon

    Open AccessA Rain, Stephen A Rain et al.ARTICLEHuman Communication Research2025Cited by: 1References: 19

    Developing a complete understanding of supportive communication requires learning more about how it unfolds among groups. We leveraged dynamic systems theory to document group-level emotional support provision practices in online health communities and examine their implications for discussion processes and the mood of support seekers. We evaluated sequences of person-centered feedback in the first three responses to threads started by community …

  • Talking about problems in online health communities

    Open AccessA Rain, Stephen A Rains et al.ARTICLEJournal of Communication2024

    Drawing from theory about rumination, we examine the impact of verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination in online health communities. Our analyses show that when users verbally ruminated in a message starting a thread (compared to when they did not), they were more likely to again verbally ruminate and to report a negative mood in the next thread they started. These relationships, however, varied over time as well as when…

  • The Effectiveness of Social Norm Appeals on Promoting Covid-19 Prevention Behaviors

    Rain Wuyu Liu, Ying Cheng et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2024

    Recent research shows social norm perceptions predict people's adherence to COVID-19 preventative health practices. Nonetheless, additional empirical studies are necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of social norm messages on behavioral outcomes with experimental designs. Guided by the social norm literature and frameworks, the current research addresses this need by examining the effects of descriptive and injunctive norm a…

  • An Investigation into the Portrayal of Organ Donation on Grey’s Anatomy Seasons 1 Through 15

    Brian L Quick, Lauren A Kri et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2024

    The current project sought to extend prior research examining organ donation portrayals on Grey’s Anatomy by examining the first fifteen seasons. Guided by the health belief model, content analysis revealed more attention was given to benefits of donation than barriers. Contrary to previous research, more attention was given to refuting rather than promoting commonly cited myths. The results also address attention to the health threat as well as …

  • The role of support seekers and seeking in supportive communication

    A Rain, Stephen A Rains et al.ARTICLEAnnals of the International…2024

    Although the topic of social support has received significant attention from communication scholars, the role of support seekers and seeking warrants greater consideration. We synthesize research examining cultural differences in support seeking, support seeking message properties, dilemmas of support seeking, and connections between support seeking and provision. An agenda for future scholarship rooted in dynamic systems theory is then proposed.…

  • Examining the Dynamics of Uncivil Discourse Between Sub-National Political Officials and the Public on Twitter

    Juliana L Barbati, A Rain et al.ARTICLEMass Communication & Society2024References: 14

    Despite agreement about the challenges posed by incivility for democratic discourse, much remains to be learned about how incivility manifests in interactions between the public and political elites. We examine the connections between top-down and bottom-up incivility among 22 local and state elected officials and the public over an 18-month period on Twitter. Our analyses show that incivility in a tweet from an elected official significantly inc…

  • Engagement with partisan Russian troll tweets during the 2016 U.S. presidential election

    Open AccessA Rain, Stephen A Rains et al.ARTICLEJournal of Communication2023

    Operatives working for the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) infiltrated social media with the goal of disrupting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We investigate how these operatives or “trolls” leveraged partisan political identities in discussing presidential candidates and parties on Twitter. Adopting a social identity lens, we conceptualize retweeting troll content as a form of identity performance and examine the message properties …

  • Soutien social et communication médiée par ordinateur

    Open AccessA Rain, Kevin B WrightARTICLEQuestions de communication2023

    Malgré les nombreuses spéculations sur les avantages et les inconvénients potentiels de la communication médiée par ordinateur (CMO) pour les processus de soutien social, peu de tentatives ont été faites pour résumer les résultats issus de l’exploitation de ce corpus d’études Le présent article présente un état des lieux de la recherche sur le soutien médié par ordinateur afin de déterminer si les promesses et les périls supposés de la CMO se son…

  • Russian Troll Vaccine Misinformation Dissemination on Twitter

    Kun Yan, Juliana L Barbati et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2023

    Although vaccine misinformation has been a longstanding problem, the growth of social media and divides based on political ideology have raised novel concerns. One noteworthy example involves the Russian Internet Research Agency's deployment of operatives on Twitter (i.e., trolls) working to sow discord among the American public. We examine 1,959 tweets made by trolls between 2015 and 2017 about vaccination to better understand their efforts to s…

  • Psycholinguistic Markers of Covid-19 Conspiracy Tweets and Predictors of Tweet Dissemination

    A Rain, GONDY LEROY et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2023

    The adoption of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 has been fairly widespread among the general public and associated with the rejection of self-protective behaviors. Despite their significance, however, a gap remains in our understanding of the underlying characteristics of messages used to disseminate COVID-19 conspiracies. We used the construct of resonance as a framework to examine a sample of more than 1.8 million posts to Twitter about COVI…

  • Pornography and religiosity

    Open AccessPaul J Wright, Robert Tokunaga et al.ARTICLEHuman Communication Research2023

    Sexual behavior and religious practice are fundamental social dynamics of longstanding interest to communication scholars. Drawing insights from the Reinforcing Spirals Model (RSM) and Sexual Script Acquisition, Activation, Application Model (3AM), this study examined whether (a) religiosity operated primarily as a predictor of later pornography consumption, which in turn predicted heightened sexual permissiveness, or (b) earlier pornography cons…

  • The Implications of Communication Technologies for Supportive Conversations

    A Rain, Corey A Pavlich et al.ARTICLECommunication Methods and Measures2023Cited by: 3References: 9

    Although turn-level dynamics involving the back-and-forth exchange of talk between support seekers and providers form the foundation for supportive conversations, they have largely been overlooked by researchers studying the implications of communication technologies for social support. To address this gap, we demonstrate the utility of examining turn transitions using configural frequency analysis to investigate patterns of talk that mark and di…

  • When they support us

    Shelby N Carter, J Harwood et al.ARTICLECommunication Monographs2023References: 12

    Our research examines perceptions of emotional support messages characterized by high verbal person-centeredness (VPC) when sent from an outgroup versus an ingroup member. We conducted two experiments in which White participants (N1 = 206, N2 = 166) imagined receiving a high VPC support message from a White (ingroup) or Black (outgroup) peer. Counter to our hypotheses drawn from expectancy violations theory, both studies revealed that participant…

  • Psycholinguistic Properties of Informational Support Seeking Posts in Online Health Communities and Predictors of Community Responsiveness

    Open AccessA Rain, Shelby N CarterARTICLEJournal of Language and Social…2023References: 32

    Although informational support can be a valuable resource for coping with illness, our understanding of how it is solicited remains incomplete. We examine the language properties of more than 20,000 posts made to an online health community to better understand the perspective of people seeking informational support and identify properties that predict community responsiveness. Compared to posts in which informational support was not requested, po…

  • Engagement with incivility in tweets from and directed at local elected officials

    A Rain, Stephen A Rains et al.ARTICLECommunication and Democracy2023Cited by: 2

    Although social media have created novel opportunities for the public and local elected officials representing city or state governments to interact, concerns have been raised about the tenor of their discourse. We used machine learning in this project to identify the presence of incivility in tweets (N = 38,218) made by and directed at local officials representing a metropolitan area over an 18-month period and examine its implications. Compared…

  • Design and implementation of a health messaging protocol employed for use within a Covid-19 health dissemination platform

    Open AccessPaulina M Colombo, Sarah Freylersythe et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Public Health2022

    Introduction: AZCOVIDTXT, a bilingual, two-way information sharing platform was created in April of 2020 in response to rising COVID-19 cases in Arizona. The aim of this paper is to delineate the protocol and processes used to develop and disseminate health messaging to serve as guidance for other groups, universities, or public health programs in the implementation or enhancement of health communication services. Methods: Health messaging format…

  • Social Enhancement and Compensation in Online Social Support among Cancer Patients

    A Rain, Jingbo MengARTICLEHealth Communication2022

    Although several researchers have reported evidence that the benefits of Internet use depend on users' offline resources, the factors responsible for this phenomenon are not well understood. We examined a network-based explanation for social enhancement (i.e., rich get richer) and social compensation (i.e., poor get richer) in the context of received social support among adults coping with cancer. After first controlling for support received offl…

  • Mutual influence in support seeking and provision behaviors during comforting conversations

    Open AccessA Rain, Stephen A Rains et al.ARTICLEHuman Communication Research2022

    Mutual influence is central to prominent supportive communication theories but remains understudied. We conduct a turn-level analysis to investigate mutual influence in the unfolding nature of conversations among 334 stranger dyads discussing a personal problem. We examine how the types of messages produced by support seekers influence the immediate response from providers, and how that provider response impacts the next message produced by suppo…

  • An Empirical Investigation of Inadequate Statistical Reporting Practices in Communication Meta-Analyses and Their Consequences

    Stephanie K Van Stee, Qinghua Yang et al.ARTICLECommunication Methods and Measures2022References: 5

    Insufficient statistical reporting practices (ISRPs) involve failure to report effect sizes or the information necessary to compute them in quantitative research. ISRPs can present problems for advancing knowledge in the field of Communication. Because, among other issues, studies containing ISRPs cannot be included in meta-analytic reviews, this practice undermines our ability to quantitatively summarize the findings from communication research …

  • Public responses to Covid-19 mask mandates

    A Rain, Philip Harber et al.ARTICLECommunication Monographs2022Cited by: 3References: 2

    Governmental mandates requiring mask wearing in public spaces to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus have been controversial in the United States. We test theory related to anger and anger expression in the context of posts about masks appearing on Twitter during a 12-week period in which mask mandates were adopted in 18 states. The results were consistent with an appraisal of mandates as providing protection from harm. Pro-mask anger directed …