Digital Commons Network^™

Neil Postman's Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy Of Communication In The Age Of Technopoly, Ryan Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project walks the work of Neil Postman (1931-2003) into the philosophy of communication. Traditional conceptions of Neil Postman’s body of work position his ideas within the traditions of media ecology, general semantics, or, more broadly, as a form of media studies and criticism. In addition, others label Postman’s work, especially in Technopoly (1992), as pessimistic, deterministic, and/or imbibed with Luddite tendencies. This project articulates a different view and contends that Postman’s scholarship, in particular his articulation of the loving resistance fighter in the final chapter of Technopoly, is committed to resisting the nefarious forces embedded in both technology …

The Semiotic Use Of Emojis In Marketing Communication, Naif Albarzan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the emergence of social media as the primary tool for communication in social and business settings, research on effectiveness of communication using of emojis is limited. This project seeks to bridge the gap in understanding the effectiveness of the use of emojis in marketing communication. In particular, the dissertation will focus on an interpretive exploration of the use of emojis in marketing communication as a semiotic that supports persuasion.

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Emergency Care For Youth Who Experience Suicidality And Identify As Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer/Questioning (Lgbtq+): An Interpretive Phenomenology, Theresa Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Suicide is a leading cause of death in children; youth who identify as LGBTQ+ are at an exponentially higher risk of suicide. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of young adults who identify as LGBTQ+ and sought emergency care for suicidality when they were adolescents.

Methods: Heideggerian hermeneutics phenomenology is the research method used in this study. Youth, ages 18-25 years, who identify as LGBTQ+ and sought emergency treatment for suicidality when they were adolescents (13-17 years) were recruited to participate;fifteen youth enrolled. Individuals ranged in age from 20 to 25 years. Participants described …

Richard Sennett Calling In Communication Ethics, Lin Gu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses on an interplay between Richard Sennett’s scholarship and the literature of communication ethics. Content from communication ethics provides a better understanding on how Sennett contributes to urban communication in this historical moment, and answers how we can make communication possible in the era of difference.

Sennett’s scholarly concerns starts with a phenomenon that he termed as the fall of public man, which is people’s self-withdrawal from the public domain. Sennett initially credited this to a mismatched “I” and “me” and believes reconciling them would solve the problem. Later, Sennett realizes the self-withdrawal from the public domain has …

Reporting On Athletes And Mental Health: An Evolution In Language And Lexicon From 1970 To 2019, Vivian Ferris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the spring and summer of 2021, several athletes made headlines for seemingly prioritizing mental health over the status quo of sports society. For example, in May 2021, during the French Open, professional U.S. tennis player Naomi Osaka announced she would not appear at press conferences, despite threats of fines, citing on social media it was for her mental health. The controversy surrounding Osaka and others led to further questions. Looking through the lens of agenda setting and framing theories, the purpose of this study is to better understand the frequency, variety, and evolution of language in journalistic coverage of …

Is Being Respectable Enough?: A Critical Investigation Of Code-Switching And The Lived Experiences Of Black Leaders Who Work At Nonprofits In Bridgertown, Ramona Crawford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current literature on Black nonprofit leaders is scarce, causing little to be known about the experiences that they have encountered when navigating their roles and responsibilities. Even less literature is available on these Black leaders and their usage of code-switching strategies when attempting to navigate those same nonprofits. Based on themes uncovered during the literature review this study employs an in-depth narrative inquiry qualitative methodology. While using theories such as critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 200; Ladson-Billings,1998), the politics of respectability (Higginbotham, 1993) and the theory of capital (Bourdieu, 1985; 1996) the researcher examines the leadership experiences of …

Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American approach to legal hermeneutics emerged from the covenant theology of the Puritans. American civil religion understands the Constitution to be based in natural laws: a secularized conception of God-given rights. To change the text would collapse the epistemological framework of the nation. When a nation sees its constitution as a sacred text, then the answer to contemporary problems cannot be to change that text; rather, it must be to return to the text with an even more fundamentalist hermeneutic. Both gun rights advocate Charlton Heston, and gun control advocate Barak Obama, argued their cases using a fundamentalist hermeneutic, …

You Are Not Welcome Here: Sloterdijk’S Posthumanism And The Rhetoric Of Hostile Urban Architecture And Design, Brandon William Aungst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation brings together three scholarship areas: rhetorical theory and analysis, hostile urban architecture and design, and Sloterdijk’s version of posthumanism. I synthesize these complementary areas to address the following questions: How do architecture and design contribute to the rhetorical meaning-making of being human and facilitate the communication of that meaning to others? How do different types of architecture and design produce the material contexts for conceptualizing what humanness means and contribute to the development of fore-structures for interpreting and communicating that humanness (e.g., hostile architecture and barbed wire)? How can we conceptualize various types of architecture and design, or …

St. Ignatius' Quill Pen: Exploring The Orality-Literacy Difficulty In The Spiritual Exercises, Hongchao Qian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Informed by the work of Walter Ong, in the first prelude of the First Week in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola used an emblematical image, the “prison-cage”, to provide phenomenological accounts for the exercitants to examine the existential situation within. This dissertation explores into the difficulty of being rhetorical in mediating on the existential situation emblematically. I try to understand the orality-literacy dynamic within the Exercises through the theoretical framework of semiotic phenomenology. The Ignatian emblematics can be understood as phenomenological descriptions that asked the exercitants to provide the parts of moral-phenomenological reductions and phenomenological interpretations within …

Friendship In The Digital Age: Implications From A Philosophy Of Communication Approach, Tiffany Petricini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Friendship is a central relationship-style that grounds us. Much of the literature on the effects of technology on our relationships, especially friendship, has taken a skeptical approach. The notion of friendship is historically-situated, thus, it requires attention in each era and has prompted questions throughout human history. Our time is no exception. Changing cultures and redefinitions of basic human institutions have led us to our current moment, in which we are experiencing a loud and continuing debate on the effect of technology on our lives. Advancements in science have allowed us to understand our past and present in new ways. …

Pierre Hadot's Holistic Philosophy Of Communication, Jonathan Crist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pierre Hadot’s holistic philosophy of communication attends to the health of the self and community through practice of spiritual exercises for the transformation of one’s entire being, working at the nexus of mind, body, soul, and cosmos. The task is ever-incomplete, works in an understanding of “human being as essentially an exposure that lacks a closed identity” and “keep[s] sight of the opening, wound, or lack that remains at the heart of any community and all communication” (Butchart 136). This is responsive to the present moment experiencing disjointed experience of time and space, increased anxiety, underdeveloped capacity for attention, and …

An Exploration Of Communication Ethics Scholarship And Economic Spheres, Andrew Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines communication ethics scholarship to understand how economics is understood within the field and to establish coordinates for scholars to discuss economic spheres as phenomena that affect communication ethics. Scholars draw from the tradition of virtue ethics to mark communication ethics inquiry as that which explores the practices that protect and promote the “good.” Philosophers of communication and communication ethicists have developed paradigmatic metaphors for the field that allow us to understand the formation of ethical guidelines within communities both familial, corporate, and national, that promote and protect various goods. These metaphors include “hierarchy” and “sameness” from Charles …

Decolonizing American Democracy And The Problem Of Gerrymandering: Implications Of Border Designs From A Communication Ethics Perspective, Mark Gardner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project attempts to understand the powerful force of political borders from a historical and communicative perspective. Of particular importance to this research is the role that political borders play in shaping individuals’ relationship to structures and practices of democracy. Following insights of decolonial and communication ethics scholars, this work understands the importance of ethically framing deliberations surrounding physical, metaphorical, and categorical political borders. Five chapters make up this work in the culmination of analyzing political gerrymandering as a form of democratic competition grounded in the rhetoric of colonialism. Tracing the colonial history of borders throughout American democracy provides this …

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To what extent and in what ways does modernity reveal itself through the bureaucratic? This project aims at an interpretive understanding of bureaucratic modernity. The rationalization of society and action in the (late) modern world requires that an increasing number of human activities and domains be explained in allegedly neutral, ‘rational’ terms and without reference to morally substantive ends. Ultimately, this entails a form of epistemic reductionism that elevates instrumental rationality to the exclusion of practical reason and probabilistic ways of knowing. Bureaucratic modernity signifies a decrease in choices that can be legitimized in public on some basis other …

Multifaith Families And Their Narratives Within Society, Josh Friedberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project is to nudge the conversation about interfaith families in a direction that examines the family post–interfaith dialogue. The term multifaith better represents this new aim because it encompasses all interactions and does not limit the family to the constraints of the moniker interfaith. I apply Walter Fisher’s concepts of coherence and fidelity, in coordination with family communication literature, to structure this project and to study the various aspects of a multifaith family and narrative. I also use three typologies of multifaith family (Passive/Passive, Passive/Active, and Active/Active) to better understand the variations of this family. The …

When Humanity Meets Technology: Contemplating Neil Postman's Critique Of Advertising, Yingwen Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to contemplate Postman’s critique of advertising and offer insights to understand Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in today’s mediated environment. As an essential component of IMC, the history of advertising demonstrates and documents that the medium of communication has an extensive influence on IMC practices. The concern about how communication media affect human perception, understanding, and behavior, resides within the central claim of the study of media ecology. Thus, this project investigates IMC through the lens of Postman’s media ecology perspectives, and argues that Postman’s prescient ideas provide both hope and constructive insights. Moreover, Postman’s thermostatic perspective, rooted …

The Ethics Of Occultic Communication: An Invocation Of Joshua Gunn And Sissela Bok, James Thomas Begley Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Occultic rhetoric, according to Joshua Gunn, is a genre of discourse concerned with the study and practice of secret communications. The strategic sharing of secret messages involves a host of methods and conventions designed for the selective disclosure of hidden knowledge, thus controlling the boundaries of (and accessibility to power between) insider and outsider groups. Occultic rhetoric has its uses in everyday encounters, but the abuse of such manipulative strategies, especially by those in the academy and other positions of power and trust, calls for an ethical response. This dissertation submits occultic rhetoric to moral investigation by incorporating the works …

The Dialectics Of Cyberspace: Communication Ethics As First Response To Cyber Attacks, Matthew P. Mancino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project recognizes the need to re-conceptualize cyberspace according to its characteristic dialectical tensions in order to offer lasting, adequate responses to cyber attacks. Scholars across multiple disciplines recognize the ineffectiveness of perimeter defense strategies, or the raising of defensive walls to protect sensitive information as the primary response to cyber attacks (Denning, 2001; Jang-Jaccard & Nepal, 2014; MacKinnon, Bacon, Gan, Loukas, Chadwick, Frangiskatos, 2013). Thus, this project suggests that in addition to a literacy in coding, corporations and policy makers must attend to what Ronald C. Arnett, Janie Harden Fritz, and Leeanne M. Bell McManus (2009/2018) term “communication ethics …

Privatio Dialogus: Toward A Phenomenology Of Aloneness For The Philosophy Of Communication, Timothy Michaels

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this dissertation is to utilize the phenomenological method to elucidate the experience of aloneness and its relationship with human communication. Aloneness, for the purposes of this research, is understood as the broad experience of feeling alone. This dissertation first seeks to understand some essential principles of previous interdisciplinary literature on this topic before establishing a typology of experiences of aloneness, including isolation, escapism, and solitude. I present a phenomenology of each of these types of aloneness through a representative philosopher for each one, with Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Henry David Thoreau, respectively. Finally, I conclude that …

Examining The Acculturation Experiences Of Syrian Refugee Emerging Adults In The United States Of America, Fatemah Alghamdi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Refugees are vulnerable populations who experience premigration traumatic events and postmigration acculturation stress. While research on immigrant mental health issues has been plentiful, there has been a clear lacuna of scholarly investigation into the acculturation experiences of Syrian emerging adults, particularly as it relates to the types and dynamics of acculturation behaviors. Acculturation is a factor that predicts emerging adults’ academic and occupational success and their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships.

This qualitative investigation was conducted within the framework of interpretative phenomenology, which allows for meaningful, organic exploration and description of participants’ stories. Data were collected from 12 emerging adult Syrian …

Reclaiming Rhetorical Intersectionality: From Silence To Parrhesia And Attuned Listening, Tahirah Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intersectionality is a term applied by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in the late 1980s to a social experience. A person experiences intersectionality when different aspects of her identity converge in a way that causes uniquely amplified marginalization or oppression. The classic three identities that produce intersectionality experiences in the United States are race, gender, and class, making poor women of color the central figures of intersectionality study. Crenshaw explained that these forces take three main forms: structural, political and representational (“Mapping the Margins” 1243).

Intersectionality has always been rhetorical. Structural, political and representational intersectionality are supported in language. The power of …

Black Body Memory: A Philosophy Of The Talk, Autumn Redcross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project offers the term Black body memory to point toward the threatened existential disposition of Black people in society today. Moreover, Black body memory points to the narrative paradigm of a shared experience. While popular conceptions theorize race as a social construction, the lived reality of Black people is frequently imbued by racialization and racism. Black body memory emerges from the intersection of the Black body articulated by Franz Fanon, Charles Johnson, and George Yancy, among others, and body memory, as described by Edward Casey and Thomas Fuchs. Black body memory is a culturally-laden and sedimented lived reality. The …

Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, Saudi Arabian culture has been deeply rooted in tradition, religious customs, family-oriented structures, and gender derived expectations for men and women alike. Saudi Arabian culture emphasizes a patriarchal family structure where men financially provide for their family whereas women are expected to manage internal household duties such as raising children, upholding household affairs, and working within a limited scope of employment. The concept of Saudi Arabian women integrating into the public workforce has been a source of contention and debate for the last several hundred years. Due to recent changes in political and economic events, a royal decree issued …

Paving The Way For Merleau-Ponty’S Eye And Mind In Organizational Communication Studies, Johan Bodaski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The body is a sense-based medium that creates and interprets organizations. Bodies create organization. An aesthetic theory of organizational communication reveals the significance of the body to the organization. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of aesthetics offers a theory of aesthetic organizational communication that is yet to be developed. Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic essay on painting, Eye and Mind, describes the body as the medium through which painters turn the world into painting. His philosophy of painting builds bridges between aesthetics, the body, and organizational communication.

In chapter one, four theories of organizational communication are described: communication constitutes organization (CCO), text/interpreter, ventriloquism, and …

The Rhetoric Of The Opioid Crisis And Addiction To Prescription Pain Medicine, Rachel Kaplan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this historical moment, the United States is amidst an opioid crisis killing the young and the old; at least seventy-eight people die every day from an opioid-related overdose (Enomoto in Murthy III). Changing mindsets of the doctors who prescribe opioids is just as important as asking the patients who are prescribed them to demand an alternative medication. The different parties involved in the crisis all have a different agenda and their rhetorical bias is explored throughout this project. The pharmaceutical companies have launched aggressive marketing campaigns expressing the benefits of opioids and encouraged physicians to prescribe, the CDC has …

Dialogic Praxes In Gabriel Marcel’S Philosophy: Hope For Being In A Technological World, Margaret M. Mullan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In a technological age, communicators report conflicting experiences of presence and absence, connection and isolation. Dislocation, distraction, and disconnection present challenges for dialogue and reveal a world broken by technology. A world broken by technology invites a response. Philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) offers insightful reflections on ways of being in a broken world. Marcel’s philosophical reflections on body, reflection, intersubjectivity, and technology form the primary content for this dissertation.

In Chapter One, Gabriel Marcel, philosopher, playwright, and international speaker, is introduced as participant in twentieth-century Paris, France. Marcel’s philosophy emerged in response to his societal, technological, and cultural contexts. Chapter …

A Phenomenological Investigation Of Sport And Fandom Through Hans-Georg Gadamer And Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alexander Regina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to uncover the phenomenological and communicative roots of sport fandom from the fan perspective, taking into account the many ways in which fans come to contact sport and integrate corresponding experiences into their own lives and sense of being in the world. Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are used to understand the conventions of play that manifest in sport, leading not only to the co-creation of the game experience due to the intertwining of spectators and players but also to the interplay of temporal realms that leads to what Gadamer calls the fusion of horizons. Through …

"Can You Hail Me Now?": Brand, Identity, And Althusserian Ideological Interpellation, Jenna Lo Castro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A surge in the role of branding within marketing practices has influenced an

industry transformation. A review of recent literature suggests that brand and the branding process have become integral in sustaining and amplifying organizations. This has been particularly influenced by Integrated Marketing Communication’s (IMC) espousal of being a consumer-driven process. As such, this project seeks to explore the current state of branding practices through the vision of French Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser. Althusser’s philosophy inspects the human capacity to exercise autonomous decision-making and highlights the influence of social structures upon individuals. Through the Althusserian constructs of ideology and interpellation, …