Digital Commons Network^™

Reclaiming A Unified American Narrative Lexical, Grammatical, And Story Metaphors In A Discussion Of Polarized Identities, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

As part of an on-going project to apply metaphor analysis to understanding the cultural polarization that has recently obstructed discourse about political and cultural issues in both the United States and Europe, this essay examines the lexical, grammatical, and story metaphors in a recent editorial column, by conservative columnist Ross Douthat, that also focuses on this topic. In a key section of the essay, Douthat uses a blend of complex grammatical and lexical metaphors to highlight the contrast between the traditional American identity narrative of settlement and conquest and a recently emerged liberal counter-narrative, which Douthat epitomizes by quoting former …

Why Do Adults Read Young Adult Books?, Monica Hay

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

Young adult books are widely read by adults. Through interviews with publishing professionals and a survey of 2,139 participants, several reasons were discovered regarding why adults read young adult literature. In the research, the most common reasons were the influence of Harry Potter and Twilight, the relatability for millennials, the social media presence of YA online, and the success of women writers in the category. Survey participants had more to add. The survey themes were nostalgia, "less pretentious," "faster reads," diversity, escapism, "less graphic," and perhaps most importantly, hopeful.

A Cover Is Worth 1000 Words: Visibility And Racial Diversity In Young Adult Cover Design, Jenny Kimura

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

Diversity in young adult literature has been a hot topic in the publishing industry for many years now, and calls for diversity from the YA community, librarians, authors, and publishing professionals have garnered nationwide attention. But while the conversation around diverse content is well documented, few have considered how young adult cover design might have an impact on how diversity, especially in terms of race/ethnicity, is represented visually.

The research detailed in this paper compiles and analyzes data from 700 covers each from 2014 and 2018 respectively (1400 book covers total). In my quantitative analysis, I wanted to know whether …

Approaches To Contested In-Group Terminology For Mindful Editors, Jasmine Gower

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

In the conversation about mindful editing, a conundrum exists with regards to marginalized groups for whom all possible labels to identify the group contain loaded histories and connotations, and different subsets of these marginalized groups are in disagreement about what terminology is most appropriate. This contested in-group terminology places editors in a position where any editorial choice they make has high risk of offending or alienated members of the very group the editor hopes to represent. How, then, do mindful editors approach the matter of contested in-group terminology in an ethical manner? This study examines the approaches to contested in-group …

Marie Kondo And The New Self-Help, Kristen Ludwigsen

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

In the wake of the Marie Kondo phenomenon, is the self-help literature genre being redefined? How is Marie Kondo and her book affecting the ways self-help literature is being shared, discussed, and interpreted? This paper attempts to answer these questions by first discussing the difficulty in defining the self-help genre, and how recent definitions reflect the current economic climate. This paper examines The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo; the tone and language used and how it’s typical of books in the self-help genre, despite categorization as a House and Home—Cleaning and Organizing book. This paper looks at …

Engagement In The Fiber Craft Community: How Authors Can Increase Visibility And Market Their Books, Victoria Raible

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

This paper conceptualized the “fiber craft community,” a group of people heavily engaged with other members in community spaces, both online and in person, surrounding their craft. Drawing on scholarship about imagined communities, brand communities, and subcultures of consumption, this research argues this potential audience is a “community.” In addition to providing contextual information on the creative products industry and craft/hobby books market, this research uses a case study approach to gather ethnographic information about where and how the fiber craft community engages. It draws conclusions about how authors can best reach this community to market their fiber craft books.

It's Not Easy - Impacts Of Suicide Prevention Research On Study Staff, Jason I. Chen, Ginnifer L. Mastarone, Lauren M. Denneson

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Suicide prevention researchers who work with individuals at high risk of suicide or are exposed to details of suicide attempts and deaths may experience negative impacts on their own well-being. This is not unlike the experiences of mental health providers, where repeated exposure to clients' difficult experiences gas long been identified as an occupational risk (Molnar et al., 2017). however, there have been few studies evaluating how exposure to details of suicide-related behavior impacts researcher well-being. This gap in the literature is worrisome, as researcher' mental health and well-being might be negatively impacted by repeated exposure to graphic details of …

The Alt-Right And Global Information Warfare, Emmi Bevensee, Alexander Ross

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Alt-Right is a neo-fascist white supremacist movement that is involved in violent extremism and shows signs of engagement in extensive disinformation campaigns. Using social media data mining, this study develops a deeper understanding of such targeted disinformation campaigns and the ways they spread. It also adds to the available literature on the endogenous and exogenous influences within the US far right, as well as motivating factors that drive disinformation campaigns, such as geopolitical strategy. This study is to be taken as a preliminary analysis to indicate future methods and follow-on research that will help develop an integrated approach to …

Pay To Play: Internships, Post-Graduate Education, And The Cost Of Working In Publishing, Madison Schultz

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

In 2019, diversity is the biggest buzzword in publishing. Spurred by initiatives such as We Need Diverse Books, publishing houses are working to publish more non-white authors and feature more stories about people of color. Behind the scenes, though, the publishing workforce is strikingly homogenous, with 86 percent of employees identifying as white or Caucasian, according to the 2018 Publishers Weekly salary survey. Increased scrutiny has started to lead to incremental gains, and groups like People of Color in Publishing and the Representation Matters Mentorship Program, both founded in 2016, are actively working to increase the number of people of …

Diversity In Ya: A Look At How Book Description Language Talks About Race, Brittney Finato

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

When exploring young adult literature, it is specifically important to research racial diversity because it can help show particular stereotypes, biases, and tropes that may be used in YA overall. This helps inform current issues or excellencies in the canon and leads to broader discussions about the importance of racial, and other, diversity in books generally. By developing methods to isolate racially diverse books in YA, extracting specific language from their Goodreads copy, and talking broadly about overall themes, I will analyze the types of language that book descriptions use when talking about race, if they do at all.

Effects Of Phonomotor Treatment On Discourse Production, Joann P. Silkes, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Rebecca Hunting Pompon, Janaki Torrence, Diane L. Kendall

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that makes it difficult for people to produce and comprehend language, with all people with aphasia (PWA) demonstrating difficulty accessing and selecting words (anomia). While aphasia treatments typically focus on a single aspect of language, such as word retrieval, the ultimate goal of aphasia therapy is to improve communication, which is best seen at the level of discourse.

Aims: This retrospective study investigated the effects of one effective anomia therapy, Phonomotor Treatment (PMT), on discourse production.

Methods & Procedures: Twenty-six PWA participated in 60 h of PMT, which focuses on …

Consumerism-Driven History: The American Girl Brand As Publisher And Arbiter Of Girlhood Identity, Sarah Loepp

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

American Girl is a highly recognizable brand that wears several hats: publisher, dollmaker, and purported educator. Yet many researchers point out a disconnect between merchandise-driven aspects of the company and its educational qualities, as well as the set of cultural values suggested in material consumption versus the brand literature’s stated representation of girlhood. This paper outlines research pertaining to these issues before engaging in a close reading analysis of one of the historical character’s book series, ascertaining how the aforementioned concepts play out in the text itself. Assessment of American Girl consumption practices further draw from the brand’s website and …

The Small Publisher’S Guide To Audiobooks, Stephanie Anderson

Book Publishing Final Research Paper

While audiobooks have been around since the invention of the phonograph, the invention of streaming technologies, combined with our increasingly fast-paced, multitasking culture, has caused audiobooks to become the fastest growing market in the publishing industry in recent years. In fact, since 2013 the audiobooks market has seen sales growth of an average of 20% per year, according to studies done by the Audio Publishers Association. However, many small publishers are not entering into the vital “new” frontier and reaching greater markets because of assumptions about the cost-prohibitive nature of creating audiobooks, and a lack of knowledge of the industry …

Deploying Natural Language Processing To Extract Key Product Features Of Crowdfunding Campaigns: The Case Of 3d Printing Technologies On Kickstarter, Nina Chaichi, Tim R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the technology management field, informal source of information such as social media has been used for technology mining, leader user detection, and etc. However, usually unstructured nature of the informal information introduces some challenges. This study is part of an effort to automate key product features extraction from crowdfunding campaign's textual information, in order to analyze the effect of them on the decision-making process of crowdfunding backers. This paper intends to evaluate the performance of UDPipe R package and six keyword extraction techniques on candidate features selection from textual data of 3D printer campaigns on Kickstarter. In the end, …

Patient Empowerment Via Mobile Personal Health Records And Mobile Health Applications: A Review Of The Current Use, Abdulaziz S. Alhomod, Saeed Alzahrani

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Consumer empowerment has gained a significant attention in the medical field recently, and despite the ambiguity of its definitions, elements and measurement tools, it is apparent that mobile and other communication technology can play a major role in keeping patients informed, involved and empowered. This paper aims to explore methods by which mobile applications contribute to consumer empowerment and allowed enhanced patient control over their health.

Do Directionality And Network Size Affect Network Structure In Online Social Networks?, Nitin V. Mayande, Charles Weber

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

A study of the online social networks of six Twitter conversations about six YouTube product categories reveals that directionality and network size affect the structure of online social networks. Our results indicate that large networks tend to be non-random, regardless of whether they are directional or not, suggesting that structural attributes of the online networks under study are a true reflection of network's features. Smaller non-directional networks also tend to be non-random, whereas smaller directional networks tend to be random in nature. However, very small networks tend to be random in nature, whether they are directional or not. Our results …

From The Studio To The Street: Cultivating Democratic Norms In Uganda, Lee Shaker, Paul Falzone, Paul Sparks, Ruth Kugumikiriza

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Communication interventions can make valuable contributions to the democratic development of citizens. This article reports on a nongovernmental organization’s (NGO’s) effort to leverage a television rap news program in Uganda to strengthen viewers’ democratic norms. Two different approaches addressing government failures and malfeasance are tested with an experiment conducted in six villages outside of Kampala. Results indicate that soft news segments can influence viewers’ perceived democratic norms and shape downstream behaviors as well. Beneficial effects were strongest when participants were exposed to stories that featured relatable citizens demonstrating desirable democratic attitudes and behaviors. Treatment effects were most pronounced among less …