Digital Commons Network^™

Sexting Unleashed: The Social Phenomenon According To Youth Sexters, Jessica Marie Mcgraw

Dissertations and Theses

What is missing from academia and society at large is a more holistic picture of youth sexting. Not adequately understanding youth sexting has stunted previous attempts to effectively educate young people on its potential consequences. As such, the social and legal consequences of sexting gone viral have negatively impacted countless individuals. This study offers a preliminary glimpse of the sexting phenomenon by highlighting the experiences of 20 young people. I explore emergent themes regarding the nature of youth sexting as well as the interrelations amongst privacy, relationships, and sexting. Two distinct forms of sexting emerged from participant narratives, opening the …

I'M Not Gonna Be Like That Guy: Exploring The Montana Meth Project Through The Eyes Of That Guy, Jaysen Nicole Ferestad

Dissertations and Theses

Graphic images of meth addicts have swept across Montana in television, radio and print ads as part of the state's latest anti-drug campaign, the Montana Meth Project. From a labeling perspective, the negative portrayal of meth addicts in these ads has significant implications for meth addicts in terms of their reintegration. The unintended population of drug addicts potentially affected by public service campaigns has failed to gain attention in the literature despite the implications suggested by labeling theory. This poses a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding, which this study addresses through the voice of recovering meth addicts. This …

Grief Lives Online: An Empirical Study Of Kübler-Ross' Categories Of Bereavement On Myspace Profiles, Ilona Yurivna Malenkovich

Dissertations and Theses

With the widespread use of the Internet, grief has been extended in its representation. Specifically, social networking sites, like MySpace, have turned grief presentation from private expressions into public displays of mourning. This study utilizes the theoretical foundations of the grief presentation process of Kübler-Ross' (1969) five categories of bereavement (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) to determine whether the grief presentation process is present in an online setting. In this study, the researcher conducted an empirical investigation of 4,931 comments, resulting in 22,263 bereavement themes outlined by Kübler-Ross, which were condensed into 2,288 time-point comparisons posted to 140 MySpace …

Talking The Talk: An Exploration Of Parent-Child Communication About Cyberbullying, Veronica Anne Droser

Dissertations and Theses

Technology has, without a doubt, altered the social fabric of society. Mediated forms of communication have paved the way for more efficient production, and the vast amount of information available online has given people the opportunity to be more informed than ever. However, the rise of mediated communication has also presented a number of new threats. The current study focused on one of these threats, cyberbullying, and was interested in looking at how parents talk about and understand their child's cyberbullying behavior.

This study had the goal of uncovering if parents talk to their child about cyberbullying, and how they …

"Game Over" For The Climate: The Keystone Xl Pipeline On Tv News, Elisabeth Wilder

Dissertations and Theses

The overwhelming consensus of the world's climate scientists is that we must rapidly reduce our greenhouse emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Yet the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil that emits three to four times the carbon emissions of conventional gasoline across the U.S., is supported by a solid majority of Americans. This level of support for a project a proposal that would dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions, pollute sensitive lands and water sources, and threaten the health and safety of communities along the way begs the question: what kind …

Trust-But-Verify: Guaranteeing The Integrity Of User-Generated Content In Online Applications, Akshay Dua

Dissertations and Theses

Online applications that are open to participation lack reliable methods to establish the integrity of user-generated information. Users may unknowingly own compromised devices, or intentionally publish forged information. In these scenarios, applications need some way to determine the "correctness" of autonomously generated information. Towards that end, this thesis presents a "trust-but-verify" approach that enables open online applications to independently verify the information generated by each participant. In addition to enabling independent verification, our framework allows an application to verify less information from more trustworthy users and verify more information from less trustworthy ones. Thus, an application can trade-off performance for …

Grouped To Achieve: Are There Benefits To Assigning Students To Heterogeneous Cooperative Learning Groups Based On Pre-Test Scores?, Arman Karl Werth

Dissertations and Theses

Cooperative learning has been one of the most widely used instructional practices around the world since the early 1980's. Small learning groups have been in existence since the beginning of the human race. These groups have grown in their variance and complexity overtime. Classrooms are getting more diverse every year and instructors need a way to take advantage of this diversity to improve learning. The purpose of this study was to see if heterogeneous cooperative learning groups based on student achievement can be used as a differentiated instructional strategy to increase students' ability to demonstrate knowledge of science concepts and …

Beyond The Yellow Brick Road: Queer Localization In The Age Of Anita Bryant, 1974-1980, Stewart John Van Cleve

Dissertations and Theses

Collective memories of gay rights in the late 1970s offer a conflicted portrait of Anita Bryant, an infamous anti-gay personality who inspired, organized, or funded four anti-gay referendums between 1976 and 1978. I employ J. Jack Halberstam's concept of "metronormativity" in an analysis of campaigns that failed to preserve local gay rights laws in Miami and Eugene, the first and last of Bryant's four "target cities." I use L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz as a metaphor to compare the beginning of Bryant's role as a leader in Miami to her subsequent role as a specter of national controversy in …

Metaphor Use In Interpersonal Communication Of Body Perception In The Context Of Breast Cancer, Jennifer Mary Fillion

Dissertations and Theses

Female breast cancer patients are often confused, frustrated, and devastated by changes occurring in their bodies and the treatment process. Many women express frustration and concern with the inability to know what the next phases of their life will bring. Previous research also states that many women struggle to communicate with others about treatment as well as side effects. This research examined how woman are use metaphors to describe their experience with breast cancer, specifically throughout the treatment period related to body image struggles. I qualitatively conducted interviews with women who were either currently in treatment or just finishing. My …

Life Post 9/11: Experiences Of Korean Americans Ten Years Later, Jay Lee

Dissertations and Theses

This is one of the first qualitative studies to investigate experiences of Korean-American Christians living in New York City at the time of 9/11. This study sought to gain an understanding of how a group of Second Generation Korean-American Christians living in New York City at the time of the 9/11 attacks experienced that event and the event's impact on their religious beliefs. The study also investigated the communication context at the time of the ten year anniversary of the event, September 11th, 2011. The guiding research questions were: RQ1) What were their life experiences of 9/11? RQ2) Was their …

International And Domestic Student Health-Information Seeking And Satisfaction, Stacy Theodora Austin

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines two groups -international and domestic students at Portland State University (PSU) - in terms of their motivations to seek university-health services, and their satisfaction with university-health services. The Theory of Motivated Information Management (W. A. Afifi & Weiner, 2004) served as the foundation for this study to examine the preferences of students in terms of the ways they seek information about their health concerns. Differences in international and domestic students' anxiety, efficacy, and satisfaction with physicians were supported. International students reported more anxiety than domestic students. Domestic students reported being more efficacious than international students when talking …

War's Visual Discourse: A Content Analysis Of Iraq War Imagery, Mary Elizabeth Major

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports the findings of a systematic visual content analysis of 356 randomly sampled images published about the Iraq War in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report from 2003-2009. In comparison to a 1995 Gulf War study, published images in all three newsmagazines continued to be U.S.-centric, with the highest content frequencies reflected in the categories U.S. troops on combat patrol, Iraqi civilians, and U.S. political leaders respectively. These content categories do not resemble the results of the Gulf War study in which armaments garnered the largest share of the images with 23%. This study concludes that …

Self-Disclosure And Self-Efficacy In Online Dating, Andrew Christopher España

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores online dating by studying the relationship between self-disclosure and self-efficacy in an online dating environment. This research study examines the way self-disclosure, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and gender interrelate in an online dating environment. This study includes, but is not limited to, discussion of the type of correlation between self-efficacy and self-esteem, the relationship between self-disclosure and self-efficacy, and the differences between men's and women's self-disclosure in an online dating environment. From conducting this study, the researcher was able to determine that there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and how it relates to self-disclosure and self-efficacy. With …