Digital Commons Network^™

Compassionate Communication, Social Support, And Safety: Needs Of People Experiencing Homelessness, Emma Lynn Jackson

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

On any given night in 2023, approximately 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness (HUD, 2023). With the highest rate of homelessness since national reporting began in 2007 and double the rate of chronic homelessness since 2016, it could be inferred that the resources are not effectively mitigating the problem (HUD, 2023). To attempt to understand this complex issue, this thesis initially reviewed theories on societal structures, personal connections, social support, and gaps in support. In person interviews of 14 people living with homelessness explored perceptions of support, social challenges, involvement in the community and lack of support. Following each interview, a …

Coming Home Again: Television Sitcom Revivals, Brandon K. Hedgepeth

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis argues that the success of television situational comedy revivals correlates with television’s technological affordances as they have evolved over the past half-century. Specifically, three revival series are examined within this study, consisting of The New Leave it to Beaver (1983-1989), Fuller House (2016-2020), and The Conners (2018-Present). This paper uses the revival case studies to showcase their parallel relationship with the introduction of cable television and streaming media, alongside the resurgence of broadcast television to highlight the changing media landscape and the intertwined nature between technological advancement and the revival form. The study’s investigation of how nostalgia intersects …

More Than Representation Heartstopper: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Tracyann Josephine Harmer

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis is a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Netflix’s Heartstopper, written with the goal of understanding its methods of representation and queer world creation. Through analysis of the ideology of heteronormativity as it relates to masculinity, internalized homophobia, homophobia, and mental health, I expand upon the significance of queer representation for queer audiences, heterosexual audiences, and producers of queer media. Through a nuanced analysis of these themes, I display how and why Heartstopper has had enormous success and expand upon the cultural phenomena surrounding this media. Finally, this thesis places these nuanced analyses into the real-world reaction to …

African-American Parents’ Cultural Understandings Of The Concept Of Autism And Implications For Parental Communication And Health Management, Kellie J. Fennell

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

In 2023 the Centers of Disease Control reported that around 1 in 36 children are diagnosed with Autism in America and that the prevalence has increased by 178% since 2000 (CDC, 2023). Despite increases in awareness and diagnosis past research finds that the discussions of ASD in African American communities is minimal (Fombonne, 2003; Yeargin Allsopp et al., 2003). This disparity is important considering that African American children receive an ASD diagnosis years later than their white counterparts and are much more likely to be misdiagnosed (Mandell et al., 2009, 2002).

Given the history of a lack of representation of …

An Exploratory Examination Of The Cultural Understandings Of Communication Competence Among Nigerian Immigrant Adult Children, Fredous Gambo

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Although “communication competence” may be considered a trans-cultural concept, its unique meanings and practices across cultures have yet to be studied. Communication between parents and children in African households, for example, have often been associated with a restive and high level of control. Specifically in Nigerian households, a major critique of parenting communication styles is the necessity of continually seeking the permissions of a patriarchal and hierarchical family structure. When families immigrate, parents and children alike must navigate learning to communicate in the new culture while also seeking to preserve their culture of origin. Past research shows that adult immigrant …

Communicating With Muted Groups: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Amy Matzke-Fawcett

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The problem of human trafficking is global, affecting men and women, adults, and children, with exploitation of various forms including (but not limited to) sex work, hospitality and entertainment, labor, agriculture, soldiering, forced begging and organ removal. While it has been the focus of movies, news articles, documentaries, legislation and research, the discussion of the communication surrounding human trafficking is still in the formative stages. What is the messaging about human trafficking in legislation, both historically and in the present day, and how did news and popular media help to frame the discourse around trafficking in the United States? Using …

The Contextualization Of Myth: Identification Of Myth In The Propagation Of Narrative Across Generational Boundaries, Joseph G. Ponthieux

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis demonstrates the unique correlation between myth and the propagation of narrative across generational boundaries. It argues that myth occurs in the intersection of belief, semiotics, and context, and further enables a way of re-encoding a narrative with a dual contextuality. This dual context preserves a narrative’s literal context while endowing it with a new or modified myth context and affords the audience a selection of choices for how to receive a narrative experienced as myth. To demonstrate this correlation a Myth Context Reception Model is designed for the purpose of identifying ascendent, obscure or emergent myths evident in …

Family Communication Patterns During Recovery Maintenance: Relapse Prevention For Alcoholics & Addicts, Adam Pyecha

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The following thesis is research into the Family Communication Patterns (FCP) (McLeod & Chaffee, 1972) of “alcoholics and drug addicts” (ADA) with long-term recovery stages III and IV. Improving relapse rates of ADA in early recovery stage I and stage II may require knowledge about the family communication environment and family type of those ADA with extended recovery time. This is an exploratory descriptive of FCP and family typology of 81 ADA identifying as Twelve-step fellowship (TSF) members recovering from the disease of addiction (Jellinek, 1947; 1960). Data was collected via online questionnaire with adapted scales; AWARE 3.0 relapse awareness …

Counterpublics, Abled Sex, And Crip Discourses On Twitter: A Discourse Analysis Of Conversations Of Sexuality And Disability, Claudia Garcia Mendoza

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

We live in an era in which essential conversations occur online. Social media has become the official voice of presidents and corporations. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, uses Twitter to address public issues and make policy announcements. Similarly, alternative voices have emerged from social media and evolved into public debates, social movements, and massive mobilizations (e.g., Gerbaudo, 2012; Tufeksi, 2017). The community gathering opportunities of social media (boyd, 2011; Parks, 2010; Chambers, 2013) and the possibilities to generate collective knowledge (Jenkins, 2004) stress the necessity to continue to expand the research in digital spaces.

It is important …

Being Listened To With Empathy: The Experience And Effect For Emerging And Middle-Aged Adults, Elizabeth (Casey) Moore

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This study examined the experience of being listened to with empathy for two lifespan cohorts, using survey methodology to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 223 emerging adults (ages 18–25) and 61 middle-aged adults (ages 35–64). While both cohorts described the impact of empathic listening with similar positive themes, including feeling cared for and happy, chi-square analyses revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups in the frequencies of nine of the twenty-seven themes (33.3%). Independent t-tests also identified statistically significant differences in perceived empathy based on the listeners’ age cohort. First, respondents rated middle-aged listeners higher on the Responding …

Clergy & Police A Semiotic Analysis Of Clergy On Patrol, Ricardo Estevan Reyes

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The Clergy On Patrol (COP) program is a collaboration between the Norfolk Police Department and community faith leaders of the Norfolk Urban Renewal Center. This study analyzed themes and patterns in the communicative relationship between police and clergy members, using a semiotic approach and the scholarship of intergroup communication. Additionally, an added secondary analysis of media coverage helped focus the results of the study using themes. This thesis merged the two semiotic analyses to examine a style of community policing that has lacked a closer eye.

This thesis guided itself by the argument that clergy-police collaborative programs structure …

A Study Of The Diffusion Of Innovations And Hurricane Response Communication In The U.S. Coast Guard, Melissa L. Leake

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Hurricane Harvey (HH) is considered to be the first natural disaster where social-network applications to request help surpassed already overloaded 911 systems (Seetharaman & Wells, 2017). Increasing interpersonal connectivity via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites correspond to an increasing need for researchers and responders to recognize how people use social media platforms to connect, share, and receive information especially during times of crisis such as natural disasters. Heightened public perceptions and expectations of response efforts in the digital era make it especially important for first responders to evaluate, monitor, and adapt to these shifts in communication. Disaster-relief groups …

Families Communicating About Health: Conceptualization And Validation Of The Family Health Communication Quotient Scale, Erin E. Gafner

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Research on family health communication is based in part on the assumption that families actually communicate about a wide variety of topics pertaining to their health and wellness (or lack thereof). However, whether they do communicate about health and wellness, and exactly what they communicate about concerning health and wellness as well as how often, remains undocumented. To begin to address this problem of documenting the extent to which families talk about health and wellness, this study adapted Warren and Neer’s (1986) Family Sex Communication Quotient to create and report the preliminary validation of a new measurement instrument called the …

Lifespan Communication And Career Development Of Black Teachers: A Socio-Ecological Approach, Veronica Whinnett Hurd

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis unlocks the lifespan story of nine Black participants as they reflected on the communicative practices that guided their career journey towards becoming a teacher. Through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) socio-ecological development model, the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem were examined to understand the content of career-related memories and with whom or what the communicative experiences occurred with across the participants’ lifespan. This study also takes an in-depth look at how the content of the memories evolved across Erikson’s (1964) childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood developmental periods, and the influence of the proximal and distal socio-ecological environments …

Americans’ Willingness To Communicate With Mexican Immigrants: Effects Of Ethnocentrism And Immigration Status, Stephanie Leanne Harris

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Prompted by the 2016 United States (US) Presidential election, the topic of Mexican immigration has come to figure prominently in contemporary societal discourse. This study explores the willingness of US citizens to communicate with Mexicans as a function of US citizens’ ethnocentrism and Mexicans’ immigration documentation status. Specifically, this study measured ethnocentrism (Neuliep & McCroskey, 1997) and general willingness to communicate (McCroskey, 1992) of US citizens and then considered the relationship of these variables to their willingness to communicate with documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants. The study also explored the potential role that various lifespan variables, such as early communication …

Intercultural Communication Training And Law Enforcement Officers: A Career-Span Analysis And Education Agenda, Amanda M. Franco

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis examines intercultural communication training and law enforcement education at the local level by means of a qualitative case study. Emphasis is given to the role of perceptions in law enforcement/community interactions as a means of understanding current relations between groups, as well as the role that cultural understanding of this should play in the creation of training curricula. There is a greater societal issue relative to interactions between minorities and law enforcement, and this research seeks to highlight how training, specifically training related to intercultural communication, can be impactful toward increasing understanding and mending group relations.

For this …

Forces At Work: Workforce Perspectives In Print Journalism Amid Paradigm Shift, Stephanie Bernat

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Print newspapers are in an age of disruption that has radically affected readership, news consumption, news production and news distribution. As such, the industry has experimented with new business models that incorporate online, including blog-style reporting, short-format stories, and investigatory reporting via social media. This experimentation could be identified as a Kuhnian pre-paradigmatic phase of a print news industry in crisis. Meanwhile the workforce of print newspapers is experiencing a disruption of identity as what it means to be a journalist has changed in reaction. Exodus of journalists from print newspapers has been both involuntary through layoffs and voluntary as …

Media Literacy Definitions, R. M. Wenner

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis conducts a critical discourse analysis on definitions of the term “media literacy” used by researchers in media literacy educational interventions. These definitions are compared to the skills developed in participants of media literacy interventions. This comparison reveals if and how researchers are operationalizing their stated definition of media literacy. Over half of researchers are using the definition proffered by the National Association for Media Literacy Education. However the disagreement in the field around a definition of the term “media literacy” has created confusion. This confusion has left educators falling back on practices scaffolded by the previous educational paradigm. …

Communication Support And Religious Support In Managing Occupational Stress In Military Careers: A Career-Span Approach, Shantonee' Malee Mitchell

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis reports an exploratory and descriptive study of communication support and religious support used by military personnel to manage occupational stress over the course of a career and their perceived effectiveness at helping to manage occupational stress. Drawing on a lifespan communication approach, this study employed a careerspan perspective where occupational stressors and sources of support (human and religious) are examined over the course of military careers. Results find three different groups of sources of communicative support were used in different ways to help manage military occupational stress: sources within the military, sources outside of the military, and religious …

Work Across The Generations: Communication Narratives Of Stay-At-Home Fathers In Early And Middle Adulthood, Alice L. Jones

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The notion of work whether it is done inside or outside the home represents a complex and shifting pattern of social relationships, gender role identities, and ideologies. For an increasing numbers of men, who represent the population of fathers labeled as "stay-at-Home Dad" [SAHD] or "stay-at-home father" [SAHF], these changes have created special challenges, controversies, and raised questions about cultural expectations concerning the transition from that of a stigmatized role to that of a "new, involved father" (Eranta & Moisander, 2011; Rochlen, 2008). Increased participation by men in roles that challenge traditional and long standing gender role norms and expectations …

Communication, Romantic Reconciliation, And Emerging Adulthood: A Relational Dialectics Study, Ashley M. Poole

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Building on the extant research of on-again/off-again (on-off) romantic relationships, the current thesis focused on building upon past findings by utilizing a unique theoretical methodology in an emerging demographic. A sample of 22 emergent adult (ages 18-29) participants who were currently in or had recently experienced an on-off relationship completed face-to-face interviews discussing communicative processes during romantic reconciliation. The primary purpose of this thesis was to identify and define discursive struggles found within on-off relationships during reconciliation attempts, and understand how they are used between partners to give meaning to the terms "on" and "off" as a precursor to restructuring …

An Exploratory Study Of Generational Differences In Health Information Seeking And Smoking Behaviors In Bulgaria, Iva Stoyneva

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Smoking is a serious global public health threat that causes more than 6 million deaths annually (WHO, 2013). Smoking is also the single, most preventable cause of death (CDC, 2014). According to a recent study, Bulgaria was ranked as one of onlyl 1 countries in the world, in which half of the adult male population smokes, as well as one of 11 countries in which more than one-quarter of the adult female population smokes. Research suggests that the most significant predictors of smoking behavior in Bulgaria were age and geographic location (Balabanova, Bobak & McKee, 1998). Contributing to these finings, …

Lifespan Communication, Social Media Policy, And Societal Institutions: A Content Analysis, Jessica Larae Bedenbaugh

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis is a qualitative study of the major societal institutions' social media policies. Three features are compared-length, readability, and legal orientation and punitive degree-in order to determine the homogeneity of the policies across the institutional categories. The top ten words featured in the policies, from highest weighted percentage to lowest, are the following: social, use, media, post, sites, content, personal, policy, communication, and web. The shortest policy length was 274 words. The longest policy was 36,036 words and the collective average word count was 2,571. The lowest reading level, based on the Gunning Fog Readability Index was 8.21, the …

From Fandom To Franchise: Generational Discourse Among Fans And Producers, Nicholas C. Benson

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Generational discourse surrounding fandom has been an understudied area of media studies. Using Disney's TRON franchise as a case study, this thesis looks at that discourse as it exists in two areas. The first chapter draws on interviews with several actual TRON fans and looks at how the concept of generation is imagined within the TRON fan community. The second chapter draws from promotional interviews done with TRON creator Steven Lisberger to analyze the way the concept of generation functions within the decision making practices and formation of career capital within Hollywood. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the concept of …

Empathic Communication: Lifespan Influences And Transgressional Associations In Military Romantic Relationships, Samantha Faith Levan

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the influences and transgressional associations of empathic communication in military romantic relationships. Through varying attachment styles, deployments, and combat experience, soldiers have a unique set of circumstances that impact the use of empathic communication in relationships. Since the effectiveness of empathic communication is also limited by unreliable communicative technologies, infidelity effects were also tested. A 66-item online survey was placed on Survey Monkey with links from social media networking websites, like Facebook and Twitter. Surveys were anonymous and only taken by soldiers who had experienced at least one deployment. The goodness of …

Zombies As A Generational Metaphor: Connections Between George A. Romero, Zombies And Fandom -- A Critical Study, Alfredo Torres

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Since the creation of the modern day zombie by George A. Romero in his directorial debut with the genre altering film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie have been associated with becoming a metaphoric representation of social and cultural issues surrounding the times these films were released, with Romero's films being at the forefront of this phenomenon. A review of Romero's career including his influences was examined as well as the film history of the zombie subgenre, the connections it has to its fans and how the fans influenced the development of the genre. A survey was connected …