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The Existential Crisis Of The New World Digital: How Centralization Stole The Internet And What Blockchain Technology Could Offer The User, David Gustafson
The Existential Crisis Of The New World Digital: How Centralization Stole The Internet And What Blockchain Technology Could Offer The User, David Gustafson
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The thesis examines how the technology of blockchain can be used as governing mechanism to create a more democratic digital space. Starting with an overview of internet history, this section contextualizes the terms “sterile” and “generative” technology. This tension is a constant in internet history with blockchain being the “generative” pull away from the more “sterile” server stack model of big tech. Both current state and corporate governances are built off a more centralized model, however with blockchain technology, democracy, as well as company structure is being re-examined. Ideas such as stakeholder capitalism and open democracy are a similarly “generative” …
Graduation Simulator: A Virtual Reality Conversation Experience For Second-Year College Students Living Through A Pandemic, Dylan Cohen
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Many second-year college students have struggled to socially transition back to in-person schooling. After a significant period of enforced isolation, there is a need to aggregate loose connections activated or maintained online. Through conducting UX/ethnographic research on current second-year students who have lost out on major life milestones between the years 2019-2021, synthesizing research from fields of media studies, interpersonal communication, and art/design that incites self-disclosure, and collaborating with a group of student designers, I responded to this issue by creating Graduation Simulator (2022) over a period of 8 months. Graduation Simulator facilitates emotionally vulnerable discussion through a VR scavenger …
Communication After A Romantic Breakup, Kayleigh Jordan Mahoney
Communication After A Romantic Breakup, Kayleigh Jordan Mahoney
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Throughout a person’s life, it is likely that they will experience a romantic breakup at some point. However, post breakup experiences can differ from person to person. Many different things can impact a person’s post breakup experiences including their investment during the time of the relationship, as well as any communication that takes place after the breakup. Previous research has taken a look at post breakup experiences. However, little to no research has examined post breakup experiences while taking into consideration romantic beliefs. This study (N = 72) tested how a person’s investment during the relationship predicts post breakup distress, …
Catastrophic Failure: How Covid-19 Was Relayed From The Media To The Public, Samuel D. Johnson, Jr.
Catastrophic Failure: How Covid-19 Was Relayed From The Media To The Public, Samuel D. Johnson, Jr.
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This research utilizes content analysis and mixed methods as a way of understanding how COVID-19 related information was relayed from the media to the public during crucial times in U.S. history. The information analyzed entails news media broadcasts that occurred from June 26 to October 2, 2020, when the pandemic was on the rise in terms of cases and deaths. In addition to analyzing specific broadcasts, a comparative analysis was conducted between MSNBC vs. Fox News, in an effort to highlight key events that took place during the battle against COVID-19. This research utilizes agenda setting and framing principles to …
The Fan/Producer Duality In Microfandoms: Examinations Of Collaboration, Creativity, And Capital, Abby Kirby
The Fan/Producer Duality In Microfandoms: Examinations Of Collaboration, Creativity, And Capital, Abby Kirby
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This paper explores the fan identity as being synonymous with the identity of media producers through the lens of microfandoms. Microfandoms are co-created by the fans of an already existing piece of media, but act as their own independent fandom. By completing an illustrative case study through surveys, interviews, and data analysis, the author was able to view the production of a microfandom and the roles that fans inhabit within that space. Conclusions were reached regarding the role of hierarchy and social capital within tight-knit microfandoms, demonstrating that the means of fan production are informed by an individual’s status within …
Backward Glances: The Cultural And Industrial Uses Of Nostalgia In 2010s Hollywood Cinema, Matthew Cooper
Backward Glances: The Cultural And Industrial Uses Of Nostalgia In 2010s Hollywood Cinema, Matthew Cooper
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Over the course of the 2010s, one identifiable trend in Hollywood cinema was the significant presence of nostalgia films. These films stage idealized recollections of the past, appealing to affective longing for its perceived comforts and stability. This thesis utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to present a historical narrative of recent Hollywood cinema and its intersection with broader American culture and society. I argue that the most recent cinematic “nostalgia wave” is attributable to the broad, epochal conditions of modernity and late modernity, specific historical events and trends of the 2010s, and Hollywood-specific technological and industrial discontinuities. In an attempt to …
Built Bodies: Representations Of Monstrous Transsexuality In The Frankenstein Film, 1945-1975, Carmilla M. Morrell
Built Bodies: Representations Of Monstrous Transsexuality In The Frankenstein Film, 1945-1975, Carmilla M. Morrell
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis considers the relationship between representations of the Frankenstein’s Monster on film and the transsexual identity to argue that they can be ontologically consolidated into the figure of the Monstrous transsexual: a constructed, hybrid being whose uncategorizability within conventionally rigid structures of sex and intolerable embodiment of incongrous “parts” renders them as simultaneously powerful with radical potential and vulnerable from ostracization, oppression, and hostility. By analyzing both Frankenstein films from the post-war era of 1945-1975 and the power dynamics of the gender clinics in which the modern understanding of transsexuality was established, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which …
"#Does This Count As Poetry?": A Genre Analysis Of Tumblr Poetry, Selena Cotte
"#Does This Count As Poetry?": A Genre Analysis Of Tumblr Poetry, Selena Cotte
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis canonizes “Tumblr poetry” as a distinct and separate genre of poetry, closely related to other digital poetry movements but ultimately its own phenomenon. Through historical analysis, the criticism against Tumblr poetry and digital poetry as a whole become familiar in a cycle of negative reactions to changing poets and changing audiences. Through textual analysis of poems found on Tumblr, common attributes and style changes are identified and contrasted with more traditional contemporary poetry, signifying a distinct formal shift. Finally, through a platform analysis, poetry communities on Reddit and Instagram are similarly analyzed and contrasted with Tumblr poetry to …
Must-Stream Tv: The Reemergence Of Nbc's Must-See Tv In The Streaming Era, Bri Mattia
Must-Stream Tv: The Reemergence Of Nbc's Must-See Tv In The Streaming Era, Bri Mattia
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis argues that two current and prevalent television industry shifts—the plethora of reboots and revivals on network television, and forthcoming studio-owned streaming services—are the result of the popularity of past series with audiences on streaming services. I first argue for a focus on the specifics of the series themselves, over the greater trend as a whole in order to determine the validity of these shifts. Approaching each series with the questions “Why then?” and “Why now?” this thesis examines two series from NBC’s famous Must-See TV programming block, Friends (1994-2004) and ER (1994-2009), that have reemerged in popularity with …
Globalizing Pakistani Identity Across The Border: The Politics Of Crossover Stardom In The Hindi Film Industry, Dina Khdair
Globalizing Pakistani Identity Across The Border: The Politics Of Crossover Stardom In The Hindi Film Industry, Dina Khdair
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Few studies have examined how the changing landscape of cultural production in India shapes the negotiation of religious and national identities onscreen in an increasingly integrated media environment. This dissertation explores the representation and reception of three crossover stars in India: Ali Zafar, Fawad Khan, and Mahira Khan. These stars embody a new global imaginary for Pakistan that contradicts the ghettoized depictions of Pakistan as a terrorist state that continue to be perpetuated in both India and the West. What does it mean to be a Pakistani star in India, and which ‘identity’ takes precedence in popular discourse – national …
Race Discourse Online: How Do We Discuss Blackness In Popular Digital Media?, Kovie Biakolo
Race Discourse Online: How Do We Discuss Blackness In Popular Digital Media?, Kovie Biakolo
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The Internet has been socially accepted as an equalizing platform where media is concerned, despite the digital divide and other inequalities that continue to persist in the space. Digital media in particular has become a source of news and opinion for many subjects including race. This research studies how race and Blackness is discussed in three popular digital media publications – The Atlantic, Salon, and Slate. Themes that arise across the publications are discussed, and an in-depth social linguistic analysis is performed on three articles. The importance of the personal narrative in digital media where Blackness is …
Ideology, The Counterculture, And The Avant Garde: Positioning The Filmmaker And The Spectator In Four Films Of Late-1960s America, Mary Bronstein Cantoral
Ideology, The Counterculture, And The Avant Garde: Positioning The Filmmaker And The Spectator In Four Films Of Late-1960s America, Mary Bronstein Cantoral
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968), Jonas Mekas’s Diaries, Notes, and Sketches: Also Known as Walden (1969) and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) constitute historical artifacts as well as discursive interventions intended to shape a vision of the nation. Therein emerged varying imbrications of ideology and the volatility of the era, along with palpable disharmony that scholars have identified between the youth movement’s cultural and political camps.1 In each case, the film’s avant-garde status did not, in and of itself, confer liberatory ideology. While all but Medium …
Masked Victims: Examining The Violence Of Femme Fatales In Contemporary Film Noir Cinema, Alexx Bonovich
Masked Victims: Examining The Violence Of Femme Fatales In Contemporary Film Noir Cinema, Alexx Bonovich
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis examines how depictions of femininity in both neo-noir and contemporary noir cinema challenge feminist activism, conform to post-feminist ideology and perpetuate problematic depictions of sex and violence in the figure of the femme fatale. In order to understand the textual and ideological function of sex, violence, and victims characterized by women in contemporary noir cinema, this research draws on existing discourse in film and cultural studies and analyzes depictions of violent and sexualized women across genres of film and throughout popular culture. The post-modern culture represented in Hollywood films emphasizes post-feminist notions of female empowerment through individualism, subjectivity, …
Love Conquers All: The Power Of The Indian Film To Free The Audience From Orientalism, Margaret Redlich
Love Conquers All: The Power Of The Indian Film To Free The Audience From Orientalism, Margaret Redlich
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Indian film and the way it interacts with the non-Indian fan community for Indian film presents an alternative to Oriantalist discourses by reaching out on an emotional level. Through surveys and interviews, this study shows how the fans find the films, find a community, and build a connection to India based on their initial massive emotional reaction to the films. By first looking at other scholarship on the topic, then the history of Indian film, it becomes apparent that this connection is outside of Said’s “network of interests” (3) that controls how the Orient is viewed, as the films have …
The Use Of Social Media Within Organizations To Foster Connections, Collaboration, And Knowledge Sharing Among Geographically Dispersed Teams, Carmen Ramson-Herzing
The Use Of Social Media Within Organizations To Foster Connections, Collaboration, And Knowledge Sharing Among Geographically Dispersed Teams, Carmen Ramson-Herzing
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The study explores how internal social media platforms can help geographically dispersed colleagues become more connected, more collaborative, and more willing to share information. The study findings are based on the analysis of three social media/social networking community “teamsites” available online to three different groups within a global law firm: a Real Estate practice, a women’s affinity group, and a marketing department, in addition to interviews with six participants of such teamsites. Following an interpretive paradigm defined by Sarah Tracy (2013), this study considers Electronic Propinquity Theory, Media Richness Theory, and Social Information Processing Theory by evaluating social media as …
Gangstas, Thugs, Vikings, And Drivers: Cinematic Masculine Archetypes And The Demythologization Of Violence In The Films Of Nicolas Winding Refn, Christopher John Olson
Gangstas, Thugs, Vikings, And Drivers: Cinematic Masculine Archetypes And The Demythologization Of Violence In The Films Of Nicolas Winding Refn, Christopher John Olson
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis considers how the depictions of masculinity in the films of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn function as a critique of mainstream Hollywood cinema’s perpetuation of the notion that violent male behavior represents a heroic ideal for men to emulate. In films such as Pusher, Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Drive, Refn constructs and presents his male characters by drawing upon recurring archetypal figures such as the gangster, the gangsta, the gunslinger, and the samurai. These figures recur throughout popular culture and across genres, and they perpetuate and reinforce a specific version of masculinity that emphasizes individualism, stoicism, and violence. …
Russian Women And Belly Dancing: Body Work, Fun And Transformation, Galina Khartulari
Russian Women And Belly Dancing: Body Work, Fun And Transformation, Galina Khartulari
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The study explores how Russian women’s socio-cultural experiences can be understood through belly dancing and transformed in belly dance classes. The study findings are based on the analysis of eleven interviews with Russian women of various ages and occupations, engaged in belly dancing for an extended period of time. Drawing on belly dancing as an embodied practice within the Russian context, the findings demonstrate that initial expectations of Russian women regarding belly dancing mutated over time, and new meanings were attached to this bodily practice. The emergent meanings are broadly conceptualized within the following dimensions: (1) remedial effects of belly …
(Re)Mixing ‘School Spirit’: Spectacular Youth Subcultures As Resistance To Cultures Of Control, Evangeline L. Semark
(Re)Mixing ‘School Spirit’: Spectacular Youth Subcultures As Resistance To Cultures Of Control, Evangeline L. Semark
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This project examines the way in which the U.S. nation-state works through cultural institutions such as schools and the media to create ideological cultures of control. A main argument of this project is that control cultures (re)produce an essentialist framework of an “All-American” dominant culture rooted in the ideology of whiteness through which youth identity – and to a larger extent, American national identity – is to be conceptualized and created. Cultural analysis is used to show how the articulation of dominant ideology works through discursive formations to shape the racial identities and regulate the bodies of students, parents, and …
Identity In Flux: Cinematic Destabilization In Narrative And Form, Eli Steenlage
Identity In Flux: Cinematic Destabilization In Narrative And Form, Eli Steenlage
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis explores the current transitional moment in culture as cinema, identity, and a mediated society interact in a state of flux. My film project, Photostoria, was produced to addresses issues of memory, history, and identity in a digital, socially networked age, through the relationships of the characters/actors and through cinema's unique aesthetic language. The film uses a convergence and remediation of media to reflect the confusion and destabilization of identity formation in cultural terms. Specifically, time travel narratives create a metaphor for the experience of displacement in a hypermediated society. Photostoria is analyzed by way of narrative theory, new …
Which Company Do I Work For? Organizational Identification In Third Party Organizations, Angela Dawson
Which Company Do I Work For? Organizational Identification In Third Party Organizations, Angela Dawson
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
Organizational communication influences organizational culture and identity, as well as employee identification with an organization. Even though extant literature on organizational culture, identity, and identification explains how these topics occur and relate within organizations, we know less about how employees develop identification to the culture specifically from the third party companies. The purpose of this study is to explore how a third party organization, “One Corporation,” communicates its organizational culture and identity to its employees and how the messages communicated by “One Corporation” influence employee identification. The researcher utilizes thematic analysis of organizational documents, face-to-face interviews, and participant observation for …
That’S So Meta: Contemporary Reflexive Television And Its Textual Strategies, Katherine Lander
That’S So Meta: Contemporary Reflexive Television And Its Textual Strategies, Katherine Lander
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis examines existing discourse from the areas of film and literature studies in order to explore the complex textual applications and rhetorical functions of contemporary reflexive television. Characterized by its self-conscious effacement of the boundaries traditionally established by works of fiction, televisual reflexivity uses such interrelated textual strategies as meta-reference, meta-production, and meta-episodes in order to foreground the inherent artifice and mediation of television programming, ultimately conveying a form of implicit, and often parodic, self-analysis and interpretation within the diegesis of a given series. Additionally, the project examines a number of ways in which the emergence of digital media …
From Panels To Primetime: Made-For-Tv Movies Adapted From Marvel Comics Properties, Jef Burnham
From Panels To Primetime: Made-For-Tv Movies Adapted From Marvel Comics Properties, Jef Burnham
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
With Marvel Entertainment commanding worldwide audiences and saturating marketplaces with licensed merchandise through complex, multimedia brand awareness campaigns, understanding popular culture in the present moment demands that we trace the company’s rise from a simple comic book publisher to a powerhouse of the film industry. Yet, virtually nothing has been written in academia about the transitional phenomenon of made-for- TV movies adapted from Marvel Comics properties. These texts, although numbering only thirteen to date, dominated the company’s live action, feature-length output in audiovisual media prior to the success of Blade in 1998. In an effort to identify a suitable framework …
The Imposition Of The Ego: Jean-Paul Sartre And The Cinematic Apparatus, James Driscoll
The Imposition Of The Ego: Jean-Paul Sartre And The Cinematic Apparatus, James Driscoll
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis applies Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy of consciousness and ego to two main concepts of Jean-Louis Baudry’s theory of the cinematic apparatus. The first of these concepts, the “transcendental subject,” is denoted by Baudry as the conflation of Cartesian philosophy and technology which ensures the transmission of representational knowledge in line with a historically dominant optical ideology. Since Sartre criticizes the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl in ways similar to Baudry’s work, his structures and levels of consciousness apply well to the enforced cohesion of the transcendental subject, and impart a hitherto lacking cohesion to the concept. Following from a …
Cameron Mcgill Dark Times: The Pursuit Of Objectivity In A Subjective Medium, Benjamin Bateman
Cameron Mcgill Dark Times: The Pursuit Of Objectivity In A Subjective Medium, Benjamin Bateman
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis project discusses the issues of objectivity, truth, and reality in documentary filmmaking. This debate has been ongoing since the establishment of the genre. Scholars like Bill Nichols, Michael Chanan, and Jane Chapman argue that the filmmaker’s subjectivity inevitably corrupts any possibility for the attainment of objectivity and that no absolute truth or reality can be captured in documentary film; while scholars like Stephen Mamber and filmmakers who ascribed to the schools of cinema verite and direct cinema suggest that objectivity is attainable through filming real people in uncontrolled situations. By framing the discussion using Nichols and Mamber along …
Dynamics Of International Nonprofit Capacity Building Partnerships, Julia Sparkman
Dynamics Of International Nonprofit Capacity Building Partnerships, Julia Sparkman
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This study worked to expand the discourse of international nonprofit capacity building research. In the field of Communication, research investigating international nonprofit partnerships is limited, and some international communities lack a voice within the scholarship. Through the lens of postcolonial reflexivity, the author traveled to Kenya to conduct participant observations and one-on-one interviews with a US Capacity Building Nonprofit (USCBN) and two local Kenyan nonprofit organizations (the KCN and the KSN). The findings revealed that the USCBN established previous organizational alliances with the KCN and the KSN. The previous alliances led to strong relationships. The relationships engendered collaboration within the …
Exploring Professional Identity, Scott G. Banghart
Exploring Professional Identity, Scott G. Banghart
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This thesis examines the ways in which organizational members define what it means to communicate professionally, the extent to which enacting professional identity reflects organizational identification and individual identity, and the specific contexts in which professionalism is most encouraged. Data collected from participant interviews highlighted three intersectional components related to the enactment professional identity and perceptions of [un]professionalism—technical, behavioral, and social. Further, the results of this study suggest that professionalism as a communicative construct manifests itself in the midst of ongoing tension between individual agency and organizational constraint, conflating individual identities with norms, values, and expectations set forth by the …
Other And Self-Representation: A Pentadic Criticism Of Kosovar Muslim And Roma Identity As Represented In Photographs By James Nachtwey And Djordje Jovanovic, Melody S. Follweiler
Other And Self-Representation: A Pentadic Criticism Of Kosovar Muslim And Roma Identity As Represented In Photographs By James Nachtwey And Djordje Jovanovic, Melody S. Follweiler
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This is an interdisciplinary study that integrates the fields of visual rhetoric, media, and identity. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of photojournalism as the medium of rhetorical messages and communicative power in terms of representing the identity, experience, and perspective of Kosovar Muslims and Roma in Other and self-representations. By applying Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism and pentadic criticism, I seek to illustrate and analyze how an outsider, James Nachtwey, uses rhetorical appeals to represent Kosovar Muslims during the Kosovo War of 1999 and how an insider, Djordje Jovanovic, uses rhetorical appeals to represent Kosovar Roma during …
Through A Feminist Lens: Language, Power And Identity In Catalan Nationalism, Christine Gallagher Kearney
Through A Feminist Lens: Language, Power And Identity In Catalan Nationalism, Christine Gallagher Kearney
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The goal for my master’s thesis is to understand how the working class women of Catalunya (specifically women that lived in the small farming villages in the region of Les Garrigues),contributed to the survival of Catalan. Catalunya is an autonomous region of Spain that endured more than three decades of the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1934-1975) that attempted to eradicate the Catalan language and culture. As stated by Everly (2003): “[…] the regional exile of Catalunya from the rest of Spain acts as a backdrop provoking women to go a step further and experiment with their own sense of gender separation …
Almost There, Indeed: Disney Misses The Mark On Modernizing Black Womanhood And Subverting The Princess Tradition In The Princess And The Frog, April Callen
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
The Walt Disney Company released The Princess and the Frog in 2009 to much anticipation and equal antagonism; the movie features the princess franchise’s first Black princess. In the spirit of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the studio touts the movie as a throwback to the classic era of Disney, but with an updated spin. Disney suggests that the marriage of classic and modern speaks to a return to hand-drawn animation and unlike the original story The Frog Prince, this princess becomes a frog, as well. This project argues, however, that framing The Princess and the Frog within the context …
The Internet’S Influence On Environmental Awareness, Jessica Vandrick
The Internet’S Influence On Environmental Awareness, Jessica Vandrick
College of Communication Master of Arts Theses
This paper examines the influence that the mass media have had on environmentalism issues since the early 1960s, and how the convergence of media on the Internet has changed the way environmental topics are communicated to and perceived by the public. For the purpose of this paper, mass media refers to all media technologies which are used for mass communication including radio, television, newspapers, the Internet, and films. Using BeGreenWeb, a web site about environmentalism, as a case study, this paper will examine the role of media in environmental awareness and how the Internet can be used effectively to inform …