Digital Commons Network^™

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.

A Life Lived With Schizophrenia: When Mother’S Love Is Kept In The Dark Exploring Maternal Communication And Attachment Organization In Families With Schizophrenia, Myrsini Stefanidou Marini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, research into the transgenerational transmission of attachment styles has shown that a mother’sattachment style often predicts the attachment style of her infant. Fearsome parental behavior has been found to predict disorganized attachment in infants, which is further associated with a range of mental health disturbances in adolescence. Furthermore, regular patterns of disturbed communication between mother and child have also been found to lead to ‘schizophrenic’ thinking and behavior in the child’s life. While acknowledging that genetic and other biological factors contribute to the emergence of schizophrenia, this study focused on disorganized attachment and disturbed communication between mother …

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

The Construction Of Identity Through Tattoos: A Semiotic And Performative Exploration Of Trauma, Erin Lionberger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this current historical moment, tattoos and tattooing have become a glorified cultural phenomenon that has been thousands of years in the making. The idea that tattoos can be used to express one’s identity is not a new concept — various fields, such as anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, have studied the relationship between tattoos and identity. In this dissertation, I explore the signification and performative aspects of Auschwitz concentration camp tattoos and 9/11 memorial tattoos, while also considering the changes in meaning and interpretation that occur within and throughout space and time. Chapter one introduces the topic and provides …

Examining The Intersectionality Of Religious Faith, Spirituality, And Healthcare Communication, Felix Okeke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is my own contribution in responding to the concern raised by certain communication scholars. Their concern was that little research and few publications have been done in the communication field by communication scholars that trace the relationship among religious faith, spirituality, and healthcare communication. While Parrott (2004) describes this apparent neglect as “collective amnesia,” others label it “religion blindness.” Thus, in trying to trace this relationship, this project uses Christian, biblical, and bioethics backgrounds to establish the value, sacredness, and dignity of human life, since these concepts make healthcare and healthcare communication necessary in the first place. These …

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. …

Opening Gates: Elevating Corporate Social Responsibility Communication And Strategic Philanthrocapitalism For Social Change, Beth E. Michalec Ph.D.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today’s global marketplace, the Aristotelian notion of philanthrôpía manifests in myriad terms and meanings: corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, social entrepreneurship, venture capitalism and philanthrocapitalism, to name a few. Now, nonprofit organizations and foundations are building on the social and financial capital of successful business titans, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and others, to address ongoing and growing social issues of health, education, and poverty worldwide. This dissertation will explore the question: Is philanthrocapitalism the next paradigm to elevate global corporate social responsibility efforts? To answer this question, I draw on Jürgen …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco's Rhetoric Of Communication And Signification, Susan Mancino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project, Understanding Lists: Umberto Eco’s Rhetoric of Communication and Signification, begins and ends with an observation and warning suggested throughout Eco’s work: lists are the origin of culture and the Internet as the Mother of All Lists threatens to end culture. To understand this warning, I turn to Eco’s work on lists, contextualized within a 2009 exhibition at the Musée du Louvre and in an illustrated collection, The Infinity of Lists. This project offers an analysis of Eco’s understanding of lists concurrent to his commentary on the social and cultural implications of the algorithmic-obsessed Internet age. To understand …

Outsourcing Our Memory 2.0: Using Walter Ong's Orality/Literacy Studies To Recognize Technologies Effects On Memory, Rishi Raj Bahl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At the heart of media ecology is the principle that technology not only deeply influences society, but also controls most aspects of daily life. Additionally, media ecology investigates how media and communication processes profoundly affect human perception and understanding. The pervasive role that technology plays in modern life today has exacerbated the results of technology on human beings. Some of these outcomes are not desirable and may be a hindrance to the progress of our society. This dissertation takes particular interest in the multifaceted consequences that the overuse of technology imposes on our ability to fully utilize our memory.

In …

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, …

Truth Telling Beyond Borders: An African Perspective, John Twinomujuni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation focuses on answering the question of how can patient’s autonomy, privacy and liberty be safeguarded especially within cultures that do not regard them as primordial principles? In some communities, truth-telling is one of the moral principles unquestioningly inherited from the West. The dissertation will try to compare African and Western perspectives. The African perspective has been chosen to explore through this search hoping that such venture would help in showing how the issue of truth-telling may be approached from such perspective. For instance in the African communalism based on the cardinal point that “I am because we are; …

The Necessity For Communicative Engagement Capability In Corporate Mergers And Acquisitions, Elizabeth Ann Duwaldt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Frequent organizational change has become inescapable in postmodern organizations. While thousands of articles and texts have been written on the topic of organizational change offering models and strategies for accomplishing planned change, the majority of change initiatives fail to meet expectations (Burnes and Jackson; Keller and Aiken). What, then, is a business leader to do when change is an imperative in the postmodern business world, but the majority of change initiatives fail to succeed in the manner predicted?

Mergers and acquisitions are a common type of planned change organizations pursue to survive in the postmodern, hypercompetitive marketplace. Mergers and acquisitions …

Casey's Hope: A Communication Ethics Response To Baseball's Fall And Its Future, Matthew David Fazio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Baseball was once seen as America's pastime, but somehow lost its way. Baseball was inherently American, and stood for more than a game. Yet a number of events caused baseball to fall from grace. Using Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of Republic Sung in the Year 1888" as a frame work, this project identifies three events that caused baseball's fall and three additional events that currently threaten the game, which will be evaluated according to Aristotle's doctrine of the mean. Understanding the game's past and present will help to develop a methodology to apply to threats …

The Megaphone Of The Soul: Resistance Of Fraudulent Technological Idolization By Recognizing The Power Of Human Choice In Media Ecology, Richard L. Talbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans naturally communicate, but choose to use tools. They use them to make sense of things, even to their own detriment and the detriment of others. These tools often receive the attention, instead of the human interaction. Aristotle's notion of humans as social animals has been carried into media ecology scholarship by Arendt, Burke, Ellul, Mumford, Postman, and Ricoeur. Social media scholarship has often focused on the tool and how it affects humanity. However, a phenomenological approach is necessary, as humans communicate with or without these tools. This approach will follow multiple steps. The first is through an understanding of …

Communicating Through Cork: Marcel Proust's Performative Call To Philosophy Of Communication, David Deiuliis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Philosophy of communication replaces modernity's metanarrative of progress with postmodernity's many works in progress. The metanarrative of postmodernity is fragmentation, the lack of a metanarrative. In postmodernity, progress sputters and stalls, then starts on new paths. Philosophy of communication responds to fragmentation by converging the fragments of philosophy and communication. In his life and work, Marcel Proust (1871-1922) embodied the duality of philosophy of communication. Proust recognized the false grandeur behind the gold gilding of the Belle Epoque in nineteenth-century France, and reframed progress as a series of fits and starts, where the self follows false scents in a search …

En Route To Communicative Praxis: Understanding Natural Law And Several Communicative Implications, Rachel Ann Kosko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work claims communicative praxis is necessary and becomes increasingly more promising by introducing discussions that integrate explicit knowledge of natural law as a precursor for conversations regarding communication ethics. Taking a hermeneutical approach of returning to a text [book, person, place, etc.] with different questions develops new insights for identifying obstacles to understanding, functioning as barriers in preventing praxis. Some existing obstacles include errors, irrelevant information, misunderstandings, and implicit or omitted topics like natural law found lacking throughout the philosophical discourse. Therefore, this dissertation defines key terms, unveils the lineage of the law, reviews texts by Roman Catholic scholars …

Virtualizing The Word: Expanding Walter Ong's Theory Of Orality And Literacy Through A Culture Of Virtuality, Jennifer Camille Dempsey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to create a vision for virtuality culture through a theoretical expansion of Walter Ong's literacy and orality culture model. It investigates the ubiquitous and multimodal nature of the virtuality cultural phenomenon that is mediated by contemporary technology and not explained by pre-existing cultural conventions. Through examining the theoretical underpinnings of orality and literacy culture, the dissertation explores the cultural shift that is just beginning to restructure human consciousness through the ways that society is connecting, exploring and communicating. Further, this dissertation examines the contrasts between virtuality culture features and those related to traditional literacy and orality types, …

The Rhetorical Turn In United States Diplomacy Praxis: Public Diplomacy 2.0, Randy Edward Cole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While discourse and rhetoric has always been a part of traditional diplomacy, rhetoric and communication theory has not enjoyed an active voice in the scholarship of foreign relations, and more specifically, public diplomacy. This project argues that a postmodern turn in public diplomacy was formalized in the State Department's 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and that two specific directives laid out therein--to expand and strengthen relationships between individuals and steer the narrative--can find theoretical ground in communication scholarship. After examining the mid-to-late 20th century shift from specialized modern policy training to a rhetorical public diplomacy that views diplomats …

Blogging: Public, Private Or Social Rhetoric?, Kristin Roeschenthaler Wolfe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines personal blogging through the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and her understanding of public, private and social. Personal blogging is the latest in a long history of self-representational writing with each form taking on a more public overtone. By utlizing Hannah Arendt's philosophy in this manner, this project provides a venue for her work in the realm of today's mediated world. Hannah Arendt's understanding of public, private, and social allows us to better understand the need for boundaries and the need for both a public and private space in our lives. Utilizing several interpersonal communication theories, including Boundary …

Beyond The Brandopolis: A Communicative Approach To City Promotion And Marketing, Kasey Clawson Hudak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A review of current city branding literature indicates that unsuccessful attempts at city branding appear to rely on creating static, flashy, and often idealized images of a city. Such marketing efforts may result in a "brandopolis," or images that may not reflect a city's true identity. This dissertation supplements current city branding literature by exploring how stakeholders' discourses form, enhance, and communicate a city's image. The consideration of a communicative approach to the promotion of city images, from a humanities perspective grounds stakeholders' experiences of the city in their communicative practices. This grounded communicative approach to city marketing offers marketers …

St. Catherine Of Siena: Vocation As Engaged Scholarship, Christina Mcdowell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The driving question of this project is: "How is St. Catherine of Siena an exemplar of engaged communication scholarship?" This project covers five essential facets of communicative inquiry into a deeper understanding of St. Catherine of Siena and her embodiment of engaged communication scholarship. The five areas trace her life from its historical context to its most personal revelations to her lived engagements with others. In the first chapter, the inquiry into St. Catherine of Siena begins with how she is understood by others for her knowledge and impact. Chapter Two assesses the historical moment in which St. Catherine of …

Health Communication: Toward A Phenomenological Perspective, Bonnie Reese

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines implications for health communication as a rhetorical and philosophical practice by focusing on the various topics in the health communication field today, identifying areas that have been examined qualitatively and/or phenomenologically and hermeneutically. Currently, health communication scholarship tends toward qualitative and quantitative research from the methodological perspective of social science. Bringing these approaches into conversation with current phenomenological studies in the health care field, particularly those in the area of nursing, offers the potential to transform health communication scholarship, giving birth to a rhetorically and philosophically grounded praxis in this field.

Roots: Agrarian Movements And The Importance Of Ground Within The Philosophy Of Communication (A Synecdoche), Maryl Roberts Mcginley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work looks at the way in which an agrarian philosophy communicates the meaningful connection between cultivating land and being attentive to the philosophical notion of ground. It tells the story of agrarian movements from the last century with special attention to what about the philosophy has durability. This work outlines the possibility of an agrarian framework as a potential alternative to modernity. Each chapter is attentive to a different voice in the movement, exploring his engagement with an agrarian philosophy and connection to the philosophy of communication.

The Postmodern Turn In Higher Education: Incorporating Narrative Literacy Into The Discipline Of Communication, Leeanne Marian Bell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The consensus across the curriculum of the centuries is that education is imperative and important, a 'good' for public life and a means by which to attain the good life. This dissertation will focus on a constructive hermeneutic that allows one to ask: 'What is the conversation taking place during this historical moment in education, and how can communication and rhetorical studies provide one potential answer through communicative engagement with our postmodern moment?' This question, the focus of this project, rests on the need to recognize narrative multiplicity in the classroom, particularly in the communication classroom in higher education. This …

Internet Use In Teacher Preparation Programs: The Relationship Between Pedagogy And Practice In The Pennsylvania State System Of Higher Education, Leighann Forbes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The overall purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) teacher educators' pedagogical beliefs and their use of telecollaborative Internet activities in practice. The goal of this examination was to address the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (April 2002) call for collecting data about how digital content is being used and to make recommendations for action. The study collected data, via a web-based survey, about pedagogical beliefs and practices of PASSHE teacher educators. The analysis of descriptive statistics, rankings, Spearman rho correlations, and ANOVA calculations revealed …