Business Commons^™

Evaluating Climate Sentiment In Sec 10-K Filings: S&P 50 Companies, Ruby Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Evaluating Climate Sentiment in SEC 10-K Filings: S&P 50 Companies investigates how climate sentiment is portrayed in corporate financial reporting, focusing on SEC 10-K filings from leading S&P 50 companies. These filings offer detailed insights into financial performance, risks, and management discussions, providing a rich dataset for analyzing corporate behaviors with sustainability and environmental concerns. This study aims to shed light on the extent to which companies address environmental issues and the implications for environmental stewardship by analyzing how these topics are portrayed in their SEC 10-K filings. Drawing inspiration from established greenwashing indicator frameworks, the study develops a climate …

Identifying Youth Appeals In Alcohol Alternative Social Media Content Through Framing, Melina Oneal

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Proposed regulations for alcohol advertising prevent beverage companies from targeting people under the legal drinking age. However, similar regulations for alcohol alternative beverages are less explored, which could allow alcohol alternative products to create awareness for alcoholic beverages among youth. Alcohol alternatives beverages, including no-alcohol and low-alcohol products, are increasing in popularity and can function as compliments to alcoholic products to decrease the total alcohol volume consumed or as substitutes for alcoholic products. Framing theory can be operationalized through the Content Appealing to Youth Index, an index of content elements found in research literature to be appealing to youth, to …

Phantom Shootings, Allan Ambris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a website designed to critique NYC Open Data reporting with respect to shootings through a series of visualizations and discoveries. The NYPD Shooting Incidents datasets (Historic and Year to Date) introduce themselves to the user by claiming to be a “list of every shooting incident that occurred in NYC.” The supplied documentation reveals that this is not the case.

After understanding the supporting materials, there are still undisclosed truths. My exploration of the data revealed that a single victim may be represented across multiple entries. Additionally, multiple victims may be represented by a single entry. It is …

Auto-Exploited: Narrative Explorations Of The Commodification Of Time, Grace C. Willis Ms.

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the phenomenon of the auto-exploitation of the modern individual through and in conjunction with the commodification of time. It explores the eruption of gig-work in recent decades in the United States, and the ways in which the modern individual is both consumer and product, buying and selling her own constructions of identity in order to gain time, fiscal currency and a sense of socioeconomic worth from herself and others. Using theoretical frameworks of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Catherine Rottenberg and Byung-Chul Han, I explore the ways in which the modern individual is …

Effects Of Internet Exclusion On The City Of Detroit, Alexander G. Haddad

Honors College Theses

Introduction

The rise of Information Technology (IT) in the past 50 years has revolutionized many areas of human life and activity. Information Technology’s most obvious areas of impact are often those where they add a great and obvious value to a particular industry, and it is extremely difficult to find some aspect of life that has not changed since its inception. Some examples include the digitization of stock trading, the automation of factories and life-saving operations, and the enhanced communication and collaboration across public education, enterprise activity, and international affairs. However, what is often overlooked and understudied are the secondary …

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Alcohol Advertisements On Social Media: A Study Of How Alcohol Advertisements On Social Media Platforms Appeal To Young People, Alexis Campbell

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

Underage drinking is not uncommon and is associated with a number of school, social, legal, emotional, behavioral, health problems, and even death. This research seeks to explore alcohol-related social media advertisements across a variety of alcohol types, alcohol brands, and social media platforms. This was accomplished by a content analysis of the most popular alcohol brands’ advertisements on the Internet that examined the strategies used to appeal to consumers and the overall content patterns and characteristics of online alcohol advertisements. The strategy used differed by brand and alcohol type, but the most common themes included “taste,” “seasonal,” “holiday,” “recipe,” and …

Computer Vision Machine Learning And Future-Oriented Ethics, Abagayle Lee Blank

Honors Projects

Computer Vision Machine Learning (CVML) in the application of facial recognition is currently being researched, developed, and deployed across the world. It is of interest to governments, technology companies, and consumers. However, fundamental issues remain related to human rights, error rates, and bias. These issues have the potential to create societal backlash towards the technology which could limit its benefits as well as harm people in the process. To develop facial recognition technology that will be beneficial to society in and beyond the next decade, society must put ethics at the forefront. Drawing on AI4People’s adaption of bioethics for AI, …

Living On Heaven's Doorstep: A Multimedia Project With The Warm Beach Senior Community, Justina Grace Brown

Honors Projects

Having a website is no longer a luxury but a requirement. Nonprofits need to take advantage of the digital age to better reach their constituents yet, overall, they struggle to do this well. Because of lack of resources, their reliance on volunteers, and the inability to keep up with the evolving demands of a website, nonprofits (especially small ones) are not using the web to their full advantage. Taking the research and applying it to a nonprofit retirement community—Warm Beach Senior Community—the challenges are seen first-hand.

Fashion Merchandising: An Augmented Reality, Naeha A. Sayed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is a continuous and constant transformation in the field of Augmented Reality (AR), both in the Retail, and the Manufacturing sector. It has started to influence everything from fashion runway shows to online shopping. Consumers dynamics have shifted in the fashion industry, the ways becoming more dominant than the old observant ones- the simple buying experience no longer satisfies them. Due to the emergence of the new digital platforms and technological enhancements, the consumers are looking for more- be it a more exciting buying experience or more user interaction or more enhanced products. This technological change starts with the …

Visualizing The Decline Of The Corset Business, Iris Finkel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The corset defined a woman’s silhouette for nearly four hundred years. It continues to fascinate and inspire new ways to study its place in culture. Taking a digital humanities approach, my project encompasses visualizations of metadata from advertisements for foundation garments in Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Vogue from 1905 through 1929. These visualizations represent the marketing behavior of corset manufacturers, a well-established group of businesses that benefited from the industrial revolution to produce and sell a type of garment that held a constant place in women’s wardrobes.

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

MSU Graduate Theses

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

Media Guide And Strategic Plan, Ella Greer

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

An MAPW candidate composes a strategic plan and media guide for a local government office.

Currents Of Consumption: How National Narratives Of Japanese Cuisine Collide With Localized Forms Of Sushi In Northern California, John Ostermiller

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper examines how national narratives of Japanese cuisine collide with the expectations, preferences, and perceptions of American consumers (particularly Northern California). The global economy has benefited the circulation of positive images of Japan managed by the Japanese government, but the commercialization of Japanese cuisine is also at odds with government efforts. In Japan, sushi is often synonymous with nigirizushi: sliced seafood and a daub of wasabi atop vinegared rice. As part of Japan’s washoku tradition, this singular image of sushi (allegedly) reflects the deepest essence of Japanese cultural sensibilities tied to simplicity, perfection, and nature. But in America, consumers’ …

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Design Thinking: A Case Study Of Implementation Within The It Software Industry., Jean-Baptiste Liberge

Theses

In the global economy, competition and market pressures push the majority of company managers to drive with more efficiency by improving processes, optimizing performance and reducing costs. Companies are increasing shareholder value by improving cash flow' and cutting costs. How many cost savings can finance departments reproduce and for how long? Is this enough to lead their markets to deliver better services to their customers? Is it enough to build customer loyalty? The 11 industry fails to escape these constraints, operating in an intensely competitive market. To compete in this environment, companies need to face frequent new product launches and …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …

Do Rio, Barbara Brasil Marcolini

Capstones

Do Rio is a solutions journalism platform for residents of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It consists of a website and Facebook page where Rio de Janeiro’s citizens find inspiring stories of people who found solutions for their city’s problems, exchange ideas about the the challenges Rio faces and take part in events with positive impact. This project was created by Barbara Marcolini at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism as part of her Master’s in Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY J-School.

Link: http://do-rio.com/

Look At Where You Listen: A Study Of Commercial Music And Mediation, Thomas Walton Moore

Senior Projects Spring 2017

A joint senior project submitted to the divisions of arts and social studies. This project aims to reconsider the 'album' as a format of music distribution that has effects on the consumption-of and relationship-with music as commodity. This project consists of writing and recorded-music-making. Please email tom (at) dpimusic (dot) com for a link.

Ernest Hemingway And Alice Walker: Branding The Great American Writer, Shari Stiell-Quashie

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Ernest Hemingway and Alice Walker: Branding the Great American Writer discusses how Public Relations efforts have shaped the work of 20th century authors, Alice Walker and Ernest Hemingway through their respective stories The Color Purple and The Old Man and The Sea. The tactics of this field have created two of the most prominent literary figures of our time, writers who have both produced timeless works and summoned a global audience to pay close attention to their work. Understanding how this attention is garnered is vital to recognizing the way authorship is created, shaped, and consumed by the reading …

Personas: A Strategy For More Inclusive And Usable Reproductive Health Tracking Technologies, Anna R. Paul

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this report, I argue for the inclusion of personas in the development process of technologies that are designed to allow users to collect and track their health information. Personas provide a profile of a user and their needs, goals, and contexts. This tool can help designers to better understand their users, in order to create better, more usable end products. I examine one particular self-tracking technology, smartphone applications that allow users to record information about their menstrual cycles. Many of the most popular period tracking applications available today only meet the needs of a narrow user group, resulting in …

Role Of Digital Collections In The Cultural Heritage Institution: Pathways For Strengthening Social Identity, Kimberly A. Arleth

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

According to the theory of social identity, the more connected an individual feels to other group members, the more likely they are to feel a part of this group. The stronger the connection is, the more likely the individual is to become an active member. Cultural collections illustrate the shared history of a group. By increasing access to these collections via online access, organizations expose more users to these shared histories. Viewing such shared history, individuals will experience stronger connections to the history and members of the group resulting in an increase in social identity. When this connection solidified, users …