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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Coordination And Symbolic Convergence At The Candles Holocaust Museum And Education Center, Jessica Mcdonald
Coordination And Symbolic Convergence At The Candles Holocaust Museum And Education Center, Jessica Mcdonald
Masters Theses
Using Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), this study examines the ways in which meaning is managed between the messages of the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center and the visitors of the museum. The research shows that the museum and the museum visitors work together in order to create an overall rhetorical vision of the museum's main message, both within the museum space and beyond. Using the metaphor of conversation, this study demonstrates the three ways through which the museum and its visitors achieve the rhetorical vision: historical conversation, personal conversation, and residual conversation. In …
A Soldier's Home, Andrew O. Mclaughlin
Those Who Slay Together, Stay Together: A Thematic Analysis Of Concert Fan Narratives And The I-57 Youth Punk Music Scene, Michael James Janowski
Those Who Slay Together, Stay Together: A Thematic Analysis Of Concert Fan Narratives And The I-57 Youth Punk Music Scene, Michael James Janowski
Masters Theses
This study uses qualitative methods of narrative interviewing and thematic analysis of narrative to explore the communicative phenomenon of youth punk concert fan story-telling. It explores how the phenomenon functions to construct the subculture of the I-57 youth punk concert fan music scene. Through methods of thematic analysis of narrative, the study works to deconstruct numerous implicit understandings and taken-for-granted assumptions that drive and govern interactions among youth punk music fans participating within the I-57 youth punk music scene. The study is broken down into four exploratory categories where meanings are derived and critically analyzed: youth, punk, fandom, and the …
Upvoting The Audience: A Burkean Analysis Of Reddit, Doug Urbanski
Upvoting The Audience: A Burkean Analysis Of Reddit, Doug Urbanski
Masters Theses
My thesis examines the Internet community Reddit through the rhetorical framework of Kenneth Burke, specifically his work with identification between individuals and how identification shapes communities. I focused on three sections of Reddit: World News, Ask Reddit, and Politics, and analyzed the best-voted comments of top posts from each section, focusing on how anonymous users communicate with one another and how their anonymity might influence the ways they interact. Additionally, I propose a method for instructors to use Reddit in the classroom, taking advantage of the medium's systematic anonymity.
Separating The Whites From The Chaff: Whiteness, Blackness, Racial Exclusion In The Midwest Agrarian Mind, Philip Mohr
Separating The Whites From The Chaff: Whiteness, Blackness, Racial Exclusion In The Midwest Agrarian Mind, Philip Mohr
Masters Theses
This thesis approaches the construction of race through the vantage of one agrarian magazine, the Prairie Farmer. It analyzes the rhetoric of the people who wrote for this magazine to distinguish changing attitudes toward whiteness and blackness in the rural and agricultural Midwest from the end of the Civil War to the Great Migration. While whiteness was equated with what the Prairie Farmer saw as the active, progressive farmer, blackness was associated with stupidity, laziness, and threat to property. From this, the thesis argues we can build a base of knowledge from which to analyze the roots of racism …
The Construction Of Spiritual Identity: Cmm And Conversion To Catholicism, Stephanie Gruner
The Construction Of Spiritual Identity: Cmm And Conversion To Catholicism, Stephanie Gruner
Masters Theses
This study uses the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) to examine the spiritual stories of six people who were not raised Catholic, but joined the Catholic faith as adults. The participants' experiences reveal that their spiritual identities have both personal and communal aspects and that they view their identities as both fixed and changing. Additionally, when communicating their spiritualities to others these individuals must balance relationship concerns with the desire to express their spiritual identities. Applying CMM's hierarchy of meaning to the data shows that the levels work together in shaping the participants' understandings of their identities. The participants' relationships …