Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Priming Effects Of Video Viewing On Preschoolers' Play Behavior, Heather J. Lavigne

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis investigates the relationship between educational television content and children‘s play behaviors immediately after viewing. Children ages 41-43 months of age were randomly assigned to view a television program with predominantly object-constructive or social dramatic content. All children participated in a period of video viewing, approximately 25 minutes in length, followed by a 30-minute play session. Each participant was subsequently administered a brief card sorting task to assess categorical knowledge of constructive and social activities. Each child‘s session was coded for looking at the television, toy choice, and play content (constructive or social-narrative). Video viewing condition and the interaction …

Linguistic And Cultural Contact Phenomena In A Mandarin Class In The U.S., Dan Zhang

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study explores English language pragmatic phenomena in the Mandarin speech of a native Chinese language teacher as she interacts with American learners of Mandarin in a university classroom setting. I document and analyze her use of English backchannel 'mm hmm' in interactions that are otherwise in Mandarin, and I document and analyze the transfer of American interaction rituals and English syntax to her Mandarin language interactions with students. In this context, her patterns of communication both reflect and constitute cultural worlds. These pragmatic transfers to her Mandarin reflect her cultural and communicative assimilation to America, but they also serve …

Bringing The Frame Into Focus: How Cable News Pundits Protect The Glass Ceiling, Kathryn M. Cassidy

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In many nations, the 21st century has been about women in politics. Not only are they running for prominent political offices, but they are winning them. The trend toward success for American female politicians has been slower to progress, however, as no women have been elected to the U.S. Presidency to date, and social science research suggests persistent gender biases exist in their news coverage. In order to explore the potential role that media play in continuing this gender disparity in U.S. politics, this comparative study investigates how cable pundit programs – a dramatic, partisan genre of “news” that has …

Bullying On Teen Television: Patterns Across Portrayals And Fan Forum Posts, Kimberly R. Walsh

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The primary goal of this thesis was to provide a snapshot of the portrayal of bullying on teen television. Drawing from contextual factors studied in the National Television Violence Study (Smith et al., 1998), a content analysis of 82 episodes (representing 10 series) and 355 acts of bullying was conducted to examine portrayals of physical, verbal, indirect, and cyber bullying in terms of bully and victim social status, motivations, humor, punishments/rewards, character support for bullies, harm shown to victims, interventions by third parties, and anti-bullying episode themes.

The analysis revealed significant differences across bullying types for all variables except third …

Networked, Collaborative, And Activist News Communities Online: A Case Study Of Reddit And Daily Kos, Michael Soha

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three …

Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography, Hari Stephen Kumar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in academic texts, using performance writing to decolonize academic knowledge production. Through a fragmented itinerary across continents and ethnicities, across religions and languages, across academic and vocational careers, I speak from the everyday spaces in between supposedly stable cultural identities involving race, ethnicity, class, gendered norms, to name a few. I write against colonizing practices which police the racist, sexist, and xenophobic cultural politics that produce and validate particular identities. I write from the intersections of my own living experiences within and against those cultural …

Situated Architecture In The Digital Age: Adaptation Of A Textile Mill In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Dorcas A. Brooks

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The City of Holyoke, Massachusetts is one of many aging, industrial cities striving to revitalize its economy based on the promise of increased digital connectivity and clean energy resources. But how do you renovate 19th century mills to meet the demands of the information age? This architectural study explores the potential impact of sensing technologies and information networks on the definition and function of buildings in the 21st century. It explores the changes that have taken place in industrial architecture since 1850 and argues for an architecture that supports local relationships and environmental awareness. The author explores the industrial history …

Meat And Meanings: Adult-Onset Hunters’ Cultural Discourses Of The Hunt, Tovar Cerulli

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study is a description and interpretation of talk about hunting. The study is based on data gathered from in-depth interviews with twenty-four hunters in the United States who did not become hunters until adulthood. A single overarching research question guides the study: How do people create and use discourses of hunting? The study is situated within the ethnography of communication research program and, more specifically, within the framework of cultural discourse analysis. The study employs cultural discourse analysis methods and concepts to describe and develop interpretations of how participants render hunting symbolically meaningful, and of what beliefs and values …

Vilification In Fox's "24", Shara M. Drew

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper explores vilification in the popular counterterrorism show, Fox’s "24." A critical, in-depth analysis of three prominent antagonists from the show illustrates the different ways in which they are vilified. Each of the three characters is examined to understand which type of villain he or she embodies in "24," which of the show’s moral codes the villain affronts, and how he or she is punished or treated as a result. The analysis considers the broadcast of the show’s first six seasons in relation to neoconservative and Christian Right values that characterized the George W. Bush administration after 9/11. It …

Community Radio, Public Interest: The Low Power Fm Service And 21st Century Media Policy, Margo L. Robb

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The introduction of the Low Power FM (LPFM) service by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided a unique glimpse into media policy-making. Because usual allies disagreed over the service, the usually invisible political nature of the debate was made transparent. The project of this thesis is to contextualize the histories of radio policy, non-commercial radio, and the public interest standard to shed light on why it was so challenging to implement even a small, local radio service. Secondly, the thesis will explore the theoretical understandings of the various players in the LPFM debate, as well as the practical functioning of …

Social Influence And The Acceptance Of Racially Charged Humor, Nicholas M. Joyce

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study examined factors important in determining the acceptance of racially charged humor. It utilized a 2 x 3 design in which race of joke teller and group targeted by the jokes were manipulated. It measured people’s level of acceptance regarding the jokes and recorded participants’ behaviors. This study found that under the conditions in which comedians derogated their in-group, White participants demonstrated higher levels of acceptance and a greater likelihood to perform the jokes. This pattern was especially true when the comedian was Black.

Rang De Basanti- Consumption,Citizenship And The Public Sphere, Meghana Dilip

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

No abstract provided.

Trophy Children Don’T Smile: Fashion Advertisements For Designer Children’S Clothing In Cookie Magazine, Chris Boulton

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study examines print advertising from Cookie, an up-scale American parenting magazine for affluent mothers. The ads include seven designer clothing brands: Rocawear, Baby Phat, Ralph Lauren, Diesel, Kenneth Cole, Sean John, and DKNY. When considered within the context of their adult equivalents, the ads for the children’s lines often created a prolepsis—or flash-forward—by depicting the child model as a nascent adult. This was accomplished in three ways. First, the children’s ads typically contained structural continuities such as logo, set design, and color scheme that helped reinforce their relationship with the adult brand. Second, most of the ads place the …

Maximizing Masculinity: A Textual Analysis Of Maxim Magazine, Kirsten Wisneski

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study examines the story that Maxim tells about masculinity, with particular focus on the type of humor in the magazine and its function; the way the magazine echoes embodied male-male social interaction, particularly “male-bonding”; and how the magazine pits “real” women against the Maxim fantasy women.

From Fantasy Dates To Elimination Ceremonies: A Content Analysis Of Gender, Sex And Romance On Reality Television, Andrea Mary Bergstrom

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The study at hand intends to document patterns related to gender roles and depictions, dating, and sex which are unveiled in a sample of reality television programs.

Spaces Of Signification, Representation And Opposition- New Feminism(S) And Women In The Indie Rock Scene, Margaret R. Wallace

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

No abstract provided.