Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cultivating Color-Blindness?: The Impact Of Tv-Viewing, Racial Policy Reasoning, And Colorblind Racism On Opposition Toward Affirmative Action Policy, Carmella N. Stoddard

Masters Theses

I examine the effect of television viewing and ideological orientations associated with “modern” racism such as minimization of the impact of racial discrimination and individual attribution on opposition toward preferential hiring of Blacks. Using cross-sectional General Social Survey (GSS) responses from U.S. adults between 2004 and 2010, I estimate ordered logistic regression models predicting attitudes toward preferential hiring of Blacks. Additionally, I compare agreement with key tenets of abstract liberalism to the findings of previous policy reasoning studies to determine the importance of these attitudes in predicting support for affirmative action policy. In this study, I aim to address the …

Ginger Masculinities, Donica O'Malley

Masters Theses

This paper explores white American masculinity within the “ginger” phenomenon. To guide this study, I asked: How is racism conceptualized and understood within popular culture, as seen through discussions of whether or not gingerism constitutes racism? How do commenters respond or interact when their understandings of racism or explanations for gingerism are challenged by other commenters? And finally, what does the creation of and prejudice against/making fun of a “hyperwhite” masculine identity at this social/historical moment suggest about the current stability of the dominant white masculine identity? Through discourse analysis of online comments, I explored discussions of race, gender, and …

The Formation Of Youth-Led Participatory Networks In Urban Bangladesh: A Case Study Of The Bgreen Project, Fadia Hasan

Doctoral Dissertations

Through the lens of a participatory action research platform that I founded called The BGreen Project (BGreen), my research explores networked political economic connections that were developed as a result of this academic-community initiative. BGreen was a participatory action research platform that connected urban high school, college, university youth in an assortment of participatory/deliberative activities in the fields of education and environment. With their ongoing engagement in the participatory network called BGreen, Bangladeshi youth are negotiating their affiliation to diverse political economic structures (for example, their educational institutions) in creative ways and forging innovative methods of transformative participation as …

“Of All, I Most Hate Bulgarians”: Situating Oplakvane In Bulgarian Discourse As A Cultural Term For Communicative Practice, Nadezhda M. Sotirova

Doctoral Dissertations

The following dissertation raises these questions: how do people talk about their communication, and what role does this play as constructing a widely used cultural resource? The specific data concerns oplakvane, referring both to a key cultural term and a range of communication practices in Bulgaria. This term, and these practices are explored through the theoretical and methodological frame of cultural communication (Philipsen, 1981-87), ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1962), and cultural discourse analysis (Carbaugh, 1992, 2007a, 2010). The analyses demonstrate how oplakvane, which can loosely be translated as “complaining” and “mourning”, functions as a deeply shared cultural resource for communication …

The Ambiguous Construction Of Collective "Family" In The Age Of Post-Collectivism China: Through The Lens Of Cctv's Spring Festival Gala, Lin Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation, through a semiotic reading of familial imagery in CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, explores the new propaganda and its effects on Chinese people's political subjectivity, against the background combining the dying Communist ideology, the rise of neoliberalism, the proliferating social technologies, and the tremendous human dislocation in contemporary China. Particularly, informed by cultural studies and ethnographic methods, this research project explores how the post-collectivism party-state insists on a mirror image of the collectivism through constructing the country as a singular super "family" form the olden time, as exemplified in the televised spectacle - CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. In the …

Parents’ Television Viewing And The Cultivation Of Materialism Among Families With Young Adult Offspring, Laras Sekarasih

Doctoral Dissertations

Employing cultivation theory as a guiding framework, and utilizing online survey responses from 303 young adults aged 18 to 25, this study examined how parents’ television viewing cultivates materialism among parents and young adult offspring, as well as offspring’s social comparison and life satisfaction. Path analyses revealed the evidence for intergenerational cultivation through parents’ materialism for the success and happiness dimensions of materialism. For the two dimensions, parents’ general television viewing positively predicts their own materialism, which in turn is positively associated with their children’s materialism. Somewhat differently, the analysis on the centrality dimension of materialism suggest that parents’ general …

Performing Critical Consciousness In Teaching: Entanglements Of Knowing, Feeling And Relating, Kathleen A. Mcdonough

Doctoral Dissertations

At a time when education reform is guided by neoliberalism, accountability and standardization have reshaped teaching as highly technocratic and threatened the democratic possibilities of public education. Even so, many teacher education programs have taken up the call to prepare teachers to teach for social justice, whether framed as multicultural education, critical literacy, or critical pedagogy. A construct that ties these pedagogical approaches together is critical consciousness, with the aim of some teacher education efforts to evoke critical consciousness among preservice teachers. This study focuses on exploring how nine educators from elementary grades to higher education experience and enact critical …

Fragmentary Girls: Selective Expression On The Tumblr Platform, Samantha Shorey

Masters Theses

Empirically based on a series of focus groups with college-age women, this thesis examines how the affordances of anonymity and audience specificity facilitate both intimate personal expression and political participation on the Tumblr platform. In dialogue with literature on self disclosure and privacy, I seek to broaden our understanding of the mediated contexts that provide space for women’s voices online.

The privacy afforded by Tumblr’s registration policies allows users more flexibility in terms of self-presentation than sites such as Facebook, which are necessarily linked to one’s offline identity through “real name only” policies. The use of pseudonyms contributes to a …

Producing The Dead Sea Scrolls: (Trans)National Heritage And The Politics Of Popular Representation, Evan P. Taylor

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the politics of representing the assemblage of ancient manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls to popular audiences in Israel, the occupied West Bank, and the United States. I demonstrate that these objects of national heritage are circulated along transnational routes to maintain the legitimacy of nationalist discourse abroad. Three sites—the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Qumran National Park in the West Bank, and a travelling exhibit presented at the Boston Museum of Science—are examined for textual narrative, spatial arrangement, and visitor behavior. Analysis of these observations illuminates two recurring motifs common …

The Semiosis Of Civil Society: Theorizing The Media In Postcolonial Polities, Srinivas R. Lankala

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation is an attempt to construct a theoretical framework for the distinctive nature of the mass media in the postcolonial political context through an engagement with the theoretical legacy of Indian political theory and historiography, especially the Subaltern Studies school. I draw from Partha Chatterjee’s conceptualization of Indian politics as divided into the two spheres of civil and political society and interpret these political categories through the rubric of mass media and televisual discourse, both to locate the mass media in the discourse and practice of politics, and to also locate political practice as it takes place in a …

Democratic Potential For A Multiplicity Of Public Spaces: A Content Analysis Of Media-Hosted Discussion Boards, Bryan M. Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

Since their inception, online discussion boards have intrinsically appealed to proponents of deliberative democracy, and those appended to Web-based news sources have been recognized as possessing the potential – whether realized yet or not – to engender meaningful discussions by engaged citizens on a range of public issues. In contrast, ardent critics of such forums contend they are merely raucous and unstructured repositories of expressions reflecting the darker side of human nature (e.g. incivility, vulgarity, ad hominem attacks, racism, homophobia, etc.). This study assessed the deliberative quality of online postings made over a two- month period and affiliated with four …

Social Media And Distribution Studies, Joshua A. Braun

Journalism Faculty Publication Series

Social media increasingly trouble our traditional distinctions between distribution concerns on the one hand and editorial concerns on the other. Sites like Facebook and reddit simultaneously serve as distribution platforms, circulating messages addressed to individuals and publics, and as mechanical editors, deciding algorithmically which posts and topics warrant inclusion in the continuous and often overwhelming feed of information delivered to each of our screens. Recent controversies surrounding the manner in which social media companies develop and test software and editorial strategies for curating content may have brought this editor–distributor duality into sharp relief in ways that feel new and at …

Interactional Sociolinguistics, Benjamin Bailey

Benjamin Bailey

No abstract provided.

Radio Talk: Discourse, Gonen Dori-Hacohen

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

Radio has always had the potential to change public life. Ordinary citizens participate in programs in which they call in the radio station and express their opinion. As such, these programs are part of the public sphere, as well as an entertainment form. These programs are taken as a service in public station, and as a revenue source in commercial stations. In the commercial stations, the shows promote the one-sided political agenda of their hostsstars. In the public stations, the shows facilitate a balanced discussion among different citizens. All participants in both types of programs use argumentative practices, including the …