Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Keep Your Voice To Yourself: The Experiences Of Women Of Color In Higher Education, Shanna Hagenah

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study provides insight into the experiences of women of color in higher education classrooms. Embracing recent literature on the politics of education, the double discrimination experienced by women of color, and the tenets of critical pedagogy, I engaged in qualitative interviews to gain insights into the experiences of women of color in higher education classrooms and reveal suggestions from women of color for improving their classroom experiences. The findings of this study reveal women of color experience appropriation of knowledge and bodies, acceptance of classroom ignorance, and social capital. Further, women of color suggest that if professors/instructors use explicit …

Public Comment Sentiment On Educational Videos: Understanding The Effects Of Presenter Gender, Video Format, Threading, And Moderation On Youtube Ted Talk Comments, George Veletsianos, Royce Kimmons, Ross Larsen, Tonia A. Dousay, Patrick R. Lowenthal

Educational Technology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that …

Invisible Dis/Abilities: To Disclose Or Not Disclose?, Julia Roma Broderick

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Approximately 56.7 million people currently live with a disability in the United States (United States Census Bureau, 2012). Many of these disabilities are invisible to others, which make disclosure necessary to gain support. Through the analysis of open-ended questionnaires, I investigated disclosure decision-making factors and outcomes for individuals living with invisible disabilities. Factors considered for disclosure included: (a) support; (b) fear of negative response; (c) perceived appropriateness; and (d) no choice or perceived obligation. Disclosure outcomes included: (a) relief; (b) closeness in relationship; (c) loss of relationship; (d) differential treatment; and (e) no change or negative outcome. Theoretically, the findings …

Inviting Mindful Silence Into Pedagogy: Supporting Agency, Voice, And Critical Engagement Through Silence, Sarah Lausch

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Across pedagogical approaches, silence and speech are rarely recognized as equally important ways to demonstrate knowledge. Favoring speech in the classroom indicates a specific set of assumptions that shows what formal teaching and learning settings should look like. I will approach silence in this study as an opportunity to create space for silent voices and invisible notions of agency. Through an exhaustive literature search and interpretive review of how contemporary pedagogical approaches currently assess silence, I invite the concept of mindful silence into pedagogy as a way to better address the ways that silence - not just speech - can …

Coats For The Csi Refugee Programs, Jason Forbush, Nick Mahan, Faith Johnson, Alisha Trejo, Sarah Moeller

International Journal of Undergraduate Community Engagement

As group for a communications course at the College of Southern Idaho (CSI), we were a part of a service learning project. The project goal was to do a coat drive for the college refugee program. We wanted to help supply coats for those who perhaps don't have the means of buying coats for themselves or for their family. We got the word out by creating and posting flyers, and posting in the college newsletter. We set up donation boxes around the college. We were able to donate two giant Home Depot boxes of coats to the program.

Media Members’ Expectations Of A High-Quality Sports Information Director, Michael Walsh

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

INTRODUCTION: The traditional role of communications and media relations professionals within intercollegiate athletics has changed. The profession, often referred to as sports information, is making an effort to redefine its role within the athletics industry and be viewed more as a strategist than a practitioner. In order to advance the profession and each professional, research must be carried out to give individuals the tools to better support their institution's communications goals in a strategic manner, while also building the base of data-driven methods and best practices. PURPOSE: This study aims to define behavioral traits and methods of a high-quality sports …

From The Fringe To The National Fabric: A Resurgence Of Disinformation And How To Neutralize It, Deana Brown, Memo Cordova

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

GAME OF THRONES CALLING OUT POLITICAL CLIMATE?

Imagine you are sitting at home having just finished Sunday dinner when there is a knock at the door. Your friends have arrived to watch the Season Finale of your favorite show, Game of Thrones. The finale revolves around a number of warring houses whose past betrayals and chicaneries have made it difficult to join together and unite against an unimaginable threat.

Decoding Nonverbal Ability: A Theoretical Model For The Acquisition Of Nonverbal Decoding Skill, Julia Berger

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Nonverbal communication adds multiple layers of meaning to social interaction above that conveyed by words. The comprehension of these nonverbal messages depends on individual ability which varies greatly between individuals. Variation in nonverbal communication ability and the variables of influence that have been associated with it over decades of research are the topic of this research project. Variables that have been correlated to nonverbal communication skill were used to develop a theory for the development of this skill and construct an evidence-based theoretical model that provides an explanation for nonverbal skill acquisition and variability. This model was also analyzed for …

The Usefulness Of A News Media Literacy Measure In Evaluating A News Literacy Curriculum, Adam Maksl, Stephanie Craft, Seth Ashley, Dean Miller

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

The question “What is news literacy?” has been asked and answered in a number of ways, as scholars, teachers, librarians and journalists have sought to address the confusion resulting from the increasingly crowded digital information sphere. Concerns center on how the difficulty people face in differentiating reliable, credible information from unverified and biased information threatens their ability to participate in democratic life. Approaches to training and curriculum aimed at minimizing that difficulty have included standalone courses, modules in existing courses, after-school programs, and online exercises aimed at a variety of populations, from K-12 to college students to adults. Given this …

The Use Of Pathos In Ipda Debate: Justifications And Guidelines, Jeffrey Hobbs, Amy Arellano

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Simply put, pathos is the use of emotional appeals in argument. The reasons for using pathos include putting your audience into a favorable state of mind for accepting your message, to provide motivational warrants for your arguments, to provide a catalyst for action, to create a balance or working relationship between ethos, logos, and pathos, and to ensure that your participation in IPDA debate teaches you real-world argumentation skills. Guidelines for using pathos include carefully choosing your words, telling compelling stories, picking your motivations carefully by determining what is at the top of your judge’s value hierarchy, avoiding the logical …

Students' Experiences Of Othering: Recommendations For Inclusive Classroom Climates, Stela Saltaga

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

As universities in the United States become increasingly diverse, the problem of “othering” in classrooms becomes an important issue to explore. Othering is the process of treating or perceiving one as different from ourselves, and can result in alienation and other challenges for students succeeding in higher education. Embracing a qualitative research approach, this study explores the experiences of “othering” through the stories of twelve students who have been treated differently than others in the classroom. The findings of this study provide insights into the complex relationships between “othering” and students’ experiences in the classroom, and contributes to more informed …

Higher Education: The Impact On Bosnian Women Who Came As Refugees To The United States, Belma Sadikovic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact college education has on Bosnian refugee women who resettled to the United States. The research findings help us better understand the effect higher education has on female students who came to the United States as refugees, their self-sufficiency and their overall integration into their new society. Using Kunz’s refugee theory and Bourdieu’s theory on social and cultural capital as a theoretical framework, the study explores socio-cultural factors that enable and constrain the ability of Bosnian women to navigate the facets of higher education, and how those factors affect their self-sufficiency and overall integration. The participants …

Speaking As (Significant) Othered, Amy Arellano, Christina L. Ivey

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Amy and Christina sat together in their living room. Amy held her phone, scrolling through notes she had typed a few minutes before their meeting. Christina’s laptop lay open in front of her.

“How do we start this?” Amy asks. “Do we need an abstract?”

Christina smirks, “I don’t know if we need it right now. Even if we do, I never start by writing the abstract.”

“Then how do we start?” Amy asks again, anxiously.

“I think we can begin with what we bring to the table for this conversation about queer autoethnography: We are a queer couple in …

Inside The Coal Industry’S Rhetorical Playbook, Steve Schwarze, Jennifer Peeples, Jen Schneider, Pete Bsumek

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

If citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it is probably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war on coal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform, which promises to “end the war on coal.”

News Media Literacy And Political Engagement: What’S The Connection?, Seth Ashley, Adam Maksl, Stephanie Craft

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Scholars and educators have long hoped that media education is positively related to pro-social goals such as political and civic engagement. With a focus on measuring news media literacy with emphasis on media knowledge, need for cognition and media locus of control, this study surveyed 537 college students and found positive relationships between news media literacy and two political engagement measures: current events knowledge and internal political efficacy. Findings show that news media literacy is not associated with political activity, although some dimensions of news media literacy are associated with lower levels of political trust. Results help to define significant …

Blown Saves: The Fate Of Baseball's Silent Cinema, Marshall G. Most

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the past three decades, baseball films — motion pictures that take baseball and baseball players as their primary content — have served as the focus for a number of scholarly studies of the game and its place in American culture. Scholars including Gary Dickerson (1991), Howard Good (1997), Stephen Wood and David Pincus (2003), Marshall Most and Robert Rudd (2006), and others have found the intersection of the national pastime and Hollywood film a rich site for cultural analysis.¹ The game of baseball is said to embody the most fundamental and significant values and virtues of the nation. …

Two-Way Symmetric Communication Between Public Utilities And The Public, Maria Willacy

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a multi-disciplinary examination of literature from the fields of public policy and participation, media and public relations, and technical communication as it relates to two-way symmetric communication and how it applies to public utilities and the public. Differences between two-way symmetric communication and other communication/public relations methods are examined, as well as the specific merits of two-way symmetric communication, including its ethical benefits, and criticisms and constraints. Current forms of communication between public utilities and the public are examined, including whether these forms are two-way symmetric. Planning events and those that involve public participation are highlighted as …

Digital Self-Ownership: A Publicity-Rights Framework For Determining Employee Social Media Rights, Susan Park, Patricia Sánchez Abril

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Imagine an upandcoming company hires you as one of its first employees. Passionate about your employer, you put in long hours doing everything from marketing to accounting to event planning. You are also proud of your employer's product, so you begin to publicize it to your friends through your social network accounts. (In fact, the company's founder is also one of your Facebook friends.) You tell your friends about the product launch, invite them to marketing events, and eventually blog about your industry, amassing a significant social media following while creating buzz about your employer. But one day, during layoffs …

Romantically Themed Media And The Development Of Children's Understanding Of Love, Tiffani Noelle Isaacson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the influence of romantically themed media on children's understanding of love and romantic relationships. By reviewing literature on relevant media influence theories, learning theories, and the consequences of learning through media, I review how children gain understandings of their world through the media. I then argue that as children identify and internalize meanings through exposure to romantically themed media, such as iconic Disney films, understandings of romantic relationships are shaped. By engaging in qualitative interviews of young children, this thesis investigates whether children can identify iconic Disney images and explores the ways children explain what it means …

Cest: City Event Summarization Using Twitter, Deepa Mallela

Computer Science Graduate Projects and Theses

Twitter, with 288 million active users, has become the most popular platform for continuous real-time discussions. This leads to huge amounts of information related to the real-world, which has attracted researchers from both academia and industry. Event detection on Twitter has gained attention as one of the most popular domains of interest within the research community. Unfortunately, existing event detection methodologies have yet to fully explore Twitter metadata and instead rely solely on identifying events based on prior information or focus on events that belong to specific categories. Given the heavy volume of tweets that discuss events, summarization techniques can …

Meet Me Monday: Case Study On A Community Health Program Through The Lens Of The Elaboration Likelihood Model, Joshua Schlaich

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This case study employs the Elaboration Likelihood Model as a framework for understanding one Idaho/Oregon Health System's community health program and weekly walking event. Meet Me Monday, a program started in 2013 due to many organizational and federal goals to improve patient population and community health, has been perceived to have struggled with influencing increased and sustained participation. This study focuses on the communicative efforts of the Meet Me Monday community health program, and looks to gain a fuller understanding of the influences and moderating variables to participation.

Utilizing data sources such as semi-structured interviews with program organizers, surveying of …

A Structurational Approach To Organizational Change: Exploring Idaho’S Students Come First Initiative, Matthew Aaron Mccarter

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study embraces a structuration approach to explore how the staff at the Idaho State Education Agency (SEA) reacted to implementing a unique and sweeping K-12 education reform package commonly known as “Students Come First.” By embracing a communicative perspective to studying change in public education, this study provides insights to how public sector employees at an SEA who work in a field governed by a unique set of features (politically-driven policies from elected officials and outcome expectations from the electorate), and who are driven by a passion to serve children engaged in changes that challenged their everyday understandings of …

Media Literacy In Action?: What Are We Teaching In Introductory College Media Studies Courses?, Seth Ashley

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

An introductory media studies course is a staple of post-secondary education. What are instructors teaching in this course, and to what extent are the principles of media literacy education being incorporated into this likely home? This article reports the findings of a small survey of instructors, who describe aspects of their course content and pedagogy. Media literacy appears to provide a basic foundation in most cases, though instructors struggle with structural constraints. Findings suggest that more focus should be placed on teaching the political and economic contexts of media, and that instructors should embrace active learning and creative engagement.

Approaching Communication With Marx: On The Symbolic Reproduction Of Social Relations, Shannon K. Jacobs

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This critical examination approaches communication with Marx to uncover the implications of the symbolic reproduction of social relations. The social reproduction of the past is characterized through an onset of parallel themes that run with depictions of the experience of people. Marxist inspired critical research illustrates the perpetuation of the internalization and normalization of ideological principles of the social sphere. Significance emerges from the dialectical questioning of the values and principles of the social. Overall, this collective reflection demonstrates the importance of the critical aspect in the current discussion of the dynamics of the social sphere.

The Thorn In Our Flesh: A Comparison Of Academic Group Projects Across Cultures, Eliysha Saputra

College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs Presentations

The mention of group projects often elicits groans from students, followed by chatter as they attempt to grab the best team members they can find among the flock of distressed classmates. In an attempt to discover whether or not the dislike toward group projects is exclusive to students in American universities, the current study explored the following question: How do students across cultures perceive group projects in the classroom? Previous research was explored to determine possible factors that influence group performance and how one’s perception of the group affects the outcome of the project. Data were collected data from university …

America’S Tv Pastime: An Analysis Of Why Professional Sports Fans Prefer Watching The National Football League Over Major League Baseball On Television, Ty Hawkins

McNair Scholars Research Journal

More out of habit than anything else, we still refer to baseball as the national pastime (McAdam, 2004). However, football began making inroads as the most viewed sport as far back as the 1970s. Two decades later, it isn’t much of a contest anymore in terms of viewing popularity (McAdam, 2004). In 2014, 35% of fans called the National Football League (NFL) their favorite sport, followed by Major League Baseball (MLB) (14%), college football (11%), auto racing (7%), the National Basketball Association (NBA) (6%), the National Hockey League (NHL) (5%), and college basketball (Rovell, 2014). Although a wide variety of …

Making The Case For War: A Comparative Analysis Of Cnn And Bbc Coverage Of Colin Powell’S Presentation To The United Nations Security Council, Seth Ashley

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

The normative role of journalism in democracy is well established: democracy depends on news media to facilitate self-government. But theories of the press point to structural limitations that inhibit the democratic ideal. To examine this contradiction, this article offers a comparative analysis of online news coverage by CNN and BBC of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003. Ethnographic content analysis is used to examine the coverage and to consider each outlet’s broad institutional context. The article concludes that structural limitations are less of a hindrance at the BBC, which is better situated to …

Selfies: Witnessing And Participatory Journalism With A Point Of View, Michael Koliska, Jessica Roberts

Jessica Roberts

Selfies, as the word implies, are visual presentations of one’s self and as such can be understood as photographic representations and formations of identity (Barthes, 1981; Sontag, 2005; van Dijck, 2008). They are a “new visual genre—a type of self-portrait formally distinct from all others in history” because they are frequently shared online (Saltz, 2014). Selfies often serve to claim, “I’m here!” (Myers, 2010, p. 274) and “reflect the view of ourselves that we want to project out into world” (Gye, 2007, p. 282). Taking and sharing digital photographs is increasingly understood as a form of communication and social currency …

Serving The Needs Of The Latina Community For Health Information, R. A. Yaros, J. Roberts, E. Powers, L. Steiner

Jessica Roberts

Latinos remain the largest US population with limited health literacy (Andrulis D.P. & Brach, 2007). Concerned with how local media can meet the information needs of underserved audiences, we interviewed Latinas who were pregnant or mothers of young children living in a Spanish speaking community, and surveyed 33 local health professionals. Findings are that Latina women’s most common source of health information was family and friends. They said they tune to Spanish television and radio programs, but gave low grades to news media for health information. Medical professionals agreed that Latinas generally get their health information through friends and family, …

Measuring News Media Literacy, Adam Maksi, Seth Ashley, Stephanie Craft

Seth Ashley

News media literacy refers to the knowledge and motivations needed to identify and engage with journalism. This study measured levels of news media literacy among 500 teenagers using a new scale measure based on Potter’s model of media literacy and adapted to news media specifically. The adapted model posits that news media literate individuals think deeply about media experiences, believe they are in control of media’s influence, and have high levels of basic knowledge about media content, industries and effects. Based on measures developed to assess news media literacy, highly news literate teens were found to be more intrinsically motivated …