Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cultural Influence In News Media In New Zealand, Maren Mcinnes, Steve Thomsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For this project, I looked at cultural media bias in New Zealand. Bias exists at least to some degree in all media—particularly in how stories are framed and which stories are chosen. However, I discovered that media bias is actually not a very big issue in New Zealand. Despite the lack of media bias, cultural influence is imbued in the society and consequently, the news.

New Forms Of Digital Journalism And Byu’S Anti Poverty Efforts, Victoria Estrada, Ed Carter

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The world of journalism is ever changing as technology continues to advance and the world evolves. As an aspiring journalist, it is important to know what is relevant. Journalists are employed by the people, we have a duty to tell society what they should know while also keeping them intrigued by being aware of what they want to know and how they want to know it. That was the point of this project. To find an issue that we feel people should be informed about. We hoped to express why they needed to know it, give it to them in …

Preserving Pasifika Working With Faith-¬Based Communities In Auckland, Mckinley Stauffer, Steve Thomsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Originally I had requested an ORCA Grant to aid in the creation of an ethnography documentary video on a qualitative research study of community-­level efforts to preserve languages and cultural heritage among Pasifika immigrants living in the Auckland, New Zealand Metro area. The younger generations of these communities do not speak their native languages with a high level of proficiency and many scholars have expressed concerns that these languages, and their accompanying cultures, are at a risk of eventually being lost. The Pasifika Education Center is an organization that has provided tertiary educational programs, helped sponsor language weeks, and offered …

Empowering The Minority, Jason Murray, Steve Thomsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

We are entering an age where the influence of social media is inevitable. Some activists are opposing it, but others are embracing social media and allowing it to promote their way of life. Minority groups often face cultural transmission and language issues from generation to generation.

Through this project, not only did we learn more about minority groups in New Zealand, but also documented inspiring stories and first-hand accounts published in the news and shared globally via social media. The goal was not just research, but to facilitate and tell inspiring stories through visual mediums.

Modeling Political Improvement Through Statistical Analysis Of New Zealand’S Youth, Abigail Norton, Steve Thomsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Some things look better on paper than in person. Prior to my three-month stay in New Zealand, I wrongly assumed that the country’s history of economic success and involved voters would translate to somewhere without conflict. What I found is a country riddled with problems.

Preserving A Sinking Culture: An Investigative Report On The Kiribati Community In New Zealand And Fiji, Ryan Turner, Steven Thomsen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

For thousands of years the peoples of the Pacific have been a people of exploration and travel. However, with the small country of Kiribati its people are now traveling to escape climate change and overpopulation¹. With such a small population at risk of relocating to another country its culture is at a severe risk of disappearing. With good sized populations of Kiribati immigrants already living in Fiji and New Zealand for several decades we can see how well that culture has survived in foreign countries. This research was looking for mixed results: on how Kiribati sees climate change and how …

The Working Lds Mother: A Cultural Anomaly, Erica Palmer, Quint Randle

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The week after I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I gave birth to my first child. The idea of being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) appealed to me, but I wasn’t ready to give up my professional goals and aspirations to be a SAHM just because that is the typical path of the LDS woman. Amid the rise in feminism and push for women to break away from traditional roles and achieve more in the workplace, and the LDS Church’s increased emphasis on the divinity of the family and motherhood, I knew I couldn’t be the only young LDS woman seeking …

Early Exposure To Expository Texts: Administering The Eeca-R2 To Preschoolers, Annika Stark, Barbara Culatta

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Children are exposed to a variety of narrative texts from a young age. However, young children are not given this same amount of exposure to expository texts. Expository texts inform and describe as they expose a child to factual information. There is a current need in early childhood education for an assessment tool that helps teachers gauge young students’ expository text comprehension skills. In 2005, Dr. Kendra Hall-Kenyon, Dr. Janet Markham, and Dr. Barbara Culatta collaborated to develop an assessment tool to address this problem. The tool was titled the Early Expository Comprehension Assessment (EECA) and was found to be …

Re-Ordering Utterances Using Transition Probabilities Among Randomly Assigned Grammatical Tags, Emily Duncan, Ron Channell

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It was our desire to investigate further, using a computer model, how children acquire language. Specifically, we decided to investigate how children learn how to arrange grammatical tags (i.e. grammatical categories: verb, adjective, etc.) into the proper order. Originally, we were going to investigate how an evolutionary algorithm could improve the degree of accuracy in re-ordering grammatical tags. However, we decided to branch off of a previous study to gain a better understanding of the potential of a computer model to re-order the grammatical tags with just the tag transition probabilities. In her thesis last year, Katie Shaw Walker, a …