Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Motherhood As Contested Ideological Terrain: Essentialist And Queer Discourses Of Motherhood At Play In Female–Female Co-Mothers’ Talk, Elizabeth A. Suter, Leah M. Seurer, Stephanie Webb, Brian Grewe Jr., Jody Koenig Kellas

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Framed by relational dialectics theory (Baxter), this investigation considered the meaning(s) of motherhood in female–female co-motherhood. Analysis identified two competing discourses: (1) discourse of essential motherhood (DEM) and (2) discourse of queer motherhood (DQM). Speakers’ invocation of the DEM reinscribes the mainstream US cultural discourse that children can have only one authentic (i.e., biological) mother, whereas invocation of the DQM denaturalizes the DEM’s presumptions of authentic motherhood as biological, interrupts monomaternalism, destabilizes the patriarch, and troubles the equation of biological with moral motherhood. Whereas interpenetrations of the DEM and DQM were typically sites of adversarial discursive struggle, in a few …

Christian Chicken Vs. Mainstream Media: A Case Study Analysis Of Chick-Fil-A’S Stance On Traditional Marriage Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory, Christiannn Mcnew

Masters Theses

A crisis can strike an organization at any moment and it is the responsibility of the organization to be prepared with a plan of action. This thesis will explore crisis management, using Timothy Coombs’ crisis management strategies, of Chick-fil-A and then COO Dan Cathy to see if those two parties implemented crisis strategies in a way that benefited the organization following Cathy’s statements in support of the biblical definition of family. Since many interpreted these comments as anti-gay sentiments from Chick-fil-A itself, crisis struck the organization Cathy represented. This thesis will also look at the idea of social activism in …

The War On Drugs: An Analysis Of The Rhetoric According To Richard Weaver’S Theory Of Ultimate Terms, Cristina Peniche

Masters Theses

The language associated with President Nixon’s ‘war on drugs’ has sparked considerable debate in the political struggle against narcotics' abuse and crime, as well as within scholarly research. There is a language associated with the debate and it reflects the primary considerations of policy makers- economics, criminal behavior, and morality. The present study discusses these qualities as well as the rhetorical ideas of Richard Weaver, specifically his theory of ultimate terms. Then, discussions within research show the discontent that scholars bear towards narcotics'-related language. Specifically, there is concern that the rhetoric may stigmatize certain populations and hinder better outcomes. As …

So You Think You Can Model? A Guide To Building And Evaluating Archaeological Simulation Models Of Dispersals, Iza Romanowska

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

With the current surge of simulation studies in archaeology there is a growing concern for the lack of engagement and feedback between modellers and domain specialists. To facilitate this dialogue I present a compact guide to the simulation modelling process applied to a common research topic and the focus of this special issue of Human Biology—human dispersals. The process of developing a simulation is divided into nine steps grouped in three phases. The conceptual phase consists of identifying research questions (step 1) and finding the most suitable method (step 2), designing the general framework and the resolution of the …

Exploring The Role Of Identification And Moral Disengagement In The Enjoyment Of An Antihero Television Series, Sophie Janicke, Arthur A. Raney

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Affective disposition theory explains well the process of enjoying hero narratives but not the appeal of narratives featuring antiheroes. Recent antihero studies suggest that character identification and moral disengagement might be important factors in the enjoyment of such fare. The current study builds on this work. A sample of 101 self-identified fans and nonfans of the television series 24 viewed a condensed version of Season 1, providing evaluation of various protagonist perceptions, moral judgments, and emotional responses to the narrative, as well as overall enjoyment. As expected, fans reported greater liking of the protagonist and greater enjoyment. But more importantly, …

The Conceptualization Of Self-Identity Among Residents Of Appalachia Ohio, Jessica L. Krok-Schoen, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly, Phokeng M. Dailey, Janice L. Krieger

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Social identity and its association to culture, place, and health is an important, but understudied, area of research. One social group that illustrates this connection between place and identity is people living in Appalachia. This exploratory mixed-method study investigates the appropriateness of the self-concept of Ohio Appalachian adults with cancer as “Appalachian,” the context associated with that identity and its association with community identification, rural identity, Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) status, demographic data, and clinical trial (CT) enrollment. Forty-nine adults with cancer residing in Appalachia were recruited. Participants were cancer patients who (1) were offered a randomized clinical cancer trial; …

Analysing The Performance Of Economic Discourses, Joseph Fitzgerald, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

We focus on the methods used in analyzing broadcast interviews with economists on Morning Ireland, a prominent Irish radio news programme. Few would doubt that economists have taken a prominent role as experts on policy issues (Carrick-Hagenbarth and Epstein 2012, p.45) and some contend that no other social science discipline has gained such prominence (Schneider and Kirchgassner 2009, p.324). This paper comes from a larger research project, which uses a tailored methodological approach, incorporating a number of analytical methods. Keller (2011, p.63) has argued that a tailored methodological approach is often required to give special consideration to the ‘knowledge side’ …

Eco-Nostalgia In Popular Turkish Cinema, Ekin Gündüz Özdemirci, Salma Monani

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. [From the publisher]

Thanatourism, Caminata Nocturna, And The Complex Geopolitics Of Mexico’S Parque Ecoalberto, Marouf A. Hasian Jr., José Ángel Maldonado, Kent A. Ono

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article provides readers with a critical analysis of Mexico’s Parque EcoAlberto. Utilizing some of the theoretical work of interdisciplinary scholars who are interested in the study of “thanatourism,” the authors illustrate how this park, with its Caminata Nocturna (night hike), is much more than simply a “dark” tourist attraction that deters those who might travel North to the U.S. border. This study shows how the indigenous Hñähñú in Mexico have to confront a host of symbolic and material forces that are sometimes hidden in the patriotic metanarratives that swirl around this park.

Cultural Incubators And Spread Of Innovation, Enrico R. Crema, Mark W. Lake

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Several forms of social learning rely on the direct or indirect evaluation of the fitness of cultural traits. Here we argue, via a simple agent-based model, that payoff uncertainty, that is the correlation between a trait and the signal used to evaluate its fitness, plays a pivotal role in the spread of beneficial innovation. More specifically, we examine how this correlation affects the evolutionary dynamics of different forms of social learning and how each can generate divergent historical trajectories depending on the size of the sample pool. In particular, we demonstrate that social learning by copying the best model is …

Does Environmental Knowledge Inhibit Hominin Dispersal?, Colin D. Wren, Andre Costopoulos

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

We investigate the relationship between the dispersal potential of a hominin population, its local scale foraging strategies, and the characteristics of the resource environment using an agent-based modeling approach. Wren et al. (2014) demonstrated that natural selection can favour a relatively low capacity for assessing and predicting the quality of the resource environment, especially when the distribution of resources is highly clustered. This also suggested that the more knowledge foraging populations had about their environment, the less likely they were to abandon the landscape they know and disperse into novel territory. The present study gives agents new individual and social …

Inference Of Cultural Transmission Modes Based On Incomplete Information, Bryan Wilder, Anne Kandler

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

In this paper we explore the theoretical limits of the inference of cultural transmission modes based on sparse population-level data. We approach this problem by investigating whether different transmission modes produce different temporal dynamics of cultural change. In particular we explore whether the distributions of the average time a variant stays the most common variant in the population, denoted by t_max, conditioned on the considered transmission modes are sufficiently different to allow for inference of underlying transmission modes. We assume time series data detailing the frequencies of different variants of a cultural trait in a population at different …

Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study Of Mixed Methods Research In South Africa, Debra Rena Miller

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Notwithstanding the dramatic expansion of mixed methods research, research methodologies, methods, and findings are culturally situated. Problematically, studies conducted outside the global north often embrace canonical methodologies aimed at understanding concepts more explicit than tacit. Learning about the needs of researchers and participants in South Africa may bring to light taken-for-granted assumptions in Anglo-American orientations of mixed methods. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore aspects of tacit cultural knowledge that contextualize mixed methods research in South Africa.

In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the …

Design Research: Typography Within The Israeli Linguistic Landscape, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

A linguistic landscape signifies language used within a physical or virtual public space, in which communication is presented in typographic form, portraying a message to an audience. Within the state of Israel, the linguistic landscape presents a unique situation in which it is common to view municipal and commercial multilingual signs that are designed using Hebrew, English, and Arabic letterforms. By studying the diverse linguistic landscape within Israeli urban environments, the article offers perspectives on the use of multilingual visual language, based on discussions with five Israeli designers in the summer of 2015.

Believing In "Inner Truth": The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion In Nazi Propaganda, 1933-1945, Randall L. Bytwerk

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Although most leading Nazis realized that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a spurious document, they found it useful in promoting belief in the international Jewish conspiracy of which they were already convinced. Authorship and other details were irrelevant, they averred, if the book expressed "inner truth."

Literacy Work In The Reign Of Human Capital [Table Of Contents], Evan Watkins

Education

In recent years, a number of books in the field of literacy research have addressed the experiences of literacy users or the multiple processes of learning literacy skills in a rapidly changing technological environment. In contrast to these studies, this book addresses the subjects of literacy. In other words, it is about how literacy workers are subjected to the relations between new forms of labor and the concept of human capital as a dominant economic structure in the United States. It is about how literacies become forms of value producing labor in everyday life both within and beyond the workplace …

Occupy Judaism: Religion, Digital Media, And The Public Sphere, Ayala Fader, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides an analysis of Occupy Judaism, an explicitly religious expression of Jewish protest, which occurred simultaneously with Occupy Wall Street, the direct-democracy movement of 2011. Occupy Judaism, like Occupy Wall Street, took place both in physical spaces of protest in New York City and digitally, through mobilizing and circulating debate. The article focuses on the words and actions of Daniel Sieradski, the public face and one of the key founders of Occupy Judaism, supplemented by the experiences of others in Occupy Judaism, Occupy Wall Street, and Occupy Faith (a Protestant clergy-led initiative). We investigate what qualified as religion …

Cooking Without Women: The Rhetoric Of The New Culinary Male, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Between their detailed instructions, measurements, and helpful hints, cookbooks provide directives about the proper management of household space. Cookbooks establish rules that govern intimate habits, helping readers to make sense of how cooking rituals fit within the domestic division of labor. They cultivate, naturalize, and sometimes resist domestic habits as they pass into the realm of unconscious investments that ideological critics call “common sense.” However, Isaac West argues that while cookbooks “invite readers into specific subject positions, some of which are more attainable than others,” they provide cooks with “opportunities for communicating who they are and who they might want …

Through A Glass Darkly: Defining Love In A Nation Of Tolerance, Jonathan T. Hogue

Senior Honors Theses

This paper features an original one-act drama Through a Glass Darkly and analyzes its constructs and themes. The play, written in the contemporary style, depicts the tension between homosexuals and Christians in American culture through emphasizing the contrasting interpretations of love between both communities. It tells the story of Ben, a young gay man struggling to find fulfillment, whose new-found friendship with a Christian named Adam causes him to reevaluate his understanding of love. The play explores the variations of love in an attempt to not only answer what love truly means, but rather what form of love carries the …

Negative Campaigns And Their Influence On Voter Attitudes, Estefan Colindres

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

There is a legitimate debate over negative campaigning and whether it either mobilizes voter participation or suppresses it. Previous studies suggest that the relevant political information brought by negative campaigns play a significant role in mobilizing the electorate (Finkel and Geer, 1998). On the other hand, some studies explain that negative campaigns challenge the legitimacy of the electoral process and consequently drain the electorate (Krupnikov, 2011).

As such, my research question asks of the effect of negative campaigning on voter participation - are people turned off and to what extent? What kind of impact does negative campaigning have on voters …

The Zen Of Daryl: A New Masculinity Within Amc's The Walking Dead, Sarah Jane Mulvey

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

If The Shoe Fits: An Analysis Of Historical And Contemporary Adaptations Of Cinderella, Heather Dupont

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Cultural Awareness In Communication Sciences And Disorders Students, Kimberly Green

Dissertations

As defined by Clinton (1996), cultural awareness is achieved when an individual becomes aware of the fact that culture can contribute to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Cultural awareness (CA) is dependent upon an individual’s awareness of one’s own culture to the same degree as the awareness of outside cultures. It can be viewed as a prerequisite to a more complex understanding of this somewhat ambiguous concept. The topic of this quantitative study involves an examination of the level of cultural awareness among students in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) programs in the state of Kentucky. This dissertation threads literature and …

Manipulating The Mass Distribution Of A Golf Putter, Paul J. Hessler Jr.

Senior Honors Projects

Putting may appear to be the easiest but is actually the most technically challenging part of the game of golf. The ideal putting stroke will remain parallel to its desired trajectory both in the reverse and forward direction when the putter head is within six inches of the ball. Deviation from this concept will cause a cut or sidespin on the ball that will affect the path the ball will travel.

Club design plays a large part in how well a player will be able to achieve a straight back and straight through club head path near impact; specifically the …

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 …

What's Below The Peak? Perceptions Of Media From Those That Live Below The World's Most Famous Mountain, Jonah P. Lucas

Student Publications

This research seeks to explore the perceptions the Sherpa people in the Khumbu region have on the media that has been created about them and their communities. Interviews conducted in the Khumbu region of Nepal with a variety of individuals gave insight into how different socio-economic and educational backgrounds affect these perceptions. This research found that all Sherpa are aware to some extent of the media about them, and its biggest effect is the international tourism trade that it promotes. Furthermore, journalists visiting the region are regarded as normal tourists, and the work they do is considered accurate and suitable …

A Savage Journey To The Heart Of Literary Freedom: Gonzo Journalism As A Vehicle For Social Criticism In The Literary Nonfiction Of Hunter S. Thompson, Jeffrey J. Horvath

Student Publications

As a professional journalist Hunter S. Thompson made it his mission to expose and defy structures of American society which he believed inhibited the exercise of personal freedom and, consequently, made realizing the “American Dream” impossible. Through his unique voice and style of literary nonfiction known as “Gonzo Journalism” Thompson is able to debunk the myth of the American Dream by attacking false conceptions of it, thereby highlighting the failures of both these conceptions and the structures of society, politics, class, and authority which give rise to them. This thesis traces the genesis of Gonzo Journalism’s formal features and themes …

Buddhism (The Conversion Of Captain American: Buddhism And Postwar Us Popular Culture), James Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

A 21st Century Fairy Tale: Disney Princesses And Perceptions Of Gender, Gina Graham

Library Research Prize Student Works

Disney's animated characters, songs, story themes and trinkets are true cultural icons, venerated across the world by staunch believers, adults as well as children, who live in massive urban centers and in tiny rural hamlets (Faherty 1). For some, the Disney princess is the princess of all princesses (Do Rozario 34). As Bruce asserts, since the 1937 premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's princesses have become a directing force of young American girls culture (Princesses 7). Before determining whether this force is positive or negative, one must ask: does the portrayal of princesses in Disney movies affect …

Accommodating New Vistas, Jessica Gasiorek, Howard Giles, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In this special issue, we aim to provide a diverse sample of current research that uses and/or extends Communication Accommodation Theory in innovative ways. With this prologue, we provide a general overview of the tenets and recent developments of theory, discussing how each of the seven original research articles included herein fits in the theory’s ever-evolving framework and body of research.