Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Newspaper Endorsements Of Candidates: Through The Looking Glass, Caitlin Burkes

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Using Green Messages To Cue Recycling Tendencies, Danielle Quichocho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recycling of common plastics is a practical way to limit the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, and eventually contributes to various forms of pollution. However, statistics indicate that it is not currently a normalized, prioritized behavior. A pilot study indicated that relying only on preexisting frameworks such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model to understand consumer perceptions simply does not encompass the scope of the topic. Consumer experiences with green messages, especially in the current climate of a saturated advertising market are incredibly complex. Understanding these experiences is also currently being impeded by inconsistencies in how researchers in …

Household Food Waste Prevention In Malaysia: An Issue Processes Model Perspective, Syahirah Abd Razak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food waste has been a worldwide concern for several decades but this problem is relatively new in the Malaysian context due to the increasing amount of food waste in recent years. Thus, the goal of the study is to provide the basic information of knowledge and involvement level, and their interaction in food waste prevention among households in Malaysia. This study seek to further mass communication research in the area of food waste. The Hallahan’s Issues Processes Model was used within this study in order to determine the relationship between knowledge, involvement, and food waste prevention behavior. The convenience sampling …

The Road To The White House: A Correlational Analysis Of Twitter Sentiment And National Polls In The 2016 Election Cycle, Melissa G. Pelletier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, the author examines the last 131 days of the 2016 election cycle. This analysis focuses on how sentiment is present on Twitter when people engage in political communication on social media. With the increasing online political discussions created on social media such as Twitter, an analysis of sentiment is critical. The data could be obtainable for candidates to estimate the electorate’s opinion of each candidate. A shift of sentiment offers a deeper insight into tracking changing attitudes toward candidates. Because Twitter only allows each tweet to be 140 characters there is a simplicity that offers statements to …

Traversing Privacy Issues On Social Networking Sites Among Kuwaiti Females, Shahad Shihab

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative descriptive study explores privacy issues on social networking sites among young Kuwaiti females and their behavior when protecting their information. In this study, two of the most prominent social networking sites in Kuwait were selected to investigate Kuwaiti females’ privacy concerns. These platforms are Instagram and Twitter. The research was guided by two questions: What information do Kuwaiti females disclose on Instagram and Twitter? How do Instagram and Twitter differ in managing privacy?

Participants of this research are 15 young Kuwait females studying at Kuwait university in different educational fields. The data collection method used was semi-structured, face-to-face …

Smog Pollution In China: News Framing And Issue-Attention Cycle Per The, Yingying Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

China's smog air pollution has become an increasingly urgent environmental crisis in China. Using framing as theoretical framework, this research examined how much media attention is focused on smog air pollution and how print media frame smog air pollution. An empirical content analysis of 339 articles in the People’s Daily newspaper was conducted from 2000 to 2016, and the results showed that “non-voluntary solutions” and “problem” frames were the two frames that had been most utilized to construct stories about air pollution. Smog air pollution crisis also discussed in terms of Downs issue-attention cycle, a five-stage model explaining the rise …

Weather Communication On Twitter: Identifying Popular Content And Optimal Warning Format Via Case Studies And A Survey Analysis, Joshua D. Eachus

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The use of Twitter as a channel for weather information inspires a deeper analysis of key information nodes during episodes of high impact weather, especially local meteorologists. To optimize communication on the channel, it is important to understand what kinds of messages produce exposure and attention among users—which translates to knowledge that could improve the reach of a warning. Literature identifies two key models that well describe the cognitive processing of tweets and warnings. The Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) describes risk perception and the factors that enable or disable one from acting on a warning. Particularly through environmental and …

The Help / Hurt Duality At Work In Makeupalley.Com Product Reviews, Lisa Wortman Raring

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines online product reviews posted by members of an online beauty social network called MakeupAlley (commonly referred to by its members as MUA). A mixed method study involving quantitative and qualitative content analyses of MUA product reviews was conducted to explore and test a framework identified here as a “duality” at work in MUA product reviews – specifically, a help / hurt duality framework. The help / hurt duality framework is tested by examining the extent to which MUA enables its members to (1) help one another circumvent advertising by distinguishing “good” or effective products from “bad” …

Social Media Use And Political Participation In China: The Mediating Role Of Political Efficacy, Bingyang Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the Chinese authoritarian and conservative political system, Chinese political efficacy and political participation are popular directions of research in recent years. Based on uses and gratifications theory and self-efficacy theory, this thesis explored the relationships among social media use, political efficacy, and political participation. The most important part of this study was examining the mediating role of political efficacy between social media use and political participation in mainland China. Internal political efficacy and external political efficacy are two dimensions of political efficacy that were separately examined in this study. The results revealed that internal political efficacy can mediate between …

Framing Genetically-Modified Foods Communication In China: A Content Analysis Of News Coverage Of People’S Daily And Southern Metropolis, Linqi Lu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Grounded in framing theory, this thesis presents a qualitative content analysis of newspaper coverage of genetically modified foods by two Chinese newspapers- People’s Daily and Southern Metropolis, in 2000-2017. The political, economic, public opinion and legal implications involved have made the reports of genetically modified (GM) foods present different framing, themes, and positions between People’s Daily and Southern Metropolis. This study aims to examine the various frames used in the coverage of GM foods in two major Chinese newspapers that operate within different media frameworks.

Results of the content analysis illustrated that significant differences existed in the newspapers in …

Documenting An Imperfect Past: Examining Tampa's Racial Integration Through Community, Film, And Remembrance Of Central Avenue, Travis R. Bell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the Civil Rights Movement in Tampa, Florida through documentary film to recognize an imperfect past and visually reconstruct Central Avenue as a physical and Thirdspace site of remembrance located at an intersection of race and community. Motivated by an ethnographic approach and through community engagement, Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue is a 54-minute film that explores Central Avenue’s rise to prominence through segregation, its physical and symbolic demise as a racialized site of communal space, and how it is remembered through collective and public memory in the location it once occupied. Documentary film …

Framing Homelessness As Crisis: A Comparative Content Analysis Of Local Media Reports On Portland's Tent Cities, Katrien Cokeley

Dissertations and Theses

This content analysis of mainstream and alternative news narratives interprets the use of the crisis media frame, and describes the relationship between local policy initiatives, media discourse and public opinion on tent cities, organized by people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. Framing homelessness and housing as a crisis intensified the public debate, attested by an increase in mainstream media reports on tent cities, and by controversial policy changes that addressed the individually-experienced traumatic impacts of the City's anti-camping ordinance, as well as the systemic lack of affordable housing and emergency shelter. Media discourse related to city-sanctioned tent cities blurs the …

Between Political Tendentiousness And Mass Media: Popularizing Propaganda Under Party Politics (1927-1937) ---A Case Study Of Shenbao Free Talk, Lei Qin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the study of Shenbao Free Talk, this dissertation showcases an urban underground left-wing propaganda during party politics of 1927-1937 that flowed between literature and journalism and between intellectual literary debates and writing experimentation on mass media. This study purposefully challenges the view of a static top-down propaganda mechanism that attached full agency to the CCP. As my project will show, the CCP had since its early phase in the 1920s and 1930s actively sought commercial media as a means to strengthen its appeal to the urban audiences. Such propaganda work in cities featured a gradual and indirect infiltration into …

Advancing Democracy One Tweet At A Time, Landon T. Hester

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis takes a broad look how citizens use social media to foster political discussion, enhance political knowledge and engage in political participation in the United States. In this study, democracy is broken down into three empirically measurable components: political discussion, knowledge and participation. To begin, I provide an in-­‐depth review of past research examining the impact social media has on each element of democracy. In addition, I analyze data collected from a novel social media panel of 3,811 Twitter users by researchers from Louisiana State University (Davis et. al, 2017). From this, I measure the impact that Facebook and …

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …

How Visual Communication Strategies, Brand Familiarity, And Personal Relevance Influence Instagram Users’ Responses To Brand Content, Lijie Zhou

Dissertations

This study comprehensively investigated the effects of visual themes, visual perspective, personal relevance, and brand familiarity on brand constructions (attitude-toward-brand, brand love, brand respect, and three dimensions of brand image) on Instagram. The study consists of two parts. In Study 1, the main and interaction effects of visual design elements on individuals’ visual attentions, brand recognition, and attitude toward brands were examined by using a 4 (visual theme: customer-centric, employee-centric, product-centric, and non-branded) × 2 (view perspective: first-person view vs. third-person view) between-subject eye-tracking test. In Study 2, a 4 (visual theme: customer-centric, employee-centric, non-brand, and product-centric) ×2 (brand familiarity: …

Bbc News: Defining Britishness In The Early Twenty-First Century, Christine Gilroy-Reynolds

English Theses & Dissertations

According to the BBC’s 2006 Royal Charter, the BBC situations itself rhetorically within the notions of ‘public value’ and its commitment to, among other things, "d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities; e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK [...]"(2-3). In order to achieve these goals, the BBC must define that which it represents particularly when dealing with the news. While BBC News claims to be impartial, rhetorically, impartiality is impossible when committing to the pursuit of definition and representation. In defining “Britishness,” BBC News must negotiate Britain’s global position as post-colonial, …

Changing Times: An Examination Changing Video Entertainment Sources And Cable Tv Companies Communicating With Customers, Chad Christenson

Master of Arts in Media and Communication Plan II Graduate Projects

The debate of customers canceling their cable TV subscriptions and relying on a mix of free and subscription based streaming video providers for their video entertainment has been ongoing for several years. A combination of low cost alternative video sources, rising programming costs, and changing viewing habits are causing small cable TV companies to review their strategies for attracting new customers. This study focuses on two groups of consumers referred to as the cord-cutters and cord-nevers. The cord-cutters are consumers who had cable TV service and canceled, and the cord-nevers are consumers who have never had cable TV as their …

Countering The Questionable Actions Of The Cpd And Fec, Brian C. Cole

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For his study, the author determines whether the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) are sovereign entities, or if they are pawns of the Democratic and Republican parties (Political Duopoly) aimed to prevent smaller candidates from participating in the CPD’s Presidential Debates.

The author’s rationale for his research is based on the fact that, despite a large majority of American voters want to hear other voices in the CPD debates, the CPD has not allowed other voices to participate in the debates since 1992, through use of the CPD’s fifteen-percent support requirement. Every time an …

“You Know Who I Am, Don’T You? I’M The One They’Re Writing About In The Newspapers And On Tv”, Casey Killen Crane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

News media play a key role in U.S. society, helping to inform members of the public as gatherers and reporters of information, as well as by serving as government watchdogs. In the ongoing search for and reporting of information, media professionals must be aware of how they report on crime by being cognizant of how they represent killers, victims, and their families, and by being aware of how they represent any gratifications those groups may receive from the media coverage. This study considers the interactions between serial killer Dennis Rader, investigators and media organizations, and how some of these groups …

"But She's Snow White, She Would N'T Hurt Anybody": A Critical Analysis Of Gender And Power In Once Upon A Time, Mackenzie Mahler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines gender performance and its relation to power in the television series Once Upon a Time (OUAT). On the surface, OUAT is a television show that constantly challenges the culturally-ingrained gender norms often found in fairy tales, as it creates new storylines for traditional fairy tales. This warrants a deeper examination of the series to understand if and how it is subverting these typical gender norms. To fully understand how gender operates in OUAT, I examined how gender affects and is affected by hegemony in the show and how this relates to our cultural understanding of gender and …

Chinese National Identity And Media Framing, Yufeng Tian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between Chinese national identity and media framing and priming effect by combining the two paradigms, the literature of group identity and the discourses of media cognitive effect. Extending social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981), self-categorization theory (Turner, et al., 1987) and subjective group dynamics theory (Marques, Paez, & Abrams, 1998), the current study drew the distinction between descriptive (cognitive/perceptual) and prescriptive (affective/subjective) fit of the social norms that contributed to social identity. After deliberating the macro concept (the ascribed vs. acquired) of a national identity (Westle, 2014), as well as the social, political, economic and cultural …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

Like, Comment, And Share: Distortion Of Information On Facebook, Sungwoo Hong

Global Honors Theses

Social media users all around the globe use Facebook to stay connected with each other, and it is a dominant source of news: “over 63% of users acquire their news from social media” (Schmidt, 2017, p.3035). The connectivity of social media has created unintended consequences that promote or influence creation and dissemination of misinformation. By literature review and using real world example, this research identifies sources and provocation of inaccurate news, and explores how user interaction within social media promotes dissemination of distorted information.

Wardle (2017) from FirstDraftNews, suggests that there are seven distinct types of content and eight different …

Zika 2016: A 3-Phase Longitudinal Study Of The Media Impact On Public Attitudes And Behavioral Response Characteristics, Karly Kownslar

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Using the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) as a theoretical framework, the present 3-phase longitudinal study examines the impact of media exposure to Zika information on public perception of the threat severity, personal susceptibility, and behavioral intentions toward the threat of Zika virus between May and November of 2016. A total of 826 participants took an online survey throughout three phases, roughly one month apart. Participants were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk and TurkPrime. Measured EPPM concepts include: perceived severity, susceptibility, self- efficacy, response-efficacy, third-person effects, combined with behavioral intentions. Participants also selected the sources from which they …

"The Destruction Of A Legacy": Agenda Setting And The Bill Cosby Sexual Assault Allegations, Larissa Teran

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Media scandal has been a contributing factor to the American culture for centuries. However, ambiguity and pre-conceived notions arise when the media scandal is framed differently by various mediated outlets. This study investigates media scandal by examining the Bill Cosby sexual assault allegations and how the scandal is framed by the media. This study utilized agenda setting theory to explore the argument that the public will think of the Cosby scandal as highly important due to frequent exposure and how the media presents and frames the stories on this subject could ultimately impact public opinion on issues such as power, …

President Barack Obama Responds To Gun Violence: A Rhetoric Of Transformation., Gabriela Tscholl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the course of his presidency Barack Obama responded to 15 incidents of gun violence. Moments of tragedy serve as one of the greatest tests of presidential leadership as they require the chief executive to articulate a definition of tragedy that enables citizens both to understand and to work through the experience. It is through the act of definition that presidents increase their rhetorical power, thereby allowing them to advocate or advance specific policy proposals. This thesis examines seven of President Obama’s memorial speeches: Fort Hood, TX (2009); Tucson, AZ (2011); Newtown, CT (2012); Washington, D.C. Navy Yard (2013); Fort …

A Content Analysis Of The 2014 Immigration Crisis Media Coverage: An Intergroup Threat Theory Approach On The Age Of Immigrants, Carolee Lantigua

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this research is to understand, through the intergroup threat theory, how the national and local press perceive unaccompanied minors through their media coverage. Using the 2014 immigration crisis, during which an exodus of unaccompanied minors crossed into the United States beginning in 2013, this paper investigates two central ideas: first, how does media coverage of young unaccompanied immigrants differ from the media coverage of non-minor immigrants? Second, how does spatial proximity to the American-Mexican border affect the tone of the media coverage young unaccompanied immigrants receive? I sampled two national newspapers and two local newspapers to interpret, …

Student Attitudes On Social Media And Perception Of Instructor Social Media Use., Abi Mathew John

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to understand what student attitudes are toward using social media in the classroom and if those attitudes influenced how they perceive instructors using social media in the classroom. Implementing a mixed method approach, this study conducted focus groups to gain an in-depth understanding of what student attitudes were and why they held those ideas. A survey was then distributed to the students’ in a Midwestern University to see if there was a relationship between students attitudes and their perceptions of instructors who use social media. Results showed that students do hold a positive attitude …

An Assessment Of Communication Strategies In Edinburgh, Scotland: A Focus On News Outlets Used By Select Audiences, Alexandria N. Mcleod

Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to discover which media outlets selected Edinburgh, Scotland consumers were using and why they chose those outlets to gain information. This study was conducted using a survey instrument with convenience sampling (N = 39) in Scotland during the summer 2016. It was found that social media is the primary source for news and timeliness is the most important factor when choosing a news source. Another objective for the study was to determine peak viewing times and primary topics of interest. Peak viewing times were observed to be mornings and evenings primarily. Primary topics …