Communication Commons^™

Age, Gender, Race, And Culture In The Er: A Content Analysis Of End-Of-Life Issues In The Television Drama, Katrina Wilson Burtt

Dissertations

Within one of the most popular television dramas on American television, hundreds of depictions of end-of-life (EOL) care and decision-making conveyed impressions of how death and dying occurred in a hospital. This content analysis of EOL incidents that appeared in every episode of the television drama ER indicated that viewers got powerful messages about EOL. The long-playing, popular television drama exaggerated the role of physician within the EOL scenes and minimized the roles of women, racial minorities and ethnic groups. Notably lacking from the EOL content were accurate or positive representations of racial, ethnic or cultural differences in death and …

Power Of Speech Styles: A Relational Framing Perspective, Michael Lewis King

Dissertations

This study advances understanding of powerful and powerless language effects by incorporating a relational framing perspective. Relational framing theory (RFT) suggests that when messages are interpreted using a dominance frame, issues regarding persuasion, influence, and control become salient. When exchanges are framed by affiliation, however, issues of liking, attraction, and regard become salient. Power of speech style researchers have instantiated dominance-framed interactions in their experiments primarily, thus leaving affiliation-framed interactions largely ignored. Addressing this gap, this study considered the effects of relational framing differences on participants’ evaluation of speech style variations. Consistent with previous literature and in partial support for …

"If It Ain't Broke, Break It": How Corporate Journalism Killed The "Arkansas Gazette", Donna Lampkin Stephens

Dissertations

Ownership is an increasingly critical issue for newspapers as they face the latest threats to the industry’s survival. Local, engaged, enlightened ownership is preferable to that of a distant corporation, but economic realities have decreed that corporate ownership has become the norm. The Arkansas Gazette was one of the most honored newspapers of twentieth-century American journalism under independent local family ownership, having provided brave leadership during the Little Rock Central Crisis, but its wounds from one of the country’s final fierce newspaper wars — against another local owner, Walter Hussman and his Arkansas Democrat — in the 1980s, combined with …

The Oddity As Commodity: Television And The Modern Day Freak Show, Robin Marie Cecala

Dissertations

A new genre of documentary and reality program has appeared on cable television in recent years. Suddenly, little people, conjoined twins, the morbidly obese, Treeman and Mermaid Girl are the new stars of cable. This latest genre features people with medical conditions once exhibited in the turn of the century freak shows.

The goal of this dissertation is to argue that documentary programming on cable is becoming a modern version of the P.T. Barnum-style freak shows. The analysis uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine representations of race, culture and disability. The dissertation also discusses the history of the …

"Reading" The Apprentice: Commerce, Culture, And The Manufacturing Of Reality, Sharon Simpson Terrell

Dissertations

This study examines the six original seasons of the reality television series The Apprentice as a postmodern, cultural artifact. Grounded in Burke’s (1967) “literature as equipment for living,” and Brummett’s (1984) consideration that televised content constitutes literature, the theory of “televised discourse as equipment for living” provided the guide to examine the series. Hall’s (1980) “reading against the grain” oppositional reading technique was utilized to interrogate both the manifest and latent content. The content of the series may indeed provide the audience with a guide to ideological beliefs of both commerce and culture, thereby creating a manufactured reality for its …

A Methodology To Develop A Communication Protocol For Visualizing Simulations In A Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment, Lacey Suzanne Duckworth

Dissertations

In the technology field, simulations and collaborative virtual reality environments (CVREs) are not generally combined because it is complicated to develop large scale simulations within CVREs. The complexity of combining these two technologies in order to form a better form of visualization stems from the lack of a methodology to help derive these scalable simulations. Simulations require very complex calculations that the CVRE cannot perform as it is overloaded in calculations for the maintenance and stability of the environment itself. Since the simulation cannot be held within the CVRE, the solution is to move the simulation external to the CVRE …

Links Of Connectedness: A Content Analysis And Industry Survey Comparing The Interactive Options Of Community And Metro Newspaper Web Sites, Cleveland Allin Means

Dissertations

As newspapers struggle to redefine their role in a constantly shifting mass media landscape, this research project studies how one of mass communications’ historically fundamental mediums, the community newspaper, is utilizing its Web presence to connect to readers in innovative ways that might perpetuate loyalty to the local press. A key question is: How can community newspapers utilize their Web sites’ interactive features to maintain useful links of connectedness with local readers, in effect capitalizing on the very technologies that many analysts predict will ultimately render them obsolete?

Through content analysis of newspaper Web site home pages and industry surveys, …

The Experiences Of Mississippi Weekly Newspaper Editors As They Explore And Consider Producing Internet Editions, Cassandra Denise Johnson

Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the challenges Mississippi weekly newspaper editors faced when deciding to have an online edition and the issues these editors encountered when they adopted a Web newspaper. The study expounded on four areas—the operational changes weekly newspapers have had to make to produce Web editions, the different type of newsroom staff that are needed to create both editions, the content that is going in the online edition, and the financial pressures that editors work through to keep the newspapers profitable. The study was modeled after similar studies from three organizations—the Pew Research Center, the Bivings Group, and …