Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Where’S The Fair Use? Participatory Culture, Creativity, And Copyright On Youtube, Joseph Daniel Barden

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how citizens used YouTube to air concerns about copyright law and its influence on content creation. It studies the “Where’s the Fair Use?” (#WTFU) movement that was formed in February 2016 and used YouTube videos to oppose the site’s copyright systems. Using textual and discourse analysis, this thesis examines seven different videos and their respective comment sections. It analyzes how video is used to express dissent, it analyzes the movement’s discourse about fair use, and it examines how YouTube’s copyright systems influence participation. Among the findings, this thesis argues that videos are framed much like television news …

Negotiating Matters Of Concern: Expertise, Uncertainty, And Agency In Rhetoric Of Science, Danielle Devasto

Theses and Dissertations

Debates over GMOs, vaccines, and climate change are but a few examples that highlight a growing body of high-stakes scientific controversies and the manifest difficulties inherent in communicating about them. Addressing these and similar issues requires navigating a wide array of competing scientific, technological, social, democratic, environmental, and economic exigencies. The development of scholarly approaches that can account for the complexity and dynamism of these cases is an essential part of ensuring effective, ethical interaction between scientists and publics. In this dissertation, I explore one such case, the L’Aquila earthquake controversy, in which seven technical experts were charged with manslaughter …

Food Discourse: The Communicative Gateway Toward Understanding Formerly Colonized Representation In Parts Unknown, Mitch Combs

Theses and Dissertations

CNN’s television series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, merges food and travel genres to communicate representations of local, indigenous, and other formerly colonized cultures. This thesis will present the significance of Parts Unknown through a review of literature that concerns postcolonial theory and food discourse to which critical insights emerge and explain how indigenous cultures are represented within Western “foodie” television. These insights will then guide a postcolonial investigation of the food rhetoric used to represent/discuss colonized and local groups within three episodes of Parts Unknown. Additionally, potential applications for rhetorical criticism are discussed by using Parts Unknown as an example …

Orthodontists’ And Patients’ Preferences In Website Design In The Selection Of An Orthodontic Practice: A Comparative Study, Taylor R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: To determine which website characteristics are preferred by orthodontists, adult patients, and parents of patients.

Materials and Methods: 1,000 active members of the American Association of Orthodontists and 750 active orthodontic patients/parents were sampled. Participants rated the importance of website characteristics, indicated presence of those characteristics on the current website, and ranked sample website images. Preferences were compared between orthodontist and the patient/parent group using t-tests and sample websites were compared using ANOVA models and Tukey’s adjusted post-hoc tests. Significance level was set at 0.05.

Results: 11 of the 16 website features showed significant differences between patients/parents and orthodontists. …

Adult Nursing Students’ Perceptions Of Social Presence In Facilitator-Created Subject- Specific Videos In An Online Nursing Course, Jamie Anne Marcus

Theses and Dissertations

The literature established that online instruction consists of cognitive, teaching, and social presence. Studies on the element of social presence linked text-based delivery of instruction with learners’ feelings of isolation and disengagement. This research findings prompted this facilitator creation of five-to-seven-minute companion videos that aligned and complemented weekly text-based learning modules to ascertain students’ perceptions of these videos as a medium for channeling social presence.

Post-video viewing surveys yielded responses to pragmatic and emotional questions. Pragmatic questions were aimed at the visual impact of professor’s delivery of information. Emotional questions gauged the students’ feelings of connectivity with the facilitator. Triangulated …

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …

In Media Res, Christopher Andrew Sisk

Theses and Dissertations

We are inundated by a constant feed of media that responds and adapts in real time to the impulses of our psyches and the dimensions of our devices. Beneath the surface, this stream of information is directed by hidden, automated controls and steered by political agendas. The transmission of information has evolved into a spiral of entropy, and the boundaries between author, content, platform, and receiver have blurred. This reductive space of responsive media is a catalyst for immense political and cultural change, causing us to question our notions of authority, truth, and reality.

An Exploratory Study Of Learning Transfer From The Online Technical Communication Course To The Workplace, Richard Scott Schnoll

Theses and Dissertations

For technical communication educators, a fundamental consideration is to what extent the skills and information students learn in the classroom are applied in a workplace environment. While this issue has been studied, it has not been examined from the perspectives of students taking an online writing course or of instructors teaching that kind of course. To investigate this issue, I conducted a two-part, qualitative study consisting of surveys and follow-up interviews that explored instructor and student (former and current) perceptions regarding learning transfer from online business and technical writing courses to postgraduate jobs or careers.

Learning transfer theory was used …

Bodily Boundaries: Inflammatory Bowel Disease And Rhetorical Enactments Of Self, Molly Margaret Kessler

Theses and Dissertations

Chronic illnesses are seven of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States and the prevalence is rising. Of the many chronic illnesses, one group of diseases present particular concern and mystery—autoimmune diseases. These conditions manifest when a patient’s body attacks itself, causing a myriad of symptoms that often leave patients debilitated. Since 2013, I have been examining the contexts in which patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)—one type of autoimmune disease—reconsider their bodily boundaries while managing new, challenging communication experiences. The results of this research are presented in my dissertation, Bodily Boundaries: Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Rhetorical …

Now You're Playing With Power: Nintendo And The Commodification Of Nostalgia, Steven Cuff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Nintendo’s past and present games and marketing, linking them to the broader trend of the commodification of nostalgia. The use of nostalgia by Nintendo is a key component of the company’s brand, fueling fandom and a compulsive drive to recapture the past. By making a significant investment in cultivating a generation of loyal fans, Nintendo positioned themselves to later capitalize on consumer nostalgia. The commodification of fan nostalgia is evident across multiple platforms, from the development of the Virtual Console digital game storefront to the use of pastiche and remediation in multi-generation, Nintendo developed franchises. Additionally, Nintendo …

Examining The Relationship Between Virtual School Size And Student Achievement, Sherrill Waddell

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between virtual school size and student achievement in virtual schools in a southwestern state. Enrollment size and the following areas were studied in an attempt to determine student achievement: STAAR English Language Arts/Reading, STAAR Math, STAAR Science, and STAAR Social Studies testing scores in regards to race. This quantitative study used nonexperimental research utilizing a distribution approach. The effect of virtual school size on student achievement in a southwestern state was examined. Specifically, student achievement was defined by student passing rates on individual tests of the STAAR examination. This research …

Designing Effective Messages To Promote Future Zika Vaccine Uptake, Jeanine Guidry

Theses and Dissertations

The Zika virus is associated with the devastating birth defect microcephaly, and while a vaccine was not yet available in early-2017, several were under development. It is imperative to identify effective communication strategies to promote uptake of a new vaccine, particularly among women of reproductive age. Moreover, though the Zika outbreak has received much social media attention, little is known about these conversations on Instagram. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, was to understand current Zika-focused communication on Instagram and to inform effective communication strategies to promote future Zika vaccine uptake intent.

The study aims were: (1) explore Zika conversations …

Meaning In Motion, Kara Hendrickson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis essay and accompanying exhibition examine the capacity of interactive art to stage situations for participants to explore embodiment. In presenting the four-part interactive suite "Body Language" by Nathaniel Stern, the exhibition invites viewers to engage with digital projections that track and respond to movement by producing animated text and spoken utterances. Through the juxtaposition of motion performed by the viewer’s physical body with computer-generated words and speech, "Body Language" explores the complex ways in which the body and language depend upon each other to create and communicate meaning. This essay also proposes that the gallery uses its power …

Relationships To Video Game Streamers: Examining Gratifications, Parasocial Relationships, Fandom, And Community Affiliation Online, Michael G. Blight

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in media consumption and viewership have expanded the use of virtual communities such as streaming platforms (e.g., Twitch,tv, Azubu.tv, YouTube Gaming, AfreecaTV) and the ways individuals satisfy individual and social gratifications within these communities. Further, the connection viewers make with streamers as both fans and parasocially (i.e., a perceived friendship with media figure) has a number of implications for the communities that support them. This dissertation tested fandom and parasocial relationships (PSR) as mediators of the relationship between sense of community (SOC) and gratifications. Users of streaming platforms (N = 624) were surveyed regarding the gratifications they seek from …

Collective Management In A Cooperative: Problematizing Productivity And Power, Avery Edenfield

Theses and Dissertations

Since the mid-twentieth century, the structure of the workplace has undergone a transformation. While the conventional firm with its rigid bureaucracies is still in use, many businesses have grown increasingly flexible, flat, and polycentric: “empowerment” and “innovation” are the coin of the realm. As the way we work changed, professional communication scholarship pivoted to consider communication practices in these structures.

While professional communication scholars have long discussed these kinds of organizations, they have not discussed an increasingly popular alternative: cooperatives. Owned and operated by the people who use them, these organizations can significantly affect the communities in which they operate. …

Characteristics Of Adult General Education Learners And Courses: A Correlational Study On The Elements Of Success, Daniel Jennings Stackhouse

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if a correlation exists among characteristics common to successful adult career and technical students in the traditional classroom setting, the online mode of instruction, and a hybrid of the traditional and distance mode of instructional delivery. A gap in the literature exists, resulting in a lack of knowledge specific to the reasons for success or failure of these adult career and technical students, specifically in relation to mode of instructional delivery: traditional classroom, online, or a hybrid of both.

This study is a quantitative correlation study of explanatory and predictive design using …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …

A Page Of Her Own: How Women Navigate The Public And Private Facets Of Blogging, Emily Marie Flinders

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the complexity of the texts women create through blogging and their inherent value. I seek to explore how the mothers who blog are constructing online identities for their family units and family members in this space and how those constructions affect and inform the mothers' construction of their personal identities online. I analyze how perceptions of gender norms and practices of gender performance may affect and inform the identities thus constructed, and further complicate the liminal nature of blogging spaces. I begin with the sociological framework of Erving Goffman, which is commonly used to deconstruct identity performance …

Materiality, Craft, Identity, And Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing Pedagogy, Kristin Prins

Theses and Dissertations

Too often in Rhetoric and Composition, multimodal writing (an expansive practice of opening up the media and modes with which writers might work) is reduced to digital writing. “Reworking Digital Writing” argues that the opportunities and insights of digital writing should encourage us to turn our attention to all kinds of nondigital materials that have not traditionally been considered part of composing—including the materials that are already familiar to crafters and do-it-yourselfers (DIYers). Further, I argue that the material, technical, rhetorical, economic, and social dimensions of DIY craft provide a coherent framework for teaching multimodal writing in ways that encourage …

Waking Dormant Researchers: Student Co-Research As Writing Research Methodology And Pedagogy, Angela Renee Sheets

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways that students took up writing researcher skills, knowledges, and identities through a teacher-student co-research investigation of writing in an online writing research course. The following questions guided this study:

* How did literate activity occur in an online Composition as Critical Inquiry Course?

* What writing research skills, knowledges, and identities did the students take up and demonstrate as they participated in a co-research project?

The study also examined the efficacy of co-research as a methodology and pedagogy.

Chapter 1 reviews literature from the relevant English studies fields. Central topics include the rationale for writing …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

The Use Of Social Media As A Communication Tool By International Development Organizations: A Case Study Of The United Nations Children’S Fund (Unicef) In Egypt, Inas Taha Abbas Hamad

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates to understand how the United Nations development organizations in Egypt can manage social media as a communication tool to achieve their development objectives. A case study of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Egypt, is introduced. Using the Excellence Theory in Public Relations developed by Grunig (2002), this study examines how social media can contribute to the strategic management of the organization, rather than being a messaging, publicity, and media relations function. Through a content analysis of a number of social media pages of the UN organizations in Egypt, and in-depth interviews with four senior communication officers …

Revisiting The Spiral Of Silence In A Social Media Environment: Egypt’S 2014 Presidential Election As A Case Study, Heba T. Saleh Elshahed

Theses and Dissertations

With the advent of the Internet and anonymous features of online media, users have established novel platforms to voice their opinion freely without fear of negative feedback. This thesis explores the application of a long-standing public opinion theory– the spiral of silence by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann–within the prevalent Social Networking Sites (SNS), particularly Facebook. When applying spiral of silence to online mediated environment, it seems intuitive that the lack of verbal cues and anonymity offered would serve to undermine the fear of isolation and restlessness that results in unwillingness to express minority views. This research contributes to understanding how the spiral …

Identity, Value, And Power: A Qualitative Study Of The Complexity Of The Working Relationship Between Technical Communicators And Subject Matter Experts, Tammy Joann Rice-Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

The working relationship between Technical Communicators (TCs) and their Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can impact such key TC goals as adding valuable contributions, engaging in successful collaboration, and producing quality documentation. Despite the primacy of this relationship, no systematic, qualitative research study in our field has yet examined the depth or breadth of the TC/SME relationship.

To investigate the nature and impact of the TC/SME relationship, I conducted a two-part, qualitative study to explore how TCs and SMEs define the role, value, and power of the TC; identify the behaviors TCs and SMEs report as helpful and damaging in their …

Online Privacy Issues: Awareness, Attitudes, And Perceptions Amongst Internet Users In Egypt, Dalia Nagy Khalil Alfred

Theses and Dissertations

This study gauges the level of awareness, attitudes towards, and perceptions of online privacy policies for Internet users in Egypt. It examines how demographics as in age, gender, and education may affect the level of Internet users’awareness, attitudes, and perceptions of online privacy issues. Further, it surveys what personal information Internet users in Egypt perceive as private and accept to share with web providers, search engines or third parties. The theory of Communication Privacy Management (CPM), which was developed by Sandra Petronio, poised that Internet users choose and manage the usage of privacy policies and rules based on their cultural …

Online Course Management System For Wic Nutrition Education And Study Of Its Effectiveness In Behavioral And Attitude Changes, Ryan A. Amy

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has been used in a variety of contexts to connect people of varying backgrounds and as a method of teaching. This thesis collaborated with the Utah County Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) department to develop an online course management system that facilitated research to evaluate the effectiveness of social media on nutrition behavior and attitude changes among WIC clients. We created a toddler themed Facebook page in conjunction with the online nutrition classes and provided the opportunity for clients to use them. Previous social media research used individuals that had agreed to participate in the social media experiment …

Global Technical Communication And Content Management: A Study Of Multilingual Quality, Tatiana Batova

Theses and Dissertations

The field of technical communication (TC) is facing a dilemma. Content management (CM) strategies and technologies that completely reshape writing and translation practices are adopted in an increasing number of TC work groups. One driving factor in CM adoption is the promise of improving quality of multilingual technical texts, all the while reducing time/cost of technical translation and localization. Yet, CM relies on automation and privileges consistency¯an approach that is problematic in global TC with its focus on adapting texts based on the characteristics of end-users.

To better understand the interdisciplinary dilemma of multilingual quality in CM, during my dissertation …

The Emergence Of A Content Acceptance Model (Cam): New Thoughts Regarding The Trial, Adoption, And Usage Of New Media, Ryan G. Walinski

Theses and Dissertations

New Media is defined not by the technology that it is based on but rather on individual level attributes that contribute to the development of new artifacts, practices and social arrangements. However, existing technology adoption models tend to stress technology and organizational level attributes over such individual level characteristics. This suggests that new models are required in order to fully capture how the New Media adoption process works. We are moving away from organizational and technology adoption focus and towards an individual and content adoption focus. A review of existing technology acceptance models reveals that the content provided by these …

Characterizing And Detecting Unrevealed Elements Of Network Systems, James A. Leinart

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the problem of discovering and characterizing unknown elements in network systems. Klir (1985) provides a general definition of a system as “... a set of some things and a relation among the things" (p. 4). A system, where the `things', i.e. nodes, are related through links is a network system (Klir, 1985). The nodes can represent a range of entities such as machines or people (Pearl, 2001; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Likewise, links can represent abstract relationships such as causal influence or more visible ties such as roads (Pearl, 1988, pp. 50-51; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Winston, …

The Social Influence Qualities Of Social Network Sites: A Qualitative And Experimental Investigation, J. Paul Conner

Theses and Dissertations

While social network sites (SNS) are a popular form of new media, the literature has not investigated the social influence of these internet sites. Using a mixed method approach of qualitative interviews and a laboratory experiment, this study tests a process model predicting the effects of communication processes and technology on social influence. This model suggested that SNSs may be more effective at social influence than face-to-face communication. A qualitative study was performed to determine whether the hypotheses were plausible whereby it was suggested that SNSs may influence other individuals and SNSs might be a more effective at influencing individuals …