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Exploring The Role Of Communication In Relational Outcomes In A High School Setting, Paul S. Butler Dec 2023

Exploring The Role Of Communication In Relational Outcomes In A High School Setting, Paul S. Butler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An action research study in a high school setting applies the Organization-Public Relationships (O-PR) theoretical frame to a short-term communications initiative designed to elicit measurable engagement in the initiative and increased parent feelings of commitment and trust in their relationship with the school. A survey administered before the initiative yields actionable data on communication needs and preferences, levels of satisfaction, and parent feelings of commitment and trust. Survey data gathered after the communication initiative is used to determine changes in levels of satisfaction, commitment and trust. Among the findings are verified and consistent indications of secondary engagement in the communication …


Once Upon Online: Conversations With Professional Storytellers About Adapting From In-Person To Virtual Storytelling Performance, Leticia Pizzino Dec 2023

Once Upon Online: Conversations With Professional Storytellers About Adapting From In-Person To Virtual Storytelling Performance, Leticia Pizzino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how professional storytellers negotiated a new storytelling stage—the videoconference platform—as they pivoted their careers during mandated shutdowns due to COVID-19. An examination of the literature reveals extremely limited research involving either professional storytellers or live virtual storytelling. After interviewing five professional storytellers, I analyzed their stories through narrative inquiry. Analysis revealed that the storytellers negotiated the limitations and affordances of Zoom and adapted their storytelling to successfully connect with their audiences. Through crafting a narrative of their stories, I was able to represent their emotions, unique experiences, and abilities to adapt to the online environment. Their stories …


"Smells Fishy": Exploring Sense Of Place Salience In Community Rejection Of Closed Net-Pen Aquaculture In Frenchman Bay, Maine, Gabriella Gurney Aug 2023

"Smells Fishy": Exploring Sense Of Place Salience In Community Rejection Of Closed Net-Pen Aquaculture In Frenchman Bay, Maine, Gabriella Gurney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The global population is rising, and with it, demand for protein, particularly seafood. Aquaculture, the farming of aquatic species such as finfish, shellfish, and kelp, has been proposed as an alternative to wild-catch fisheries, of which 75% are overfished or at capacity. In Maine, aquaculture is growing, but often faces mixed community response when new or expanded projects are proposed. In the summer of 2020, a large-scale closed net-pen farm for Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) was proposed for Frenchman Bay, Maine. Community reaction was instantaneous and overwhelmingly negative. The strong, unified response from residents in the towns of …


Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker Aug 2023

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …


Neil Postman's Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy Of Communication In The Age Of Technopoly, Ryan Mccullough May 2023

Neil Postman's Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy Of Communication In The Age Of Technopoly, Ryan Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project walks the work of Neil Postman (1931-2003) into the philosophy of communication. Traditional conceptions of Neil Postman’s body of work position his ideas within the traditions of media ecology, general semantics, or, more broadly, as a form of media studies and criticism. In addition, others label Postman’s work, especially in Technopoly (1992), as pessimistic, deterministic, and/or imbibed with Luddite tendencies. This project articulates a different view and contends that Postman’s scholarship, in particular his articulation of the loving resistance fighter in the final chapter of Technopoly, is committed to resisting the nefarious forces embedded in both technology …


A Comparison Of The Expressive Language Characteristics In Schizophrenia And Wernicke’S Aphasia, Taylor Thomas May 2023

A Comparison Of The Expressive Language Characteristics In Schizophrenia And Wernicke’S Aphasia, Taylor Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mental illness and language disorders are rarely linked together as a way of making a comparison. In this study, a comprehensive scoping review was initiated to discuss the differential diagnostic characteristics of expressive language in Schizophrenia and Wernicke’s Aphasia (WA). This study will examine the domains of language where there are overlaps between the characteristics of expressive language. Semantics, pragmatics, and discourse will be further examined while comparing what aspects of expressive language are key in each domain. Schizophrenia being classified as a mental illness and WA being classified as an acquired language disorder, there are fundamental properties of language …


“It’S About The Two Selves”: Experiences In Code-Switching Between Home And Academic Environments, Travis Wolven Dec 2022

“It’S About The Two Selves”: Experiences In Code-Switching Between Home And Academic Environments, Travis Wolven

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study is an exploration of how college students navigate code-switching between their home and academic environments. Data were collected from five participants using interview and small group methods. Through the lenses of Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and Memorable Messages (MM) frameworks, the researcher explores how key MMs affect how participants coordinate and manage meaning in communications with others in their home and college environments. Findings were fourfold: 1) participants chose between following established and creating new rules when code-switching; 2) participants shared experiences and strategies regarding knowing when and how to code-switch; 3) preparing audiences for …


A Frayed Edge: A Qualitative And Poetic Inquiry Analysis Of White Antiracist Protest In 2020, Emily Katt Dec 2022

A Frayed Edge: A Qualitative And Poetic Inquiry Analysis Of White Antiracist Protest In 2020, Emily Katt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This multiphasic study explored the narratives of five first-time Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating during the historic confluence of conflicts in 2020 America. After positioning the liminal 2020 circumstances within an antiracist research lens, the author analyzed, first through grounded theory and then secondarily through poetic inquiry, how these five participants described their protest experiences. The grounded theory phase yielded an overarching theory that first-time protestors experienced a dual process of unsuturing and of calling-out, with three subthemes categorized within each of these two processes. The author moved into analysis with the poetic inquiry phase, crafting poems guided by six …


Searching For A Solution To Political Polarization In The U.S. Through A Feminist Ethics Of Care, Marissa Smith Aug 2022

Searching For A Solution To Political Polarization In The U.S. Through A Feminist Ethics Of Care, Marissa Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

American politics have seen growing polarization in the past few years (Serrano-Contreras et al., 2020; Wojcieszak & Warner, 2020). Polarization is generally defined as “the distance between opposing political views” (Serrano-Contreras et al., 2020, p. 65). With focus on college students, this thesis considers ways to bridge the political divide in the United States and to promote generative engagement with differences across the political spectrum. The specific research questions this study explored were: 1) How do Ethics of Care principles and practices appear in and impact conversations on politically-charged topics among college students? and 2) How does participating in a …


Framing, Advice-Seeking, And Medical Trust In The R/Keto Community: An Analysis Of The Medical Flair On R/Keto, Sabrina Finke Jan 2022

Framing, Advice-Seeking, And Medical Trust In The R/Keto Community: An Analysis Of The Medical Flair On R/Keto, Sabrina Finke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

First created in 1921, the ketogenic diet was used as a medical intervention for children suffering from severe epilepsy. However, in recent years, this highly restrictive diet has gained mainstream popularity for a number of illness management, wellness, and weight loss uses. Despite its rise in use and popularity, mainstream medical opinion still views the ketogenic diet as a last resort for severe conditions. Using a content analysis of posts tagged with the “medical” flair on the subreddit “r/Keto,” this thesis found commonalities among posts which praised the ketogenic diet and shared positive personal anecdotes were the most likely to …


The Examination Of Social Support Received After Traumatic Experiences, Emily Abellon Jan 2022

The Examination Of Social Support Received After Traumatic Experiences, Emily Abellon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to explore what constitutes effective and ineffective social support after an individual endures trauma. Participants were recruited mainly through social media to complete an online survey with open-ended questions. The survey provided participants with the opportunity to reflect and share the social support they received after the endured trauma, specifically disclosing what support messages were effective and ineffective, and why these messages were effective and ineffective. The messages found to be effectively supportive after the endured trauma, and the ones most frequently mentioned were emotional and appraisal support. These messages were found to be effective due to …


You Are Not Welcome Here: Sloterdijk’S Posthumanism And The Rhetoric Of Hostile Urban Architecture And Design, Brandon William Aungst May 2021

You Are Not Welcome Here: Sloterdijk’S Posthumanism And The Rhetoric Of Hostile Urban Architecture And Design, Brandon William Aungst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation brings together three scholarship areas: rhetorical theory and analysis, hostile urban architecture and design, and Sloterdijk’s version of posthumanism. I synthesize these complementary areas to address the following questions: How do architecture and design contribute to the rhetorical meaning-making of being human and facilitate the communication of that meaning to others? How do different types of architecture and design produce the material contexts for conceptualizing what humanness means and contribute to the development of fore-structures for interpreting and communicating that humanness (e.g., hostile architecture and barbed wire)? How can we conceptualize various types of architecture and design, or …


Virtual Reality For Public Speaking Rehearsals: Student And Faculty Perceptions, Carrie A. Saltsman May 2021

Virtual Reality For Public Speaking Rehearsals: Student And Faculty Perceptions, Carrie A. Saltsman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Speeches and speech rehearsals are an important part of many basic communication courses. However, instructors are developing new ways for students to rehearse their speeches every day; one way may be for students to use virtual reality. Although virtual reality is somewhat of a new innovation, it is effective in various settings, including higher education, and more specifically, the speech classroom. However, this efficacy may not matter if students and instructors are unwilling to adopt it into the classroom. Diffusion of innovation theory, developed by Rogers (2003), focuses on how an innovation is diffused and adopted. Using two of the …


Out Of Time: Temporal Performativity And Resistance In Popular American Film, Television, And Theater, Meghan Johnston Aelabouni Jan 2021

Out Of Time: Temporal Performativity And Resistance In Popular American Film, Television, And Theater, Meghan Johnston Aelabouni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that religious world-making in popular culture can reveal and resist hegemonic times. Taking as my primary case study the United States in the 2010s, particularly the shift from the Obama to the Trump era, I analyze cultural constructions of time—as sacred history, destiny, and “the times”—that reflect and shape national identity and belonging in the American imagined community. In this context, such temporal constructions have privileged whiteness and heteronormative masculinity, positioning those who embody or approximate this norm as “of the times,” while also displacing BIPOC, women, and queer people as “out of time.” I posit time …


“It's Like A Phantom Limb. It Feels Like It’S There. It's Supposed To Be There, But It's Not.”: Birthmothers’ Metaphors Of Ambiguous Loss, Melodee Lynn Sova Jan 2021

“It's Like A Phantom Limb. It Feels Like It’S There. It's Supposed To Be There, But It's Not.”: Birthmothers’ Metaphors Of Ambiguous Loss, Melodee Lynn Sova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Birthmothers are a population with unique experiences and challenges. Among those challenges is the difficulty understanding and managing a loss for which they do not have a readily available coping strategy. As a birthmother, the author of this dissertation was uniquely situated to connecting with, and understanding the ways in which, birthmothers expressed their narratives. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the ways in which birthmothers make sense of their experiences with ambiguous loss by examining the metaphors they employ when narrating their adoption story. The use of metaphor in the birthmother narrative was especially important because metaphor …


“We Didn’T Have A Lot Of Money, We Worked Hard, And We Ate Beans”: Examining The Narrative Inheritance From An Appalachian Father To His Son, Thomas Townsend Dec 2020

“We Didn’T Have A Lot Of Money, We Worked Hard, And We Ate Beans”: Examining The Narrative Inheritance From An Appalachian Father To His Son, Thomas Townsend

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The author contends that narratives, shaped not only by events but also by socioeconomic and geographic factors, are narratives that require exploration and analysis because these narratives build the lives in which individuals exist. By understanding narratives passed down with which they have built their lives, individuals can come to greater understanding of the narratives in which they live. To understand the narratives, he created and continues to craft about his life, the author needed to understand his narrative inheritance. When a proposed thesis study imploded, the focus of the study shifted to exploring the circumstances of a single interview …


Fostering Climate Change Resilience: A Socio-Ecological Forest Systems Approach, Alyssa R. Soucy Aug 2020

Fostering Climate Change Resilience: A Socio-Ecological Forest Systems Approach, Alyssa R. Soucy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As climate change continues to impact socio-ecological systems, those that rely on natural resources are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Maine’s forest industry provides for the economic and social well-being of many residents and is especially vulnerable to climate change impacts. Changes in growing season length and timing, forest health threats imposed by insects and pathogens, extreme weather events, shifting forest composition, and changes in natural disturbance severity and frequency have already begun, and are projected to continue, to impact forest systems in the Northeastern U.S. While climate change presents a threat to forest systems, opportunities also arise due to …


Friendship In The Digital Age: Implications From A Philosophy Of Communication Approach, Tiffany Petricini May 2020

Friendship In The Digital Age: Implications From A Philosophy Of Communication Approach, Tiffany Petricini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Friendship is a central relationship-style that grounds us. Much of the literature on the effects of technology on our relationships, especially friendship, has taken a skeptical approach. The notion of friendship is historically-situated, thus, it requires attention in each era and has prompted questions throughout human history. Our time is no exception. Changing cultures and redefinitions of basic human institutions have led us to our current moment, in which we are experiencing a loud and continuing debate on the effect of technology on our lives. Advancements in science have allowed us to understand our past and present in new ways. …


Pierre Hadot's Holistic Philosophy Of Communication, Jonathan Crist May 2020

Pierre Hadot's Holistic Philosophy Of Communication, Jonathan Crist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pierre Hadot’s holistic philosophy of communication attends to the health of the self and community through practice of spiritual exercises for the transformation of one’s entire being, working at the nexus of mind, body, soul, and cosmos. The task is ever-incomplete, works in an understanding of “human being as essentially an exposure that lacks a closed identity” and “keep[s] sight of the opening, wound, or lack that remains at the heart of any community and all communication” (Butchart 136). This is responsive to the present moment experiencing disjointed experience of time and space, increased anxiety, underdeveloped capacity for attention, and …


Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods To Understand And Inform Collaborative Decision Making About Dams And Restoration In The Penobscot River Watershed, Tyler Quiring Apr 2020

Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods To Understand And Inform Collaborative Decision Making About Dams And Restoration In The Penobscot River Watershed, Tyler Quiring

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How do we understand what to do with rivers and dams? How might rhetoric, the ancient study of persuasion, inform and shape this understanding as it relates to river restoration practices? Ecological approaches to rhetoric provide ways for engaging in decision making about dams and river restoration. In this dissertation I present three projects that bring media discourse analysis, reciprocal case study, and cross-cultural digital rhetoric to sites of collaborative decision making about dams and rivers in the Penobscot River watershed (Maine, USA). In this place, the prominent Penobscot River Restoration reconfigured several hydroelectric dams to improve fish passage and …


Strategies Exemplary Social Studies Teachers’ Implement When Facilitating Discussions About Race, Candice Nicole Jasmer Mar 2020

Strategies Exemplary Social Studies Teachers’ Implement When Facilitating Discussions About Race, Candice Nicole Jasmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers experience difficulty in introducing some sensitive and controversial issues in the classroom environment. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to identify strategies that exemplary secondary social studies teachers implement when facilitating classroom discussions about sensitive and controversial issues, specifically, racial issues framed within Singleton and Linton’s 4 agreements of courageous conversations: stay engaged, speak your truth, experience discomfort, and accept and expect nonclosure. This study utilized qualitative data collection. Semi-structured, online one-to-one internet-based interviews were used to document the lived experiences of exemplary secondary social studies teachers and the strategies they use when facilitating discussions about …


Performances Of An Able, Academic Mind, Caleb Green Jan 2020

Performances Of An Able, Academic Mind, Caleb Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Western culture individualizes issues of public health. This is especially clear in academic life, where the structures of the university disable atypical bodies and minds in order to force them to simultaneously perform the roles of scholar, teacher, and colleague. The university not only fails to accommodate afflicted minds and bodies, it also produces more precarity in the process. This project is a performance ethnography of my time in the academy, starting with my life as an undergraduate being disciplined into academic life, moving toward recruitment for graduate school, and ending with events surrounding the construction of this very project. …


Rhetorical Genealogy And The Ethics Of Eugenics, David Mark Thomas Jan 2020

Rhetorical Genealogy And The Ethics Of Eugenics, David Mark Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation strives to critique contemporary rhetoric on eugenics. In recent years, scientists succeeded in mapping the human genome and subsequently developed new gene editing technologies. To situate current ethical discourses about eugenics, I trace histories of these discourses at several scales of society – from the macroscopic level of the body politic to the meso level where modes of assessment have been deployed purportedly to accurately evaluate human characteristics to the microscopic level of the gene. I employ Foucauldian genealogy to highlight how, despite marked differences over time in specific eugenic discourses and practices exist, the underlying rhetoric has …


An Exploration Of Communication Ethics Scholarship And Economic Spheres, Andrew Tinker Dec 2019

An Exploration Of Communication Ethics Scholarship And Economic Spheres, Andrew Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines communication ethics scholarship to understand how economics is understood within the field and to establish coordinates for scholars to discuss economic spheres as phenomena that affect communication ethics. Scholars draw from the tradition of virtue ethics to mark communication ethics inquiry as that which explores the practices that protect and promote the “good.” Philosophers of communication and communication ethicists have developed paradigmatic metaphors for the field that allow us to understand the formation of ethical guidelines within communities both familial, corporate, and national, that promote and protect various goods. These metaphors include “hierarchy” and “sameness” from Charles …


Stories Of Color: An Exploration Of Storytelling And Racial Microaggression, Tama Lunceford Dec 2019

Stories Of Color: An Exploration Of Storytelling And Racial Microaggression, Tama Lunceford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines experiences of racial microaggressions as related to an audience through the art of Storytelling. Integrating Performance Ethnography and Critical Race Theory, it examines how storytelling may serve to illuminate the concept of racial microaggressions. After examining the current body of work on Racism, Storytelling and Microaggression, the author moves through the stories of experiences with racial microaggression from four individuals, gathered and performed as a storytelling event, before a live audience. The communicative management methods individuals use when talking about race and racial microaggressions are explored in presentation of the audience discussion which followed the performance. The …


Becoming A Master Manager: An Analysis Of Snap Recipient Stories Of Navigating Government Assistance, Kallie Gay May 2019

Becoming A Master Manager: An Analysis Of Snap Recipient Stories Of Navigating Government Assistance, Kallie Gay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines experiences of utilizing government assistance in the United States. It focuses on the ways in which persons participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) communicatively managed their lives in relation to their role in the program. Specifically, the research reveals that SNAP recipients are master managers. After synthesizing the pre-existing body of research concerning social assistance in the U.S. and its effects on those who utilize it, the author argues that sharing the stories of marginalized groups can serve to reduce stigma surrounding government assistance participation. Employing a Feminist Standpoint Theory sensibility to elicit such stories, …


The Rhetoric Of Missions Reporting, Bailey Cate Dec 2018

The Rhetoric Of Missions Reporting, Bailey Cate

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Missions, especially short-term trips, are becoming more and more controversial. As short-term missionaries interact in the field, they take pictures depicting the poverty, lack of resources, and overall sense of destitution around them. These photos have helped generate income, as many Christians who see the photos as part of updates on mission work they supported come to see themselves in a position of “savior” because they have resources to give to “those in need.” Evangelism is a critical component of Christianity; however, how people evangelize and how they communicate about that evangelism is equally critical. By analyzing both the church …


The Effects Of Social Proof Through Social Media On Perceptions Of Responsibility, Taylor Powers Dec 2018

The Effects Of Social Proof Through Social Media On Perceptions Of Responsibility, Taylor Powers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Situational crisis communication theory, also referred to as SCCT, is a central and very well-developed theory in the field of crisis communication. The goal of SCCT is to create a response strategy based on stakeholders’ levels of attributions of responsibility. SCCT states there are two main factors stakeholders take into consideration when attributing responsibility to an organization in crisis: crisis type and performance history. While the previously stated factors are very important, the progressive development of social media is not taken into consideration in this theory, specifically the use of social proof through social media channels. According to the principle …


Gain Vs. Loss And Near Vs. Far Spatial Distance Message Framing And Support For Aquaculture Among U.S. Seafood Consumers, Sandaruwan P. Kumara Aug 2018

Gain Vs. Loss And Near Vs. Far Spatial Distance Message Framing And Support For Aquaculture Among U.S. Seafood Consumers, Sandaruwan P. Kumara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the U.S., the aquaculture industry receives differential support from various publics due to the health and environmental concerns of seafood consumers. Since consumer communication plays a significant role in policy support, understanding how messages about aquaculture should be framed is important. This study investigated the influence of gain vs. loss and near vs. far spatial distance framing on support for aquaculture among seafood consumers in the U.S. The study used a 2*2 experimental design to vary gain/loss and near/far framing among 1052 U.S. residents from all 50 states. An online questionnaire, distributed by the survey firm GfK, was employed …


Looking At Innovation Dialogically: Teaching Communication And (Social) Change In The Innovation Engineering Program At The University Of Maine, Mark J. Congdon Jr. May 2018

Looking At Innovation Dialogically: Teaching Communication And (Social) Change In The Innovation Engineering Program At The University Of Maine, Mark J. Congdon Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Higher education institutions face two concurrent demands: preparing students for the job-market, while also developing informed and engaged citizens (Frey & Palmer, 2014; Gould, 2003). How universities reconcile these demands varies. The Innovation Engineering program (IE) at the University of Maine strives to both, “change the world by enabling innovation” (concern for social issues) and educate entrepreneurs (students) whose innovations reach markets quicker and at a decreased risk (capitalist orientation) (Hall, 2013; Kelly, 2014). The program uses a systems approach to innovation by teaching tools and methods for creating, communicating, and commercializing meaningfully unique ideas. Processes and contexts are important …