Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

Environmental Loss, Displacement, And Anxiety In Portugal: Analyzing News Articles To Differentiate Manifestations Of Environmental Distress, Robin Greene

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Expressions of environmental distress can take different forms, with different symptoms, causes, and treatments. Existing literature generally identifies three primary categories of environmental distress responses: environmental grief, solastalgia, and eco-anxiety. This paper explores these distinctions and identifies words typically associated with each category in Portuguese news articles using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). LDA is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique that groups words into topics and identifies connections between those words based on how often those words appear together in sequences. This paper uses a modified LDA algorithm called GuidedLDA to identify additional keywords within topics defined by a list …

“It's So Normal, And … Meaningful.” Playing With Narrative, Artifacts, And Cultural Difference In Florence, Dheepa Sundaram, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article considers how player interactions with religious and ethnic markers, create

a globalized game space in the mobile game Florence (2018). Florence is a multiaward-

winning interactive novella game with story-integrated minigames that weave

play experiences into the narrative. The game, in part, explores love, loss, and

rejuvenation as relatable experiences. Simultaneously, the game produces a unique

experience for each player, as they can refract the game narrative through their own

cultural, identitarian lens. The game assumes the shared cultural space of the player,

the player-character (PC), and the non-player-character (NPC) while blurring the

boundaries between each of these …

Visual Framing Effects Of News Coverage Of Police Use Of Deadly Force On Intergroup Relationships, Lucile Henderson, Riva Tukachinsky Forster, Leora Kalili, Simone Guillory

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The study examines the effects of visual framing in news coverage of law enforcement use of lethal force. In a 2X2 online experiment, participants read one of four versions of a news story that included visual racial cues (images depicting a Black vs. a White victim) and a delinquent/normative frame—depicting the victim wearing attire that signifies either normative or delinquent behavior (regalia vs. a hooded sweatshirt). Both race and delinquency framing influenced the readers’ stereotype endorsement and feelings toward Black Americans. However, judgment of the police officer’s behavior solely depended on the victim’s race. These findings demonstrate the importance of …

Self-Centeredness As A Response To Narratives With Few Self-Transcendent Elicitors, Sophie Janicke-Bowles

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Recently scholars argued to broaden the concept of eudaimonic entertainment experiences and introduced two conceptualizations: 1. self-focused experiences, including mixed affect, contemplation and need satisfaction, and 2. other-focused experiences, including self-transcendent emotions and prosociality. The goal of the study was to investigate how the two dimensions of meaningful media experiences (self-focused vs. other-focused) are elicited from inspiring films that contain self-transcendent elicitors and explore the connection and differentiation between the two. Results of a Qualtrics experiment (N = 328) revealed that films with a large amount of transcendent portrayals lead to greater experiences of mixed affect and less self-centeredness than …

Religious Nationalism And The Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals And Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article investigates the response to the coronavirus crisis by Evangelical Christian nationalists in the USA. The article outlines the curious mediaverse of religious nationalism—its post-truth and fake news aspects in particular—links religious nationalism to American exceptionalism, and analyzes conflicts between secular and religious authorities. Drawing upon some lessons from the past, the article addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology, as it has been played out virally in the corporate media. The article shows that the ideological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity prevent its proponents from understanding the virus in an historical and materialist …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Television In Ireland Before Irish Television: 1950s Audiences And British Programming, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

The first television broadcasts in Ireland were watched in the 1950s. These initial programmes were British. This history of these early viewers, however, has been ignored. A dominant narrative has addressed the history of television in Ireland as the history of the public broadcaster Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ). Thus, the history of Irish television often begins in 1961, overlooking Irish people’s experience of the medium in the preceding decade. This paper breaks with traditional historiography by employing life history interviews to explore the uses, rituals and feelings attached to television in the years before RTÉ.

Irish people who watched television …

Television In Ireland: A History From The Mediated Centre, Edward Brennan

Conference Papers

This paper identifies and critiques a dominant narrative in the history of Irish television, which is too often passed off for, or accepted as, the history of television in Ireland. The his- tory of television in Ireland has been written within an institutional framework and depends on the cultural binary of tradition and modernity, ‘old Ireland’ and ‘new Ireland’. This dom- inant narrative fails to interrogate television as a medium. It provides an account of the Irish broadcaster RTÉ rather than an account of the arrival of a new medium. Ironically this nar- rative which hinges on the role of …

Gender In The Slasher Film Genre, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It slices, it dices, it has entertained and scared audiences for decades—it’s the slasher film. Despite being dismissed by critics, the slasher film refuses to go away. Even if you don’t go to these movies, they are hard to escape, as every Halloween at least a few trick or treaters will dress up as a character from these movies. Given the longevity and popularity of this genre, I want to spend today talking about how these films often represent gender.

Scholars have also studied slasher films, and have provided a more formal definition than the one that I just provided. …

Meditating On Mountain Bikes, Sam Bowen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For a long time, Nepal has been an exotic destination for adventurers and spiritual wanderers. Geographically, there are no comparisons. “The country is vertical,” said Jagan Biswarka as he pointed across Phewa Lake to the snow-capped mountains. “You can see the 8000 meter from 800 meter. This will be one of the best playgrounds in the world. Nowhere in Nepal. Nowhere in the world.” Mads Mathiasen, a Danish expatriate agrees. “I think very few people realizes how big a contrast there is in Nepal from seventy-one meters above sea level – the lowest place in Nepal – to eight-thousand eight-hundred …

Power Girls Before Girl Power: 1980s Toy-Based Girl Cartoons, Katia Perea

Publications and Research

The socio/cultural history and partnership of toy advertisement and children’s television is rich and well documented (Schneider 1989, Kunkel 1988, Seiter 1993). In this article I discuss the influence of policy in girl’s cartoon programming as well as the relationship between commercialization and financial motivation in creating a girl cartoon media product. I then discuss the formulaic, gender normative parameters this new genre set in place to identify girl cartoons as well as girl media consumption and how within those parameters girl cartoon characters were able to represent an empowered girl popular culture product a decade before the nomenclature Girl …

Theories Of Public Opinion, Patricia Moy, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

While the issue of citizen competency has vexed scholars throughout history, the modern concepts of a mass public and mass media are relatively new. Beginning with the seminal works of Lippmann and Dewey, we chart the evolving theories of public opinion, from the "hypodermic needle" model of the early twentieth century to the more psychologically oriented approach to media effects of today. We argue that in addition to understanding how audiences process media content, theories of public opinion must account for how media content is constructed and disseminated, which is complicated by the ever-changing nature of our media landscape.

Free Speech And The Myth Of The Internet As An Unintermediated Experience, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, a growing number of commentators have raised concerns that the decisions made by Internet intermediaries — including last-mile network providers, search engines, social networking sites, and smartphones — are inhibiting free speech and have called for restrictions on their ability to prioritize or exclude content. Such calls ignore the fact that when mass communications are involved, intermediation helps end users to protect themselves from unwanted content and allows them to sift through the avalanche of desired content that grows ever larger every day. Intermediation also helps solve a number of classic economic problems associated with the Internet. …

Globalization’S Impact On Identity Through Billboard Advertisements, Sarah Hogan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

When one walks down the main streets of Tunis it is clear that the faces represented in billboards do not match the faces of those walking along the streets. Why is this? Are the ads representative of the layering of civilizations that Tunisia has undergone? Are the ads from another source, such as the French, and just implementing their system on top of Tunisians expecting it to be successful? Moreover, what are the implications of these advertisements on the Tunisian identity? W.E.B. DuBois discusses the phenomenon of a “double consciousness” that has developed in African-Americans due to the portrayal of …

Cumulating Evidence About The Social Animal: Meta-Analysis In Social-Personality Psychology, Blair T. Johnson Dr., Marcella H. Boynton Dr.

CHIP Documents

Like most scientific fields, social-personality psychology has experienced an

explosion of research related to such central topics as aggression, attraction, gender,

group processes, motivation, personality, and persuasion, to name a few. The

proliferation of research can be a monster unless it is tamed with the scientific

review strategy of meta-analysis, literally analyses of past analyses that produce

a quantitative and empirical history of research on a particular phenomenon. The

purpose of this article is to outline the basic process and statistics of meta-analysis,

as they pertain to social-personality psychology. Meta-analysis involves: (i) defining

the problem under review; (ii) gathering qualified …

The Fair City Production Line: An Examination Of Soap Opera’S Potential Contribution To The Public Sphere, Edward Brennan

Articles

Between December 2000 and February 2001 the Irish soap opera Fair City ran an unprecedented, risky and controversial abortion storyline. This came before a looming referendum on the legality of abortion. Here, Fair City was not just offering entertainment, but provoking debate and discussion on a divisive issue in Irish society. In this case, and many others, it appears that soap opera, by promoting such discussion, may contribute to the formation of public opinion in contemporary civil society. Heretofore, most academic studies have overlooked the possible consequences of soap opera for civil society, public opinion and the democratic process. This …

All The News That’S Fat To Print: The American "Obesity Epidemic" And The Media, Natalie Boero

Faculty Publications, Sociology

Increasingly the term epidemic is being used to describe the current prevalence of fatness in the United States. Skyrocketing rates of obesity among all groups of Americans, particularly children, the poor, and minorities, have become a major public health concern. Indeed, it is difficult to open a newspaper or magazine without encountering a discussion of the expanding American waistline and the health problems associated therewith. In this paper I use 751 New York Times articles on obesity to examine the media construction of the obesity epidemic. I show that there is not one dominant discourse (i.e. medicine) constructing this epidemic, …

Television Transnationale, Mondialisation Et La Formation De L'Identite Culturelle: L'Exemple De La Republique Dominicaine, Antonio V. Menéndez Alarcón

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

La societe globale qui se profile au debut du XXIe siecle presente des caracteristiques tant economiques et politiques que culturelles. En sociologie, le phenomene de mondialisation se definit comme la proliferation de flux economiques et culturels internationaux et transnationaux au niveau de la planete et comprend egalement la creation d'institutions supranationales. De fait, les echanges financiers et commerciaux, le developpement de moyens de communication plus efficaces et rapides (mass media, transports, telephone, telecopie, Internet, etc.) et l'intensification des flux migratoires ont connecte et rapproche des nations differentes, produisant une interaction accrue entre les peuples. Appadurai (1990) explique le processus de …

Privacy And The Public Official: Talking About Sex As A Dilemma For Democracy, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ua12/2/1 Valen Times, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

Valen Times special College Heights Herald regarding Valentine’s Day.

• Goetz, Kristina. Love is More Than Just a Warm, Fuzzy Feeling
• Lega, Stephen. Valentine’s Day Not All About Hugs, Kisses
• LaBelle, Charboneé. Kisses I May Have Forgotten to Give You
• Lenz, Rebecca. Loneliness
• Back, Shannon. Here’s the Recipe for a Successful Relationship
• Siria, Stephanie. Dinner, Dancing on Valentine Agenda
• Mains, Brian. Men, Women Hope for More Than Love
• Hutchins, Chris & Ryan Craig. Dateless Dudes Offer Love Advice
• Olmsted, Mikki. Holiday Harder for Long-Distance Love
• Hieb, Dan. The Journey of a Rose . . . from Ecuador to Your Door
• Brim, …