Communication Commons^™

0300–0430, Jesus M. Sierra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Night, a time everyone experiences and few contemplate. It is a time of darkness both figuratively and literally. Darkness of the soul and of the mind, when some rest and others are restless. We live in an age of endless day where the night is nothing more than a time to be blinded by electronic light. With this in mind the question becomes how was our night seen in the past? Also, how was the night and the darkness represented throughout time? To answer these questions I researched the topic of night and made a film entitled 0300 - 0430. …

Implicating Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation In Comparative And Non-Violent Rhetoric: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Three Ecofeminist Movements From East To West, Shahreen Mat Nayan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the study of social movement rhetoric, scholars often focus on movements based in Western nations, foregoing study of social change in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world. Similarly, the focus on non-violent rhetoric has also been lacking, despite its use by great leaders such as Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King. This dissertation contributes to the study of social change in a globalized world, by taking a comparative approach to non-violent rhetoric in three diverse case studies. As sub-areas, both comparative rhetoric and non-violent rhetoric require further deliberation due to the numerous debates concerning …

Maintaining Or Disrupting Inequality: Diversity Statements In The University, Linda A. Merkl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my study was to identify whether university Diversity Statements aid in maintaining or disrupting inequality in the university. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed an initial sample of eleven Diversity Statements to develop a list of common themes found within the diversity statements. Using a maximum variation method, I then reduced my sample to four universities to provide breadth of information for the final study (Miles & Huberman, 1994). In my case analysis, I first conducted an individual analysis of each of the four Diversity Statements using the common themes from my critical case analysis, common functions …

When Talking Helps: A Quantitative Study Of Privacy And Resilience After Bereavement, Carrie Lynn West

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the theoretical framework of Communication Privacy Management, this study sought to determine how trait resilience, state hopefulness, distress disclosure, use of social networks, and boundary turbulence relate to bereaved spouses' life satisfaction. Bereaved spouses (N=149) completed questionnaires at Camp Widow, a weekend-long conference for bereaved spouses held in San Diego, from August 12-14, 2011. Participants were single, engaged or remarried. The average age of the participants is 46.24 years. The average age at time of bereavement reported was 43.71 years. The amount of time that had passed since the death of their spouse was 2.83 years, and the average …

Cultural Diabetes, Keri E. Noll

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes has become a cultural problem across America, but particularly in the Midwest and Southern regions. For my film, I explored these two areas and compared the food and exercise culture to one of the healthier regions, the West. Having moved from Indiana to Colorado, I used my own personal experiences to analyze why people in the Midwest struggle with diabetes and obesity at such a higher rate than those nearer to the Pacific Ocean. Through a series of interviews with close friends and observational analysis of each state, I came to learn something very important about health: our food …

Mapping The Conceptual Terrain Of Work Calling, K. Arianna Molloy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Communication researchers have much to gain and contribute by paying sustained attention to the implications, contributions, and consequences of the interpretation and (re)production of work as a calling. While work calling has been theoretically and quantitatively conceptualized in a number of disciplines, it remains lacking in evidence of how the lived experiences and sensemaking discourses of participants serve to (re)construct this concept. Thus, the current study is qualitatively guided by asking, how people from different professional domains communicate about their experiences of work as a calling. To begin, I assess the overarching themes related to work calling in the areas …

Adding Within-Utterance Emotion Decay For More Human-Like Dialog, Michael Hans Durcholz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While spoken dialog systems have been used for commercial applications for several decades, most commercial spoken dialog systems provide only simple information exchange capabilities. Emotion synthesis in spoken dialog systems has become an active research area recently, and use of emotion-adaptive dialog systems has demonstrated improvements in user experience and rapport. This thesis seeks to improve how emotions are conveyed in dialog systems to enable robust emotional support that improves user experiences with dialog systems and models human speech characteristics more accurately than current dialog systems.

Prior work with Gracie (GRAduate Coordinator with Immediate response Emotions), an emotion-adaptive dialog system, …

Nostalgic Identities: A Study In The Interactive Process Of Mexican/ Mexican American Users In Facebook, Daniel Dominguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Online social networking is a growing phenomenon. All over the globe people engage in disembodied interactions with one another taking for granted a compression of time and space. Most social analysis of online settings has been studied from a symbolic interactionist perspective in which the concept of multiple/pluralized identity helps explain how users identify themselves in disembodied contexts.

This paper intends to discover how the Mexican / Mexican American identity is presented, managed and produced by users in the Social Networking Site Facebook using the concept of nostalgia in how identity is presented in a disembodied context.

Androgyny And Musical Identity: Glitz, Glamour, And Everything In Between, Tanya Yvette Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Discourse of androgyny and how it functions and how it is constructed will be central to analyzing how it is utilized in popular music and how artists, particularly androgynous artists, use it to complicate their expression of identities. Androgyny is described as a mixing of both male and female genders, where there can be distinct lack of coherent gender identification. Androgyny has been revealed as an identity that neither men nor women are born with, but embody through time. It is important to illustrate a growing recognition of androgynous artists to offer us an opportunity to glimpse the spectacular evolvement …

Ua19/16/1 Volleyball Media Guide, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Archives Records

Athletic media guide for volleyball team.

Thin Is In: A Content Analysis Of Images In Women's Magazines From 2009-2011, Jennifer Kate Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many research studies have shown that women constantly compare themselves to the models they see featured in women's magazines, and in turn, develop body image issues, negative mood changes and even eating disorders. The majority of findings show that women often develop these serious side-effects because they are bombarded with images of mostly thin models. Yet editors of women's magazines continue to choose women much smaller, in most cases at least six times smaller, than the average sized American women to feature. It is very unusual to see fashion spread in a women's magazine featuring a model close to the …

Adios, Cuba, Zita Arocha

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Memoir about a family's immigration from Cuba to the United States in the late 1950's, and how exile from native country is like the Buddhist state of bardo, an in-between condition and transition between life and death.

Vanishing Acts: Creative Women In Spain And The United States, Jean M. Grow, David Roca, Sheri J. Broyles

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This exploratory cross-cultural study examines the experiences of women in advertising creative departments in Spain and the United States. The study, an exploration of the creative environment and its impact on female creatives, is framed by Hofstede’s dimensional model of national culture (Hofstede 2001; de Mooij & Hofstede 2010) and signalling theory (Spence 1974). Interviews with 35 top female creatives suggest that the challenges women face are rooted in the ‘fraternity culture’ or ‘territorio de chicos’ of creative departments in both countries. The data further suggest that the gender-bound cultural environment of advertising creative departments may be a global phenomenon, …

The World Is A…Network: Social Media And Cause Networks In The Girl Effect Movement, Kati Tusinski Berg, Sarah Bonewits Feldner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Intercultural New Media Studies: The Next Frontier In Intercultural Communication, Robert Shuter

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

New media (ICT's) are transforming communication across cultures. Despite this revolution in cross cultural contact, communication researchers have largely ignored the impact of new media on intercultural communication. This groundbreaking article defines the parameters of a new field of inquiry called Intercultural New Media Studies (INMS), which explores the intersection between ICT's and intercultural communication. Composed of two research areas—(1) new media and intercultural communication theory and (2) culture and new media—INMS investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world. INMS promises to increase …

Deaf Culture: The Creation Of Self And Socialization Through The Use Of Sign Language, Marisela Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a strong perception of the physicality of disabilities. The review of literature in this project shows that there is a large number of disability related studies in the field of communication that focus primarily on physical and/or visible disabilities. The purpose of this study is to incorporate research on hidden and/or invisible disabilities, specifically deafness. The literature in the field of communication relating to hidden disabilities is limited and much more limited in deaf related research. There are an estimated two thousand deaf individuals in El Paso. Their participation and integration in the community is hindered by societal …

Life Without Boundaries: A Positive Deviance Inquiry Of Communication Behaviors That Influence Academic Success Of Learning-Disabled University Students, Davi Kallman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The label of "disabled" causes many learning-disabled students to downplay their disability in order to avoid alienation and isolation. Hence, many of learning-disabled students go through years of education without accommodations, increasing the likelihood for academic failure. Students who do have accommodations are still at risk of failure especially if they lack strong support systems and suffer from low expectations. Simply put, dropout rates among learning-disabled students are a complex social problem. The dropout rate among these students is nearly double that of general education students (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). Dropping out has devastating financial, educational, and social repercussions for …

Photovoice With Pediatric Cancer Parents: Understanding Difficulties And Communicative Behaviors For Coping Effectively, Gabriela Isela Morales

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Pediatric cancer is a disease that not only affects children but their families as well. Both patients and their caregiving families have to cope with the many twists and turns that every day presents. This research study is aimed to understand and discover through the use of Photovoice--responding to questions through photographs and later narrating them--what difficulties and dilemmas parents face and what communicative behaviors and practices parents engage in to effectively care for their child. Living effectively with pediatric cancer involves more than medical regimens and treatment schedules. How this disease is communicated in public discourses, and how caregivers …

Parasocial Interaction Between Latino Newscasters And Their Viewers: A Cultural Pluralism Perspective, Laura A. Alvardo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Latino identity is in a hybrid state that is continuously evolving to include many factors. Latinos no longer feel the need to assimilate and renounce their cultural identity. Multiculturalism proposes the maintenance of Latino identity to include many variables. A Latino today can maintain their identity as well as include many factors to compose a multi-faceted identity. Therefore, a Latino today can listen to both Spanish-language and English- language radio programs. The present study investigates parasocial interaction between Latino respondents and Latino/White newscasters. Parasocial interaction serves as a medium to study the strength of ethnic identification in Latinos. This study …

News Coverage Of The Sergio Hernández Case In Newspapers Of The Border Region, Rodrigo Giovan Barragan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study analyzes the news coverage of two newspapers from the border region between the United States and México (El Paso Times) from El Paso, Texas; and (El Diario de Juárez) from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, about the case of Sergio Hernández, a 15 year old Mexican teenager who was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the boundary zone between both countries on June 7, 2010. Using a textual analysis of the stories published about this case in these newspapers, the research seeks to identify news frames and competing meanings of community and identity embedded in the …