Social Influence and Political Communication Commons^™

Examining The Cross-Cultural Competence Of United States Christian Missionaries Engaged In Developing Indigenous Leaders: A Mixed Methods Study, Craig W. Goodman

Dissertations

For the past two millennia, missionaries have crossed from one culture to another to bring the Christian message to all cultures of the world. Questions about the effectiveness of these mission efforts have been asked and researched by many; however, one key question remains unanswered: what personal attributes help a person to be more competent at crossing cultures as they interact with people from other cultures? Although cross-cultural competence has been studied in a variety of fields over the past 50 years, the models and assessments used have never been applied to Christian missionaries.

To address this deficiency, this parallel ...

Finding Their Chrysanthemum: Linguistic Representation In Children's Literature, Marielena Zajac

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Children in America today struggle with finding themselves in the books they read due to societal expectations. From an early age, children are dictated on the correct way to speak and write in “American,” which can leave children and their home languages feeling unseen and dismissed. To help further the conversation and promotion of linguistic diversity in American society, this capstone analyzes dialectal representation in children’s books, with a heavy focus on attitudinal linguistic principles rather than prescriptive mechanics. The secondary research explores current literature and resources that discuss literacy acquisition in adolescents, trends in dialects in America, and ...

Moral Matching: Strategic Messaging To Overcome Barriers To Persuasion, Tess M. Buckley

Communication (PhD) Dissertations

Persuasive messages are often met with resistance. Message fatigue is a unique motivational state caused by excessive exposure to redundant messages, which leads to active and passive resistance towards persuasive messages. The consequences of active and passive resistance are particularly harmful when directed towards messages intended to assist individuals in making health decisions. This dissertation investigated a message framing strategy, moral matching, to combat message fatigue resistance in the context of COVID-19. Guided by message fatigue and moral foundation theory literature, there were three main purposes of this dissertation. The first purpose was to identify what features of COVID-19 health ...

Black Occularity, The White Gaze, And Color-Blindness In Shonda Rhimes' Bridgerton, Daniella Ruiz Cantu

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

The white gaze, or the assumption that the default reader or observer of a piece of media is white, affects the way that people of color are shown on television. This research project uses the hit Netflix show Bridgerton to study the way that modern-day representations of people of color both challenge whiteness and white supremacy, while also reinforcing the white gaze. This is done through the examination of works by George Yancy, Laraine Wallowits, Frantz Fanon, Laura Mulvey, Kristen J. Warner, and Cheryl I. Harris on the white gaze, the male gaze, narrative conventions of soap operas and telenovelas ...

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Civilian Response And Expectations, Celeste Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

On October 14, 1962, an American U-2 spy plane flying over the island of Cuba discovered Soviet missiles being constructed. This discovery led President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro into a thirteen-day negotiation period to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba. During this time, the world was the closest it had ever been to nuclear destruction, causing stress and anxiety to many worldwide, especially the American populace, who believed they were invincible in a home front attack. Throughout this thesis, I aim to examine the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear fallout through the ...

Girl Power?: 2017’S Wonder Woman As A Feminist Text And Icon In An Era Of Post-Feminist Media, Rachel Richardson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Media, including film, have the incredible potential to influence viewers and disrupt or contribute to dominant ideologies. In an era of post-feminist media where women are seemingly empowered under the guise of ‘girl power,’ there continues to be very limited social, financial, and professional options for women and girls. The same can be said for film when female characters appear to be in control of their own lives and bodies, though they are pressured into making the ‘correct’ choices. The 2017 film rendition of Wonder Womandirected by Patty Jenkins intended to change that. This textual analysis of the film ...

How Conservative Media Influences Views On Illegal Immigration, Juhi Doshi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Conservative media sources tend to amplify antiimmigrant rhetoric on their news platforms. Relying on the 2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears, I examine how conservative media sources like FOX News may influence how likely one is to fear illegal immigration in comparison to someone who watches CNN. Data is sourced from questions that ask subjects how afraid they are of illegal immigration, where they get their news from, what their racial attitudes are, and their political affiliation. The topic of illegal immigration has been studied for years, however there is not much literature published on how media consumption can directly ...

Personal Outcomes Of Activist Interpreting: A Case Study, Mark A. Halley

Showcase of Faculty Scholarly & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Girl-Next-Door To Girlboss: Taylor Swift’S Online Evolution From Puerile Pop Star To Poignant Political Influence, Clare G. Daly

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Of all society’s public figures, the social-media-savvy celebrity is arguably the most powerful. Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has amassed one of the largest followings on the internet. In recent years, she has inspired fans to act upon sociopolitical issues via voter registration, letter-writing campaigns, and music. Her digital footprint is not without contention from a slow arrival to politics to white feminist attributes present in her messaging. Through close reading across four social media platforms, I found a shift in Swift’s social media activity. In her transition from a young pop star to a global influence, I concluded that ...

The Age Of Advanced Communication: Impacts Of Superpower Disinformation On U.S. Public Diplomacy, Kaitlyn Elizabeth Early

Helm's School of Government Conference

The age of advanced technology is among us. Beginning in the 1430s with the invention of the printing press, innovations such as the telegraph, radio, television, and the internet have changed the channels of communication, foreign and domestic, forever. Much of the previous research dominating the field of United States foreign policy focuses upon the age of disinformation. Some research pieces surrounding the impacts of communication tools on public diplomacy are outdated as technology is constantly changing. Rather, an up-to-date, comprehensive study of the shifting public diplomacy and media strategies due to these advanced communication tools would paint a thorough ...

Using A Reconciliatory Model To Change Attitudes Towards Covid-19, Gabriella Hubble, Mark Rockwood, Jordan Willis

Annual Research Symposium

This research was designed to see if we were able to change university students’ attitudes about COVID-19 in regard to precautionary behaviors such as mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccinations using a reconciliatory model. The reconciliatory model has had success in evolution research and we wanted to assess its success here. Additionally, we wanted to test if students’ perception of the respectfulness and relatability of the presenter influenced a change in attitude. For our model, we created 6 different videos from various individuals. After watching the videos, participants filled out a survey about if/how the video changed their minds, and ...

Ukraine-Russia War: Nevada Twitter And Disinformation Trends, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

This fact sheet analyzes responses to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia War posted on Twitter by users located in Nevada and identifies the most circulated narratives and disinformation topics.

“I Thought About It And I May Follow What You Said”: Three Studies Examining The Effects Of Elaboration And Source Credibility On Risk Behavior Intentions, Xialing Lin, Kenneth A. Lachlan, Patric R. Spence

Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research

The induction of cognitive elaboration on information concerning risks may facilitate compliance with messages encouraging audiences to mitigate against risks. Nevertheless, cognitive elaboration and its relationship with other key variables in risk information processing have been largely understudied. Revisiting data from three experiments, this study examined how cognitive elaboration influences behavioral intentions associated with a risk, and the relationship between cognitive elaboration and behavioral intentions, as mediated by perceptions of source credibility. Results consistently found that cognitive elaboration directly predicted increases in both source credibility perceptions and behavioral intentions, along with an indirect effect of cognitive elaboration on behavioral intentions ...

Editorial Essay: A Reflection On Methodological Diversity In The Journal Of International Crisis And Risk Communication Research, Audra Diers-Lawson, Florian Meissner

Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research

This is the Editor's essay for Volume 5, Issue 1 of the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research.

Rise Of Social Media Influencers As A New Marketing Channel: Focusing On The Roles Of Psychological Well-Being And Perceived Social Responsibility Among Consumers, Jihye Kim, Minseong Kim

Integrated Strategic Communication Faculty Publications

This empirical research investigated the structural relationships between social media influencer attributes, perceived friendship, psychological well-being, loyalty, and perceived social responsibility of influencers, focusing on the perspective of social media users. More specifically, this study conceptually identified social media influencer attributes such as language similarity, interest similarity, interaction frequency, and self-disclosure and examined the respective effects of each dimension on perceived friendship and psychological well-being, consequently resulting in loyalty toward social media influencers. The authors collected and analyzed data from 388 social media users in the United States via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk with multivariate analyses to test the hypothesized ...

Discursive Constructions In Televised News: The Case Of Mindanao, Philippines, Estelle Marie Macuja Ladrido, Ariel Robert Ponce

Department of Communication Faculty Publications

News stories carry boundary setting language that constructs nations as homogenous imagined communities and furthers the us-vs-them metanarrative that separates those who belong to one nation from those who do not. However, it may be possible that boundary-setting representations may be applied to groups within the nation-state. This article explores this possibility by examining the discourse constructed by mediated communication such as local and national television news programs about the Mindanao region in the southern Philippines. Results show that Mindanao-based journalists present Mindanao to local viewers as different, neglected, and violent. This is possibly an indication of how historical social ...

Influence Of Message Theme On Consumer Perceptions Of Lab Grown Meat, Kellie Kubacak, Courtney Meyers, Hannah L. Ford, Nan Li, Lindsay Kennedy

Journal of Applied Communications

Lab grown meat is a new technology being developed as a potential alternative protein source. Although some research has been done about public perception of lab grown meat, no studies to date have observed the effects of message themes on public perception of lab grown meat. The study sought to better understand measures of uncertainty and risk and benefit perceptions after viewing a themed blog post about lab grown meat. Participants were randomly assigned one of three themed blog posts - against lab grown meat, neutral, or support lab grown meat. Perception questions were asked after viewing the blog post, and ...

Slices Of The Big Apple: A Visual Explanation And Analysis Of The New York City Budget, Joanne Ramadani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a component of government, budgets are fundamental not only to improving the quality of a shared society, but also to understanding what our government officials consider to be their priorities. However, most budgets can be difficult to understand, using terms that are not familiar to people who have not studied finance or economics. To that end, Slices of the Big Apple is an interactive, centralized narrative website that uses visualizations at its core in order to: 1) facilitate a holistic understanding of the New York City government budget for NYC residents; and 2) conduct a five-year analysis of Community ...

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and ...

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and ...