Digital Commons Network^™

Ice Bear: The Cultural History Of An Arctic Icon By Michael Engelhard, Geneviève Pigeon

The Goose

Review of Michael Engelhard's Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon.

Ua12/9 Newsletter, Vol. 4, Issue 4, Wku Counseling & Testing Center

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about WKU Counseling & Testing Center.

• Our Staff
• Staff Spotlight - Susan Harper, Masami Matsuyuki
• Star's Report - Therapy Dog
• CTC Sets Green Dot Training Dates
• Star's Good Work
• Star is Turning 2
• Testing Corner
• Support Group Spotlight - LGBTQIA Group
• Resources
• Laves, Karl. Who Are You Going to Call?
• Fun Facts About August
• Counseling Services

Believing Is Not The Same As Being Saved By Lisa Martin, Gillian Harding-Russell

The Goose

Review of Lisa Martin's Believing is not the same as Being Saved.

How Visual Communication Strategies, Brand Familiarity, And Personal Relevance Influence Instagram Users’ Responses To Brand Content, Lijie Zhou

Dissertations

This study comprehensively investigated the effects of visual themes, visual perspective, personal relevance, and brand familiarity on brand constructions (attitude-toward-brand, brand love, brand respect, and three dimensions of brand image) on Instagram. The study consists of two parts. In Study 1, the main and interaction effects of visual design elements on individuals’ visual attentions, brand recognition, and attitude toward brands were examined by using a 4 (visual theme: customer-centric, employee-centric, product-centric, and non-branded) × 2 (view perspective: first-person view vs. third-person view) between-subject eye-tracking test. In Study 2, a 4 (visual theme: customer-centric, employee-centric, non-brand, and product-centric) ×2 (brand familiarity: …

The Motivational Pull Of Video Game Feedback, Rules, And Social Interaction: Another Self-Determination Theory Approach, Ryan Rogers

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This paper argues that most video game enjoyment can be understood in terms of the type of feedback used, the rules set out by the game and the social elements of the game - concepts that have been identified as critical to video games. Self-determination theory (SDT) is used as a lens for understanding the mechanism by which these traits might lead to enjoyment. Specifically, the argument is that feedback, rules, and social elements of games will fulfill the dimensions of SDT - competence autonomy, and relatedness. Then, the dimensions of SDT will predict enjoyment. Participants were presented with a …

Decoding Nonverbal Ability: A Theoretical Model For The Acquisition Of Nonverbal Decoding Skill, Julia Berger

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Nonverbal communication adds multiple layers of meaning to social interaction above that conveyed by words. The comprehension of these nonverbal messages depends on individual ability which varies greatly between individuals. Variation in nonverbal communication ability and the variables of influence that have been associated with it over decades of research are the topic of this research project. Variables that have been correlated to nonverbal communication skill were used to develop a theory for the development of this skill and construct an evidence-based theoretical model that provides an explanation for nonverbal skill acquisition and variability. This model was also analyzed for …

The Use Of Social Media Interactivity Between Nevada E-Government Agencies And The Public: An Analysis Of The Role And Impact Of Twitter Accounts, Jung Eun Song

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Social media platforms have extended the information and communication technology (ICT) landscape in the public sector and have been used to increase e-government transparency, participation, and collaboration in the U.S. e-government. The use of social media platforms has improved a two-way communication for the interactivity with the public, which can provide insights to understand compliance with the Open Government initiative. However, many government agencies using social media have not thoroughly measured the impact of their digital interactions. Moreover, a lack of empirical studies of social media exist for improving the interactivity between governments and the public. Furthermore, scholars have not …

Animate Planet: Making Visceral Sense Of Living In A High-Tech Ecologically Damaged World By Kath Weston, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Kath Weston's Animate Planet: Making Visceral Sense of Living in a High-Tech Ecologically Damaged World.

Religion And Ecology: Developing A Planetary Ethic By Whitney A. Bauman, Paul T. Corrigan

The Goose

Review of Whitney A. Bauman's Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic.

Reproducing The Ghanaian/African Subject: Ideological Tensions And Queer Subjectivities In Postcolonial Ghana, Godfried A. Asante

Communication ETDs

Same-Sex sexual relationship continues to be a criminal offence in Ghana under the carnal knowledge clause instituted by the British during colonization. Although the law does not specifically mention same-sex sexual relations, carnal knowledge criminalizes all forms of non- heterosexual sexual activities. The criminalization of same-sex sexual relations has sparked an intense debate about African subjectivity. On the one hand, many African nationalists and most Christian organizations argue that same-sex sexual relations is unAfrican; this enables them to both subjugate queers while not having to defend their views more explicitly. Others (typically academics) have explored the existence of diverse sexual …

Mass Communication Law And Policy Research And The Values Of Free Expression, Edward L. Carter

Faculty Publications

Mass communication law and policy research, including on values and theory of freedom of expression, has played an important role in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly for decades. Mass communication law research in Quarterly reached a high point with a special issue on the First Amendment in 1992 and numerous articles in the decade that followed. A relationship is explored between First Amendment theory and structural archetypes of constitutional argument. Future research could focus on international law and contemporary challenges involving technology, surveillance and changes in democratic citizenship.

Girl Crush: Liminal Identities And Lesbian Love In Children's Cartoons, Madison Bradley

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

A textual analysis of the cartoon Steven Universe, this project takes a semiotic approach to explore anti-essentialist messages of gender identity. I argue that within the mainstream media, the cartoon expresses prosocial messages about gender by representing nonbinary characters and gender fluid themes. Using children’s media studies, queer studies, and reception studies, I investigate how the show portrays liminal identities. In particular, I focus on how lesbian existence and gender fluidity are simultaneously normalized and othered through the text’s visuals and dialogue. Critically analyzing the ways in which the media represents queerness as ‘too adult,’ this study reveals that children’s …

Walking The Line Between Reality And Fiction In Online Spaces: Understanding The Effects Of Narrative Transportation, Sarah Gretter, Aman Yadav, Benjamin Gleason

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Recent contentions about "fake news" and misinformation online has shed light on the critical need for media literacy at a global scale. Indeed, digital stories are one of the main forms of communication in the 21st century through blogs, videos-sharing websites, forums, or social networks. However, the line between facts and fiction can often become blurry in these online spaces, and being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy can have important consequences in the lives of young Internet users. Using contemporary examples from news stories, fanfiction, advertising, and radicalization, this article outlines the features, affordances, and real-life implications of …

Explicit Content: Hip Hop, Feminism, And The Black Woman, Brittney Nicole Davis

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This work uses grounded theory and the framework of Black feminist thought to analyze the messages in contemporary hip hop music. Grounded theory was chosen to create an unbiased setting that allowed the themes to emerge rather than looking for specific occurrences. The beginning sections focus on the history of hip hop music, Black women in media and hip hop culture, hyper-masculine blackness, before reviewing key points in Black feminist thought. The top twenty hip hop songs from 2016 were studied lyric by lyric and coded into various themes resulting in three main areas of study: Formation of Black Femininity, …

Écrire Et Lire Le Caribou Au Lieu De L’Achever, Jonathan Hope

The Goose

Dans un acte sans précédent de gestion de la faune, le gouvernement libéral du Québec a décidé de capturer les derniers membres d’une harde de caribous des bois en Abitibi et de les enfermer dans un zoo. Biologistes et écologistes ont exprimé, avec raison, leur inquiétude et leur colère; cette situation est aussi consternante d'une perspective littéraire.

A Saturnalia Of Bunk : Selections From The Free Lance, 1911–1915, H. L. Mencken, S. T. Joshi

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

H. L. Mencken’s reputation as a journalist and cultural critic of the twentieth century has endured well into the twenty-first. His early contributions as a writer, however, are not very well known. He began his journalistic career as early as 1899 and in 1910 cofounded the Baltimore Evening Sun. The next year he initiated a column—The Free Lance—that ran six days a week for four and a half years, until the Sun discontinued it, partially in response to Mencken’s controversial defense of Germany during World War One.

In this early forum for his renowned wit, Mencken broached many of the …

Ua42/1/5 Online Learning At Wku, Wku Online

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about WKU Online / Online Program Services.

• Faculty Spotlight: Creating a Sense of Community in an Online Program with Dr. Jane Olmsted
• Student Spotlight Meet Jessie Key
• Supporting Student Success Through Coaching
• Recent Changes
• Resources for Working with Online Students
• Guaranteed Online Pathway for Completion of Colonnade
• Ideas for Expanding Communication to Increase Recruitment & Support
• WKU Online Learning / Tuition Cheat Sheet
• Addressing Financial Barriers
• 6 Areas of Impact
• Our Team

Harriet Tubman, Women On 20s, And Intersectionality: Public Memory And The Redesign Of Us Currency, Calvin Coker

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article analyzes representative texts from the public debate surrounding the Treasury Department’s decision to place Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, showing that public memories of Tubman were complicated by an intersectional understanding of her role as a black woman abolitionist. Tubman’s femininity is emphasized to the detriment of her historical significance in a way that complicates Tubman’s relationship to currency as a victim of the slave trade. Using money as a technology of memorialization invites a deeper understanding of Tubman as a black anticapitalist woman, as her placement on money is read by some as ironic. The article …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Elements Affecting Adoption And Implementation Of Health Literacy Initiatives In Healthcare Organizations: A Qualitative Study, Audrey C. Riffenburgh

Communication ETDs

Nearly nine in ten U.S. adults struggle to use increasingly complex healthcare organizations and to understand the information these organizations provide. However, healthcare organizations are not yet widely addressing the need to make their services and health information easier to navigate, understand, and use.

The purpose of this study was to expand knowledge about the facilitators and barriers to adoption and implementation of health literacy initiatives in healthcare organizations. Sixteen qualitative interviews with individuals who lead health literacy initiatives in 16 organizations across the U.S. were conducted.

The study identified multiple facilitators and barriers to health literacy adoption and implementation …

A Mixed Method Study Of A Former Special Operations Community: Identifying Factors That Effect Cross-Cultural Competency, John Phillip Buffin

All Theses And Dissertations

The September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks on the United States caused a series of military events, including the planning and deployment of troops to Afghanistan. In less than a month after that infamous September day, military Special Forces (SF) members and officers from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were operating in Afghanistan. The SF and CIA members were faced with not only the difficult geographical terrain but were hampered by inadequate time to prepare for the complicated human terrain of the Afghan culture.

In the initial months of the war, these deficiencies were not evident; however, over the next decade, …

Americans’ Willingness To Communicate With Mexican Immigrants: Effects Of Ethnocentrism And Immigration Status, Stephanie Leanne Harris

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Prompted by the 2016 United States (US) Presidential election, the topic of Mexican immigration has come to figure prominently in contemporary societal discourse. This study explores the willingness of US citizens to communicate with Mexicans as a function of US citizens’ ethnocentrism and Mexicans’ immigration documentation status. Specifically, this study measured ethnocentrism (Neuliep & McCroskey, 1997) and general willingness to communicate (McCroskey, 1992) of US citizens and then considered the relationship of these variables to their willingness to communicate with documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants. The study also explored the potential role that various lifespan variables, such as early communication …

Reconceptualizing The Work Of A Content Provider For An Online Audience: A Case Study For How Pedagogical Strategies Can Provide Models Of Engagement For Producers Of Entertainment, Diane Cooke

English Theses & Dissertations

With the interconnectivity of the Internet, and the availability of affordable media compositional tools, the proliferation of online media continues to grow exponentially. However, each day is still comprised of a fixed 24 hours, with far fewer hours spent in active media consumption. Considering the global potential for content to be found (Moreville), discovered (Cormier) or spread (Jenkins), content providers are looking for ways to attract, cultivate and hopefully expand their audiences amid all this digital clutter. In the field of entertainment, this challenge is complicated when small content providers are not aligned with an online, curated network such as …

Can Big Whales Inspire Big Behaviors? A Study Of Environmental Communication, And Nature Immersion, Theresa Soley

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Direct contact with wild nature is becoming harder for people to access in present times, yet research suggests that experiencing nature is important to the formation of environmental values, which may lead to conservation behaviors. My thesis experiment theorizes that direct contact with nature has the ability to impact people's behavioral beliefs and intentions toward the environment, applying Icek Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the New Ecological Paradigm Scale as measures. A questionnaire was administered post-whale watching trips in Juneau, Alaska to determine whether whales, direct experience with charismatic megafauna, could stimulate positive attitudes and behaviors toward recycling. …

"But She's Snow White, She Would N'T Hurt Anybody": A Critical Analysis Of Gender And Power In Once Upon A Time, Mackenzie Mahler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines gender performance and its relation to power in the television series Once Upon a Time (OUAT). On the surface, OUAT is a television show that constantly challenges the culturally-ingrained gender norms often found in fairy tales, as it creates new storylines for traditional fairy tales. This warrants a deeper examination of the series to understand if and how it is subverting these typical gender norms. To fully understand how gender operates in OUAT, I examined how gender affects and is affected by hegemony in the show and how this relates to our cultural understanding of gender and …

The Prospector, June 13, 2017, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: The Fight for Duranguito Continues

Prospectus, June 7, 2017, Parkland College, Evyjo M. Compton, Greg Gancarz, Emma Gray, Derian Silva

Prospectus 2017

Frequent fire alarms leave Parkland-goers curious about the cause; Planetarium introduces new shows, continues previous productions for summer; Prospectus attends 2017's Summer Camp festival; Summer for Parkland students and Champaign-Urbana;

Open Source Micro Diplomas: New Credentials For New Learning, Jack F. Powers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The standard model for college in America—a four-year bachelor’s degree that teaches critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication skills—is unaffordable and unattainable for most Americans. Only about a third of citizens aged 25 and over have achieved a baccalaureate degree or better. Two-thirds are left behind in precarious jobs that pay substantially less and that are losing ground. Everyone from politicians to parents repeats the mantra of “college for all”, but the reality is more like “college for the socio-economically gifted.”

At the same time, the modern world of work is evolving into a more complex, technical, and computerized …

The Rise Of The Listicle: Using Eye-Tracking And Signal Detection Theory To Measure This Growing Phenomenon, Jason Robert Freeman

Theses and Dissertations

As online technology continues to progress, the modes of communication through which content can be shared have exponentially grown. These include advances in navigational options for presenting information and news online. Though the listicle has been around for centuries, the internet has proliferated its growth, as content producers rely on its structure as a vehicle for sharing information. This research shows that in the case of listicles, format had no direct effect on recall, however, participants who had a greater interest in the content showed significantly higher levels of memory sensitivity. This critical finding suggests that news outlets and content …

Backpedaling Nugget Smugglers: A Facebook And News Article Thematic Analysis Of Chick-Fil-A Vs. Gay Marriage, Stacy M. Wiedmaier

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study utilizes William Benoit’s Image Repair Theory to frame the dominant crisis communication strategies that fast food chain Chick-fil-A (CFA) employed before, during and after their CEO mixed his personal opinion on social issues with corporate policy in June 2012. The thematic analysis draws from three distinct data sets that include 3,900 Facebook comments posted by the general public on CFA’s social media page, 32 individual Atlanta Journal-Constitution news articles that address the debate and CFA’s public response to the crisis titled “Who We Are.” This thesis aims to identify both the dominant themes in Facebook posts and the …