Digital Commons Network^™

“Black Americans And Hiv/Aids In Popular Media” Conforming To The Politics Of Respectability, Alisha Lynn Menzies

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines narratives about racialized gender, sexuality, and class through media images of black Americans with HIV/AIDS. Through textual analysis of media sites featuring HIV/AIDS and blackness (The Announcement, Precious, and Marvelyn Brown’s website, www.marvelynbrown.com), this project analyzes how the politics of respectability—a set of precepts that govern how black men and women can present themselves in public spaces to align with white ideals of gender and sexuality—construct black people in media representations of HIV/AIDS. This work examines how respectability politics deployed in media representations of HIV/AIDS and black Americans reclaim notions of acceptable black sexuality …

Dialectical Tensions Experienced During Pediatric Chronic Illness: Analyzing Art Therapy Conversations From A Relational Dialectics Perspective, Katherine A. Rafferty, Erin Parcell

Journal of Clinical Art Therapy

Relational dialectics theory (RDT) provides a framework for understanding the dialectical tensions families experience when talking about pediatric chronic illness. One place where families may express these tensions is during clinical art therapy sessions, where therapists encourage child patients and their family members to use the creative process of art to tell stories while engaged in art making. Subsequently, we studied one clinical art therapy program for families with chronically ill hospitalized children. We examined the naturally occurring conversations during the art making process. Family members’ talk enumerated three primary dialectical tensions describing the pediatric illness experience. Findings and implications …

Medium As King: Social Media & The Political Campaign, Isaac Shea

Masters Theses

There is a growing need for a greater understanding of the intersection between great content, effective targeting and proper media usage in mediated communication and especially in American politics. As more campaigns move their efforts online in an attempt to reach a rapidly growing digital constituency, more content will continue to be less visible. The major quest for this study will be to challenge the long-standing idea that “content is king” which Bill Gates termed at the inception of the internet. A theoretical background of Marshall McLuhan and Kathleen Hall Jamieson will not only allow us to answer this question, …

Access Magazine, Summer 2016, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Access Magazine

No abstract provided.

Defining News: A Ten-Nation Perspective, August Grant, Jeffrey Wilkinson, Diane Guerrazzi, Yicheng Zhu

Faculty Publications

Worldwide, the consumption of news and information is greater than ever before. But twenty years of Internet news and a decade of social media have permanently altered the patterns of behaviors associated with how consumers look for news and even how they perceive what ‘news’ is for them. As the media landscape changes and old approaches no longer fit, it may be time to re-assess the fundamental definition of “news.” Traditional news values have been defined and extensively studied by Western researchers, but little attention has been paid to the correspondence of these definitions of news with consumers’ behavior in …

Communities In (Digital) Space: Creating Networks For Daily Living Through Pervasive Media, Jamie Lynn Henthorn

English Theses & Dissertations

Studies of online communities often focus either on communities that produce texts or the texts with which individuals engage. This dissertation examines online communities that practice in ongoing activities, in their leisure time, often with no end goal of producing any final text. Through interviews, surveys, and community forum analysis of running, gaming, and translation communities, this study finds that place and everyday habits factor heavily into the ways that sustained online communities structure their work. “Place” can have several meanings within this context, including the communities valuing specific locations or working with specific individuals because of where they live. …

How Do Presence, Flow, And Character Identification Affect Players’ Empathy And Interest In Learning From A Serious Computer Game?, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael, Amanda Waldron

Communication

This study develops and tests an integrated model of how three psychological variables—presence, flow, and character identification—contribute to interest in learning and empathy with people from other cultures through a simulation game. U.S. college students played one of two roles (an American journalist or Haitian survivor) in the game that dealt with the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Presence was a powerful predictor of flow, character identification, and empathy felt during the games. Furthermore, empathy experienced by game play significantly predicted interest in learning more about the game topics. Flow and identification made secondary contributions to learning outcomes, with …

Becoming The Change Witnessed: Strategic Use Of Empathy In Morgan Spurlock’S “Straight Man In A Gay World”, Michael W. Tumolo, Jennifer Biedendorf

The Qualitative Report

This essay examines the strategic use of empathic communication that fosters a loving struggle for Existenz in “Straight Man in a Gay World” (2005), an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary-styled television program 30 Days. The show functions as a persuasive discourse designed to influence the heterosexual participant and, by extension, the implied audience. This essay offers an overview of key terms in the study of empathy and analyzes key moments of empathic communication in the episode.

Padawan’S Journey: Remixing Star Wars Radio For Adolescent Literacy Education, Mark J. Davis

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The Star Wars phenomenon motivates adolescents who may be disengaged in the classroom. The wealth of visual content may overshadow the power of the music, sound effects, and dialogue. In literacy education, skills are often practiced by reading and discussing traditional texts. In this digital literacy project, struggling readers remixed the Star Wars canon through audio storytelling. Students served as actors, Foley artists, and directors in the recording of brief episodes based on the original trilogy. The project heightens students’ oral fluency and text comprehension by engaging in close reading and structured dialogue. The recordings demonstrate how students can be …

The Think Aloud Approach. A Promising Tool For Online Reading Comprehension, Stefania Carioli, Andrea Peru

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Despite its unquestionable interest from a theoretical and practical point of view, so far there has been little research on online reading and there is a lack of attention paid to this topic in most European educational institutions. In particular, primary and secondary school teachers are not adequately trained on how and when to intervene to support students’ proficiency in the online reading comprehension. After presenting a rationale demonstrating why students may struggle with online reading comprehension and the importance to adopt a self-regulated reading, this study proposes a Teacher’s Guide that could support late primary and secondary school teachers …

Three-Year-Old Photographers: Educational Mediation As A Basis For Visual Literacy Via Digital Photography In Early Childhood, Arielle Friedman

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The study examines two years of an educational program for children aged three to four, based on the use of digital cameras. It assesses the program’s effects on the children and adults involved in the project, and explores how they help the youngsters acquire visual literacy. Operating under the assumption that formal curricula usually marginalize visual and digital literacy, the program gives photography a central role in all areas of preschool learning: the children take pictures of all their daily preschool activities, and view and learn with photographs from various resources.

The findings illustrate the centrality of educational mediation – …

A Clown, A Quartet & Los 33: How An Ensemble From Chile Uses A Flag To Bring Hope Around The World, Becky St. Clair

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

No abstract provided.

Required Biochem Class Live-Streamed This Summer: Collaboration With Union College Makes Required Credits Easier To Obtain, Chris Mclean-Wheeler

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

No abstract provided.

A Systematic Review Of Dual-Sensory Impairment In Older Adults, Abby F. Malawer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The elderly population (ages 65 years and older) in the United States is estimated to double between 2000 and 2030 to approximately 72 million people. Among this population, sensory impairment is a chronic disability. The combination of both hearing and vision impairment, referred to as dual-sensory impairment (DSI) is a chronic condition on the rise. The prevalence of DSI ranges from a low of 1.6% to as high as 22.5% depending on the population (Appollonio et al., 1995). Higher prevalence rates tend to emerge in populations receiving rehabilitative and hospital care. DSI impacts independent physical function and verbal communication, along …

Queering By Example: Sex Education In The Age Of Vlogging, Zoe M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 1990s saw the rise of third wave feminism, queer theory and the digital age. This paper looks at how the three come together in YouTube video bloggers’ promotion of queer sex-positive ideology. Sex positivism is the belief that all safe, consensual sex is healthy, while queer theory emphasizes the diversity and instability of sex and gender identities. YouTube vloggers engaged in life-streaming profit from the entertainment value of revealing personal sexual information while framing their sexual revelations as healthy, shame-free sex positivism. In doing so, they also put their unique and sometimes changing sexualities on public display, in effect …

Book Review: Remembering Genocide, Tony Barta

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Of Communication Styles Of Millennial Employees With The Communication Satisfaction And Perceptions Of Communicator Competence Of Their Supervisors, Edward R. De La Torre

Dissertations

Each generation in the workplace shares characteristics that distinguish them from the generations before them. These differences in personality, behavior, and attitudes can result in intergenerational conflict, and these dynamics were identified by researchers when describing the interaction between young Millennial workers and their supervisors of the older generations. However, research did not explicitly test if these differences extend to the different communication styles that people exhibited in their verbal interactions. One such communication style paradigm, the Mok’s Communication Styles Survey (MCSS), describes the actual communication style of an individual, and was used to see if Millennials communicated differently than …

Adolescent Self Esteem And Instagram: An Examination Of Posting Behavior, Anna Hill, Lamaja Denman

Concordia Journal of Communication Research

Social media is a way that people can communicate and share parts of their lives through the internet ("Social Media", n.d.). Being that the media tends to have an influence on the general public, it has an influence on adolescents as well. Sometimes this influence can be quite negative (Sanders, 2015). Because of this, exploring their connection would be insightful. This study explores how a specific social media site, Instagram, may affect adolescent girls and their self-esteem. The researchers issued a self-esteem questionnaire to a gorup of girls on their self-esteem and compared it to their Instagram profiles. In this …

A Rhetorical Criticism Of Blackfish: Making Waves In Orca Activism, Lindsay Beisheim

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Pretty Princess And Hurdling Heroes: A Content Analysis Of Walt Disney Studio Movies, Jessica Noll

Communication Studies

This study investigated the portrayal of active and passive behaviors of male and female characters in Walt Disney Studio original animated films. It was hypothesized that males would exhibit more active behaviors than their female counterparts and that females would exhibit more passive behaviors than their male counterparts. The results indicated that both of these hypotheses were supported. The study also found that the least likely interaction of male and female characters was when the male character was being passive and the female character was being active. The most likely was male characters performing active behaviors and female characters performing …

How-To Understand And Create Hip-Hop Art, Joshua Wolcott

Graphic Communication

Typography is an essential component of Graphic Communication. The purpose of this study was to bridge typography with hip-hop art. To bridge the two disciplines, hip-hop art was presented in the context that it is actually practiced by these artists. The use of a questionnaire and a drawing lesson was intended to bring the subject within its true context. Presenting the art form in its true context enabled participants involved in the study to understand the art form with the perspective that the discipline, like typography, involves the use of lettering. Participants that were interested in drawing were able to …

Music And Language Development: Traits Of Nursery Rhymes And Their Impact On Children's Language Development, Ashley Lauren Gonzalez

Music

From birth--possibly even before birth--the amount and array of external stimuli profoundly affect a child’s cognitive and linguistic development. In addition to verbal communication from parent to child, singing proves to be an integral aid to a child’s development of speech and language, allegedly due to repetitions of words and rhythms. Nursery rhymes are, from infancy, among the most commonly presented forms of musical stimulus for children. The repetitive nature of the nursery rhymes undoubtedly supports language and speech development, but various characteristics of nursery rhymes, specifically pitch interval, meter, phrase length, contour, and harmony, also contribute substantially to the …

Beneath The Surface Dive And Beach Cleanup Festival, Megan Van Hamersveld

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

A Fish Out Of (Open) Water: A Close Textual­-Intertextual Analysis Of The Monterey Bay Aquarium, Danielle Berton

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

That's Disgusting: The Role Of Disgust In Nonprofit Marketing Campaigns, Tyler N. King

Theses and Dissertations

Nonprofit organizations face a unique challenge in communicating their messages in a marketing saturated world. The author of this research studied how nonprofit organizations used fear, disgust and empathy in their marketing campaigns to see if the use of these emotions would have an effect on six different factors. The results of this study showed how the use of distress can be used to amplify the feelings people have when they see images that contain both fear and disgust.

Why Kids Are 'Lovin' It': A Q Methodology Analysis Of The Appeal Of Mcdonald's, Erica Nelson Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

The dramatic rise in childhood obesity is a major concern nationwide. Unprecedented media exposure, drastically decreased time spent interacting as a family, and the consumption of calorie-dense foods are all heated topics of discussion with ties to weight gain. In this research, possible associations are examined between media, social groups and a favorite fast-food restaurant among children: McDonald's. Q methodology was used to analyze the various factors that draw children to McDonald's. With a theoretical background in social learning theory, this study had 29 children rank-order 30 photographs depicting elements of the McDonald's experience. Pictures included the most and least …

The Importance Of Online Peer Relationships During The Transition To Motherhood: Do They Decrease Stress, Alleviate Depression And Increase Parenting Competence?, Bobbie Sue Arias

Dissertations and Theses

This research addressed the challenges faced by women in today's society during the transition to motherhood, and explored the possible benefits of an online natural helping network of blogging peers. Given the content of the literature describing the transition to motherhood and the many hardships that pose possible obstacles for an ideal transition, this research attempted to uncover the reasons why mothers blog and what benefit, if any, they experience as a result of blogging. This study explored the following questions: Why do women blog during the transition to motherhood? What is the relationship among the seven identified variables: blogging …

A Tale Of Two Mommies: (Re)Storying Family Of Origin Narratives, Elizabeth A. Suter, Jody Koenig Kellas, Stephanie K. Webb, Jordan A. Allen

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study examined co-mother family of origin stories. Origin stories, representing the formation of a family, are culturally understood within a master narrative of heterosexual love and biological childbearing. Beginnings of co-mother families rupture this dominant, gendered, boy-meets-girl script. Investigating whether or not co-mother stories reify the normative master narrative or if instead their narrations resist and/or possibly transform conventional understandings, analysis identified three co-mother origin story themes: Becoming a Family (1) as Normal, (2) as Negotiation, and (3) as Normalization. Themes differ in terms of depiction of co-mother family formation as congruent with current norms, as something that needs …

The Guardian, May 2, 2016, Wright State University Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

Twenty page issue of The Guardian, the official student-run newspaper for Wright State University. The Guardian has been published regularly since March of 1965.

Lessons From A Garbage Dump: How To Say 'No', Michael Preston

UCF Forum

It was a symbol of excess and waste in 1980s New York City. The massive 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, N.Y., was once the largest garbage dump in the world.