Digital Commons Network^™

The Digital Folklore Project: Tracking The Oral Tradition On The World Wide Web., Jasen Bacon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I collected forty-two e-mail forwards over the course of four months, and from those I formulated a framework that adapts existing theory in collection and study of real-world folklore to the emerging folk communities that exist on the internet. Through this analysis I prove that the same genres of folklore that is routinely collected by folklorists have been adapted to fit the digital environment of the internet. I then use the framework that I lay out to perform a study of the e-mails themselves.

Systems At Play: The Construction Of International Systems In Social Impact Games, Jorge Albor

Master's Theses

This thesis explores how game makers conceive of and navigate the intersection between digital systems and real world systems by asking, how can social impact game designers shape procedural rhetoric to effectively address complex real world systems with digital systems? By examining three game case studies, I reach four significant findings regarding player agency, subversive play, design approaches to scale, and game difficulty in regards to systems fluency.

Lesson Not Learned: Deepwater Horizon Research And Media Coverage Exposes Gaps In Knowledge And Risky Protocol Within The Oil Industry, Lauren Haller

Honors Theses

An insatiable thirst for oil has led poorly coordinated, risk-prone megasystems deeper into the ocean in search of new oil reserves. Profit-driven agendas at the corporate level have a top-down effect within these megasystems. Cost-cutting and risk-downplaying leaves the field employees unprepared to handle emergencies. A series of costly mistakes led to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which caused extensive damage to an already fragile ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico. The wealth and political influence of the oil industry overpowers lax regulatory agencies and legislation-even though media and research has exposed frustrating parallels between the Deepwater Horizon …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 87, No. 27, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Stephens, Brad. Willie Taggart’s $475,000 Deal Draws Praise, Criticism – Football
• Wade, Katherine. Blind Horses Find a Home on Karen Thurman’s Bowling Green Farm
• Wade, Katherine. WKU Seeks to Stop State Budget Cuts
• Anderson, Anna. Community Action of Southern Kentucky Helps Keep Locals Warm for the Winter
• Rutledge, Chris. M is for Movie Enthusiast – Stefan meadows
• Jenkins, Spencer. Sarai Aguazul Remembered for Her Faith, Friendship
• Kriz, Lindsey. WKU Finding New Ways to Interact with Students
• McKay, Michael. Old Bowling Green Junior High Converting Into Apartments
• Vogt, Darren. Editorial …

Chimes: December 9, 2011, Calvin College

Chimes

Campus Fair Trade sale promotes justice by Amanda Elliott

Acton translates Kuyper by Ryan Devries

Choirs worship with LaGrave by Grace Ruiter

Scientists fight bacterial resistance by Jon Hielkema

Paradise Fears impressive by Jess Koster

Soccer team finishes second in the nation by Mark Zylstra

Nor'easter News Volume 5 Issue 7, Nor'easter News Staff

Nor'easter News

The forty-sixth issue of the University of New England's student-run newspaper, Nor'easter News.

Spartan Daily December 7, 2011, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 137, Issue 52

Prospectus, December 7, 2011, Josh Grube, Alisha Kirkley, Angie Broughton, Jacob Kuppler, Buster Bytes, Mark Roughton, Spencer Brown

Prospectus 2011

C-U UNDERGROUND SCENE PICKS UP THE PACE, Keys to College Students' Success Often Overlooked, Tips for Going Green this Holiday Season, Common Student Study Myths and Tips, Stop Online Piracy Act: What You Should Know, Millennials: Shape Your Political Future, You Went to College for That?, Cobras Volleyball Finishes Off Another Strong Season, Cobras Look to Rebound From Tough Start, 99% Movement Makes the Most of the Social Web

Spartan Daily December 6, 2011, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 137, Issue 51

Columbia Chronicle (12/05/2011), Columbia College Chicago

Columbia Chronicle

Student newspaper from December 5, 2011 entitled The Columbia Chronicle. This issue is 44 pages and is listed as Volume 47, Number 14. Cover story: "Top dogs make top dollars" Editor-in-Chief: Brianna Wellen

Gender Swapping In World Of Warcraft: A Look Into Personal Relationships And Gender Identity In The Gaming Environment, Jay Potter

iResearch: Department of Communication Studies Invitational Scholar Slam 2011-2012

Massively multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are virtual environments that allow thousands of players to come together at one time to interact, fight monsters, and solve challenges. Role-playing in particular offers some unique benefits and opportunities that are not spared in its virtual equivalent. Gender-swapping, that is when a player chooses to play as a character that is the opposite gender of him or her is one of those benefits. This study will explore the phenomenon of gender-swapping, looking for the diverse reasons players may have to assume an identity so extremely opposite of their own. The purpose of …

Winona Currents Magazine, University Advancement - Winona State University

Winona Currents

This magazine published by Winona State University’s University Advancement was intended to inform WSU Alumni, students, faculty, staff and the greater community about Alumni and the university.WSU goes to Washington to meet our D.C. Alumni.

Crisis Communication Needs Assessment: A Delphi Study To Enhance Instruction For Agricultural Communicators And Other Stakeholders, Allyson Ceary Mcguire

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Agricultural communicators and industry stakeholders need to be able to develop, prepare and implement crisis communication plans to help assure the sustainability of the agriculture industry should a crisis event occur. A thorough exploration of possible options and needs for training crisis communicators is a needed study in the agriculture industry. Students learning to prepare for managing crises in real life situations are rarely taught in a hands-on, experiential manner. Students can read and analyze case studies pertaining to crises, but without having an actual crisis; little means exist for preparing students for real world situations. There is a need …

Sneaky Peeks: An Examination Of The Use Of Subliminal Messages In Children's Television And Film, Mary Patricia Charvat

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This thesis project is an account of how advertising agencies and film and television companies make use of subliminal messaging and product placement to manipulate viewers‟ subconscious minds. According to research, there is some skepticism in some areas as to the effectiveness of their subliminal messages. However, it is clear that there is some recognizable effect; statistics show an increase in obesity and self-image and self-esteem problems spurred on by subliminal messaging in television and film aimed at the young. The selected literature included well-known books on subliminal messages and other materials covering 50 years of research. The literature also …

The Components Of A Healthy Culture: Umpqua Bank, Joanna Nasser Mansour

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

When analyzing an organization's success, taking a cultural approach allows the dissection of key components necessary to determine and produce such findings. Culture brings more to the table than just the values and ways an employee is expected to conduct their daily job duties. Umpqua Bank, an Oregon-based bank, was the organization chosen for this study because the employees take great pride in its unique retail bank culture. Geertz's Cultural Approach (1973) and Edgar Schein's (1991) idea of Three Levels of Culture: core beliefs and assumptions; values and behavioral norms and artifacts were utilized, along with other communication theories used …

Nonverbal Communication In Small Group Leadership: Using Nonverbal Competence To Increase Group Cohesiveness, Angela Tice

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Cohesiveness is an important component of small groups and contributes to the overall effectiveness of the group. The purpose of this study was to research leaders' nonverbal cues and the potential effect they have on group cohesiveness. Grounded in Burgoon's expectancy violations theory, Pearce and Cronen's coordinated management of meaning theory, and Mead's symbolic interactionism theory, this study examines the leader's ability to demonstrate their competence in nonverbal communication, and as a result increasing the group's cohesiveness. The data for this exploratory study came from two different surveys, non-participant observations, and participant interviews. This study revealed that positive nonverbal communication …

Experiential Interior Design: Branding Entertainment And Nightlife For The Postmodern Young Urban Professional, Niccole S. Skomal

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Past study on Interior Design has been primarily looked at through the lenses of aesthetics and functionality. Only recently have scholars begun to see the influence marketing, in the form of branding, can have on the Interior Design process in targeting specific lifestyle groups. The purpose of this research is to understand the fabric of the postmodern Young Urban Professional lifestyle as a marketing tool for branding and designing services in the form of entertainment and nightlife. With an increasing lack of community and social connectedness in today’s postmodern society, Young Urban Professionals tend to consume entertainment and nightlife as …

Mariners All Access: An Inside Look At The Role Of A Producer At Root SportsTm, Carrie S. Tachiyama

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The experience of producing a full episode and several segments of Mariners All Access provides an in-depth look at the inner workings of a production at a regional sports network. Examining the role of the producer, what lessons are learned and discovering more effective ways to produce Mariners All Access.

The producer in this instance is a manager of a small staff, a researcher and a creator of storylines. From previous experience an assumption is made that sports networks and news stations operate the same way. After the author’s experience in producing Mariners All Access it is shown this …

Identifying Barriers And Incentives Related To Attending The Performing Arts: An Examination Of First Year College Students, Laura J. Sweet

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Young adults entering their first year of academic study beyond high school face seemingly limitless opportunities. For the first time, they’re on their own: deciding everything from when to eat to where to study and what to do in their free time. Campuses are rich with possibilities. From official student organizations and clubs, to impromptu pizza parties and dorm floor trivia contests, daily decisions create the experiences that shape the life to come. On many large campuses, alongside academic buildings are art galleries and performance spaces. Research shows that early exposures to the arts lead to increased engagement during student …

Local Television Coverage Of A Mall Shooting: Separating Facts From Fiction In Breaking News, Jeremy Harris Lipschultz, Michael L. Hilt

Communication Faculty Publications

Local TV news emphasizes the earliest stage of crimes because ‘‘breaking news’’ is fresh, dramatic and visual. A qualitative analysis was conducted using a comprehensive set of recordings of the first three-and-a-half hours of local television news coverage in Omaha, Nebraska. This study identified a series of ongoing issues that have important implications for newsroom decision-makers. Local television news used charged and dramatic language, such as that shooting victims were ‘‘fighting for their lives.’’ Reporters and news managers find themselves in the middle of a struggle between two options: remaining a distant and objective observer of events, or connecting with …

Inanimate Speech From Lovecraft To Žižek, Apple Z. Igrek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Inanimate Speech from Lovecraft to Žižek" Apple Z. Igrek explores an influential line of reasoning associated with our contemporary loss of the Real. The argument describes how the contingencies and nuances of social life have been reduced to an operational, friction-free, and homogeneous realm of signs. Slavoj Žižek contends that our inherently traumatic relationship with the Other is being foreclosed and replaced by an omnipresent technological screen of virtual communication. The danger of this shift, identified as the "digital break," is that it facilitates an extraordinary form of divine violence which strikes back at the social system …

The Metroburb: American Values In Facebook Culture, Heather Marie Carlson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Using critical discourse analysis, fantasy themes were extracted from user profiles and postings to examine American values found in Facebook culture.

Core values found on Facebook worked to create not only socially recognizable identities enacted and communicated through the participants, but also a particular culture to which participants both reflected and contributed in Facebook. Themes and values extracted from findings indicate that Facebook users should be casual, technologically-aware, social, respectful and fair to others, “good little copers,” financially savvy while at the same time valuing higher education, a healthy lifestyle, family and travel.

Because Facebook is an interestingly fluid cultural …

The Cowl - V. 76 - N. 11 - Dec 1, 2011

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 76 - Number 11 - December 1, 2011. 40 pages.

Workplace Harassment: The Social Costs Of Bullying, Andra Gumbus, Bridget M. Lyons

WCBT Faculty Publications

Most research on workplace bullying uses survey results to understand working conditions, target and bully characteristics, and results of bullying situations. This study uses content analysis to determine themes emerging from a writing assignment that asks students to respond to questions about workplace bullying. The intent of the research is to enable bullying targets to better understand the situation, to help managers to learn how to mitigate possible bullying situations, and to assist witnesses to better react to workplace incidents.

Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Working from assumptions that inequality is often spatially informed, a set of interactive cartographies has recently proliferated on Google Earth. In this essay, I analyze one of those interactive cartographies: The World is Witness produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I read the map as an organizational rhetoric that frames place as "embedded injustice." I also argue that thorough analysis of the framing of local place on Google Earth must inherently question whether the map can create a disruption in the viewing subject. While the map presents vital information on excruciatingly despicable acts of injustice, and the …

Let The Beauty We Love Be What We Do: A Case Study In Communication-Centered Leadership, Jo Carter

Communication ETDs

While leadership research is widespread, much of it represents leadership psychology assumptions that leaders are singular individuals, different from the body that they are leading. This dissertation provides a close reading of a different approach to leadership, one arising from the cultural community around the Diana's Grove retreat center. This philosophy holds cultural norms of the Cornerstones of Community (choice, thinking well of the group, thinking well of one's self, stewardship of self, and sacred wound) as overt rules that are the foundation of sustainable community interactions. It discusses how service to the idea of community is the primary motivating …

Academic Discourse And Literacy Narratives As "Equipment For Living", Kris Rutten

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Academic Discourse and Narratives of Literacy as 'Equipment for Living'" Kris Rutten discusses practices of academic discourse and argues that students entering higher education have to become part of a specific community of institutional discourse. Rutten claims that narratives of and about literacy — narratives that revolve around issues dealing with language and the acquisition of literacy — "dramatize" the tension of moving from one discourse community to another. By charting situations of "type," fictional literacy narratives can be used by students as "equipment for living" in order to reflect on confrontations and difficulties they experience in …

The Writing And Reading Of Fan Fiction And Transformation Theory, Veerle Van Steenhuyse

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Writing and Reading of Fan Fiction and Transformation Theory" Veerle Van Steenhuyse discusses the experience of immersive reading fan fiction offers to fans based on her analysis of fan fiction about the television series House, M.D. (2004-). Van Steenhuyse postulates that a text is immersive when it evokes a mental construct with the presence of a text-independent reality. In the case of fan fiction, this reality is a "transformed universe" that builds on and deviates from particular primary texts. Following the work of Marie-Laure Ryan and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Van Steenhuyse argues that readers feel immersed when …

Latino Identity In Allende's Historical Novels, Olga Ries

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Latino Identity in Allende's Historical Novels" Olga Ries analyzes the concept of individual and group identity found in five historical novels by Isabel Allende. Ries argues that while Allende's protagonists come from different backgrounds and different epochs, they share a process of psychological transformation and that affects their identity formation. The result is the formation of a transnational "Hispanic" identity, group as well as individual. In Ries's reading of Allende's texts, transnational Hispanic identity is based simultaneously on the Mexican/Hispanic concept of mestizaje and on the US-American concepts of the "melting pot" and the "American Dream."

About The Human Condition In The Works Of Dickens And Marx, Ami E. Stearns, Thomas J. Burns

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "About the Human Condition in the Works of Dickens and Marx" Ami E. Stearns and Thomas J. Burns contribute to the study of Charles Dickens's Industrial Revolution-era fiction by examining his novels in relation to Karl Marx's social philosophy. Stearns and Burns postulate that Dickens relies on Marxist concepts of class consciousness, sacrifice, revolution, social antitheses, and social injustice to weave his narratives and compare and discuss six of Dickens' novels: A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations with three works of Marx: Grundrisse, The Communist Manifesto, …