Digital Commons Network^™

Using The Zmet Method To Understand Individual Meanings Created By Video Game Players Through The Player-Super Mario Avatar Relationship, Bradley R. Clark

Theses and Dissertations

Video game researchers have recently begun to explore qualitative techniques to understand video games and their audiences. Yet many questions remain concerning the significance of gaming media and how video game research should be conducted. This research addresses the changing focus of video game researchers from the "producers," or sender of the video game, to the "audience" or receiver. This is accomplished in the following ways: by exploring meanings created by individuals while "role-playing" in an electronic world as an on-screen video game avatar; by using the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET), to gather a deeper understanding of how players …

The Legacy, March 19, 2008, Lindenwood University

The Legacy (2007-2018)

Student Newspaper of Lindenwood University

Spartan Daily, March 19, 2008, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 130, Issue 32

Columbia Chronicle (03/03/2008), Columbia College Chicago

Columbia Chronicle (student newspaper)

Student newspaper from March 3, 2008 entitled The Columbia Chronicle. This issue is 48 pages and is listed as Volume 43, Number 21. Cover story: "Walking it out, Chicago style" Editor-in-Chief: Amanda Maurer

Nation Building, Utopia, And The Latin American Writer/Intellectual, María Odette Canivell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nation Building, Utopia, and the Latin American Writer/Intellectual," María Odette Canivell discusses the role of utopia in the foundational myths of Latin American cities and its nations. Nation building, in Latin America, Canivell claims, is tied to European myths regarding the New World, as well as to the function of writers' (escribidores) and intellectuals' (letrados) re-formulation of these myths along with their own desires/dreams as to what the ideal of Latin America means. Escribadores and letradas, who make history while re-writing the story/history of their nations, have a direct effect on the policy making and construction of …

Central Florida Future, Vol. 40 No. 23, February 29, 2008

Central Florida Future

Explicit images found on professor's laptop; Block party; SGA explains tuition costs; New policy could require meningitis shots for all students; Meningitis vaccine.

Central Florida Future, Vol. 40 No. 13, February 6, 2008

Central Florida Future

Putting a stop to the go; Speed a factor in fatal car crash; Jordan princess supports exchange program; Stressed nurses increase turnover.

Inside Unlv, Cate Weeks, Grace Russell, David Ashley, Shane Bevell, Angela Sablan

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Central Florida Future, Vol. 40 No. 11, February 1, 2008

Central Florida Future

Second meningitis case confirmed; Six is enough; Student dies in Ocala car crash; Webcast goes down, hopes stay high.

The Guardian, January 09, 2008, Wright State University Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

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

Post-September 11Th Representations Of Latin American Immigrants In Political Discourse: An Analysis Of Metaphor, Nick James Romerhausen

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyzes the types of metaphorical labels that the United States House of Representatives uses in post-September 11th resolutions to label and describe Latin American immigrants. The rhetorical philosophy of Kenneth Burke, Haig Bosmajian’s The Language of Oppression, and a study conducted in 1999 by Otto Santa Ana provide the framework for analyzing the power of the dominant and secondary metaphors found in these documents. Furthermore, this paper examines the connection between metaphorical labels and social and political attitudes toward Latin American immigration in contemporary discourse.

Accurate Mental Maps As An Aspect Of Local Ecological Knowledge (Lek): A Case Study From Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland, John Mckenna, Rory J. Quinn, Daniel J. Donnelly, J. Andrew G. Cooper

All UNF Research

A mental map of the substrate of Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland, compiled from interviews with local fishermen, is compared with maps produced by science-based techniques. The comparison reveals that the mental map is highly accurate. This finding contrasts with the spatial distortion characteristic of the classic mental map. The accuracy of the Lough Neagh map is attributed to the fact that it is a compendium of the knowledge of several generations, rather than an individual perception. Individual distortions are filtered out, and accuracy is promoted by economic self-interest. High accuracy may be characteristic of the mental maps held by artisanal …

Epistemological Pluralism: Reorganizing Interdisciplinary Research, Thaddeus R. Miller, Timothy D. Baird, Caitlin M. Littlefield, Gary Kofinas, F. Stuart Chapin, Iii, Charles L. Redman

All UNF Research

Despite progress in interdisciplinary research, difficulties remain. In this paper, we argue that scholars, educators, and practitioners need to critically rethink the ways in which interdisciplinary research and training are conducted. We present epistemological pluralism as an approach for conducting innovative, collaborative research and study. Epistemological pluralism recognizes that, in any given research context, there may be several valuable ways of knowing, and that accommodating this plurality can lead to more successful integrated study. This approach is particularly useful in the study and management of social–ecological systems. Through resilience theory's adaptive cycle, we demonstrate how a focus on epistemological pluralism …

Catching The Video Virus, Trupti Guha

ETD Archive

In the process of computer-mediated exchange, some online videos travel from one person to another resulting in the process of diffusion of the video. However, there are very few empirical investigations of the audience involved in the process. This exploratory research employs Rogers' diffusion of innovations as a theoretical framework to study online video users. Theories from social networks on tie strength and homophily are applied to create an integrated diffusion model. Based on survey data from college students, online video audience was profiled in two ways: one based on individual characteristics and another on activities with video content. Participants …

Exploring Interdisciplinary Prayer Research In A Health Context, E. James Baesler

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

Communication, Psychology, and Sociology are three leading academic disciplines engaged in the social scientific study of prayer, the spiritual communication between a believer(s) and God, but rarely do these disciplines collaborate in interdisciplinary prayer scholarship. Possibilities for interdisciplinary prayer research in a health context are explored through a review of the literature and academic interviews. Interdisciplinary linkages in the prayer-health context are organized in an integral "all-quadrant" theoretical model, and an assessment of the viability of interdisciplinary prayer-health research is considered.

Subject Guides: Putting A New Spin On An Old Concept, Nedelina Tchangalova, Amanda Feigley

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

The wide application of digital technologies in the library environment has changed the format and content of subject guides. Given the advent of new Internet tools and the explosive growth of electronic resources available on the Web, the reference librarians at the University of Maryland (UM) College Park were facing many issues when keeping up with new technologies and creating subject guides that meet library users’ satisfaction. The goal of this paper was to explore the challenges librarians are facing and to identify new technologies to assist them in creating subject guides. The literature revealed a wide variety of …

When (Post)Coloniality Meets Transnationalism, Hsin-I Cheng

Communication

Cultural differences are produced and maintained in numerous relations as spaces and places are. Spaces such as nation-states are made and organized hierarchically through historical agency within the parameter of unbalanced power interactions. They are imagined, contested, and enforced through processes in which multiple sociopolitical structures are implicated. In the de-territorialized age, the ways in which people "confound or reinforce the established spatial orders either through physical movement or through their own conceptual and political acts of re-imagination" are central for any research on people's dynamic acts of cultivating, identifying, and communicating processes (Gupta and Ferguson 17). This is especially …

Blogging About Feminist Lnterdisciplinarity In The Study Of Communication, Language, And Gender, Cynthia Berryman-Fink, Janet Bing, Deborah Cameron, Amy Sheldon, Anita Taylor

English Faculty Publications

This article provides information about several blog posts discussed during a round-table discussion on feminist interdisciplinary studies in relation to communication, language, and gender. Topics under discussion include the nature of interdisciplinarity and its relevance to feminist studies, intercultural communication, and the study and teaching of gender in women's studies programs in higher education.

A Transnational Conversation On French Colonialism, Immigration, Violence And Sovereignty, Miriam Ticktin, Ruth Marshall, Paolo Bacchetta

Publications and Research

This conversation was transcribed from a panel discussion that took place at The Scholar & Feminist Conference XXXII, “Fashioning Citizenship: Gender and Immigration,” held on March 24, 2007 at Barnard College.

Study Of Symbolic Expressions In Peking Opera'scostumes And Lyrics, Yiman Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis represents an analysis of symbolic expressions used to convey traditional Chinese cultural values in marital relations as expressed through costumes and lyrics in Peking Opera plays and performances. Two symbols, dragon and phoenix, were selected from the costume collection. Four symbols--bird, tiger, wild goose, and dragon--were selected from compilations of lyrics. These symbols were selected because they expressed Chinese core cultural values, an imperial ideology based on Confucian thoughts, which were practiced rigidly during Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Modeling Theory is applied to argue that dragon and phoenix as visual symbols convey ideas about characters' background, marital relationship, social …

Processes And/Of Performance: Difference, Memory, And Experimentation, Benjamin Daniel Powell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study enacts performance analyses by combining experimental and avant-garde performance practices of artists or art movements such as John Cage, Jerzy Grotowski, Dadaism, and Eugenio Barba with the differential philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. By focusing on the ways that performance practice informs understandings of “the ghost” and différance in Derrida’s theories, and processes of production and experimentation in Deleuze’s, this study examines performance as a process of negotiating practice and theory that continues to produce rather than disappear. To reinforce the productive capacity of performance, this study looks at three different sites and the processes at …

Walden Pond And The Performative Touristic Gaze, Daniel Christopher Bono

LSU Master's Theses

This is an ethnographic study of tourism at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. I argue that Walden Pond operates as a site that creates tensions among visitors due to the ways that time has transformed the once serene landscape into an overcrowded swimming pool. These tensions, however, fall under the expectation that the State Reservation of Massachusetts (re)creates Thoreau’s Walden as suggested in his discourse, but the performance of history is enacted through the creation of meaning among visitors engaging in a dialogue that references the past, talking about a space that has cultural significance. Exploring the touristic experience and …

One Rhizome, Two Unstoppable Blossoms: Environmental Communication And Ecological Rhetoric, Kevin James Ells

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation will contribute to the project of explaining what environmental communication studies may offer theoretically to an understanding of communication and rhetoric in general, investigate a complex problem in rhetoric from a variety of methodological approaches, offer examples of rhetorical criticism relevant to environmental communication researchers, and delve into certain salient aspects of ecological rhetoric (defined herein as rhetoric from an ecological perspective). The hypothesis of this doctoral thesis is twofold: 1) studying environmental communication can illuminate much about communication and rhetoric in general, and 2) ecological rhetoric has considerable persuasive potential in itself for reasons that can be …

Preschool Children And The Media, William J. Thorn

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Fabric As A Narrative: Constructing A Global Quilting Tradition, Evan Bland, Laura Chapman, Ashley Ermel, Takako Iwatani, Tanna Kimmerling, Linsey Marshall, Audrey Pribnow, Antona Beckman, Metta Cederdahl, Madeline Donovan, Sara Lackey, Kristin Limoges, Alicia Roth, Maika Bauerle, Michaela Stevens, K. J. Hascall, Katie Nieland, Shannon Smith, Kirk Fellhoelter, Jill Havekost, Rick Alloway, Nancy Anderson, Timothy G. Anderson, Charlyne Berens, Stacy James, Marilyn Hahn, Anna Mostek, Bruce Thorson

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Media

OVERVIEW – The tradition of quilting is engaging people of all ages, genders and classes around the globe
CULTURE – Quilting empowers women and provides them an outlet for expression
MUSEUMS – Museum exhibitions and academics have shown quilting in a different light
THE WHITNEY – The exhibition that changed it all
IQSC – A strong quilting tradition prompts a couple to let their 900-quilt collection establish a museum
AQSG – High standards in quilt-related studies
DOCUMENTATION – Preserving and cataloging quilts make sure information is not lost for future generations
ART QUILTS – As the perception of quilting changes, …

Dialogue As Performance. Performance As Dialogue, Laura Lynn

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation is an arts-based qualitative study in Leadership and Change that describes the qualities of dialogue revealed through the felt experience of Native and non-Native American music composers engaged in a dialogue through music composition. The fifteen co-collaborators who participated in the study range in age from three-years-old to elders. The study is theoretically embedded within Performance Studies, Dr. Carolyn Kenny’s music therapy model Field of Play, and aesthetic philosophy. Methodologically, this work is expressed through performance ethnography and autoethnography and privileges textual and non-textual modes of account including photographs, video excerpts, poetry, and music manuscript. The text is …

The Rhetorical Myth Of The Athlete As A Moral Hero: The Implications Of Steroids In Sport And The Threatened Myth, Karen L. Hartman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research analyzes changes in the rhetoric of a sustaining myth in order to better assess what happens when a myth is threatened. By examining American sport and its current struggle to withstand the widespread use of steroids, the author investigates how public discourse about the scandal turns athletes from mythical heroes to cheaters. The author begins by explicating the rhetorical construction of the athlete as a moral hero in America and how this myth is perpetuated today. The author then examines how steroids threaten the myth of the moral athlete and uses Major League Baseball as a case study …

Performing Photographs: Memory, History, And Display, Melanie A. Kitchens

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my study, I place concepts and practices of photography and performance in dialogue to enable our understanding of how photographs perform and how performance contains or can contain elements we attribute to photographs. The connection between photography and performance that most intrigues me is how they make memories and when collected or restored in some socially shared way make histories too. My specific aim is to understand how photographs and performance might benefit from each other in how they make and transmit memories and histories. To activate the study, I select and focus on five specific events in which …

A House Performs, Lisa Flanagan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyses and performs a series of histories about a semi-abandoned Victorian house located in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I engage Gregory Ulmer’s inter-discursive and inter-subjective process of historiography, the mystory, as a way of viewing and doing research. Mystory allows for research through diverse perspectives of professional, popular and personal discourses, which activates the pleasures and problems of knowledge production by urging invention and creative expression. Significance is discovered in less determined, more localized, ways of knowing that avoid fixing the house in terms of predetermined “historic” values. Material culture and archives like the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps …

Democratic Pr? : Relationship-Building Between Members Of Parliament And Their Constituents, Andrea Urbinati

Theses : Honours

This paper puts forward the proposition that relationship-building public relations could facilitate a more genuine engagement between Members of Parliament and their constituents. Much has been written about Grunig and Hunt's (1984) two-way symmetric public relations and its role in establishing, building and maintaining a sense of community between an organisation and its publics. Previous work has extended the relationship management paradigm to various sub contexts such as the non-for profit sector. However, the majority of literature provides an organisation-centric perspective. This paper takes the Grunigian notion of symbiotic relationship building and applies it to the political context. This study …