Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Strategic Communications Of Middle-Level Managers On Strategic Thinking And Organizational Performance: A Quantitative Study, Anthony Uwem Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study explored the relationship between Middle-Level Managers' (MLM) strategic communications, strategic thinking, and organizational performance. Pieces of evidence about strategic communications processes and strategic thinking supporting increased organizational performance are critical to an organization. According to researchers, when strategic communications and strategic thinking are not in the manager’s thought processes, any plans based upon such methods might fail to achieve the desired outcomes concerning organizational performance. While strategic communications and strategic thinking are essential to corporate performance, researchers have not fully substantiated their impact on the performance outcomes of an organization. Identifying to the highest Degree how a relationship …

International Students’ Perception Of Intercultural Communication From Official University Sources, Liseth Hubbard

Communication Theses

Research on intercultural communication has centered on the difficulties that international students experience during their adjusting journey in their new residence away from home. However, there are relatively few in-depth studies that report on international students’ perceptions of communicative practices from university officials. Following a social phenomenological approach, this study focuses on understanding the impressions and experiences of 12 international students. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews centered on three sensitizing concepts: intercultural sensitivity (IS), intercultural communication competence (ICC), and intercultural learning (IL). Data were analyzed using an iterative phonetic approach as described by Sarah Tracy (2019). The findings were …

Lindenwood Digest, August 17, 2022, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Does A Sender’S And Recipient’S Relationship Influence Readers’ Interpretation Of Message Tone?, Allison Arp

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Given the importance of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and the uniqueness of the cues that have meaning in this environment, research is warranted to investigate how the relationship between the people communicating via CMC might impact the way the message and cues are interpreted. This study aims to investigate whether different inherent levels of authority and familiarity between a message sender and recipient affect how email tone is interpreted. Previous studies demonstrate that when individuals communicate with authority figures, they employ different strategies than when communicating with peers. Furthermore, individuals adapt their behavior to mimic the interactants behavior, which in turn …

Scratching The Surface: An Autoethnography To Begin To Understand And Address Illness Experience In Lice Infestation, Jennifer B. Gray

The Qualitative Report

Though pediculosis, more commonly known as lice, is extremely common and has nothing to do with hygiene, misconceptions persist. Lice, constructed as a highly contagious illness, is more of a nuisance, with most contagion resulting from head-to-head contact, and 3% resulting from environmental causes; still, the condition tends to be associated with negative behavior like uncleanliness and neglect. There is very little study of it in the U.S. save for some “no nit policy” studies and almost none on the psychological or communicative impact on those affected. Through the analysis of pediculosis in my children, I detail an autoethnography of …

Harnessing Your Feminist Rage: A Multimedia Assignment For Upper-Level Courses, Caitlin E. Lawson

Feminist Pedagogy

"Harnessing Your Feminist Rage" introduces a three-part multimedia assignment that encourages students to think critically about feminist anger, particularly as refracted through social media. First, students introduce and analyze a media text or phenomenon that made them angry and reflect upon that anger. Then, using whichever online medium they choose, students call out the offender and express their anger to the audience of their choice in order to meet a specific goal. Finally, students reflect on their expression of anger and their experience creating their response. Overall, the goal is for students to combine their knowledge of feminist theories and …

Canton Through Western Eyes: Resources & Wood’S Sketches Of China, Sai Deng

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This book talk was organized by the Guangzhou Book Club and it was aimed to introduce the newly translated and published book《洋记者的广州城记》(English title: Sketches of China: with Illustrations from Original Drawings). The original English book was written by William Wightman Wood (1804-), an American journalist, businessman and cartoonist, who went to Canton, China in 1825 and created one of the first English newspapers in China, The Canton Register. This book is about his impressions and experiences of Canton and the southern China in the 1820s, all based on his travel notes. Canton was the only city which was open …

Multivocality As Practice Of Critical Inquiry For Social Justice, Cesar Cisneros

The Qualitative Report

Multivocality has been clearly and in detail present in social science reflection since the impact of the so-called linguistic turn and nowadays it has also presence in the qualitative inquiry current discussion. To explore how multivocality can be a practice of qualitative inquiry for social justice is the goal of this contribution. It is a global picture of epistemic violence that has subjugated knowledge and practices along with executing genocides and exterminations of otherness to build societies without social, epistemic, and cognitive justice that my goal is to unveil the horizon of modern social sciences to get a better understanding …

How System Efficacy Affects Risk Perception: Comparison Of The United States, Iran, And China Throughout The Covid-19 Pandemic, Nazanin Bani Amerian

Dissertations

The current study fills a gap in the risk and health communication literature that deals with perception of risk. The extended parallel process model (EPPM) and associated Risk Behavior Diagnosis Scale lack consideration for attenuated perceptions of risk when people believe that some agent (e.g., government agencies or first responders) will protect them from a hazard. This project’s intention is to establish the validity of a new concept, system efficacy, as an addition to the EPPM model. System efficacy supplements current use of self and response efficacy. In addition, this study tries to investigate how culture affect risk perception by …

Comm 1311: Fundamentals Of Speech Communication, Jeremy S. Coffman, Tammy L. Holmes, Patrick A. Luster

Open Education Resources

This OER packet contains the course materials for COMM 1311: Fundamentals of Speech Communication that introduce you to why do we/I need to take a public speaking course. The answer is also always the same. “Because it is required.” However, you the reader, and us as the authors/editors, know that this doesn’t answer the question. The real answer can be complicated, but this author/editor believes that the skills gained by public speaking will help you in any field, despite whether or not you end up working in a field that requires public speaking.

The Columbia College Chicago Oral History Model In Action: A Case Study, Erin Mccarthy Phd, Heidi Marshall Ma, Ms

What We Owe: Columbia College Chicago Oral History Model in Action

No abstract provided.

Vietnam Continued: The Battle For American Public Memory In Public School History Textbooks, Donnie Owens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The question of “how do we actively remember the past?” can perhaps best describe the purpose of public memory studies. Acknowledging this question, I analyze popular public-school textbooks to assess the way in which educational literature constructs the public memory of the Vietnam War. In total, the narratives of the texts construct a public memory of Vietnam as a controversial conflict contained within a decade of American uncertainty. However, these narratives also take care to minimize or leave aside the details of Vietnam’s lasting impact and in favor of reaffirming American exceptionalism. Ultimately, this thesis finds that students who read …

Organizational Culture And Communication Competence Workshop: Masters Plan B, Travis Bergon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project began as an attempt to understand how events, such as the “Great Resignation” (i.e., an unprecedented mass exit of employees from the U.S. workforce), have impacted the way in which organizations are attempting to mitigate employee turnover. In addition, this project examined what role managers might play in promoting a positive organizational culture. A review of literature identified Schein’s (1990) model of organizational culture and Spitzberg and Cupach’s (1984) conceptualization of communication competence as useful frameworks for helping managers understand and promote positive organizational culture and employee mental health and well-being. In addition, the review of literature pointed …

Applying The Dialogic Method In An Eighth Grade English Curriculum, Maggie Repko

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this thesis, I provide an analysis of Paulo Freire’s (1973) dialogic method for language education. I then synthesize his theories with the work of sociocultural and linguistic researchers who have determined the strongest activities to bring about student language development. Finally, I apply these theories to my appendices of created works that might be utilized in an eighth-grade creative writing course. This thesis demonstrates the similarities between Freire’s students and our students in the USA today and the ways that a critical dialogic pedagogy will meet their language learning needs while also inspiring their creative, critical conscientização. Paulo Freire …

"Advancing Pride": How New Turkish Historical Dramas Challenged Western Media's Stereotypical Images Of Muslims, Naim Aburaddi

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

After the phenomenal success of Resurrection: Ertugrul that started airing on the governmental Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) in 2014, a new wave of Turkish historical dramas started getting global popularity. These shows captivated Arabs’ and Muslims’ attention around the world and exceeded viewers’ expectations. Therefore, I examined in my study why Arab viewers watch those dramas, how they perceive and react to historical facts presented in those dramas, and whether and how those dramas confront the misrepresentations of Muslims by Western media and cinema. Utilizing Said’s conceptual framework of Orientalism and other research studies that focused on the …

Public Readiness Index Entering New Normal Period Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic As Exposure Effect To Social Campaigns, Wahyuni Pudjiastuti

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

Indonesian people will face daily activities that are no longer the same as conditions before the corona-19 virus pandemic, which is then termed as New Normal. This policy is communicated in the form of a social campaign. Policy implementation should be a solution to improve welfare. But often, support from the public is still lacking. Therefore, it is necessary to study the level of public readiness (public readiness index) in accepting a policy and the effectiveness of the social campaign that the government has carried out.

The research aims to describe the public readiness index for implementing the new normal …

Diversity Of Gay Identity And Gender Expression On Social Media, Nadissa Fadhila

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

The purpose of this research is to provide perspective on being a gay in Indonesia and his point of view on how he tries to express his diverse identities through social media Instagram. Also, how he tries to be unattached from the negative profiling and imagery of being a gay that exists in society in Indonesia. The focus of this research is the practice of posting and uploading content on Instagram from Magistus Miftah, an Indonesian fashion designer. This research is qualitative research with descriptive design and social semiotics analysis. This research concludes that the gender expression that Magistus Miftah …

A Case Study Of Organizational Mobilization Best Practices For Natural Disasters, Jaclyn Ermoyan

Masters Theses

Researching mobilization best practices for natural disasters has concluded that volunteers respond best to having meaning behind the work that they do and when they are involved at all levels of the service they are doing. After interviewing a representative from the American Red Cross and a representative from Team Rubicon, it is clear that having a local focus leads to successful mobilization practices. Both organizations are able to move quickly and innovate because of their understanding that all disasters are different. The two organizations focus on training their volunteers and having various deployment requirements. According to this research, technology …

Cinema Studies, Burak Turten

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

PREFACE

Cinema Studies is a comprehensive book that, is hoped, will provide students and researchers with film studies and other persons interested in cinema with a useful reference book on film analysis and, where relevant, the different discussions surrounding that. The contributors analyze some films using ideas and concerns from modernism, cinematographic narrative, ideology, propaganda, migration, nomadism, and the sense of revenge. The book provides new insights into films and turns the discussion towards recent research questions and analyses, representing and constituting in each contribution new work in the discipline of film text analysis.

Therefore, each chapter of this book, …

Cinema Studies: Different Perspectives, Burak Turten

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

PREFACE

Cinema Studies: Different Perspectives is essential reading for anyone interested in cinema discipline. The singular aim of this edited book of scholarly text is to stimulate and engage readers in the fast-changing, complex, and increasingly interdisciplinary nature of cinema studies, and to serve as a catalyst for future intellectual, academic, and professional-driven research agendas. It is believed that the integration of cinema studies with other disciplines will undoubtedly contribute to the development of the cinema field both in practice and in theory.

Therefore, each chapter of this book, which consists of 9 chapters, focuses on a sub-discipline such as …

Tiktok As Art: Visual Culture Art Education In An Afterschool Art Program, Chloe C. Morrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research and the objective were to investigate the firsthand experience of

visual culture art education in an after-school art program. The after-school

program was focused mainly on an underserved population. We focused our

concentration on the social media app TikTok. The author investigated visual

culture theorists and discovered ideas from Terry Barrett and his use of

denotations and connotations and their relationship to art. The participants were

members of the Boys and Girls Club of Nacogdoches who analyzed TikTok

videos using annotations and denotations, then in return created their own

individual videos inspired by an original TikTok video. The …

Going Viral: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement & Social Media, Corinn Evancho Schumacher

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In the recent years of the rise of Web 2.0, health information has become more accessible. With this shift has come a reliance on social media to inform and educate the masses on vaccines. With the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine, the conversation surrounding vaccines moved to the forefront of the United States’ zeitgeist from late 2021 to early 2022. In this research, I conducted a case study on the communication surrounding vaccines on social media while examining specific Facebook groups that advance the misinformation surrounding vaccines. I examined over 300 posts from four public Facebook groups in order to …

The Personal Is Still Political: An Analysis Of Jessica Valenti's Contemporary Feminine Style, Michala M. Zilkey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 2016, Jessica Valenti’s memoir, Sex Object, was published. Sex Object describes Valenti’s experiences of sexualization and objectification in a personal and anecdotal format. The feminine style, a rhetorical style that bridges the divide between norms of femininity and expectations of public oration, has been heralded as essential for advancing the feminist movement. This thesis asks the question, to what extent does contemporary feminists’ rhetoric mirror and diverge from earlier iterations of the feminine style? I argue that Valenti’s employs a feminine style that utilizes relational norms and self-disclosure to illustrate the personal as political and the political as …

The Pandemic Is Not Killing Us, The Police Are Killing Us: How The Change In The Subjective Reality Of Nigerian Citizens Brought About The #Endsars Protests, Olabode Adefemi Lawal

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Using the theory of the social construction of reality, I researched the multiple roles of social media in the Nigerian #EndSARS protests. I interviewed 16 Nigerian protesters from the #EndSARS movement for this study: eight participated in-person while eight protested in-person and digitally (hybrid). Participants were asked a series of scripted questions regarding the #EndSARS protests to understand the roles social media played in shaping the subjective reality of Nigerians during that time. Using thematic analysis, this thesis proposes that the change in the subjective reality of some Nigerians contributed to the October 2020 #EndSARS protests. This thesis also compares …

Investigating Toxicity Changes Of Cross-Community Redditors From 2 Billion Posts And Comments, Hind Almerekhi, Haewoon Kwak, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research investigates changes in online behavior of users who publish in multiple communities on Reddit by measuring their toxicity at two levels. With the aid of crowdsourcing, we built a labeled dataset of 10,083 Reddit comments, then used the dataset to train and fine-tune a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) neural network model. The model predicted the toxicity levels of 87,376,912 posts from 577,835 users and 2,205,581,786 comments from 890,913 users on Reddit over 16 years, from 2005 to 2020. This study utilized the toxicity levels of user content to identify toxicity changes by the user within the …

Media Ideologies And The Politics Of Digital Literacy: Discourses On Technology And Media In A Small School District In The U.S. Heartland, Chris Borntrager

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uses a discourse studies approach to investigate key communicative processes by which digital technology is given situated meanings within the institution of public education, including at the level of official discourse, administrative texts, and the spoken discourse of professional educators. The discursive processes under analysis, referred to here as “institutional media ideologies,” arguably function as discursive frameworks which, akin to tactics of management in organizations, constrain the further production of discourse in a particular professional domain, including through the codification of contextualization practices, participant roles, and the social meanings of practices implicating the use of digital technology. Furthermore, …

The Effects Of Consumer Loan Application Formats And Advertised Terms On Consumer Borrowing Decisions, Alicia M. Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumers continue to demonstrate a willingness to accrue more debt. They are also more accepting of increased repayment risk via the acceptance of longer loan terms. Extant research on consumer borrowing consists primarily of experiments designed to assess consumer choices and understand how consumers evaluate loan attributes in relation to one another within consumer borrowing contexts (Kamleitner, Hoelzl, and Kirchler 2012; Ranyard et al., 2006). Thus, prior research examines consumer responses to loan information rather than the generation of loan parameters at the time of financing. With important implications for consumers, marketers of financial products, academic researchers, and federal regulators, …

A Tide Of Technical Trends: Technology Competence Among Licensed Counselors, Brittany G. Suggs, Mary Sanderfer Stull, Spencer R. Baker, Kathie T. Erwin, David M. Savinsky

Journal of Technology in Counselor Education and Supervision

The inclusion of technology in mental health care can revolutionize the accessibility, affordability, and effectiveness of counseling services, while furnishing practical solutions to reduce mental health disparities and meet widening care demands. Steered by the Coalition for Technology in Behavioral Science (CTiBS) telebehavioral health (TBH) competencies, this study employed a descriptive survey design to investigate licensed counselors’ (LCs’) perceived technology competence in mental health care. The following research question steered the study’s exploration: What is the nature of perceived technology competence among LCs? The overarching hypothesis speculated that LCs’ exposure, familiarity, and current utilization of various mental health technologies would …

Music: Seeking Pleasure, Emotional Language, Ritualized Communication, Jillian N. Gerlach

Interdivisional Studies Summer Fellows

The impetus for my project was how I view listening to music as a spiritual or religious experience. Listening to music, instead of practicing religion, satisfies my inclination toward spirituality. In the introduction to my paper, I outlined how music exists in my life. I thought it was valuable to provide my unique experience to give context to my research. I created a diagram that delineates how I interact with music and the benefits I derive from listening to music. During this self-reflection, I realized listening to music functions like a ritual for me. I noticed my individual ritualized listening …