Digital Commons Network^™

Ethical Dimensions Of Climate And Environmental Issues In Pakistani Media, Shafiq Ahmad Kamboh, Muhammad Ittefaq, Sadia Jamil, Busha Hameedur Rahman

School of Communication Studies - Faculty Scholarship

One of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, Pakistan, is facing a variety of cases of climate and environmental ethics violations by a number of local and regional actors. Advocacy journalism has the potential to publicize these violations and injustices, stimulating democratic dialogue among the public audience that can eventually push leadership to make eco-friendly policies and raise public concerns on international platforms. The present study critically analyses the advocacy journalism coverage of cases of local and regional climate and environmental ethics violations in almost 8000 editorials in mainstream Pakistani Urdu and English language newspapers over two years and examines the …

The Mental Image ... Sources, Factors And Dimensions And The Role Of Public Relations In Improving It In Light Of The Digital Revolution (Jordanian Ministries As A Model), Nawzat Abu Alasal, Sami Melki

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

The current study, entitled “The mental image…sources, dimensions and the role of public relations in developing it under the digital revolution (Jordanian ministries as a model)”, sought to identify the nature of the mental image of Jordanian ministries in term of their formation sources, forming factors, dimensions and the role of public relations and their contribution in developing this image among publics of the ministries in light of the data and tools of the digital revolution. To obtain the field information and data of the study, the questionnaire tool was designed which was applied to (404) subjects of the Jordanian …

Collaborative Action In Informal Social Networks Of Wildfire Managers In Northwestern Wyoming, Hannah Lynn Spencer

Dissertations and Theses

Wildfire is a cross-boundary, collective action issue. Previous research has demonstrated the importance of collaborative relationships in wildfire for purposes such as increasing capacity, trading information, and facilitating landscape-scale mitigation projects. However, a stakeholder's location in social networks, as well as personal factors, may impact their collaboration. Furthermore, stakeholders must prioritize their own organizational goals and responsibilities, which may differ from those of their collaborators. I used interview and survey methods to investigate these questions in the context of wildfire management professionals in northwestern Wyoming. For the interviews, I selected 12 individuals with high betweenness centrality who were involved in …

An Analysis Of Communication-Related Information And Services Offered To Parents Of Deaf Children In Puerto Rico, Brenda Belcher

Capstone Collection

The period from birth to five years is a critical stage for human language acquisition, and inadequate access to language during this period can cause far-reaching negative effects. Young deaf and hard-of-hearing children face barriers to acquiring language through speaking and listening techniques, and their parents must make consequential decisions about what communicative strategies to pursue for their child. In Puerto Rico, information and support around communication approaches flow to parents from a variety of sources, including the Island’s local Early Hearing Detection & Intervention (EHDI) system, three dedicated schools for the deaf, and a variety of community-based organizations. This …

People And Power: Person-First Language Usage And The Criminal Justice System, Casey E. Orr

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

Language is power. Word choice and terminology, especially those referring to people, are expressions of societal norms and institutional power. Dehumanizing crime-first terms and labels are abundant and common in criminal justice contexts despite being protested by system-involved individuals and activists. Instead, many advocate for person-first terms wherein identifying language emphasizes an individual’s humanity. With a peace-focused anthropological framework, this paper presents the case for person-first language in criminal justice contexts. It is evident that adopting first-person language usage regarding the criminal justice system is necessary after analyzing and considering the multiple sources, such as the voices of those who …

Show Or Tell? A Systematic Review Of Media And Information Literacy Measurements, Daniel Schofield, Reijo Petter Kupiainen, Vegard Marinius Frantzen, Anette Novak

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media and information literacy (MIL) is a key concept in several research fields and measuring the levels of MIL is considered valuable for policy stakeholders. However, the concept is complex, and few systematic reviews of research on measuring MIL levels have been conducted. This article draws on a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies measuring MIL between 2000 and 2021. Out of a total of 4008 publications, 236 were included in the analysis, and 87 were analysed in depth. A key finding was that several studies applied broad understandings of MIL, often based on initiatives by international organisations such as UNESCO, …

Online Media Literacy Intervention In Indonesia Reduces Misinformation Sharing Intention, Trenton Ford, Michael Yankoski, Matthew Facciani, Tim Weninger

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media literacy is widely viewed as an important tool in the fight against the spread of misinformation online. However, efforts to boost media literacy have primarily focused on Western-media and Western-oriented social media platforms, which are substantively different from the media and platforms used widely in the Global South. In the present work, we focus on the media ecosystem of Indonesia and report the results of an online media literacy intervention consisting of short-videos that were targeted specifically to social media users in Indonesia (N= 656). We found that participants in our media literacy intervention were 64% more …

Filipino Students’ Competency In Evaluating Digital Media Content Credibility: ‘Beginning’ To ‘Emerging’ Levels, Margarita Felipe Fajardo

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study investigates Filipino students’ reasoning competency levels in evaluating the credibility of digital media content and whether significant statistical differences exist in their competency by education status, sex, age group, Internet use, and geographical location. Four hundred twenty-four students representing the senior high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels responded to four modified versions of the Stanford History Education Group’s civic online reasoning tasks. The study found that most students have ‘beginning’ competency levels in author-checking, fact-checking, and bias-checking but ‘emerging’ competency levels for image-checking. Younger students and those who spend more hours online have higher mean competency levels for …

Social Media Literacy: Sociocultural Instruction And Community College Students, Angela Kohnen, Christine Wusylko, Max Sommer

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Although literacy researchers have paid increasing attention to online information literacy, curricula are usually centered around webpages rather than social media, which is the more popular media platform for young adults. We developed and introduced a social media literacy curriculum to a summer bridge program for marginalized community college students. Our instruction was designed to center and build on students’ lived experiences, and we found that students purposes for using social media and their knowledge of credible sources was not aligned with traditional approaches to information literacy. Students perceived social media as a tool for fun and connectivity and their …

Lived Experiences Of Unequal Englishes Of Filipino Domestic Workers In Hong Kong, Nicanor L. Guinto

International Journal for Research in Education

In this paper, I investigate the lived experiences with English of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong from roughly 30 hours of recorded ethnographic interviews and fieldwork with 28 key participants talking about language in relation to their living and working experiences. Employing linguistic ethnographic approaches to analysis, I describe recurring accounts reflecting the tension between doing being an English-proficient and an English-deficient other: a tension that emanates from enabling and constraining sociolinguistic conditions in the workplace and the host society, and informed by participants’ experiences and education from their home country. I demonstrate how participants seem to discursively invoke …

Science Communication Training Imparts Confidence And Influences Public Engagement Activity, Christina M. Swords, Jerlym S. Porter, Amy J. Hawkins, Edwin Li, Melissa Rowland-Goldsmith, Matthew D. Koci, John F. Tansey, Nicole C. Woitowich

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

The impacts of science are felt across all socio-ecological levels, ranging from the individual to societal. In order to adapt or respond to scientific discoveries, novel technologies, or biomedical or environmental challenges, a fundamental understanding of science is necessary. However, antiscientific rhetoric, mistrust in science, and the dissemination of misinformation hinder the promotion of science as a necessary and beneficial component of our world. Scientists can promote scientific literacy by establishing dialogues with nonexperts, but they may find a lack of formal training as a barrier to public engagement. To address this, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology …

Twitter Trends During The 82nd Session Of The Nevada Legislature, 2023, Annie Vong, Zachary Billot, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

This fact sheet examines Twitter trends during the 82nd Session of the Nevada Legislature (2023). Data are comprised of tweets posted on Twitter by users located in Nevada addressing the most discussed topics during the session.

Parents’ Perceptions Of The Philly Goat Project’S All Abilities Ramble: A Qualitative Study Of Animal-Assisted Intervention For Intellectual And Developmental Disorders, Patricia Flaherty-Fischette, Jenée Lee, Yvonne D'Uva-Howard, Elizabeth P. Cramer, Karen Krivit, Sarah Meehan

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are a growing population. Considering the wide diversity in IDD and the financial burden of traditional treatment modalities, Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) has emerged as an innovative and non-traditional treatment for individuals with a range of disabilities, including individuals with IDD. To the authors’ knowledge, the present study was one of the first to explore a goat-assisted therapy experience for children with IDD. This study explored the experiences of 23 children with the All Abilities RAMble – a goat-assisted therapeutic activity offered by the Philly Goat Project (PGP). Key themes in our study included …

Valenced Media Effects On Robot-Related Attitudes And Mental Models: A Parasocial Contact Approach, Jan-Philipp Stein, Jaime Banks

Human-Machine Communication

Despite rapid advancements in robotics, most people still only come into contact with robots via mass media. Consequently, robot-related attitudes are often discussed as the result of habituation and cultivation processes, as they unfold during repeated media exposure. In this paper, we introduce parasocial contact theory to this line of research— arguing that it better acknowledges interpersonal and intergroup dynamics found in modern human–robot interactions. Moreover, conceptualizing mediated robot encounters as parasocial contact integrates both qualitative and quantitative aspects into one comprehensive approach. A multi-method experiment offers empirical support for our arguments: Although many elements of participants’ beliefs and attitudes …

Institutional Rhetoric And Campus Reactions: A Multi-Method Case Study Exploring University Communication And Social Responsibility In A Racial Crisis, Rockia K. Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This case study explores how an institution in the southeastern conference (SEC) responded to racial reckonings before and after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, how students came to perceive the institution's responses and commitment to diversity and inclusion. To understand this phenomenon beyond apologia and image repair theory, the discourse of renewal theoretical framework and university social responsibility guides this dissertation. This work fills a gap in the literature on crisis communication in response to racism in higher education spaces. Using critical discourse analysis and an open-ended survey, this dissertation further explores the idea of social responsibility of institutions …

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

Why China Cares About Canada’S Indigenous Residential Schools: From Whataboutism To Internal Denial, Xiyuan (Marvin) Xia

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines how the Chinese government and its propaganda departments use genocide-related discourses to fulfil different political purposes at home and abroad. By criticizing Western colonialist regimes’ assimilation policies, especially Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, the Chinese diplomats apply the rhetoric of whataboutism to dodge the international community’s questions about China’s systematic persecution of Uyghur Muslims. Domestically, China’s state media intensively cover Canada’s residential school system and the colonial genocide against Indigenous people, trying to distract the audience from the state atrocities in Xinjiang and mislead the public to distrust Canada and other countries’ motives for accusing China of committing …

Gender In Cultural History: Gender And Education, Dimitra Kalodimou, Maria Kapalika

Journal of Research Initiatives

The position of women in the oldest societies has often occupied the scientific community, which is a great reason to study it. Today's societies put tremendous effort into highlighting the importance of women's contribution. In this text, we will deal with the position of women in the recording of history, with women’s presence within the historical sources as well as the roles held in family business and education. In addition, the gradual changes regarding women's recovery in society will be presented and highlighted. The first steps to improve women's image started in Europe and continued worldwide. The critically studied articles …

How Do International Students In A University In The United States Relate Their Cultural Identity To Fashion Trends, Kharen Alejandra Martinez Murcia

Masters Theses

International students who move to the United States must endure the challenge of adapting to a new culture. Understanding different aspects of how the adaptation process works is essential to create better avenues to connect with these students as they go through the acculturation process. This research focuses on how international students communicate their cultural identity through clothing choices. This study followed a qualitative method through in-depth interviews with ten participants from eight countries. Participants answered questions regarding motivation, cultural adaptation, clothing adaptation, and cultural identity and expression. Findings show that participants consider clothing communicates something about themselves and their …

Weakly Supervised Spatial Relation Extraction From Radiology Reports, Surabhi Datta, Kirk Roberts

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: Weak supervision holds significant promise to improve clinical natural language processing by leveraging domain resources and expertise instead of large manually annotated datasets alone. Here, our objective is to evaluate a weak supervision approach to extract spatial information from radiology reports.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Our weak supervision approach is based on data programming that uses rules (or labeling functions) relying on domain-specific dictionaries and radiology language characteristics to generate weak labels. The labels correspond to different spatial relations that are critical to understanding radiology reports. These weak labels are then used to fine-tune a pretrained Bidirectional Encoder Representations from …

Contextualizing Search: An Analysis Of The Impacts Of Construal Level Theory, Mood, And Product Type On Search Engine Activity, Jackson Everitt Carter

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the world of search from the human perspective. While search engine research, both corporate and academic, has seen a growth in relevance in recent years, the relative novelty of the area in the advertising world means that many important questions remain unanswered. This work aims to expand the current state of search engine research by examining the combined impact of mood, construal level theory applications, and product type on search behavior. Additionally, this research seeks to examine psychophysiological responses from these interreacting frameworks using webcam eye-tracking technology, which was developed recently and has not been previously used …

Online Information-Seeking And Cancer Screening Intention: An Analysis Of The Health Information National Trends Survey 2022, Rachel Aileen Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Online information-seeking has become common in modern life, including when patients search for health information to make informed healthcare decisions. Previous research into the effect of online information-seeking on health maintenance behaviors has been mixed. This study sought to expand the current literature concerning the online information-seeking habits of cancer patients and integrate the concept of competence to analyze the effect on cancer screening adherence. The study analyzed HINTS 6 data to examine the relationship between online information-seeking and cancer screening intention as well as the relationship between social media habits and cancer beliefs. Results showed support for competence resulting …

Extreme Persuasion: Analyzing Meaning Creation And Persuasive Strategies Within Extreme Discourse On Alternative Social Media, Naomi Kathryn Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a long history of counterterrorism strategy, the U.S. has seen a drastic increase in domestic attacks over the past decade. Previous studies have found that, due to increasing content-related restrictions, many individuals who participate in extremist-related discourse have migrated away from mainstream social media and toward alternative social media platforms. This study consists of a comprehensive content analysis based on Multimedia Critical Discourse Analysis theories to study how meaning is created via the combination of text, image, and symbols, as well as how various persuasive narratives and rhetorical appeals are used within extreme discourse on social media. This research …

Words Evaporate, The Images Remain: Testing Visual Warnings In The Context Of Intentions To Vape Among U.S. Adults As An Expansion Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior (Tpb), Carl Arland Ciccarelli

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation applied the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model variables of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, along with the variable of fear to explain individuals’ behavioral intentions to vape. Previous studies have explored the social appeal, intrigue, and potential consequences of vaping among adolescent and college student populations. However, these past studies have largely relied upon focus groups and self-reported data conducted among samples of teen, adolescent, and college student populations. Thus, the aims and designs of these previous vaping studies may have been lacking in construct validity and a theoretical approach from which to explain behavioral …

Exploring The Agenda-Setting Dynamics Between Traditional Newspapers And Twitter During Mass Shooting Event, Yujin Heo

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the intermedia agenda-setting interplay between traditional news media and Twitter in the wake of mass shooting incidents. Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to data sourced from Twitter, national, and local news, the study investigated the distinct coverage patterns and the extent of their reciprocal influence over time. The findings of this study demonstrated that, in the immediate aftermath of a shooting incident, national news outlets exerted a significant agenda-setting influence on both local media and Twitter discourse. However, as time unfolds, a mutually influential dynamic emerged across all media platforms. …

Framing Police Brutality: An Analysis Of Newspaper Coverage Of Walter Scott’S Murder, Shamira S. Mccray

Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes news articles about the killing of Walter Scott in 2015 to determine how frames changed over time and across platforms. Previous studies have found that news coverage of police violence against Black men has not always been fair. Instead, the narrative of official sources, like law enforcement, prove dominant. These same research articles typically focus on the way national news outlets frame incidents like Scott’s.

But this thesis takes a deeper look at how state newspapers framed Scott’s murder. I analyzed the frames and sources found in nearly 200 articles published by The Post and Courier and …

Arab Media Researchers’ Perceptions Of Factors Affecting Their Research Problem Selection, Hossam Mohamed Elhamy, Maha Abdulmajeed

All Works

This study examines the factors affecting media researchers’ selection of media research problems. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of Arab media researchers were conducted, followed by applying a 22-item questionnaire on a sample of 247 from Arab media researchers. The impact of internal/subjective factors and external/objective factors, on the selection of research problems by Arab media researchers, and their perceptions were investigated. Findings revealed that internal factors are perceived to have a higher impact than external factors. However, external factors are perceived to have a stronger negative impact than positive ones. Findings also raise …

Impact Of Difficult Negatives On Twitter Crisis Detection, Yuhao Zhang, Siaw Ling Lo, Phyo Yi Win Myint

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Twitter has become an alternative information source during a crisis. However, the short, noisy nature of tweets hinders information extraction. While models trained with standard Twitter crisis datasets accomplished decent performance, it remained a challenge to generalize to unseen crisis events. Thus, we proposed adding “difficult” negative examples during training to improve model generalization for Twitter crisis detection. Although adding random noise is a common practice, the impact of difficult negatives, i.e., negative data semantically similar to true examples, was never examined in NLP. Most of existing research focuses on the classification task, without considering the primary information need of …

An Industry-Standard Profit And Loss Statement For Book Publishing Professionals In The United States, Jackie Krantz

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Title profit and loss statements (P&Ls) in book publishing are valuable predictive tools for newly acquired titles. They inform the press on how money will be moving through the press in relation to the book’s production, revealing the book’s estimated value and level of profit. However, there is no industry-standard template. This lack of a template makes it difficult for new industry professionals to learn about P&Ls; prevents knowledge of one press’s P&L from being transferrable throughout the industry; and causes smaller presses to potentially neglect this useful tool due to the steep learning curve. The solution is to create …

#Dubailiving And Digital Placemaking On Tiktok: Migrant, Domestic, And Service Workers’ Affective Social Mediascapes, Zoe Hurley

All Works

While Dubai, the small emirate in the United Arab Emirates, tends to be associated with luxurious social media images of elite social actors, startling architecture, and consumer status symbols, this study addresses migrant, domestic, and service workers’ everyday digital placemaking. To explore these issues, a global semiotic framework reorientates traditional notions of the geopolitical context in terms of Dubai’s social mediascape. TikTok is taken as a case to explore a corpus of Dubai-related hashtags and content being shared by migrant, domestic, and service workers. The central argument of the article is that, while Dubai’s social media cultures reflect hegemonies of …