Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Eliot's The Waste Land And Surging Nationalisms, Pouneh Saeedi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Eliot's The Waste Land and Surging Nationalisms" Pouneh Saeedi analyzes T.S. Eliot's poem in the context of the impact of World War I and the emergence of nationalisms. In the midst of the ruins of both his personal life and Europe, Eliot expresses the loss of a universal understanding delineated in the fragmentation of language and a disassociation of sensibility. In The Waste Land, the West and the East — represented in their respective canonical texts — commingle and cohere to present an image of oneness that goes beyond oppositional binaries and leads the egotistical self …

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 Prospector, December 1, 2011, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Good Luck Graduating Miners

Ancient Chinese Power, Modern Chinese Thought, Linsay Cunningham-Cross, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power is the latest publication to come from Yan Xuetong's ongoing research project that explores the interstate political philosophy of China's pre-Qin era. This book is interesting on many levels, and has already drawn attention from public intellectuals and scholars in the West. This essay thus first will examine the scholarly issue of how Yan and his colleagues are employing pre-Qin thought to make philosophical and political arguments about how China will rise. It will consider the relation of the ‘kingly way’ (wang 王) and the ‘hegemonic way’ (ba 霸) to critically analyze Yan's argument …

The Information Battlefield: Al-Qaeda's Use Of Advanced Media Technologies For Framed Messaging, Jessica Marie Martin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Through a descriptive and qualitative content analysis of Al-Qaeda videos from 2001 to 2010, this thesis describes how the organization's video production has undergone a surge in production quality by using modern technology and skilled recruits. This thesis also provides background on the Islamic culture and the history of Al-Qaeda in order to put into perspective the goals of the organization's framed messages that are incorporated into their videos. The study also draws on parallels of propaganda use throughout history to highlight how regimes from all over the world understand the importance of communication during a time of war.

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 …

Comparative Literature In Chinese And An Interview With Yue, Hui Zhang, Daiyun Yue

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Comparative Literature in Chinese and an Interview with Daiyun Yue" Hui Zhang and Daiyun Yue present a review of the discipline of comparative literature based on an interview with Yue (2010). Because Yue's work with comparative literature is intertwined with her personal journey, the interview sheds light on other Chinese scholars and their work who would not be known audiences outside China. The interview also touches on the academic and political reasons why the joint dualisms of "ancient/modern" and "Chinese/foreign" continue to be major structuring principles of the discipline in China, as well as how the development …

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 …

A Case Study In Discourse Analysis Of "Community Arts" In Cultural Policy And The Press, An De Bisschop, Kris Rutten, Ronald Soetaert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "A Case Study in Discourse Analysis of 'Community Arts' in Cultural Policy and the Press" An De bisschop, Kris Rutten, and Ronald Soetaert explore theoretical and applied aspects of the phenomenon of community arts. Community arts in Flanders have developed into a professional practice during the past few years and have received increased recognition from policy makers, scholars, and critics. This attention has caused a growing need to define the nature of a practice diverse in form, goal, and process. De bisschop, Rutten, and Soetaert discuss the problematics of community arts projects in comparative discourse analysis in …

Dante's Linguistic Detail In Shelley's Triumph Of Life, Anita O'Connell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Dante's Linguistic Detail in Shelley's Triumph of Life" Anita O'Connell analyzes Shelley's attention to detail in Dante's poetic style and presents a close textual analysis of the ways Shelley draws on the beauty of Dante's texts. When Dante's Divine Comedy re-emerged into the public sphere in Britain through Henry Cary's 1814 translation, his reputation was as a stern, dark, Medieval poet and readers and writers alike shared a love of the perceived gothicism particularly of The Inferno. Shelley, however, differed from this general view of Dante: despite the grotesque descriptions in his Triumph of Life …

The Tartu School And Catalan Scholarship: A Book Review Article Of New Work In Reception And Communication Studie, Christopher Larkosh

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Glocalization In Macedonia: English In Outdoor Advertising Messages, Pamela Morris

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Outdoor advertising visuals from Skopje, Macedonia are analyzed in a content analysis. Images were photographed in the most heavily traveled areas of the city to secure a snapshot of culture and to analyze western influence. Media and linguistic imperialism, globalization and glocalization, along with advertising and communication strategies, are used to frame the investigation. Findings show that media companies are the leading advertisers, along with banks and entertainment. The majority of ads employed some form of English, although Macedonian and Cyrillic writing were also used. The images revealed strategic use of language and symbols, depending on the product category, business …

Mohaennanji & Fatima Sadiqi (Eds.) Gender And Violence In The Middle East. London/New York: Routledge. 2011., Mahesh Sharma

Journal of International and Global Studies

Book review.

New Media, New Communicative Genres And Inclusive Technology-Mediated L2 Pedagogy: A Conversation With Steve Thorne, Victoria Antoniadou, Steven L. Thorne

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Professor Steve Thorne is well-known for his work on second and foreign language development and Internet-mediated communicative activity. He is identified with the study of language use, communication dynamics and technology-mediated foreign, second and plurilingual language learning, occurring within and outside of formal educational settings. His work draws on sociocultural and cultural-historical approaches to language development and he is particularly interested in multiplayer online gaming environments, the "cultures of use" of Internet communication tools, and intercultural communication. Professor Thorne is currently a faculty member in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Portland State University and at the University …

Spartan Daily November 10, 2011, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily (School of Journalism and Mass Communications)

Volume 137, Issue 41

Measuring Social Networks For Real-Time Competitive Advantage, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Social networks offer up a goldmine of information just waiting to be exploited. For the first time, human relationships, comments and activities are documented quite publicly on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Save for privacy concerns, never before has it been easier to know what people think, what they like, and to whom they are connected.

Designing Qualitative Research, Yu Fu

Organization Management Journal

No abstract provided.

What Schooling Engenders: Reflections From Arab States, Muslim Societies And Beyond, Charis Boutieri

Journal of International and Global Studies

Book review on:

• Osama Abi-Mershed (Ed.). Trajectories of Education in the Arab World: Legacies and Challenges. Routledge. 2010.
• Sakurai Keiko and Fariba Adelkhah (Eds.). The Moral Economy of the Madrasa: Islam and Education Today. Routledge. 2011.

David Palfreyman And Ted Tapper. Structuring Mass Higher Education: The Role Of Elite Institutions. New York: Routledge Press. 2009., Ryan Guffey Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

No abstract provided.

Some Things Are Better Left Not Unsaid: An Exploratory Study Of The Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stressor, Justin P. Boren, Alice E. Veksler

Communication

In organizations, individuals seek the support of others to manage their day-to-day stress. Researchers within a social support paradigm have found that individuals who have communicative outlets to discuss their stressors are healthier psychologically and physiologically. To the extent that those outlets are restricted, individuals may suffer the deleterious effects of stress. Therefore, this manuscript conceptualizes and explores one such stressor, the Communicatively-Restricted Organizational Stressor (CROS). Based on a sample of 405 organizational members, we identified the existence and explicated the nature of this stressor. Results were generally inconclusive. Discussion focused on significant findings and the need for better operationalization …

(Re)Conceptualizing Intercultural Communication In A Networked Society, Damien S. Pfister, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

We offer four theses about how intercultural communication is altered in a digitally networked era. Digital media shape intercultural communication by (1) producing new public fora capable of (2) hosting rich, multimodal ‘‘spaces’’ of contact on (3) a scale of many-to-many communication that (4) challenges traditional modes of representation

The Prospector, October 18, 2011, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Haunting Homecoming

Chimes: October 14, 2011, Calvin College

Chimes

Youth Lagoon plays a synth set by Michelle Ratering

Occupy Together descends upon Grand Rapids by Libby Stille

Steve Jobs had eye for greatness by Jon Hielkema

Three women awarded Nobel Peace Prize by Josh Delacy

Bjork's latest album innovative, interactive by Samatha Wade

Women's golf qualifies for tourney by Mark Zylstra

The Prospector, October 13, 2011, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Occupy El Paso

Certifying Medical Interpreters; Need For Public Policy, Bonni Wagner

Professional Projects

No abstract provided.

Negotiating Tensions Across Organizational Boundaries: Communication And Refugee Resettlement Organizations, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Voluntary non-profit organizations play a critical role in mediating the transition of refugees into their new host communities in the United States. Furthermore, mediation is fundamentally a communicative phenomenon, as social services are provided in through communication between nonprofit workers and clients. Critically, for voluntary mediating organizations to create empowering spaces for refugees, communication is central. In this study, I emphasize the tensional processes inherent to mediating interactions and explore how refugee resettlement organizational staff members and refugee-clients describe and manage the communicative tensions which emerge when they interact with one another.

I conducted eighteen in-depth interviews with fifteen organizational …

Witness And Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective On The History Of The Bosnian Muslims, Rusmir Mahmutćehajić

International Dialogue

In his essay, “Witness and Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective on the History of the Bosnian Muslims,” Rusmir Mahmutćehajić explores and deconstructs ideological abuses of some of the most important terms in the Muslim intellectual tradition. The terms ‘witness’ and ‘witnessing’, ‘opener’ and ‘opening’ are of key significance for understanding and reasoning for Muslim sacred tradition. Distorted, narrowed and reductive forms of these terms have been taken by antimuslim ideologists as material within their own constructions. In deconstructing the ideological abuse of these terms, Mahmutćehajić applies new knowledge from his experience in Scriptural Reasoning. Terms from the cultural history of Bosnia …

Virality Modeling And Analysis, Tuan Anh Hoang, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Virality is a virus-like behavior that allows a piece of information to widely and quickly diffuse within the network of adopters through word of mouth. It is about how easy users propagate information to their friends and friends of friends by means of diffusion. While virality of information has several interesting applications, there are much research to be conducted on virality. These areas of research include understanding the mechanism of virality, modeling the virality both qualitatively and quantitatively, and applying virality to applications such as marketing, event detection, and others. In this paper, we survey existing works on quantitative models …

Fans Don't Boo Nobodies: Image Repair Strategies Of High-Profile Baseball Players During The Steroid Era, Kevin R. Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

Baseball's Steroid Era put many different high-profile athletes under pressure to explain steroid allegations that were made against them. This thesis used textual analysis of news reports and media portrayals of the athletes, along with analysis of their image repair strategies to combat those allegations, to determine how successful the athletes were in changing public opinion as evidenced through the media. The contexts, media reports, and strategies of Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Andy Pettitte, and Roger Clemens were analyzed and revealed important implications involving effective use of image repair strategies. They provided a deeper framework for the success of mortification …