Digital Commons Network^™

Decoding Nonverbal Ability: A Theoretical Model For The Acquisition Of Nonverbal Decoding Skill, Julia Berger

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Nonverbal communication adds multiple layers of meaning to social interaction above that conveyed by words. The comprehension of these nonverbal messages depends on individual ability which varies greatly between individuals. Variation in nonverbal communication ability and the variables of influence that have been associated with it over decades of research are the topic of this research project. Variables that have been correlated to nonverbal communication skill were used to develop a theory for the development of this skill and construct an evidence-based theoretical model that provides an explanation for nonverbal skill acquisition and variability. This model was also analyzed for …

Religion And Ecology: Developing A Planetary Ethic By Whitney A. Bauman, Paul T. Corrigan

The Goose

Review of Whitney A. Bauman's Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic.

Summer Graduation 2017, Becky St. Clair

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of The Alt-Right Movement, Ryan T. Summers

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

The alt-right was once seen an obscure subculture festering on sites like Reddit and 4chan. They were written off as a bunch of trolls and racists too scared to organize, and media outlets saw them as a fringe movement with little hope of growing. However, the 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump is one of many important events the alt-right rallied behind. They are even leaving their computer screens and beginning to hold ‘free-speech’ rallies across the country. This project asks very important questions about how this has become possible. What are the nuances of this movement? How were they …

Girl Crush: Liminal Identities And Lesbian Love In Children's Cartoons, Madison Bradley

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

A textual analysis of the cartoon Steven Universe, this project takes a semiotic approach to explore anti-essentialist messages of gender identity. I argue that within the mainstream media, the cartoon expresses prosocial messages about gender by representing nonbinary characters and gender fluid themes. Using children’s media studies, queer studies, and reception studies, I investigate how the show portrays liminal identities. In particular, I focus on how lesbian existence and gender fluidity are simultaneously normalized and othered through the text’s visuals and dialogue. Critically analyzing the ways in which the media represents queerness as ‘too adult,’ this study reveals that children’s …

The Prospector, July 18, 2017, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Texas Legislative Special Session Agenda

Measuring Media Literacy For Media Education: Development Of A Questionnaire For Teachers' Competencies, Mathea Simons, Wil Meeus, Jan T'Sas

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Effective media education requires that teachers dispose of sufficient media literacy and that they have the competencies to promote media literacy in students. This article describes the development of a questionnaire to measure these competencies individually or as a team. The questionnaire was developed in five stages. A systematic and critical listing of existing inventories resulted in a preliminary questionnaire. In the final stage, the questionnaire was submitted to a representative sample of 454 teachers and 219 student teachers, and an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. The results show that the questionnaire is sufficiently valid and reliable.

Walking The Line Between Reality And Fiction In Online Spaces: Understanding The Effects Of Narrative Transportation, Sarah Gretter, Aman Yadav, Benjamin Gleason

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Recent contentions about "fake news" and misinformation online has shed light on the critical need for media literacy at a global scale. Indeed, digital stories are one of the main forms of communication in the 21st century through blogs, videos-sharing websites, forums, or social networks. However, the line between facts and fiction can often become blurry in these online spaces, and being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy can have important consequences in the lives of young Internet users. Using contemporary examples from news stories, fanfiction, advertising, and radicalization, this article outlines the features, affordances, and real-life implications of …

Écrire Et Lire Le Caribou Au Lieu De L’Achever, Jonathan Hope

The Goose

Dans un acte sans précédent de gestion de la faune, le gouvernement libéral du Québec a décidé de capturer les derniers membres d’une harde de caribous des bois en Abitibi et de les enfermer dans un zoo. Biologistes et écologistes ont exprimé, avec raison, leur inquiétude et leur colère; cette situation est aussi consternante d'une perspective littéraire.

Performing Narrative Medicine: Understanding Familial Chronic Illness Through Performance, Alyse Keller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study presents the process of creating a performance ethnography of my family’s narratives about familial chronic illness and disability. I label this process performing narrative medicine. By documenting and granularly analyzing the process of my performance ethnography, the following chapters provide a step-by-step discussion of how families communicate about chronic illness/disability through storytelling and humor, and how/what performance does as a method, metaphor and object of study to further our current communicative practices and understandings of chronic illness and disability in families. I argue that performing narrative medicine is a heuristic for families living with chronic illness and …

Ua42/1/5 Online Learning At Wku, Wku Online

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about WKU Online / Online Program Services.

• Faculty Spotlight: Creating a Sense of Community in an Online Program with Dr. Jane Olmsted
• Student Spotlight Meet Jessie Key
• Supporting Student Success Through Coaching
• Recent Changes
• Resources for Working with Online Students
• Guaranteed Online Pathway for Completion of Colonnade
• Ideas for Expanding Communication to Increase Recruitment & Support
• WKU Online Learning / Tuition Cheat Sheet
• Addressing Financial Barriers
• 6 Areas of Impact
• Our Team

Ua77/1 Wku Spirit, Wku Alumni Relations

WKU Administration Documents

WKU alumni magazine. Contents:

• Ransdell, Gary. Letter from the President
• 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Gary Ransdell
• Scholarship Celebration
• U.S. News & World Report Ranks WKU Online Programs Among Best in Nation
• Gary Ransdell to Become President & CEO of Semester at Sea
• Six WKU Students Awarded Gilman International Scholarships for Summer 2017
• WKU Tied for 2^nd in 2016-2017 List of Top Fulbright Producers
• Six WKU Faculty & Alumni Named 2017 Trailblazer Honorees
• University Distinguished Professor Gifts Proceeds from IRA to WKU
• Honors College at WKU Named for Dixie & Pete Mahurin
• Gabbi Doolin Memorial Scholarship
• Vic Richey …

Discovering Explanatory Models To Identify Relevant Tweets On Zika, Roopteja Muppalla, Michele Miller, Tanvi Banerjee, William L. Romine

Kno.e.sis Publications

Zika virus has caught the worlds attention, and has led people to share their opinions and concerns on social media like Twitter. Using text-based features, extracted with the help of Parts of Speech (POS) taggers and N-gram, a classifier was built to detect Zika related tweets from Twitter. With a simple logistic classifier, the system was successful in detecting Zika related tweets from Twitter with a 92% accuracy. Moreover, key features were identified that provide deeper insights on the content of tweets relevant to Zika. This system can be leveraged by domain experts to perform sentiment analysis, and understand the …

Ua52/1 Out Of The Box, Wku Archives

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about WKU Archives and the records management program.

Telling Fire’S Story Through Narrative And Art, Stephen W. Barrett

Joint Fire Science Program Digests

Modern works by highly skilled narrative authors and artists have become increasingly useful for telling the story of wildland fire in the United States. Using unconventional means—and with partial funding by the Joint Fire Science Program—creative individuals have spawned some colorful and heartfelt messages that convey insightful information about wildland fire, climate, and other elements of nature to an increasingly receptive public. Recent narrative works by well-known authors, such as Stephen J. Pyne, and creative art pieces by well-established and emerging artists have helped depict fire in a new light to audiences that scientists may rarely reach. This issue of …

Can Big Whales Inspire Big Behaviors? A Study Of Environmental Communication, And Nature Immersion, Theresa Soley

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Direct contact with wild nature is becoming harder for people to access in present times, yet research suggests that experiencing nature is important to the formation of environmental values, which may lead to conservation behaviors. My thesis experiment theorizes that direct contact with nature has the ability to impact people's behavioral beliefs and intentions toward the environment, applying Icek Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the New Ecological Paradigm Scale as measures. A questionnaire was administered post-whale watching trips in Juneau, Alaska to determine whether whales, direct experience with charismatic megafauna, could stimulate positive attitudes and behaviors toward recycling. …

Demographics Of News Sharing In The U.S. Twittersphere, Julio C.S. Reis, Haewoon Kwak, Jisun An, Johnnatan Messias, Benevenuto Fabrıcio.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The widespread adoption and dissemination of online news through social media systems have been revolutionizing many segments of our society and ultimately our daily lives. In these systems, users can play a central role as they share content to their friends. Despite that, little is known about news spreaders in social media. In this paper, we provide the first of its kind in-depth characterization of news spreaders in social media. In particular, we investigate their demographics, what kind of content they share, and the audience they reach. Among our main findings, we show that males and white users tend to …

The Prospector, June 27, 2017, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Roller Derby: The Grunge and Grit of Sports

"But She's Snow White, She Would N'T Hurt Anybody": A Critical Analysis Of Gender And Power In Once Upon A Time, Mackenzie Mahler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines gender performance and its relation to power in the television series Once Upon a Time (OUAT). On the surface, OUAT is a television show that constantly challenges the culturally-ingrained gender norms often found in fairy tales, as it creates new storylines for traditional fairy tales. This warrants a deeper examination of the series to understand if and how it is subverting these typical gender norms. To fully understand how gender operates in OUAT, I examined how gender affects and is affected by hegemony in the show and how this relates to our cultural understanding of gender and …

The Prospector, June 20, 2017, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: SGA Launches Education Across Borders

Education Program Using Non-Pharmacologic Support During Benzodiazepine Reduction In Patients With Anxiety Disorders, Kelly D. Kearney Dnp, Rn, Pmhnp-Bc, Diane Wardell Phd, Whnp-Bc

Journal of Nursing & Interprofessional Leadership in Quality & Safety

A private mental health clinic developed an initiative to aid patients with anxiety disorders to taper their use of benzodiazepines. Based on best practices, a treatment protocol was developed in which patients attended 4 sessions (1 per month) in which they combined instruction in non-pharmaceutical anti-anxiety techniques (guided imagery, mindfulness meditation, deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, exercise, emotional freedom) with cognitive behavioral therapy and use of selective serotonin re uptake inhibitors. Participants experienced a reduction in benzodiazepine use. This small scale initiative showed that the holistic approach to anxiety management was an effective plan to decrease the use of benzodiazepines …

Prospectus, June 7, 2017, Parkland College, Evyjo M. Compton, Greg Gancarz, Emma Gray, Derian Silva

Prospectus 2017

Frequent fire alarms leave Parkland-goers curious about the cause; Planetarium introduces new shows, continues previous productions for summer; Prospectus attends 2017's Summer Camp festival; Summer for Parkland students and Champaign-Urbana;

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

The Effects Of Religiosity On Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sex And Sexuality : A Multiple Regression, Marlon C. Robinson

Dissertations

Most studies on parental religiosity have focused on specific adolescent sexual behaviors (i.e. sexual initiation), family cohesion, greater supervision, and higher moral expectation while parent-adolescent communication about sexual matters remains understudied. The purpose of this study was to examine the relative influence of parent variables such as relation, education level, communication style (degree of openness, extent of problems), and religiosity (public, private) on sex communication and the age at which parents began conversations about sexual matters. A sample of 170 parents and caregivers from the Continental United States who had at least one adolescent 13-18 years old completed questions on …

Backpedaling Nugget Smugglers: A Facebook And News Article Thematic Analysis Of Chick-Fil-A Vs. Gay Marriage, Stacy M. Wiedmaier

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study utilizes William Benoit’s Image Repair Theory to frame the dominant crisis communication strategies that fast food chain Chick-fil-A (CFA) employed before, during and after their CEO mixed his personal opinion on social issues with corporate policy in June 2012. The thematic analysis draws from three distinct data sets that include 3,900 Facebook comments posted by the general public on CFA’s social media page, 32 individual Atlanta Journal-Constitution news articles that address the debate and CFA’s public response to the crisis titled “Who We Are.” This thesis aims to identify both the dominant themes in Facebook posts and the …

Comparative Analysis Of Big Data Analytics Software In Assessing Sample Data, Soly Mathew Biju, Alex Mathew

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Over the last few years, big data has emerged as an important topic of discussion in most firms owing to its ability of creation, storage and processing of content at a reasonable price. Big data consists of advanced tools and techniques to process large volumes of data in organisations. Investment in big data analytics has almost become a necessity in large-sized firms, particularly multinational companies, for its unique benefits, particularly in prediction and identification of various trends. Some of the most popular big data analytics software used today are MapReduce, Hive, Tableau and Hive, while the framework Hadoop enables easy …

Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening Up Possibilities For Chronic Pain In Disability Rhetoric And Rhetoric And Composition, Hilary Selznick

Theses and Dissertations

In the dissertation “Enabling Pain, Enabling Insight: Opening up Possibilities for Chronic Pain in Disability Rhetoric and Rhetoric and Composition,” Hilary Selznick argues that pain is rhetorical, accessible, and communicable to those without the lived experience of chronic pain. Additionally, she argues for the necessity of considering chronic pain as a disability and not merely as a symptom of a disability. In order to make these arguments possible, Selznick crafts a political-relational-rhetorical methodology that challenges restrictive models of disability and theoretical and commonplace assumptions that pain is resistant to language. Specifically, Selznick’s methodology, which combines disability scholar and activist Alison …

Ua42/4/3 Commencement Program, Wku Owensboro

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program listing graduates with order of exercises for WKU Owensboro.

Ua42/3 Commencement Program, Wku Elizabethtown/Ft. Knox

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program for WKU Elizabethtown/Ft. Knox.