Digital Commons Network^™

From Hashtags To Regime Change: How Ai-Driven Social Media Algorithms Fueled Youth Protests Against Authoritarianism In Bangladesh But Stalled In Pakistan (2020-2025), Rafia Nishan Abbasi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this research, it has been investigated that how and why youth protests were amplified by AI based social media algorithms in Bangladesh; however, their impacts resulted in occasional and isolated resistance in Pakistan during 2022-25, taking in account the differences in state regulations, platform governance, and civil society networks. While utilizing Mixed-methods approach, this study employs comparative discourse analysis, a structured survey (N=466), semi-structured interviews, legal and policy tracing, and platform data. This research has proposed a novel theoretical framework of Algorithm Regime Mediation (ARM). ARM considers platform algorithms as politically intermingled intermediaries which can determine socio-political outcomes by …

Toward Defining Vulnerability For The Field Of Communication, Adrian Osman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Vulnerability, a common human experience, is still not well-theorized within the field of communication and lacks a clear, discipline-specific definition. This qualitative study examined how vulnerability shapes interpersonal communication, using general systems theory and social exchange theory as guiding frameworks. Through in-depth interviews with individuals who identify obesity as a lived vulnerability, five central themes emerged: awareness and acceptance of vulnerability, experiencing weight-based dismissal in healthcare, weight-related communication in familial and everyday interactions, avoidance and situational disengagement, and support systems – what works and what does not. Findings show that vulnerability acts as a dynamic communicative force, shaping engagement, withdrawal, …

Rethinking Interpreter Training: The Role Of Microlearning In Boosting Knowledge Retention, Hicham Boughaba

Al-Kīmiyā

This study examines the effectiveness of microlearning interventions in enhancing knowledge retention and interpreting performance among trainee interpreters. A quasi-experimental design was employed, with interpreting students divided into two groups: an experimental group receiving targeted microlearning modules on specialized terminology and a control group relying on general knowledge only. Their performance was evaluated according to four criteria: accuracy, clarity and fluency, terminology usage, and cultural and contextual understanding. Results indicate that participants who were exposed to microlearning modules achieved significantly higher scores across all evaluation criteria, with notable gains in accuracy and terminology usage. These findings suggest that microlearning constitutes …

Penet, Jc., Moorkens, J. & Yamada, M. (Eds.). 2026. Teaching Translation In The Age Of Generative Ai: New Paradigm, New Learning? Language Science, May Hobeika Haddad

Al-Kīmiyā

Dès l’introduction, cet ouvrage collectif s’inscrit dans le prolongement de publications récentes consacrées à l’intelligence artificielle et à la traduction, que Penet mentionne explicitement, notamment celles de Kenny, Machine Translation for Everyone: Empowering Users in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2022), et de Pym et Hao, How to Augment Language Skills: Generative AI and Machine Translation in Language Learning and Translator Training (2025).
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Discursive Analysis Of Authoritarian Islamist Populism: The Case Of The Justice And Development Party (Morocco), Youssef Aboudi

Al-Kīmiyā

This article analyzes the linguistic modalities constitutive of political populism, with particular attention to its contemporary authoritarian-leaning manifestations. Conceived as a discursive construction or a style of communication (Taguieff, 1997), populist discourse is organized around a charismatic figure who claims a direct relationship with an idealized people, set in opposition to an elite deemed illegitimate and inherently malevolent (Breton, 2009). The study advances the hypothesis that the staging of charismatic power, grounded primarily in conspiratorial logics that generate an atmosphere of insecurity and fear (Wodak, 2015), contributes to reinforcing mechanisms of symbolic and political domination while inhibiting critical reflexivity (Weber, …

(Re)Claiming Homeplace: Dance As Embodied Resistance & Healing For Health & Spatial Justice, Preeya G. Kannan

University Honors Theses

This thesis argues that dance functions as both an upstream public health intervention and a form of radical spatial resistance; creating healing, agency, and belonging among historically marginalized communities. Drawing on bell hooks' concept of homeplace, Jasbir Puar's assemblage theory, Nancy Krieger's eco-social theory, and Katherine McKittrick's Black geographies, I position the body as both an ecological and political landscape shaped by histories of colonialism, racial capitalism, displacement, and resilience.

Through this community-based participatory research study, Homeplace, I explore dance as a form of social prescription that centers liberation rather than pathology. Movement is often reduced in public health discourse …

Breaking The Silence: A Content And Expert Analysis Of The 2025 Ramadan Series Lam Shamseya's Framing And Subversion Of Child Sexual Abuse Discourse In Egypt, Maya Abouelnasr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how the 2025 Egyptian TV series Lam Shamseya served as a sociocultural intervention and awareness platform for reframing and subverting the typical child sexual abuse (CSA) discourse in Egypt. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study triangulates framing theory and two complementary tools of the critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the circuit of culture model through a scene-level content analysis of 304 scenes across all 15 episodes of the series and ten semi-structured interviews with media experts, media practitioners, and psychologists. Key findings include reported corroboration of subversion of traditional tropes and archetypes, as well as reframing of …

Creating Public Value Through Public-Private Partnerships In Technical And Vocational Education And Training In Egypt, Aseel Amr Tajuddin

Theses and Dissertations

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has emerged in the last decade as a foundational pillar for Egypt’s workforce and economic development vision. More recently, the Egyptian Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MoETE) has scaled industry driven and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) TVET models, industry affiliated dual education programs and Applied Technology Schools (ATS), seeking to strengthen alignment with the labor market and improving TVET graduates employability. Yet, TVET in Egypt continues to suffer from persistent social stigma, limited social legitimacy and low social ranking, despite the state led reform efforts. Existing TVET literature remains limited to examining …

Will Beauty Save The Brain? Exploring The Relationship Between Eudaimonic Reels Exposure And Egyptian Gen Z'S Mind And Motivations, Petra Zaky

Theses and Dissertations

Social media entertaining content includes a mixed bag of the meaningful and the trivial. For Generation Z, whose favorite daily entertainment is shallow yet funny short-form videos (reels), there is often an invisible price paid. The loss of ability to watch long meaningful videos, distractedness from self, “Brain Rot”, glamorizing of hedonism are among the maladies left behind the attractive rabbit hole of their daily media diet. This study explores the relationship between exposure to meaningful reels, in contrast to pleasurable reels, and Gen Z’s reflective thinking, “Brain Rot” symptoms, motivation to watch long meaningful videos and life motivations between …

The Style Of Decision: Consumer Wisdom And The Mediating Role Of The Heuristic-Systematic Model Of Information Processing In Clothes Shopping, Nourane Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

Rationality and emotions are often treated as opposing forces in decision-making. Yet what if the more productive question is not which one prevails, but how a balance between the two might be achieved? Wisdom offers precisely this kind of integrative paradigm. Wisdom is a central trait for self-development; yet, little has been explored on Consumer Wisdom from a communications perspective. The theory has been initially examining ecology principles with an extensive space in consumer behavior and marketing practices. This research approaches consumer wisdom in online fashion advertising context whilst understanding the common information processing modes; evoked by the mediation of …

Modeling The Spread Of Competing Narratives In Multimodal Social Media Network, Mayor Inna Gurung

Theses and Dissertations

Social media has fundamentally transformed how narratives are produced, contested, and disseminated, enabling competing interpretations of the same event to spread rapidly across networked populations. Understanding how narratives gain traction over others in these environments is critical for addressing misinformation, supporting informed public discourse, and designing effective counter-messaging strategies. Yet existing research largely treats narrative propagation as a single-process phenomenon and focuses predominantly on textual data, overlooking both the competitive dynamics between opposing narratives and the growing role of visual symbolic communication in shaping how narratives are received. This dissertation addresses these gaps through a multi-platform, multimodal framework applied to …

Viral Visions Of Femininity: A Visual Thematic Analysis Of Trending Tradwife Imagery On Instagram, Phoebe L. Lim

Masters Theses

This study uses visual thematic analysis and a semiotics lens to examine how trending tradwife content on Instagram constructs domestic femininity through recurring signifiers of whiteness, homemaking, motherhood, and hyperfeminine aesthetics. Current rhetorical analysis of the tradwife movement argues that the imagery of sweet, nostalgic traditionalism functions to mask visual and semiotic codes associated with patriarchal hierarchies, anti-feminism, pronatalism, and alt-right ideologies (Proctor, 2022). Drawing on the theoretical models of Saussure, Peirce, and Barthes (1972), this research analyzes how strategically curated visuals of domesticity and femininity function as ideological signifiers within digital culture. Analysis of 100 posts under #tradwife found …

University Of Nebraska At Omaha Division Of Biomechanics And Research Development Annual Report 2023-2025, Uno Biomechanics

Biomechanics Annual Report

This report contains:

A letter from the Director: Dr. Nick Stergiou

Highlights articles

Center for Cardiovascular Research in Biomechanics (CRiB) articles

The Center for Research in Human Movement Variability (MOVCENTR) articles

People of UNO Biomechanics

Student Centered articles

Education Initiative articles

Bridging The Divide: How Political Polarization Shapes Communication Among College Students, Kylie C. Gaynor

Communication Studies

The following study employed Social Identity and Affective Polarization theories to examine how political disagreement influences students’ willingness to engage in open dialogue within higher education during a time of polarization. This study employed a simple survey distributed to a sample of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students from all colleges. The Qualtrics survey included multiple-choice questions assessing students’ political affiliation and examining how these affiliations influenced their willingness to engage in communication with individuals holding differing views, as well as their openness to developing deeper interpersonal relationships. The survey results were analyzed using SPSS statistical software. The results concluded …

Cooling Deserts For Renters: Heat Equity Inside The Nyc Housing System, Tahreem Ashraf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study introduces the Cooling Desert Index (CDI), a composite spatial measure designed to identify census tracts in New York City where extreme heat vulnerability and structural barriers to adaptive cooling converge. Drawing on five publicly available datasets and a seven phase statistical pipeline, the CDI scores all 2,231 NYC census tracts on a continuous 0 to 100 scale by integrating heat exposure, severe rent burden, household income, racial composition, language access, disability status, and housing crowding. The analysis identifies 557 cooling deserts, defined as tracts where environmental heat risk is high and financial constraints make effective cooling structurally inaccessible, …

News Media Coverage Of Measure Ula: How The Story Of La’S Big Project To Address Homelessness And Affordable Housing Got Sidetracked By The Story Of Big Real Estate, Christopher R. Martin

Faculty Publications

“Measure ULA,” named after United to House LA, was approved by voters in Los Angeles in 2022 to create a dedicated, long-term funding source for solutions to homelessness in LA, including funding the construction of affordable homes and preventing homelessness by helping tenants stay in their homes. The funding would come from a new tax on the most expensive real estate transactions in L.A. (i.e., mansion tax), and would affect fewer than 4% of all property transactions. At the end of three years of local news coverage about Measure ULA from the Los Angeles Times and LAist, the news audience …

Building On Rented Land: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Of Black Women’S Digital Homeplace-Building On Tiktok, Monica Thompson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) examined the lived experiences of seven Black women TikTok users, exploring how they describe and make meaning of TikTok as a space of digital expression amid algorithmic constraint and platform precarity. Grounded in Black Cyberfeminism, Critical Race Theory, and hooks’ (1990) homeplace theory, the study asked three questions: how Black women describe their use of TikTok; how they make meaning of the platform as a space of expression; and how they navigate platform instability, political threats, and content restrictions while maintaining authentic expression. Drawing on semi-structured Zoom interviews and analyzed using Smith et al.’s (2009) …

Rewarding Risk: How Political Health Messaging Drives Virality And Controversy On X, Hiba Ali

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Jihad As Discourse: The Houthi Movement's Official Rhetoric On The 2023–2024 Red Sea Attacks, Moh. Iqbal Bulgini, Imam Khomaeni Hayatullah

Journal of Terrorism Studies

This study examines how Ansar Allah (the Houthi movement) constructs and legitimises a jihad discourse through official speeches and formal statements issued by military spokesperson Yahya Sarea and the movement's official platforms during the 2023–2024 Red Sea attacks. Employing Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework—integrating textual analysis, discursive practice, and sociocultural context—the study analyses a purposive corpus of 45 verified institutional texts. Three dominant and mutually reinforcing discursive formations are identified: (1) the Humanitarian-Juridical Discourse, which reconstitutes armed attacks as legally and morally obligatory acts of protection; (2) the Anti-Hegemonic Resistance Discourse, which constructs the movement as a …

Online Shopping Non-Adoption In South Africa: A Distrust-Centric Framework Integrating Social Exchange, Trust Transfer, And Social Presence Theories, Cleopatra Moipone Matli, Jeevarathnam P. Govender

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

Online shopping non-adoption remains critically underexplored, especially in emerging markets. Addressing this gap, the authors develop and test a distrust-centric framework that applies the inhibitory logic of social exchange, trust transfer, and social presence theories to explain pre-emptive avoidance. Focusing on South Africa, where only 18.16% of the population engage in e-commerce, data was collected from 414 consumers who have never shopped online. Structural equation modelling reveals that perceived lack of reciprocity directly increases the intention of non-adoption. Moreover, distrust in online payment systems transfers to broader channel scepticism, which in turn drives avoidance. Perceived lack of social presence further …

Voices Within: How Ncii Survivors Reconstruct Self Concept Through Intrapersonal Communication, Keisha Aurellia Devinia, Aiza Nabilla Arifputri

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

This study examines Non-Consensual Intimate Image Sharing (NCII) as a form of digital gender-based violence that disrupts women’s self-concept beyond its psychological consequences, particularly among female victims active on social media. It aims to analyze their intrapersonal communication experiences and how they redefine self-concept following the incident. This study employs a qualitative approach, gathering data by performing in-depth interview with five female NCII victims who actively use social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and X. The study draws on Stuart & Laraia’s (1998) self-concept theory, which includes five analytical dimensions: body image, ideal self, self-esteem, role performance, …

Bridging The Justice Gap: A Comparative Study Of Legal Aid Marketing In Canada, Australia, And The United States, Farah O. Haq

Student Theses and Dissertations

Access to justice remains a central challenge across legal systems, particularly for immigrants and refugees, Indigenous communities, and survivors of domestic violence. While legal aid organizations play a critical role in bridging this gap, their effectiveness increasingly depends on how clearly and compassionately they communicate legal information online to their target audience. This thesis conducts a comparative content analysis of nine nonprofit legal aid organizations in the United States, Canada, and Australia, three countries united by a common law tradition but divided by the communication barriers their communities face, examining 180 social media posts and nine websites through the lens …

From Double Absence To Double Presence: Video-Selfie As Empowerment In A Multicultural Italian Classroom, Maria Ranieri, Ilaria Bucciarelli, Giulia Cuozzo

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

This paper examines the video-selfie as a tool for empowerment in multicultural secondary school classrooms. We draw on data from the European ICME project, focusing on a vocational secondary school in Italy, where 17 of 18 first-year students – approximately half of whom had migration backgrounds – produced short videos presenting themselves through personally meaningful objects. Students then participated in a structured reflection activity after watching each other's videos in class. We combine three theoretical frameworks: critical media literacy, identity and self-representation studies, and Mezirow's transformative learning theory. Our argument is that the video selfie empowers in multiple ways: it …

The Role Of Social Media Platforms In Combating Health Misinformation Among The Jordanian Public From The Perspective Of Jordanian Pharmacists, Hani Ahmad Fayez Al-Badri Dr.

Middle East Journal of Communication Studies

The proliferation of health-related misinformation constitutes a serious threat to public health security. Pharmacists, as healthcare professionals, play a crucial role in addressing this phenomenon by increasing public awareness and dispelling misconceptions. The present study seeks to examine the role of social media platforms in mitigating health misinformation among the Jordanian public from the perspective of practicing pharmacists in Jordan. Adopting a descriptive survey methodology, the study employed a structured questionnaire distributed to a random sample of 480 pharmacists. The findings indicated that platforms such as WhatsApp (mean score = 4.43) and Facebook (mean score = 3.92) were the most …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

I Miss My Computer: Online Artistry, Web Aesthetics, And Coming-Of-Age In A Digital Landscape, Catherine Capeci

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how young artists develop their creative practices in a world informed by digitality. Through survey research of 44 art students between the ages of 14 and 22, as well as a process of autoethnographic inquiry, I examine how artists in high school and college relate to digital imagery, web archives, online gaming, and social media platforms, and how these experiences inform artmaking. I believe that art educators should explore how the internet informs aesthetic and conceptual sensibilities, and how these sensibilities show up in young artists’ work, more so than focus on digital media as its own …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

41.82379°N, 71.38497°W, Xiaotong Cai

Masters Theses

I, Xiaotong Cai, have known an abandoned bridge was lifted and stuck at 64-degree from 1976. I have walked and bent down towards it for over 60 times, each paralleling a journal entry. The visits and 27,351 words (up until May 5th) are the living proof: observation, encounters, correspondence, collectively and personally. It’s been nine months since it emerged in flux. Two flesh. A moving outsider and a still bridge. How can an Unused giant activate a human body? Who is the attractor and intervener?

Here, my solution is to conduct a series of small gestures. I say, interpreting without …

I Believe, Rusudan Dushuashvili

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how products become believable and desirable through the stories that surround them, and how design enables the continuous cycle of desire that defines consumption. Drawing on  the underlying structures of myth-making, identity, and belonging that allow consumer culture to function, it argues that consumer culture operates through the same instruments older systems of belief have always used — narrative, ritual, sacred objects, and shared language — and that design is what makes the story stick to the object.

“I Believe” is an archive of objects collected from contemporary consumer culture. Half are products found in the marketplace; …

Multimodal Analysis Of Content Drift And Algorithmic Bias In Youtube Recommendations, Mert Can Cakmak

Theses and Dissertations

Recommendation systems play a major role in shaping how users encounter information on digital platforms, yet their influence often unfolds through sequences of recommended content rather than isolated outputs. This dissertation investigates recommendation bias on YouTube by examining how recommendation pathways evolve across long-form videos and YouTube Shorts. Focusing on politically sensitive narratives, including the China–Uyghur conflict, the South China Sea dispute, and Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election, the dissertation develops a unified framework for understanding how recommendation systems reshape exposure across platform formats. Using an audit-based and multimodal methodology, the dissertation combines controlled recommendation collection, topic and relevance analysis, emotion …