Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Social Media Activism In Achieving Good Water And Sanitation In Ghana, Inusah Mohammed

Communication ETDs

This thesis examined the role of social media activism in ensuring good water and sanitation in Ghana. The study conducted a thematic analysis of Facebook posts (403) from March 2020 to December 2022 and found seven themes on how social activists are presenting issues concerning water and sanitation in Ghana. The study also found outcomes of the activism and also found theoretical implications of activism on social media usage in Ghana.

Socially Mediated Self-Presentation, Image-Construction, And Twitter: A Multimodal Analysis Of Vice Presidents Across A Continental Divide, Nana Kwame Osei Fordjour

Communication ETDs

Struck by the paucity of studies on vice presidential rhetoric, the omnipresence of social media, and its centrality in politics, I analyzed the tweets of the vice president of the US, Kamala Harris, and the vice president of Ghana, Dr. Bawumia, after their respective elections in 2020. Taking a multimodal rhetorical analysis guided by a theoretical self-presentational framework centered around gender, personalization, and authenticity. I contribute to the broader discourse of how politicians communicate on social media to construct their public image. Taking a cue from the rhetorical approaches used by the two vice presidents, I argue that vice-presidential communication …

"Domestic Terrorism" Or "Political Protest?": Partisan Cable News Framing Of The January 6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol, Alexandra M. Stover

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a historical event that received widespread media attention in the days and weeks that followed. This study focuses on the differential framing techniques used by Fox News and CNN, specifically, in their coverage of January 6. Additionally, this study addresses the differential framing techniques used across different shows on the same network: “commentary-based” shows and “information-based” shows. In doing so, this research builds upon the vast body of pre-existing news media framing research. This study finds that the differences in framing are more pronounced between Fox News and CNN …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

Midweed: A Comparison Between Marijuana Laws, Regulations, And Social Attitudes In Cannabis-Legal Vs. Cannabis-Illegal Midwest States, Abagail Lim

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

This professional project is a series of three journalistic articles. Each article focuses on laws, regulations and social attitudes surrounding marijuana in the United States. These topics are explored primarily through the lenses of two Midwest states (Illinois & Nebraska), which have highly contrasting laws and regulations regarding marijuana. The state of Illinois legalized medical marijuana in January 2014 and recreational marijuana in January 2020, while in Nebraska, both medical and recreational use still remains illegal, though possession of up to one ounce has been decriminalized.

The purpose of choosing these two states is to show how stark a contrast …

Spartan Daily, May 4, 2023, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2023

Volume 160, Issue 40

The Cowl - V. 87 N. 17 - May 4, 2023

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol. 87 No. 17 - May 4, 2023. 32 pages.

The Role Of Epistemics In Storytelling, Ashley Kayla White

Comm-entary

Epistemics play a vital role in storytelling sequences. In fact, laying the necessary epistemic groundwork before engaging in a storytelling sequence may make the difference between successful and unsuccessful story receptions. Taking a conversation analytic approach and drawing from one story-rich recording, this paper aims to explore the role of epistemics in storytelling sequences captured in day-to-day interaction. To achieve this, several critical conversation analytical concepts are employed. These include repair, expansion, physical gesturing, preference organization, reference, delicate formulations, assessments, and more. This paper adds to a framework of conversation analysis scholarship by drawing explicit connections between two distinct concepts …

Framing Radical Care And Radical Empathy In The #Blacklivesmatter Movement, Ashley White

Comm-entary

This thesis looks at the ongoing media framing of the #BlackLivesMatter movement (primarily in the realm of journalism) to argue that incorporating elements of radical care and radical empathy in how we communicate stories can lead to transformative change. The paper looks at the history of the movement, with attention paid to the major cases that have sparked outrage, protests, and policy changes in the United States in the last decade. Attention is also paid to the #SayHerName movement and the role of intersectionality in whether some stories reach prominence or not. Following this, a comprehensive explanation of the concepts …

Comm-Entary 43rd Edition, 2022-2023 - Full Issue

Comm-entary

No abstract provided.

T. Hanks For Nostalgia: The Power Of Tom Hanks And Film Branding, Jacob Higgs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, Tom Hanks announced he had contracted COVID-19 while shooting the Elvis Presley Biopic in Australia. On Instagram, he encouraged fans to take the disease seriously and be aware of how severe of a disease it was. Character brands and nostalgia have been found to foster trust in products and encourage relationships with those brands. Using the lens of nostalgia and uses and gratification to examine Tom Hanks as a character brand, the researcher analyzed five blockbuster films with Tom Hanks as the lead character. The study used narrative thematic analysis to observe Hanks and the depictions of …

Examining The Effectiveness Of The Mandatory Training On Relationship Violence Administered By California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Sophia Mcdevitt

Journalism

This project intends to examine the effectiveness of California Polytechnic State University’s (“Cal Poly’s”) current student requirements on the subject of intimate partner violence. The existing mandatory training is meant to inform students on the prevalence of intimate partner violence and advise them on prevention and intervention techniques. The research in this project explores a broad contextualization of intimate partner violence from a social and historical perspective, which intends to explore the possibility that students may be more likely to internalize the significance of the information if such context was included in the training model. The research also presents information …

Environment Influence On Interaction Outcomes, Kaley Lambert

Comm-entary

In tandem with other interactional elements, the body plays a substantial role in communicative interactions with companions and oneself. This research compares environmental differences between spaces from two different reality television program environments (Love is Blind and Love Island) which are specified as having the same interaction-goal, observes how the spaces may influence the types of interpersonal interactions they are built for, and compares data regarding the outcomes of said interactions within these spaces so as to provide support for the argument that environments may influence interpersonal interaction outcomes.

Interorganizational Communication: Case Study, Emma Darocha

Comm-entary

The case presented in this study examines coercive power. An eighteen-year-old freshman attending college in a new state found himself longing for a community on campus which led him to decide to join a fraternity. Regrettably, this student did not find this community or brotherhood in this fraternity. As part of the pledging initiation, he was put in an extremely dangerous situation that was overseen by the authority figures of the fraternity. When he tried to drop out of the pledge process, he was coerced by older members to continue it and made to believe that this was something that …

Performing Relationships During Special Occasion Openings, Ashley Kayla White

Comm-entary

All conversations start with an opening. However, opening sequences take on different and at times more grandiose representations during special or uncommon interactional events. How these openings are performed, furthermore, conveys much about the social dynamics and relationships between interactants. The goal of this research is to explore how special event opening practices display relationships between people in day-to-day interaction by drawing from two recordings of special occasion communication. To achieve this, a conversation analytic perspective is employed and several concepts are analyzed in conjunction with openings. These include preference organization, affiliation, repair, body torque and spatial orientation, gaze, epistemics, …

Content For Change, Kaley Lambert

Comm-entary

This piece considers the perspectives of environmental activist Paul Kingsnorth, and author of Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture Mark Bould when assessing the power of storytelling in efforts for climate crisis action. Stories hold the potential to change perspectives and encourage new mentalities. Media content is able to perpetuate, develop, and share stories to a massive audience. This paper argues that if media content were, on a wide scale, to deliberately shift narratives to encourage compassion, action, and concern for the environment, and to discourage wastefulness and mentalities of expansion and colonialism, then it may become more feasible to mitigate …

Pandemic Through The Lens: An Examination Of Repeat Photography During Lockdown, Lauren Cole

Comm-entary

The Covid-19 pandemic had sweeping effects on environments across the globe including, decreases in pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and many others. Repeat photography and social media became tools to document these changes for people to see. Generally, traditional climate imagery and repeat photography depict the degradation of the environment rather than its recovery. This paper works to show how the use of this unique situation, to promote positive environmental change, might work better as a persuasive tool in the fight for climate action.

Art In Climate Argumentation, Matthew Morely

Comm-entary

My paper examines the role of art in the environmental crisis that we are currently facing. I believe that the climate emergency is largely the result of a disconnect between the scientific community and the non-scientific community. In other words, scientists are trying to portray scientific information to a non-scientist demographic. I believe that if we are to prevail during these uncertain times, we need a middleman between these two parties. We need someone who is able to take the information that the scientists are bringing to the table and break it down to non-scientists in a way that makes …

Empathy Meditation To Soothe Division, Kaley Lambert

Comm-entary

In that widespread lack of empathy and the presence of excess stress may be contributing factors toward harsh social division in the United States, programs to increase empathy and decrease stress may help to soothe these issues. Classrooms act as spaces which may be specially suited to trial and implement such programs. This research presents the foundational backing for such programs, and offers a detailed proposal for one set within the structure of a college level course.

A Rhetorical Criticism Of “Bothsidesism” In Journalism, Jess Kirby

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In recent years, a term called “bothsidesism” has come into public use as both a critique of journalists participating in false balance and as an expectation that journalists should cover all sides of an issue—no matter if a side’s claims are unfounded. I argue that bothsidesism is problematic because 1) bothsidesism is a fallacious rhetorical tactic that minimizes objective fact; 2) the term “bothsidesism” and the act of practicing it both reinforce bipartisan thought, which stymies political action; 3) false balance is at odds with the role of a journalist; and 4) false balance is perpetuated by comment sections. I …

Spartan Daily, April 27, 2023, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2023

Volume 160, Issue 37

Winonan, Winona State University

The Winonan - 2020s

This issue of the Winona State University student newspaper The Winonan was published on April 26, 2023.

Spartan Daily, April 25, 2023, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2023

Volume 160, Issue 35

Content-Based Unsupervised Fake News Detection On Ukraine-Russia War, Yucheol Shin, Yvan Sojdehei, Limin Zheng, Brad Blanchard

SMU Data Science Review

The Ukrainian-Russian war has garnered significant attention worldwide, with fake news obstructing the formation of public opinion and disseminating false information. This scholarly paper explores the use of unsupervised learning methods and the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to detect fake news in news articles from various sources. BERT topic modeling is applied to cluster news articles by their respective topics, followed by summarization to measure the similarity scores. The hypothesis posits that topics with larger variances are more likely to contain fake news. The proposed method was evaluated using a dataset of approximately 1000 labeled news articles related …

Re: Beyond Fake News, Nate Floyd, Jaclyn Spraetz

Journal of Media Literacy Education

A student success librarian with a Ph.D. in mass communication and an information literacy librarian with an M.A. in secondary English education describe their efforts to innovate in the field of news literacy by incorporating the media effects research tradition. By highlighting the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive elements of information processing, the authors hope to show students how professional norms, institutional and market pressures shape the news while their own predispositions influence how they interpret the news they consume. The authors emphasize agenda-setting and framing, two fundamental media effects paradigms, and report on their effort to develop news literacy classes …

The Promise Of Media Literacy Education When “Everything Is At Stake” And “Everything Is Expected”, Monica Bulger, Gina Baleria, Renee Hobbs, Kimberly R. Moffitt

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In the midst of a tumultuous time in American and global history, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference 2021 hosted a panel to explore the promise and limits of media literacy. Panelists discussed the vital role of media literacy education in responding to challenges to democracy, social justice, and public health. With “everything at stake,” the panelists moved through responses to current crises while grounding in a historical context and offering recommendations for the future. Curated transcripts share a pivotal moment when much was expected of media literacy and media literacy experts explored promise and …

The Prospector, April 18, 2023, Utep Student Publications

The Prospector

Headline: Inglorious Bastards

Chimes: April 17, 2023, Calvin University

Chimes

A year in review by Savannah Shustack

What's in a name? by Grace Buller

Documentary in honor of Michelle Loyd-Paige to premiere this month by Ashley Hamons

Administrators seek to send message of consistency, clarity to CRC as Synod approaches by Abigail Ham & Katie Rosendale

New films produced by students to premiere at Media Showcase by Maya Oeverman

Calvin football plans remain in flux due to unexpected challenges by Lauren Nyong

Engineering department to roll out two new concentrations starting fall 2024 by David Ogboro

A collision of faith, history and education: Calvin connections and the CRC in Rehoboth, …

The Current - Volume 33 Issue 9, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Disproportionate Discourses: Analyzing The Media’S Coverage Of Police Brutality, Tatyanah Santiago

Honors College Theses

This thesis examines how the media covers fatal confrontations between minorities and the police. Since the media is a primary vehicle for interpreting events as they unfold, it is important to recognize the ways news coverage frames these violent encounters. This paper focuses specifically on the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014 and George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, MN in May 2020. News articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, and CNN were analyzed to see how authority narratives, witness narratives, and character depictions were reported. Three theoretical lenses (Critical Race …