Digital Commons Network^™

Implicit Attitudes Toward Hearing Aid Visibility: Conspicuous Versus Inconspicuous Hearing Aid Colors, Orly R. Ames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hearing aid stigma remains a significant barrier to treatment uptake, with device visibility frequently identified as a contributing factor. Although prior research has examined visibility in relation to hearing aid size and style, the role of color as a distinct aesthetic dimension has not been systematically investigated. The present study assessed whether hearing aid color affects implicit and explicit attitudes toward hearing aids and whether such evaluations differ across contexts. Twenty-six adults who were not current hearing aid users participated in an online quantitative multi-method study consisting of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report questionnaires. The IAT measured implicit …

Assessing The Influence Of Disability Views On Perceptions Of Hearing Aids Among Older Korean Adults, Stasha Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background

Age-related hearing loss, also known as presbycusis, is highly prevalent among older adults, yet hearing aid adoption remains low, in part due to concerns about stigma and negative social perceptions. This study aimed to examine whether attitudes towards disabilities influence perceptions of individuals wearing hearing aids among older Korean adults. It also explored the potential effects of cultural identity and the age of the individual wearing the hearing aid on these perceptions.

Methods

Ten participants completed the Attitudes and Perspectives on Persons with Disabilities (APPD) questionnaire and rated 8 different images of individuals (one younger male and one older …

“Hip-Hop Permeates Everything I Do:” The Intersections Of Global Politics, Hip-Hop, And Education, Mecedes Lindsay

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This qualitative study examines how the absence of Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy (CHHP) within academic institutions shapes students’ sense of belonging, motivation, and engagement by regulating which forms of cultural capital are deemed legitimate. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students, educators, scholars, and members of the hip-hop generation, this research adopts an interpretivist framework to center participants’ lived experiences within educational spaces. Informed by Freirean critical pedagogy and Yosso’s theory of community cultural wealth, the study situates schooling as a site where America’s soft power operates through curriculum design, disciplinary norms, and definitions of deviance. Findings reveal that …

Old Crimes, New Eyes: Recent Findings From The Scottish Witch Hunts, Carol Lee Campbell

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges

^Abstract

^{Most discussions about the Scottish witch trials have been shrouded in a category of superstition, primarily from historians postulating from the era of the Enlightenment one hundred years afterward. Some have distanced themselves from the witch hunts by universalizing the cases within a monolithic framework. But the data shows that the Scottish witch “panic” was disproportionately more intense than other hunts in Early Modern Europe and England.}

^{In the last generation, however, scholars utilizing interdisciplinary approaches have revisited trial records and their supporting documents- such as confessions and testimonies - which appear to reveal more than just trial outcomes. …}

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 …

Crisis Severity In Sportswashing: Examining The Effects On Host Nations, Erika J. Schneider, Courtney D. Boman, Mutaz M.. Barnawi, Kenon A. Brown

Media Studies - All Scholarship

This study examines how the men’s 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, marked by allegations of labor abuses, influenced U.S. viewers’ perceptions of the host nation through the lens of “sportswashing.” Utilizing a survey of self-identified U.S. viewers of the World Cup, the analysis examines how viewers’ personal involvement and recognition of human rights concerns influenced their perceptions of the crisis’s severity. Findings show that recognition of the problem, by viewers themselves, significantly increased perceptions of severity, while involvement with the issue of human rights did not have a direct effect on severity perceptions. Higher perceptions of severity, in turn, …

Organizational Sustainability In Shared-Space Behavioral Health Models, Lorie Lopez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Urban Sociology Oer Syllabus, Can Ersoy

Open Educational Resources

This is a zero cost textbook syllabus for undergraduate level urban Sociology course. It includes readings and visual materials for 6 learning modules, and instructions for a semester-long neighborhood study.

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

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 …

Finding A Way Out Of The Filter Bubble: The Confusion Of A Heavy Social Media User, Longwen Miao

Masters Theses

This thesis studies how algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and the construction of selfhood within contemporary digital culture.

Everything begins with the experience of repeatedly encountering algorithmically recommended content on everyday digital platforms. On these platforms, images, sounds, and social interactions are continuously selected, repeated, and reorganized by predictive systems, forming an environment in which perception is constantly structured and adjusted.

From this observation, the research raises two central questions: how do algorithmic recommendation systems reshape visual perception, aesthetic judgment, and self-recognition, and how might these systems be intervened in or made perceptible through artistic practice? Within …

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; …

¡Estamos Aqui!: The Underrepresentation Of Latinos In Professional Sports And Sports Media, Antonio Hernandez

University Honors Theses

The Latino population has had a long and complicated history within the United States. Since the turn of the 21st century, Latinos continue to become the largest minority group within the country. As the Latino population continues to rise, other industries have failed to properly represent the community. Within the world of professional sports, Latinos continue to be grossly underrepresented, with professional athletes from Latino backgrounds representing less than 6% of all professional athletes across all disciplines. This number is just under ¼ of the total percentage of Latinos within the United States. With Latino's influence of other cultural phenomena …

Soft Power, Arab Media And Sports Mega Events: Coverage Of Fifa 2022 And Lessons For Future Arab Hosting, Lynne Kennedy, Maaira Shahbaz, Ala Al Rajabi

All Works

Sport mega-events (SMEs) increasingly transcend athletic competition, functioning as strategic instruments for national identity formation, statecraft, and soft power projection. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in the Gulf, where Qatar’s successful hosting reignited regional rivalries and attracted unprecedented global scrutiny. While existing scholars have extensively examined Western media portrayals of SMEs, a notable gap remains for academic engagement with Gulf media. Dismissed as state-controlled and analytically lacking, we contend that such media offer a rich site for exploring how small states use media as soft power, to construct and contest legitimacy, identity, and global influence. This analysis suggests how state-aligned …

Menstrual Muses: Art, Storytelling, And The Care-Based Communication Of Menstrual Justice, Burcu Koleli

Masters Theses

Menstrual Muses is an artistic research project comprising a written thesis and a body of work developed across soft sculpture, ceramics, illustration, graphic memoir, digital media, and participatory workshops. The written component operates alongside the studio practice, outlining the project’s theoretical framework, methodology, and context while engaging questions of communication, accessibility, embodiment, and stigma. It situates menstruation within feminist discourse, examining how it has been culturally silenced, regulated, and shaped through systems of power.

The artistic work functions as research materialized through practice, responding to the central question of how my art can facilitate conversations around menstrual justice. It explores …

Material Costs, Karima Weinman

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how migration fatality and disappearance data can be reinterpreted through material craft to create a more reflective encounter with information. Working with the Missing Migrants Project's dataset, this project asks how design can communicate dimensions of human loss that conventional data visualization cannot reach.

The work situates contemporary border violence within a longer colonial history, arguing that the logics of surveillance and quantification that structured European imperial expansion persist in the databases that govern mobility in the Mediterranean today.

Terrazzo is a 15th-century Venetian flooring technique built from discarded fragments bound together into a unified surface. This …

The Lived Experience Of Immigrant Chinese Parents Navigating The Iep Process For Children With Austim, Mei Yu Cheung

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to understand how immigrant Chinese parents navigate the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) process for their children with autism within public schools in King County, Washington. The theory guiding this study is Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, as this study explores parents’ lived experiences, challenges, and advocacy strategies as they engage with school professionals and systems of support. Through semi-structured interviews with participants, the research seeks to identify shared meanings and patterns that shape parental engagement and empowerment in special education contexts. The findings aim to inform culturally responsive practices and improve parent–school collaboration for …

Refuting Ruscism: A Critique From Biblical Social Ontology, Paul Miles

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation argues that the ideology of Ruscism is incompatible with biblical Christianity on the basis of God’s design for the individual, the family, and the country. Indeed, the extent of incompatibility between these two worldviews renders any attempt to syncretize them a significant departure from biblical Christianity. God’s design for society is an absolute standard by which political ideologies may be evaluated, and these three societal units will suffice to demonstrate that Christians must reject Ruscism.

This dissertation will describe these three societal units—the individual, the family, and the country—as they are described in biblical Christianity and contrast their …

From Chennai To Texas: Major League Cricket, Glocalization, And The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Glenn Houlihan

Journal of Global South Sport Studies

This article examines Major League Cricket (MLC), an American professional Twenty20 (T20) cricket franchise league which began in July 2023 with a sold-out match at Grand Prairie Stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas. The fans in attendance were predominantly immigrants from South Asia, a region where cricket is the dominant sport. MLC’s connection to South Asia, however, extends beyond domestic U.S. fandom, as four of the league’s six franchises are operated by Indian Premier League (IPL) teams. Here, the IPL is expanding operations into the U.S. market, leveraging the recognizable branding of the league’s teams to offer the nascent MLC a …

Predictors Of Opposite-Sex Antipathy, Mikayla R. Poe

Psychology ETDs

Evolutionary pressures have shaped men’s and women’s motivations to cooperate and compete with one another. Sexual conflict is generated in natural conditions but may be exacerbated by features of the modern world. The current study recruited participants from Prolific to respond to a Qualtrics survey (n = 812) to investigate the correlates of opposite-sex distrust/antipathy using the newly developed Opposite Sex Antipathy (OSA) scale, which is the first of its kind to allow cross-sex comparisons. Men and women’s antipathy for each other was predicted by perceptions that the opposite sex was of lower value to society, more harmful experiences …

Sayyid Qutb: Political Philosophy And The Global Decline Of Jihadist Legitimacy, Jorge A. Ferrara

Senior Theses

Historically and culturally, the meaning behind political philosophies has been misappropriated to serve new ideological aims, and understanding how contexts have changed is essential to contemporary debates surrounding militant jihadist ideology. Sayyid Qutb, a political philosopher in Egypt during the mid-twentieth century, whose political philosophy, which sought moral, spiritual, and societal reform in Egypt under Gamal ‘Abd-Nasser’s regime, has been classified as the philosopher of Islamic terror. In this thesis, I argue that Sayyid Qutb’s political philosophy has been misappropriated into a politicized and militant jihad ideology through successive reinterpretations by militant jihadist leaders, and that this misappropriation is evidence …

Thoughts From The Pit: Can Raving Change The World? A Literature Review Exploring Rave Culture As Expressive Arts Healing, Marissa Rose Renella

Expressive Therapies Theses

This literature review examines the structural and philosophical commonalities between expressive arts therapy (EXA) and rave culture. Drawing on scholarship from anthropology, cultural studies, health sciences, transpersonal psychology, neuroscience, and expressive arts therapy, this review identifies five core principles shared between the two fields: transformational experiences, multimodality, entrainment and flow, containment and ritual, and community and social action values. Across each principle, the literature reveals not surface-level similarity but deep convergence — two fields that have, independently and through different lineages, arrived at the same understanding of what human beings need in order to heal, grow, and connect. To the …

Memory Parties: Celebration As A Community Mental Health Intervention In Dementia Care, Alexis Ask

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between memory, celebration, and collective experience, and proposes Memory Parties as a community mental health intervention for individuals with dementia, their families, and broader communities. Using a qualitative integrative literature review, this thesis synthesizes interdisciplinary research from dementia care, trauma studies, neurobiology, dance/movement therapy (DMT), cultural practices of ritual and celebration, and social psychology. The primary aim is to reconsider memory as an embodied, relational, and collective process rather than solely an individual cognitive function. Findings suggest that as cognitive and narrative memory change, individuals retain the capacity for emotional expression, relational engagement, and participation …

Shelter From The Storm: Public Library Value And Community Adaptive Capacities, Margo Gustina

Economics ETDs

This dissertation contributes to theoretical framing within the discipline of library science, while building out empirical methods for quantitatively valuing broadly loved public libraries. Chapter 1 lays the foundation for understanding how analysis public libraries must always be set within regional contexts. Chapter 2 demonstrates that positive voter valuation of public libraries is driven by proximity to a library building by using data from public funding referendum events. Chapter 3 estimates a reduction of 0.75 percentage point (p=0.002) in graduation rates where public libraries were closed (but school instruction was in-person) from COVID closures. Chapter 4 builds on the previous …

War Photography & The Limits Of Empathy, Andrea Shi

Student Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of photography, particularly war and poverty photography, has had massive implications for the level of vividness with which Americans are able to picture suffering beyond their doors. The mass atrocities that have occurred since the advent of photography – that is to say, the last 200 years – are so relentlessly circulated that they feel, sometimes, as an inevitable byproduct of human nature. It’s not surprising, then, that a lot of media theory and analysis reduce the dilemma of atrocity photographs to a psychological level. Do they numb us, or do they incite empathy? Are they a call …

The Dehumanization Of Nfl Players In The Media, Destiny D. Farley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This creative thesis aims to bridge the gap in sports journalism by humanizing National Football League (NFL) players, showcasing their lives outside of sports, and exploring their nuanced relationships with the media. NFL players are objectified in the press in a variety of ways, with some common themes including coverage of drafting/trading, performance statistics, salary/contracts, and their overall celebrification. Through an episodic visual narrative podcast, the project grants autonomy back to the players by providing them with a platform to showcase their personalities, discuss media experiences, and share untold stories. This podcast series—featuring a blend of A-roll and B-roll—immerses audiences …

A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of Mukbang Influencers In China And The United States: Food, Identity, And Cultural Values, Anni Zhang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mukbang, a type of online eating broadcast which originated in South Korea, has become a widely popular form of digital media practice across different platforms. Although existing studies have examined Mukbang from perspectives such as audience psychology, health concerns, and platform economies, fewer studies have focused on how Mukbang influencers communicate cultural meanings and identity through food-related media contents in different cultural contexts. To address this gap, this study conducts a cross-cultural analysis of Mukbang influencers in China and the United States, focusing on how food, identity, and cultural values are represented in digital media environments.

This research adopts an …

Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope As B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet, Cullen Whisenhunt

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In 1927, a letter by then-professor at the University of Oklahoma, Roy Temple House, was published in the Ada Evening News complimenting Ada, OK, poet Welborn Hope and suggesting Hope get in touch with folklorist and literary scholar BA Botkin, also an OU faculty member. That same year, Botkin published “Oklahoma Poets, Inc.,” in which he detailed what he believed to be the three stages of a state’s literary development: the pioneer stage, the popular rhymesters stage, and finally, the union of art and life (30-31). In 1935, Botkin presented a lecture in Tulsa in which he cited Hope among …