Digital Commons Network^™

The Cowl - V.80 - N.14 - Jan 28, 2016

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 80 - No. 14 - January 28, 2016. 24 pages.

2016-01 Library Impact Statement For Com 243g Life Begins At Consumption, Joanna Burkhardt

Library Impact Statements

Library Impact Statement submitted in response to new course proposal for COM 243G Life Begins at Consumption. This class was supported with no need for additional resources. Responding library faculty: Joanna Burkhardt. Requesting faculty: Kristine Cabral.

The Cowl - V.80 - N.13 - Jan 14, 2016

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 80 - No. 13 - January 14, 2016. 20 pages.

2016-01 Library Impact Statement For Com 460 Environmental Communication, Joanna Burkhardt

Library Impact Statements

Library Impact Statement submitted in response to new course proposal for COM 460 Environmental Communication. This class was supported with no need for additional resources. Responding library faculty: Joanna Burkhardt. Requesting faculty: Norbert Mundorf.

Dietary Supplements: A Consumer Profile Of Knowledge And Use, Sarah J. Kucera, Yen Nguyen

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alternative medicine, in the form of dietary supplements, is appealing to Americans. Supplements have been marketed as being natural promoters of general well-being, healing, and disease prevention. Even with minimal regulation and research, the majority of supplement use is self-prescribed, fueling an industry last estimated at $32.5 billion in 2012. The study explored the degree of consumer knowledge with regards to regulation, appropriate indications and dosages, and potential adverse effects of various dietary supplements. The study also sought to evaluate the relationship between supplement knowledge and demographic information as well as the extent of discussion about supplement use with a …

University Homepage Affordances: The Influence Of Hyperlinks On Perceptions Of Source Credibility, Patricia Dellacorte

ETD Archive

The technology affordances of university website homepages were evaluated to inform the development of prototypical examples of accessible public university and exclusive private university homepages. Affordances are characteristic of the environment that, when perceived, afford or provide opportunities for action (Gibson, 1986). In addition, affordances, such as hyperlinks, also prompt heuristic processes that lead to judgments that are based on peripheral cues rather than substantive information. Integrating the MAIN model (Sundar, 2008) and the Two-Factor Theory (Herzberg, 1966; Zhang & Von Dran, 2000), eye tracking and survey methodology were used to assess differences in perception and credibility judgments of the …

Tatami: A Productive Work-Based Social Media, Jacob Kreiner, Jacob Holcombe, Minh Nguyen

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Tatami is a collaborative social media app created by Ippon Technologies that focuses on workflow and communication in an industry setting. Ippon wanted a product that allows members of a company to maximize productivity, and have a communal message board that shows what is going on in the company currently. Functionality of this product would allow a user to create an account, set up and edit their profile and be able to post messages to a workplace timeline. For a more specific and personal timeline we need users to be able to create and subscribe to groups and trends corresponding …

"I Warn You Ming, Stay Away From My Friends!”: The Language Of Superhero Mythology In Flash Gordon, R. James Buehner

ETD Archive

The Flash Gordon (Stephani, 1936) serial is a profoundly important, indeed seminal superhero film that has not been granted the critical attention that it deserves within modern film scholarship. Its position at the beginning of the genre of the modern screen superhero is examined through its evident thematically mythic implications and its culturally centered historical aspects. The serial Flash Gordon is treated and analyzed as a self-standing text that provides clues to the ontological and genealogical foundation and conventions of the screen superhero that is dominant in the media landscape today. This analysis is conducted through the Freudian – Jungian …

Communication Technology In Romantic Relationships: The Importance Of Age, Alexandra B. Bauman

Theses & ETDs

Past research has explored how different modes of communication are associated with various relationship variables with mixed results; some studies have shown that more frequent communication leads to happier relationships, yet others have suggested that relying too much on technology can be detrimental. The majority of studies, however, have only used undergraduate participants and in doing so have ignored older age groups who have been found to utilize communication technology in different ways and to different degrees. The current study investigates how frequently people of all ages use various modes of communication in their relationships, and in turn how this …

Consent Does Not Require Communication: A Reply To Dougherty., Larry Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Globalization, Mobile Technology, And Social Media's Influence On Leadership Communication Involving Millennials, Rasheedah Dunston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Current research identifies effective leadership communication, which includes frequent direct conversational communication from company leaders, influences worker performance during organizational change. Social media, mobile technology, and the Millennial workforce have shifted leader communication style from purely top-down, town hall style communication to incorporate more collaborative and engaging forums. The case study addressed how globalization, social media, and mobile technology affects leadership communication and then subsequently effects worker performance as Millennials join the workforce. Qualitative data were collected from observations and interviews from a purposeful selection of 9 Millennial employees, including 2 Millennial leaders, and 8 non-Millennial leaders of a Fortune …

A Qualitative Examination Of The Perception Of Risk In Warnings For Severe Weather, Teresa Simmons

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the past decade, weather disasters have claimed thousands of lives and resulted in billions of dollars in damages. Awareness of a storm threats can occur hours or days in advance, but disaster assessments indicate many people do not heed storm warnings. This problem is old. Despite 50 years of research, and new technologies and training to improve responsiveness, the basic issue– understanding how people interpret and respond to weather warnings–persists. An exploratory study that incorporated human behavior theories and communication models not traditionally associated with severe weather analysis was conducted to learn how weather risks are perceived by nonscientists. …

Strategies For Increasing Employee Engagement In The Service Industry, Tonia Ann Walker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The annual loss to U.S. organizations consequential to a lack of employee engagement was approximately $300 billion in 2013. Employee engagement is vital to the business sustainability of an organization. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore successful strategies that business leaders of a service organization used to increase employee engagement. The conceptual framework guiding this study was the behavior engineering model theory developed by Gilbert. A purposeful sample of 6 engineering managers was selected based on their success in creating strategies resulting in increased employee workplace engagement in a monopoly service organization in Connecticut. Semistructured …

Disconnect To Connect: Emotional Responses To Loss Of Technology During Hurricane Sandy, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

This chapter examines loss of technology by community college students during Hurricane Sandy and their resulting communication and behaviors without technology. It is a qualitative research study.

Beyond Blood: Examining The Communicative Challenges Of Adoptive Families, Mackensie C. Minniear

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study examined how adoptive families discursively create family identity through their communication. Building on theories of discourse dependence and family communication patterns, this research examined how families whose identity does not meet a bio-genetic view of family must re-define family using communication. Often times, families that are created outside biological means must renegotiate family identity both within the family, and outside the family, from those who feel comfortable commenting and questioning their family composition. Communication becomes a tool that adoptees must use to understand their family identity, as well as their own adoptive identity. Furthermore, this study looked to …

Queer Stories Of Coming Out In The 21st Century, Bradley Wolfe

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Queer Stories of Coming Out in the 21st Century was written by Bradley Wolfe for his Communication Studies master’s capstone project. The research was conducted at Minnesota State University, Mankato during the 2015-2016 school year. The research problem was to analyze the relevance of the Cass Model of queer identity development in a cultural environment which has shifted greatly since its origination. 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand what aspects of the model still held true and if other models better describe the identity development process for queer individuals. The research found the Cass Model was not correlating with …

Communicating Social Support: Understanding Complexities Of Breastfeeding Communication Among African American Mothers, Nicole Rachael Peritore

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Breast milk is the best choice for meeting the nutritional needs for an infant whenever possible. Despite the knowledge that this nutritional choice is the best choice for an infant, data demonstrates that there is a sharp decline in the rates of breastfeeding mothers. Among African Americans, breastfeeding rates are significantly lower than the national averages. Despite many of the applications of social support in communication research, there is a gap in knowledge on the social support systems in the context of breastfeeding, especially for African Americans. With the social ecological model as a framework, social support theory provides understanding …

The Impact Of Facebook, Twitter, And Youtube On Millennials' Political Behavior, Nicholas M. Njegomir

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Social media plays a prominent role in the daily lives of Millennials. The majority of Millennials use some form of social media, and with the amount of political content on various social media sites, it is worth examining how social media influences Millennials’ political behavior. This study focused on three social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This research was rooted in George Gerbner and Larry Gross’ Cultivation theory (1976), which states that long-term media exposure shapes reality. The study consisted of survey and focus group research, which attempted to determine how much time Millennials spend on each site, how …

A Gendered Lens Of Understanding Confidence, Abbey Johnston

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Women make up approximately half of the U.S. workforce, yet far fewer women than men reach senior management and leadership positions. Women enter the workplace at levels similar to men, with comparable credentials and expectations, but their career paths rapidly diverge. This discrepancy among males and females can be associated, in part, to the documented difference in confidence between men and women. This study addressed the critical topic of how gender may impact an individual’s understanding and level of confidence and utilized the theoretical lenses of Mead’s (1934) Symbolic Interactionism and the Standpoint Theory of Harding (1991) and Wood (2004). …

This Is Not A Cage Match, Joseph C. Shepard

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

During the 2016 presidential election season, Senator Ted Cruz’s use of social media to promote his campaign and build up a grassroots following was masterful. This case study explores Cruz’s digital outreach efforts in the shadow of GOP rival Donald Trump’s commanding use of traditional earned media. This case study views the Cruz campaign’s digital outreach strategy through the lens of the Agenda Setting theory of communication, which seeks to explain the mass media’s ability to influence what the important issues are to the public, and through the reverse agenda setting effect, meaning if the airtime is unavailable through traditional …

Practical Challenges, One Crucial Skill: Knowing How, When, And Why To Go Into Caucus, Kelly Browe Olson

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Network Pruning For Scaling Dynamic Community Detection, Gaurav Ghosh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Local community detection is an important tool for the analysis of networks of different genres. The goal is to identify only the best communities in a network instance as opposed to computing a partitioning of the whole network. The majority of the work on local community detection has focused on static networks with less attention on networks that evolve over time. Given a trace of temporal interaction among nodes in a network, how can we detect a period of high interaction for a specific group of nodes? To help temporal community detection with the need to search in the time …

Synchronous Subgraphs In Networks, Navita Jain

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Community detection is a central problem in network analysis. The majority of existing work defines communities as subsets of nodes that are structurally well-connected and isolated from the rest of the network. Apart from their underlying connectivity, nodes in real-world networks exhibit temporal activity: user posts in social networks, browsing activity on web pages and neuron activations in brain networks to name a few. While edges encode potential for community interactions, participation in the community can be quantified by synchronized member activity. Given both the network structure and individual node activity, how can we detect communities that are both well-connected …

The Megaphone Of The Soul: Resistance Of Fraudulent Technological Idolization By Recognizing The Power Of Human Choice In Media Ecology, Richard L. Talbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans naturally communicate, but choose to use tools. They use them to make sense of things, even to their own detriment and the detriment of others. These tools often receive the attention, instead of the human interaction. Aristotle's notion of humans as social animals has been carried into media ecology scholarship by Arendt, Burke, Ellul, Mumford, Postman, and Ricoeur. Social media scholarship has often focused on the tool and how it affects humanity. However, a phenomenological approach is necessary, as humans communicate with or without these tools. This approach will follow multiple steps. The first is through an understanding of …

Telling Our Story: A Case Study Of A Collaborative Departmental Blog, Stephanie J.H. Mcreynolds, Anne E. Rauh

Librarian Publications

This case study will take readers through the planning and publication process of a collaborative departmental library blog at Syracuse University, which is a large private, non-profit research intensive university located in central New York State. It will provide an overview of the history of the project and the mission of the blog. It will describe the technical aspects, developing a publication schedule, and the editorial responsibilities of maintaining the blog. The impact of the blog is documented. The blog has raised awareness of the librarians’ expertise and this is explored alongside how posts have contributed to a number of …

Need For Informed Consent In The Age Of Ubiquitous Human Testing, Caitlyn Kuhs

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Practice Improvement Project To Improve Knowledge And Perceptions Of Palliative Care Among Patients With Heart Failure And Cancer In The Acute Setting Using Video Enhanced Education, Crystal F. Spellman

DNP Projects

Background: Clear communication of the purpose and benefits of palliative care can reduce barriers to acceptance of such services for patients and families. The purpose of this practice improvement project was to assess and improve knowledge and perceptions of palliative care among patients with a diagnosis of heart failure and cancer in the acute setting using a video enhanced education intervention. Methods: This practice improvement project took place at a 555 bed teaching hospital. 18 patients referred to an inpatient palliative care consult service in the acute care setting with a diagnosis of either heart failure or cancer participated. …

Click Here: The Influence Of Candidates’ Websites In The 2016 Presidential Nomination Contest, Samantha L. Friedman

Master's Theses and Capstones

This project seeks to answer the question: How did the websites of Republican presidential candidates change over time in order to frame the overall message a candidate is sending potential voters? Subsequently, what information cues or shortcuts that are described by Popkin in The Reasoning Voter were being utilized to target voters in their decision making process? The hypothesis was that Republican candidate websites that employed competitive messages on hot button issues attracted low information, partisan voters, resulting in more traffic on their websites and higher standings in the polls. The data was compiled through a content analysis of the …

Engaging Practice In Communication Education: Institutional Politics, Knowledge Economy, And State Power, Wincharles Coker

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A grave concern in communication education scholarship is that research in practice plays second fiddle to theory. Little is known about the phenomenology of practice in communication pedagogy, and how it shapes and is shaped by programmatic assessment in particular. This dissertation attempts to explore the complexity of practice in communication education in a non-Western culture. The project demonstrates that the organizational culture that gives rise to the work of communication program administrators is always filtered and enacted through the interplay of institutional politics, the global knowledge economy, and state power. Using two public universities in Ghana, I argue, based …

Archives, Museum Objects And Digital Humanities: Supplementing Exhibits With Aural Object Contexts, Jennifer Ware

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This hybrid work uses examples of audio history profiles from an undergraduate introductory radio and TV news course to illustrate how audio storytelling can supplement museum exhibits to provide the functional context of items in an archived collection. Broadcast journalism students in the course researched, designed, recorded, and produced audio histories of museum objects from the 1920s "Stanley's General Store" archive exhibit at the Michigan State University Museum. The final audio files can be attached to the objects and displayed through a digital interface, which museumgoers access with their smartphones.

The project enables students to blend their traditional research and …