Digital Commons Network^™

The Actor Within: An Exploration Of Present Moment Awareness In Business Presentations, Billie Shepard

Master's Theses

This thesis explores incorporating the use of acting skills in business presentations using present moment awareness techniques. Present moment awareness is defined in this study as the use of improvisation, intention, voice, and body/sensory awareness and is drawn primarily from the theoretical work of Patsy Rodenburg.

The research project followed nine adult student-participants through a five-week course of study in business presentation methods, which incorporated the present moment awareness acting techniques. Data were collected throughout the five weeks and included a pre and post survey, participant journaling prompts, a researcher journal, peer reviews, and participant interviews. The study concluded that …

Technology Use In The National Basketball Association: How Technology And Communication Has Changed, Katie Hottinger

Senior Seminars

No abstract provided.

Blogging: Public, Private Or Social Rhetoric?, Kristin Roeschenthaler Wolfe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines personal blogging through the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and her understanding of public, private and social. Personal blogging is the latest in a long history of self-representational writing with each form taking on a more public overtone. By utlizing Hannah Arendt's philosophy in this manner, this project provides a venue for her work in the realm of today's mediated world. Hannah Arendt's understanding of public, private, and social allows us to better understand the need for boundaries and the need for both a public and private space in our lives. Utilizing several interpersonal communication theories, including Boundary …

Awareness And Usage Of Collaboration And Communication Technologies In Student Teamwork, Manouchehr Tabatabaei, Marco Lam

Information Systems & Analytics: Faculty Publications

In this study, we investigate students’ awareness and usage of collaboration and communication technologies (CCTs). Coordination and communication are two of the key processes for effective teamwork that have been identified in the literature. We find significant differences in awareness of CCTs between various student groups. However, when controlling for awareness, we find no difference in usage. While the proportion of students that are aware of various CCTs is high, the reported usage of CCTs is low. Because of the increased emphasis on teamwork, students need to be taught the technologies they need to use for collaboration and communication in …

Theorizing The Effects Of Color, Environmental Space, Culture And Gender On Communication, David A. Brucker

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Extant literature indicates it is our physical, psychological interactions, and perceptions with certain colors and space and our culture and gender influence the way we verbally and nonverbally communicate. I discuss how the meanings of different colors have been depicted throughout history. Summarize my research on the physiological and psychological effects on individuals and show how certain colors are used. Describe environmental space in terms of natural, acute, chronic space and the psychological effects of different spaces. Describe how the perception and use of space affects how we feel. Explore how culture strongly influences the "windows" of the world we …

Rethinking The Classroom: One Department’S Attempt To Connect Student Learning And National Events, John A. Mcarthur

Journal of the Association for Communication Administration

Communication programs have a rich anecdotal history of connecting student learning to real-world experience. Yet, the same programs, including ours, often privilege classroom-based instruction and instructor-led experiential learning over other types of experiences. When community organizers announced a national mega-event for our city, faculty in our communication department knew that we wanted to use it as a learning experience. We brainstormed ideas, most of which were classroom- and semester-based concepts typical of traditional topics courses. But, one of our faculty members suggested that we think outside of the concept of classroom. What resulted was a unique experience unlike any we …

An Investigation Of Boaters' Attitudes Toward And Usage Of Targeted Mobile Apps, Kamra Bowerman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand boaters’ adoption and usage of smartphones and mobile apps as well as to obtain their opinion on potential features of a targeted mobile app being developed as part of a broader interdisciplinary Florida Sea Grant outreach project. Data were gathered from an online survey of a sample of 164 boaters from the surrounding Central Florida area. In contrast with previous empirical mobile app studies, many respondents reported using mobile apps for information-seeking versus escape gratifications. Further more than half of the respondents’ age sixty-five and over indicated using smartphones and mobile apps. …

Enacting Privacy Rules And Protecting Disclosure Recipients: Parents’ Communication With Children Following The Death Of A Family Member, Paige W. Toller, M. Chad Mcbride

Communication Faculty Publications

Given the probability that the death of a family member will occur before a child has reached adulthood, the purpose of this project was to understand what motivates parents to either talk or not talk about a loved one's death with their children. Using Communication Privacy Management to inductively analyze interviews, we found parents were motivated to talk to their children about death because they wanted their children to be informed. This is reflected in the first primary theme, Recalibrating Family of Origin Privacy Orientation Rules: Motivations for Revealing. Two secondary themes further explained parents' motivations to reveal: death as …

Differences In Relational Maintenance Strategies: A Comparative Study, Ariana Smith, Kama Konda

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

Individuals in long-term relationships use relational maintenance strategies to sustain their relationships. This study investigates differences in the use of relational maintenance strategies by relational status (dating, engaged, and married) and by choice of communication channel. Findings from N = 96 individuals in long-term romantic relationships revealed that the most commonly used strategy was assurances, and that positivity and openness decreased as the length of relationship increased. Face-to-face was the most commonly used communication channel across all relational maintenance strategies, and social networking sites were the least used. In addition, married couples were less likely than either dating or engaged …

How Emoticons Affect Leader-Member Exchange, Jennifer Loglia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emoticons have been shown to be the nonverbal cues of computer-mediated communication and could therefore be a rich source of information, but they are not used in the workplace because they are considered unprofessional. This study aimed to look at the effects of emoticons on relationships, specifically between a leader and member. Participants were asked to read a fake email from a fake boss and answer several questions in regard to leader-member exchange, affective presence, perceived message positivity, perceived masculinity/femininity of the fake boss, and perceived professionalism. This study found that the use of a positive emoticon in an email …

Cultural Differences And Switching Of In-Group Sharing Behavior Between An American (Facebook) And A Chinese (Renren) Social Networking Site, Lin Qiu, Han Lin, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Prior research has documented cultural dimensions that broadly characterize between-culture variations in Western and East Asian societies and that bicultural individuals can flexibly change their behaviors in response to different cultural contexts. In this article, we studied cultural differences and behavioral switching in the context of the fast emerging, naturally occurring online social networking, using both self-report measures and content analyses of online activities on two highly popular platforms, Facebook and Renren (the “Facebook of China”). Results showed that while Renren and Facebook are two technically similar platforms, the Renren culture is perceived as more collectivistic than the Facebook culture. …

Confidentiality: The Illusion And The Reality— Affirmative Steps For Lawyers And Mediators To Help Safeguard Their Mediation Communications, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Confidentiality is one promise of mediation that is increasingly broken, even though judges, lawyers and mediators frequently extol the sacredness of mediation confidentiality as a primary benefit for considering mediation as a settlement forum. We observe that legal challenges to any aspect of the mediation have caused judges to scrutinize mediation communications in a way that renders mediation confidentiality vulnerable at a minimum and violated at the worst. We are finding it a chronic challenge to decipher the precise and appropriate boundaries of mediation confidentiality. Moreover, we are increasingly discomforted to see that even unsuccessful legal challenges to mediation …

Comparing Spoken Language Treatments For Minimally Verbal Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Rhea Paul, Daniel Campbell, Kimberly Gilbert, Ioanna Tsiouri

Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Preschoolers with severe autism and minimal speech were assigned either a discrete trial or a naturalistic language treatment, and parents of all participants also received parent responsiveness training. After 12 weeks, both groups showed comparable improvement in number of spoken words produced, on average. Approximately half the children in each group achieved benchmarks for the first stage of functional spoken language development, as defined by Tager-Flusberg et al. (J Speech Lang Hear Res, 52: 643–652, 2009). Analyses of moderators of treatment suggest that joint attention moderates response to both treatments, and children with better receptive language pre-treatment do better with …

Experience As An Experiment, James Walker

Theses and Dissertations

My work is an exploration of new media that demonstrates the influence a community has on visual communication. The community reveals content as objects go unnoticed after they become a permanent part of the landscape and assumptions are made from cultural archetypes. Through exploration, immersion, and reflection, I am able to recognize the invisible and expected, establish a familiarity with a community, and design responses that communicate directly to it.

The Rhetorical Turn In United States Diplomacy Praxis: Public Diplomacy 2.0, Randy Edward Cole

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While discourse and rhetoric has always been a part of traditional diplomacy, rhetoric and communication theory has not enjoyed an active voice in the scholarship of foreign relations, and more specifically, public diplomacy. This project argues that a postmodern turn in public diplomacy was formalized in the State Department's 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and that two specific directives laid out therein--to expand and strengthen relationships between individuals and steer the narrative--can find theoretical ground in communication scholarship. After examining the mid-to-late 20th century shift from specialized modern policy training to a rhetorical public diplomacy that views diplomats …

Song Of The Lonely Mountain, Allison Davis

Honors Projects

The primary goal of this “creative form” project was to arrange a piece for my senior recital that would be entertaining as well as serve an educational purpose for all involved. In this case, the piece was Song of the Lonely Mountain, the music of which is featured in the modern film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey based off of the popular novel written by J.R.R. Tolkien. Along with arranging and performing the piece itself, another goal was to recruit performers who had not necessarily played the instruments they would be assigned to in order to teach them new …

Relational Dialectics: Friends Or More?, Catherine Ziemann

The Corinthian

In every intimate relationship, there are bound to be some tensions couples will need to overcome in order to carry out successful partnerships and connections. Researchers and theorists study the tensions between couples in order to identify communication strategies that can be used to manage or diminish these dialectical tensions. By analyzing a fictional representation of a relationship, individuals may appreciate it and apply it as a model for their own real-life relationship. How is the theory of Relational Dialectics, as presented by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, related to the relationship of Ross and Rachel from the television comedy …

Let’S Talk About Sex: A Training Program For Parents Of 4th And 5th Grade Children, Elizabeth Kay Eickhoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this study was to construct a training program for parents of 4th and 5th grade children on how to initiate and maintain conversations about safe-sex and sex-related topics by using Beebe, Mottet, and Roach’s (2013) Needs-Centered Training Model. The main topics arising from the needs assessment include experiencing puberty, healthy friendships, and peer pressure/media influence. The need for better communication surrounding sex can be seen from rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States remaining higher than those of other developed countries (Martinez, Copen, & Abma, 2011) as well as adolescents accounting for only a quarter of …

Propriety Of Self-Disclosure On Facebook: An Examination Of Its Impact On Credibility, Katherine Colleen Ireland

Master's Theses

This experimental study examined the effects of the propriety of computer-mediated teacher self-disclosure on perceptions of teacher credibility and how that relationship is moderated by ethnicity. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions: White Appropriate, Latina Appropriate, White Inappropriate, and Latina Inappropriate. Participants answered questions about the instructor's perceived credibility. Results suggest that teachers who engaged in appropriate self-disclosure were rated higher on teacher credibility than those with inappropriate Facebook® profiles. There was no main effect for ethnicity. Implications for classroom pedagogy, technology use, and areas for future research are discussed.

Safe Sex As Patriotic Ideograph In Wartime Std Prevention Campaigns, Jessica Ann Johnson

Master's Theses

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a problem that has afflicted people in the USA for centuries. Health communication and mass communication scholars have attempted to determine the effectiveness of STD prevention campaigns. It is crucial for scholars to take into account the persuasiveness of these campaigns and beliefs that become significant to these campaigns.

This rhetorical history examines how acted as a patriotic ideograph in World War I and II STD prevention campaigns. A history of war and knowledge associated with STDs gives readers a broad overview of the cultural aspects that are a part of the context of this …

From Lord Coke To Internet Privacy: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Law Of Electronic Contracting, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Personal, Political, And The Virtual? Redefining Female Success And Empowerment In A Post-Feminist Landscape, Linda Elizabeth Chardon

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of Energy-Efficient Compression And Communication Techniques For Multimedia In Resource Constrained Systems, Tao Ma, Michael Hempel, Dongming Peng, Hamid Sharif

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Advances in wireless multimedia communication technologies enable new types of pervasive and ubiquitous applications such as mobile health care, environmental monitoring, facility monitoring and traffic surveillance. Among different factors concerned, energy efficiency is one of the most challenging issues in multimedia communication due to the resource constraints, and the requirements for high bandwidth and low transmission delay. In this survey, we provide a broad picture of the state of- the-art energy efficient techniques that have been proposed in wireless multimedia communication for resource-constrained systems such as wireless sensor networks and mobile devices.

Following the essential stages required for multimedia communication, …

Meme World Syndrome: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The First World Problems And Third World Success Internet Memes, Robert Chandler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies the theory and method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the ideological components of the First World Problems (FWP) and Third World Success (TWS) Internet memes. Drawing on analytical concepts from CDA and related perspectives, such as multimodal discourse analysis and social semiotics, the paper analyzes the visual and textual elements of a sample of the FWP and TWS memes. The paper argues that the text and images featured in the memes are ideologically salient and discursively construct oppositional binaries between “us” and “them” in terms of wealth disparity.

Hidden In Plain Sight: Development And Testing Of A Model To Evaluate Political Leadership Tactics, Albert Citron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the kinds of verbal and nonverbal signals elites manifest to show leadership qualities. Launching from Max Weber’s conceptual framework of charisma as a power term and Harold Lasswell’s study of propaganda, this study takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying political leadership with elements of communication methodology and an ontological basis in evolutionary psychology. The study’s goal is to offer a framework for defining and evaluating the diverse signal patterns employed by political elites in three real-life situations. These are the Malta Summit, the 1992 Virginia Presidential Debate, and the 2012 South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary. The cases …

Keep Your “Friends” Close And Your Enemies Closer: Walking The Ethical Tightrope In The Use Of Social Media., John G. Browning

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article will examine the ethical issues posed by lawyers’ use of social media platforms in light of the ABA Ethics Commission 20/20 changes to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Social networking has had a transformative effect both on the way society shares information and on the legal profession. Much of the discussion to date focuses on the discovery and use of evidence from social media sites in criminal cases and civil litigation, but attention must also be directed to the ethical quandaries posed by the legal profession’s use of social media. This Article will consider issues such as …

Unintended Consequences Of Regulated Contract Structure, Bryan W. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effect of contract structure (fixed versus contingent) and a contextual factor (positive versus negative benefit surprise) on tax professionals' behavior. Regulatory restrictions on contract structure are based on the belief that contingent fee contracts "encourage tax return preparers to take unsupported positions on the taxpayers' returns" (Murphy 1989, p. 2). Experienced tax professionals participated in an experiment investigating the effect of contract structure and benefit surprise on their judgments and decisions. Contrary to regulators' beliefs about the effect of contingent fee structures, I do not find a main effect of contract structure. Rather, results show that …

Media Literacy, David Kamerer

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Student Behavior Alteration Techniques On Student Motives To Communicate, Student Talk, And Student Learning, Christopher J. Claus

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation addressed the effects of students' perceived effectiveness of and likelihood to use student behavior alteration techniques (BATs) on students' motives to communicate with their instructors, student talk (i.e., willingness to talk, out-of-class communication), and student learning (i.e., cognitive learning, affective learning, state motivation, and student communication satisfaction). Results revealed that student perceived effectiveness of, and likelihood to use, student BATs did not influence, student talk or student learning, but indicated some significant relationships with the students' motives to communicate with their instructors. Specifically, the relational, functional, participatory, and sycophancy motives were generally related to the perceived likelihood to …

Communicating, Collaborating, And Coordinating To Revitalize New Jersey Neighborhoods, Lois W. Greco

The Foundation Review

· Since 2003, the New Jersey public and private funding community has been organizing and implementing a shared, cross-sector approach to revitalizing the state's low-income neighborhoods that incorporates residents and stakeholders, encourages private investment, leverages corporate resources, and produces measurable results.

· The approach has been shaped by the programmatic alignment of the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation's Neighborhood Grants Program and the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs' Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit program (NRTC) with technical assistance from the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.

· The combined programs have supported initiatives in 26 neighborhoods, funded by $16 …