Digital Commons Network^™

The (Mis) Representation Of Racialized Minorities: Barbie Dolls As Social Problems In India, Namrata Ashvinbhai Bhadania

English Faculty Publications

The relation between commodities and consumers is directly related to the transactional relationship between kids and their interaction with the toys. The paper aims to critique how female representation through Barbie Dolls in popular culture shapes female identity. Production and consumption of Barbie dolls in India became a way of socializing mechanism to educate young Indian girls on the concept of beauty. A notion of beauty is attached to blue eyes, skinny waist, and fair skin giving rise to “American Exceptionalism” (Madsen, 2009, p. 14), where the model nation conceptualizes itself though national identity where perceiver compels to transform themselves …

The Comfort Watch: Psychology And Media Theory Perspectives On Nostalgia And Film, Sohni Kaur

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explored the relationship between nostalgia, film, and coping mechanisms,

using both media theory and psychological lenses. Nostalgia, a concept with roots in both media theory and psychology, is best defined as homesickness for a time rather than a place. Nostalgia, when combined with film, leads to the concept of “comfort watches”, a scarcely researched topic. From a psychological standpoint, research suggests that nostalgia and media usage are commonly used coping mechanisms, yet there has been little to no research combining the two. The psychological study included in this thesis was conducted online in the United States using 83 …

Between The Lines: Reflexive Misogyny And Remediated Forms In A Secret Online Group Of Women Poets, Rae Elizabeth Snobl

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis examines an online, secret writing community for 1,800+ women-only poets called “The Retreat.” Analysis of two years of Facebook posts and interviews with group members revealed a noticeable membership split between those publishing through conventional literary venues, the “traditional poets,” and social media poets. These “Instapoets,” as labeled by popular media each had between 10,000 to 125,000+ followers on sites like Instagram and Facebook—significant numbers when seen in the context of readership and monetizing. Yet, their digital, snippet poems did not hold to the literary norms of poetry, both in form and publishing method. This led to a …

Mummy Cave; North Fork Shoshone River; Park County, Wyoming, Timothy Andrews

Conspectus Borealis

Mummy Cave represents the silence of the Sheepeater Shoshone. Little evidence of human occupation can survive this close to the river. The bank is low and rocky, with a thin deposit of alluvial soil, from the present shoreline to the angle of the ridge, where the ruddy breccia and tuff rise acutely, providing a rockface where the erosive action of the frigid mountain water could lap over eons at the igneous wall to form a shallow overhang. Camp placement in this proximity to a river was likely common, making use of a broad level riverbank to live close to water …

​The Case Of The Melting Pot: How Does Opinion Bias Affect One’S Understanding Of Immigration In The Us?​, Mary Ankomah

Honors Program Theses and Projects

In such a delicate political climate the complete acceptance of legal immigrants in the United States seems too often to be a challenge carried to many native-born Americans. Feelings of displeasure, annoyance and anger are repeatedly cultivated by many American citizens towards immigrants. News media and social media platforms have displayed this kind of negative behavior towards legal immigrants, in which they are often accused of “stealing jobs,” “trying to suppress a certain ethnic population,” or “infesting” the area. This study analyzes the political-psychological reason behind this learned reaction, while focusing on factors that have sponsored this level of intolerance …

Social Studies Teacher Perceptions Of News Source Credibility, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, H. James Garrett

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These …

The Opaque Operations Of 21st Century Populism, Konnor Callihan

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

In my capstone, I claim that the populism of the 21st century should be considered a political style as elucidated by Benjamin Moffitt. But Moffitis’s understanding of political style does not adequately address how populism morphs through new technological systems, such as algorithms, filter bubbles, echo chambers in our internet devices. This theoretical framework takes necessary elements from past theories and stresses the performance that is vital to populism in our modern media ecosystem. The charismatic leader is no longer necessary, but the "opaque operations"( i.e algorithms, filter bubbles,echo chambers) allow populism to be almost self replicating. These “populist actors” …

Lost Without A Connection: Analyzing Netflix's Maniac In The Digital Streaming Age, Eric Bruce

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the emergence and rise in popularity of streaming services such as Netflix or Hulu, the way in which audiences view and interact with media, as well as each other, has changed drastically. The move to digital streaming impacts how audiences everywhere experience and expect immediacy in media, connecting deeper with what they watch. Along with this transition in spectatorship comes a shift in visual aesthetics, a trend that can be seen across various digitally-streamed series. This thesis serves to address what this transition is and how it affects the cultural landscape of the digital age, continuing the conversation of …

The Understanding Of Women’S Movement Activists On The Necessity Of Critical Analysis Of Television Content In Iran, Kobra M. Kachalmi, Lee Yok Fee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Iranian TV tries to legitimize and reinforce sexism and male domination with oppressive gender representation. The current study investigates how critical analysis of media is necessary for Iranian women from the viewpoints of Iranian feminist activists. Using a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews with 15 Iranian feminist activists, this paper contends that critical reading of media messages is essential for Iranian women. The findings reveal that critical reading of media messages could empower Iranian women to understand how Iranian TV reinforces and naturalizes gender stereotypes and roles. In addition, the Iranian feminist activists believe that because media has a purpose, …

Performing The Global: The Mediated Mobility Of Virtual Cosmopolitans, Hye Jean Chung

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines how contemporary media art and popular culture, vernacular cultural practices, and digital technologies express and actualize aspirations for global mobility. This task is propelled by the need to question the limited scope of how we envision globalization. Here I explore how people use forms of visual media to “perform the global” through mediated experiences of mobility. I propose the concept of “virtual cosmopolitans” to describe those who participate in the experience of global citizenship through their use of photography, film, and digital media. Although they do not have access to conventional forms of cosmopolitan mobility, these virtual …

Doing Gender: Cars And Culture In The United States, Adrian L. Zavala

Communication Senior Capstones

This qualitative research study aims to define and describe gender stereotypes and car culture. It will also explain how these stereotypes influence car culture and vice versa. This paper aims to explain how the mass media uses car culture in the United States and imposes gender stereotypes. The mass media I will be discussing includes but is not limited to commercials and magazine adverts. This paper asserts that by portraying what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, car companies build car culture and use pre-existing constructs of gender for marketing it. According …

Critical Rhetoric And Collaboration: Missing Principle #9 And Profsdopop.Com, Art Herbig, Andrew F. Herrmann, Alix R. Watson, Adam W. Tyma, Joan Miller

Communication Faculty Publications

As part of this Special Section on critical rhetoric, this article examines the role of collaboration in the future of critical rhetoric. Building on McKerrow’s original eight principles of praxis, the authors advocate for a missing ninth principle that reflects the need for critical rhetoric to be a shared venture across both individual projects and larger discourses. As an example of this type of work, they provide ProfsDoPop.com, an academic, online blog designed to bring academic sensibilities and concepts to popular audiences through the critique of popular culture.

The Cultivation Theory And Reality Television: An Old Theory With A Modern Twist, Jeffrey Weiss

Capstone Showcase

George Gerbner, a Hungarian-born professor of communication, founded the cultivation theory, one of the most popular and regarded theories in the communications world. Developed in the mid 20th century, the theory focus on the long-term effects of television on people. Longer exposure to signs, images and people on television cultivates their perception of reality in the real world. The television became a household staple during this time. Families often spent time together watching programming together, however, it played out different effects for each person. Television's constant visual and auditory stimulation on a person made it easier to cultivate certain messages, …

The People’S Princesses: Feminist Theory And Uk Media Representations Of Lady Diana Spencer And Meghan Markle, Mackenzie Myer

Capstone Showcase

This paper analyzes how Lady Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle were and are treated by members of the UK media force through the lens of feminist theory.

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And Wikileaks: The Public Sphere And The Right To Know, Mary Murray

Capstone Showcase

Jürgen Habermas, a German theorist, coined the public sphere as a place where citizens could interact, study, and debate issues together outside the realm of the home or family, which was defined as the private sphere. The public sphere can also be seen as a “manifestation of citizen sovereignty”. At its core, Habermas centered the public sphere around feudalism and the shift of one all-powerful individual reigning and representing the public to those citizens under the control of the state. Some critics argue voices encouraging the minorities were actually private voices leaking into the public sphere, while others argue the …

Engaging With The Media In A Pre And Post Brexit World: Racism, Xenophobia And Regulation: A United Kingdom Perspective, Kim Mcguire

Journal of Hate Studies

This paper engages with the perception that the UK media was instrumental in promoting racism and xenophobia in the period before the UK EU referendum. Furthermore, that this promotion led to actual hate crimes within the UK: How and why this occurred are central research issues. However, a further question is why no prosecution took place of either individuals within the media, or media companies themselves, promoting such rhetoric. Primary data analysis consisted of surveying newspaper content, online or otherwise, and particularly the tabloid press, but also EU reports, legislation, including Article 10 and 10.2 European Convention on Human Rights …

Examining The Relationship Between Media Consumption And Kenya's Political Culture, Gilbert Kipkoech

Theses and Dissertations

Using data collected from 206 participants, this country-specific study examines the relationship between media consumption and Kenya’s political culture. Political scientists and communicators contend that political culture encompasses several aspects. In this study, only four aspects of a country’s political orientations (culture) and its relationship with the media are examined (a) Political participation, (b) political trust, (c) patriotism, and (d) inter-ethnic attitudes. Drawing on past research, the study establishes a link between media use and political attitudes and behaviors of the Kenyan people, operationalized in the study as the political culture. While the literature is divided on whether the media …

Building A Music Festival: Understanding Media Industry Lore, Madeline Edgmon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Music festivals have become culturally salient within the new age of consumer participatory culture. Festivals fundamentally warrant a rite of passage by providing consumers a unique, all-encompassing experience. This critical media industry study examines the music festival industry and its’ usage of lore as industry held logics based off of perceptions of consumer wants and desires that calcify within the industry (Havens and Lotz, 2012). I contend three substantial and emergent lore in the music festival industry identified include millennials, experience economy, and prosumer culture. In addition, this thesis explores industry lore as various textual representations across social and physical …

“This Is The True Story:” The Representation Of The Lgtbq Community In Mtv’S The Real World, Morgan Rae Ohman

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

In this project, Morgan Ohman seeks to explore the MTV reality show The Real World by analyzing several cast members of the show who identify as part of the LGBTQ community. MTV’s The Real World, a reality TV show that first aired in 1992, captures the lives of seven young people between the ages of 18-24 that are selected to live in a house together for several months. The show’s dramatic the opening title sequence, “what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real?” raises fundamental questions about the relationship of reality TV and the politics of …

Seeing Every Corner Of Tangier: A Photographic Collection Going Beyond The Media Sphere, Cynthia J. Coleman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Tangier is an iconic city, with an image recognized internationally. Its image is created, not only by the city itself, but by its representation in the media. That said, it is worth considering, how true to Tangier is its image? This study considers this issue by addressing the following question: how does the image of Tangier, as represented in photographs, compare with that portrayed in the media? To accomplish this, a collection of 18 photographs over the area of Tangier, an area of 44 square miles, was taken. The photos were taken to as objectively as possible represent the city …

The Image Of Adventure In Literature, Media, And Society: 2019 Sassi Conference Proceedings, Society For The Academic Study Of Social Imagery, Thomas G. Endres

Society for the Academic Study of Social Imagery

These papers have been selected from among those presented at the spring 2019 conference of the Society for the Academic Study of Social Imagery (SASSI), devoted to the theme of THE IMAGE OF ADVENTURE in Literature, Media, and Society. The theme – and keynote address, delivered by UNC English chair Andreas Mueller – was selected in honor of the 300th anniversary of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. As the following papers demonstrate, this is a rich and provocative topic with interesting and surprising implications.

Storied Feelings: Emotions, Culture, Media, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Communications: Faculty Publications

Mass mediated emotional experiences are central to late modern subjectivity. Narrative storytelling creates public sites where audiences encounter and negotiate shared sociocultural circumstances rendered in aesthetic terms. Popular narratives move us by providing access, through felt recognition, to aspects of our emotional existence that would otherwise remain inexpressible. Using examples from film, this chapter explores how emotions as public events, constituted as part of collectively experienced social, cultural, and historical conditions, are enacted or realized through narrative media.

Islam & Interfaith Dialogue: Innovative Diplomacy Between The United States And Islamic Republic Of Iran, Kristyn Rohrer

Honors Student Research

This meta-communicative study provides an analysis of global interfaith dialogue as it pertains to peace and conflict, with a primary focus on Islam. The Islamic Republic of Iran and United States have a complicated history. Their diplomatic relationship is rife with manipulation, radicalism, and a disregard for human dignity. Currently, the US is imposing hundreds of sanctions and restrictions on Iran, from nuclear energy to medicine, as a result of President Trump’s decision to back out of the Iran Deal. However, other forms of dialogue are affecting positive relations between the two countries. Interfaith dialogue between North American Mennonites and …

Financial Media And The Politics Of Difference: Argentine Histories Of The Greek Debt Crisis, 2010-2015, Marcos Mendoza Ph.D., Emily Warner

Journal of International and Global Studies

This article examines financial media discourses and representations of the Greek debt crisis from 2010 to 2015. The analysis is based on financial media texts published by six major news outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. This paper argues that the AngloAmerican media generated a financial discourse of the Greek debt crisis based on an analogical framework to contemporary Argentina. The discussion highlights three aspects of this media discourse: the classification of the unfolding crisis type (liquidity, solvency, or political), the use of Argentine financial histories to understand the crisis type and predict its possible futures, and …

Mediated Merchandise, Merchandisable Media: An Introduction, Elizabeth Affuso, Avi Santo

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

There are many reasons why film and media scholars ought to take merchandise seriously. That filmrelated merchandise is a lucrative part of the film business is only a starting point, but still a good place to start. In 2018, character and entertainment licensing accounted for 44.7% of retail sales of licensed merchandise, generating $121.53 billion in sales. [1] [#N1] This earned entertainment companies approximately $6.2 billion in royalties. [2] [#N2] Not surprisingly, five of the top ten licensors are entertainment companies, with Disney positioned at the top with $53 billion in merchandise sales. Universal Studios is ranked 4th ($7.3 billion), …

Insecure Hegemony: The Cultural Construction Of 'Righteous Retaliation' In The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden, Marisa Tramontano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the American “authorized discourse” about the hunt for and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to better understand it as an episode in American cultural hegemony maintenance. Through a structural hermeneutic analysis of presidential speeches and widely-circulated national strategy documents, high distribution news coverage, and entertainment media, alongside one-on-one interviews and focus groups, I illuminate the symbolic mechanics by which the death of Osama bin Laden was constructed as righteous and legitimate retaliatory violence in response to the unprompted, offensive violence of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on an array of theoretical approaches including classical sociologists Karl …

The Social Construction Of Protest: Print Media Coverage Of The 2004 Republican National Convention And The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Protests In New York City, Kirsten Christiansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Majoritarian democracies are founded on the idea that the governance of society will reflect the needs and desires of the majority of the people and that all citizens are given a voice. Public protest activity is one of the ways in which social movement organizations as claims-makers can reach an audience to attempt to convince a majority to effect social change. The mainstream news media can disseminate information about protest messages and activity beyond the local. However, the mainstream news media filters information in its own way, influenced in part because of traditional news routines but also potentially by the …

Perceptions Of Non-Americans Towards American Tv Series, Thaarika Charumathy Seetharaman

Theses

Television drama is one of the most entertaining genre of the media industry, and it serves as a socialization platform (Greenberg, 1982). American TV series have gained audience and fans from all around the world which opens up the scope for examining the effects of American media on the secondary audience. Drawing on the framework of cultivation theory, this study examined the effect of American TV series on non-American population. The results suggested that the cultivation effects are dependent on age and gender of the respondents, in connection with the genre of the series influencing the audience’s framing of the …

Effects Of College-Themed Media On First-Year Student Expectations, Micheal John Clinton Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Common expectations of incoming undergraduates have been identified, however, the influences on these expectations are varied and include input from high school, familial pressures, and the media. Incoming students consume messages regarding what college is like from these various sources, yet the specific impact of narrative media has yet to be investigated. Utilizing interviews of college students following their first full-time academic year, this study accomplishes two tasks. First, the types of expectations students have of four common assumptions of college congruent with previous research are identified. Then, the influences of narrative media are investigated and analyzed. The analysis of …

A Place To Stand: Community Media Centers, James Joseph Knightwright

Theses and Dissertations

With the experience of 30+ years in community media, I envision providing a resource for scholars as well as community media practitioners and stakeholders. I am investigating the processes of training at community media centers (CMC) to determine potential impacts and effects. Functioning as a participant observer, I will prepare a documentary film focusing on the practices and processes utilized by CMCs to serve their communities.

Concentrating on Columbia Access Television (CAT TV), Columbia, Missouri and the Sun Prairie Media Center (SPMC), Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, I plan to visit each location to interview station staff, volunteers, and community members. These …