Digital Commons Network^™

True Crime Podcasts As A Scene Of Feminist Reckoning: A Comparative Analysis Of My Favorite Murder And Sistas Who Kill, Rachel C.C. Matteri

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This research examines the cultural impact and ethical implications of true crime podcasts (TCPs). In recent years, TCPs have become a powerful cultural force, with White women often emerging as the primary storytellers and most visible participants in the genre. Their dominance in this space is not neutral and it carries representational weight. It explores the potential for feminist activity made possible by the auditory, self-publishing genre of podcasting. This work focuses on the buddy-comedy subgenre of TCPs. The concerns of this text are that TCPs are dominated by White feminist values and are not an intersectional feminist project. Textual …

Breaking Barriers: The First-Generation Experience In Pursuit Of The American Dream, Milagros Ortega

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines the common misconceptions surrounding First-Generation Latino college students and challenges the dominant narrative that portrays them as unprepared, unsupported, and unmotivated. Through narrative and content analysis of the short films, Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá and Turns in the Road, this project explores the overlapping challenges that complicate their educational journeys. These challenges, financial instability, lack of guidance, and sociocultural dissonance, represent three core barriers commonly faced by first-generation Latino college students. Guided by theoretical frameworks such as the Immigrant Optimism Hypothesis, W.E.B Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness, Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of Nepantla, and Yosso’s …

Large Language Models And Identity: A Reflexive Approach, Nicholas Austin Nielsen

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explicates theories of identity, technology, and capitalism and uses an auto ethnographic approach in order to apply that explication at a personal level. The project responds to AI rhetoric in business and pedagogy and the instability surrounding perspectives on job security, the role of technology in Higher Education, and existential representations of the human. By deconstructing identity, ideology, cultural contexts, and technologic rhetorics, the goal is to further the scholarship surrounding Large Language Model applications in pedagogy and offer a personal, therapeutic approach to feelings of economic and existential discontent and fear experienced by students and educators regarding …

Heading For The Hills: An Evaluation Of The Conditions Impacting Teacher Attrition And Retention In Post-Pandemic California Title I Schools, Colin M. Mcinnis

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The low rates of preservice and early in-service teacher retention in California’s Title I schools have been a longstanding concern and contributing factor in the state’s teacher shortage. However, the impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) pandemic exacerbating teacher attrition creates a concern for how frameworks of new teacher support should be re-examined in post-pandemic classrooms. This study aimed to understand what factors are most important to preservice and early in-service teachers working in Title I schools when deciding to retain or resign from their positions. Additionally, this study examined whether reported factors associated with teacher attrition and retention differ from …

Narrative Inquiry Into The Socio Economic Integration And Resilience Of The Mien Community In The United States, Teresa M. Saefong

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the socioeconomic integration of the Mien community, a refugee minority sometimes overlooked in research and policy discussions, in the United States. Five participants shared their experiences through in-depth interviews and community observations. The study utilizes narrative inquiry and is informed by community cultural wealth and resilience theory. The analysis incorporated restorying, comparative, and performative approaches. The findings suggested that Mien integration depended on intergenerational storytelling, clan-based networks, multilingual skills, and the adaption of traditional practices within U.S. institutions. Community organizations were important for keeping culture alive and filling in the gaps in institutional services by giving …

Overidentification Of Learning Disabilities Among African Immigrants English Language Learners, Ololade Khafayat Banire

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the over-identification of learning disabilities among African immigrant English Language Learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools, examining both the individual and systemic factors contributing to disproportionality. By reviewing existing literature, the study identified five major factors: assessment and diagnostic bias, teacher knowledge and beliefs, contextual and school-level factors, structural inequities, and evidence gaps in research, revealing that overidentification often arises from the intersection of these factors. The review also highlights evidence-based solutions, including culturally and linguistically responsive assessment, continuous teacher professional development, family and community engagement, structural and policy reforms, and improved research practices. While limited by the …

Authenticity At Issue: Legislative Resistance To Gen Ai In Constituent Communication, Amy Mccoy

Iowa Journal of Communication

As legislators manage a fast-paced environment including an increasing number of legislative proposals, this research examines their perceptions around and understanding of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) and its potential applications related to constituent communications. This study explores how technological shifts in legislative communication, examined through New Media and Constructivist lenses, are interpreted and experienced by lawmakers. Through a mixed-methods approach using survey and interviews, this research provides insights on the contradiction of using Gen AI for legislative efficiency with concerns of how it may impact perceptions of authenticity and affect democratic engagement.

Toxic Sweetness And Abstinence: The Citationality Of Robert Lustig's Anti-Sugar Rhetoric, Tyler J. Snelling

Iowa Journal of Communication

Robert Lustig’s (2009) lecture on YouTube “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” animated a widespread conversation about whether sugar poisons bodies. Discourse following the lecture warrants analysis to gage how the meaning of the lecture transformed from a critique of food systems into individual actions. I argue that citationality of “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” fosters healthism by grounding sugar’s toxicity in scientific and affective reasoning that compels individual actions like abstinence from sugar. The pediatrician's lecture enabled the construction of a supposedly "moral eater" who removes sugar from consumption to avoid the poison's consequences. This paper offers tools for examining the spread …

Remembering July 36th: A Semiotic Analysis Of The Student-People's Revolutionary Graffiti, Jordan D. Smith

Iowa Journal of Communication

The use of graffiti as a tool for political solidarity has been universally documented in the academic lexicon. Using symbols of resilience, justice, disenfranchisement, and hope, graffiti is a unique phenomenon for visual rhetorical studies. The variety of artifacts spanning millennia document socio-political shifts, economic disparity, and messages of rebirth for systems in crisis. This study conducts a semiotic analysis of protest graffiti created during Bangladesh’s Student-People Uprising of July 2024 to explore how visual and linguistic signs construct messages of hope and solidarity. Using Ferdinand de Saussure’s (2021) semiotic framework, this research examines the symbolic and rhetorical elements present …

Front Matter - Table Of Contents - Preface

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Fixation On Viruses: Eye-Tracking, Image-Based Agency, And Fear-Appeal Desensitization, Braden Bagley, Lijie Zhou, Hayden Coombs, Matthew Barton

Iowa Journal of Communication

This study examined the effects of image-based assignment of agency (IAA) on COVID-19 and flu fear-appeals by employing eye-tracking technology. Volunteers participated in a 2x2x2 between-groups experiment. Fixation-count and fixation-duration were collected by a Tobii Pro X3-120 Screen-Based Eye-Tracker. After reviewing a fact sheet, participants answered a 29-item survey that included items aligning with the extended parallel process model. The flu/agentic-image/virus-agentic-language message produced significantly higher fixation-frequency to the image and a higher perception of severity than the COVID-19/real-image/human-agentic-language message. Fixation-frequency on the image produced significantly higher fear perceptions, but significantly lower message-quality and message-credibility perceptions. Flu messages led to significantly …

Insights In Adaptation: Examining Self-Reflection Strategies Of Job Seekers With Visual Impairments In India, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Significant changes in the digital employment landscape, driven by rapid technological advancements and the COVID-19 pandemic, have introduced new opportunities for blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals in developing countries like India. However, a significant portion of the BVI population in India remains unemployed despite extensive accessibility advancements and job search interventions. Therefore, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 BVI persons who were either pursuing or recently sought employment in the digital industry. Our findings reveal that despite gaining digital literacy and extensive training, BVI individuals struggle to meet industry requirements for fulfilling job openings. While they engage in self-reflection …

Can Llms Beat Humans On Discerning Human-Written And Llm-Generated Science News, Dominik Soós, Meng Jiang, Jian Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Science news is increasingly important in connecting scientists and the public by sharing discoveries and innovations. With the rise of large language models (LLMs), there is potential to automate science news creation, but concerns exist about the quality of LLM-generated news versus human-written news. This paper explores whether LLMs can outperform humans in distinguishing between human-written and LLM-generated news. Inspired by the Chain-of-Thought prompting method, we designed a simple yet effective variant called Guided Few-shot (GFS), which encodes the characteristics of news of two types with examples. Our experiments indicated that GFS with just a single example effectively boosted the …

From Philosophy To Nlu: Evolving Definitions With Research Hypotheses, Jian Wu, Sarah Rajtmajer

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Over the past decades, alongside advancements in natural language processing, significant attention has been paid to training models to automatically extract, understand, test, and generate hypotheses in open and scientific domains. However, interpretations of the term hypothesis for various natural language understanding (NLU) tasks have migrated from traditional definitions in the natural, social, and formal sciences. Even within NLU, we observe differences defining hypotheses across literature. In this paper, we overview and delineate various definitions of hypothesis. Especially, we discern the nuances of definitions across recently published NLU tasks. We highlight the importance of well-structured and well-defined hypotheses, particularly as …

From Philosophy To Nlu: Evolving Definitions Of Research Hypotheses, Jian Wu, Sarah Rajtmajer

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Over the past decades, alongside advancements in natural language processing, significant attention has been paid to training models to automatically extract, understand, test, and generate hypotheses in open and scientific domains. However, interpretations of the term hypothesis for various natural language understanding (NLU) tasks have migrated from traditional definitions in the natural, social, and formal sciences. Even within NLU, we observe differences defining hypotheses across literature. In this paper, we overview and delineate various definitions of hypothesis. Especially, we discern the nuances of definitions across recently published NLU tasks. We highlight the importance of well-structured and well-defined hypotheses, particularly as …

Neural Topic Modeling Via Contextual And Graph Information Fusion, Jiyuan Liu, Jiaxing Yan, Chunjiang Zhu, Xingyu Liu, Qing Li, Yanghui Rao

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Topic modeling is a powerful unsupervised tool for knowledge discovery. However, existing work struggles with generating limited-quality topics that are uninformative and incoherent, which hindering interpretable insights from managing textual data. In this paper, we improve the original variational autoencoder framework by incorporating contextual and graph information to address the above issues. First, the encoder utilizes topic fusion techniques to combine contextual and bag-of-words information well, and meanwhile exploits the constraints of topic alignment and topic sharpening to generate informative topics. Second, we develop a simple word co-occurrence graph information fusion strategy that efficiently increases topic coherence. On three benchmark …

Humans Vs. Llms On Open Domain Scientific Claim Verification: A Baseline Study, Benjamin Curtis, Stefania Dzhaman, Matthew Maisonave, Jian Wu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Verifying scientific claims is challenging for the general public because most people lack domain knowledge. Manual verification by subject domain experts is accurate, but it is obviously not scalable to meet the rising number of scientific claims on the Web. Whether the emerging large language models and large reasoning models can be used for scientific claim verification, and how their performances compare to humans, are still research questions. To this end, we developed a new benchmark MSVEC2 that consists of 138 claims from credible fact verification websites and science news outlets. Two tasks were given to both human and LLM …

Major Eleanor M. Roberts Papers - Accession 1796, Eleanor Marguerite Roberts

Manuscript Collection

The Major Eleanor M. Roberts Papers consist of records related to Major Eleanor M. Roberts (1916-2000) who was a 1938 graduate of Winthrop and a 25 year veteran of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and Women's Army Corps (WAC). This collection includes photographs, photocopies, postcards, report cards, illustrations, handwritten notes, military documents and certificates, service medals and ribbons, military dog tags, two photo albums, transcriptions of WWII correspondence, and Roberts family histories. An original draft and copy of Robert’s memoir Wings on My Heels, as well as material relating to Roberts’ time at Winthrop College like her Five …

Original Discontent, William Magnuson

Vanderbilt Law Review

There are many theories of constitutional interpretation. Most, but not all, assert that, in interpreting the U.S. Constitution’s provisions, we should start by taking seriously the intentions of the enactors, meaning, roughly speaking, its drafters, defenders, and ratifiers. This Article argues that, in doing so, judges, scholars, and policymakers have underestimated an important feature of the process of constitution-making: the discontent of the enactors themselves with the Constitution they were enacting. Time and again, during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, during the penning of the Federalist Papers, and during the state ratifying conventions, the enactors expressed deep reservations about the …

An Analytical Review Of Preprocessing Techniques In Bengali Natural Language Processing, Sovon Chakraborty, Protiva Das, Shakib Mahmud Dipto, Md Aktaruzzaman Pramanik, Jannatun Noor

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Research in Bengali Natural Language Processing (BNLP) is rapidly expanding. Despite being one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, BNLP research remains insufficient, particularly in Bengali speech recognition. The languages rich morphology, agglutinative structure, and diverse dialects make text and speech processing especially challenging. However, these challenges can be addressed with effective preprocessing techniques. Various organizations in Bangladesh and West Bengal are integrating Natural Language Processing (NLP) into their services, but without a thorough understanding of preprocessing, these implementations remain incomplete. Applying proper preprocessing techniques to the Bengali language will serve as a foundation for developing robust …

Position: Benchmarking Is Broken - Don't Let Ai Be Its Own Judge, Zerui Cheng, Stella Wohnig, Ruchika Gupta, Samiul Alam, Tassallah Abdullahi, João Alves Ribeiro, Christian Nielsen-Garcia, Saif Mir, Siran Li, Jason Orender, Seyed Ali Bahrainian, Daniel Kirste, Aaron Gokaslan, Carsten Eickhoff, Pramod Viswanath, Ruben Wolff

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The meteoric rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its rapidly expanding market capitalization, presents both transformative opportunities and critical challenges. Chief among these is the urgent need for a new, unified paradigm for trustworthy evaluation, as current benchmarks increasingly reveal critical vulnerabilities. Issues like data contamination and selective reporting by model developers fuel hype, while inadequate data quality control can lead to biased evaluations that, even if unintentionally, may favor specific approaches. As a flood of participants enters the AI space, this "Wild West" of assessment makes distinguishing genuine progress from exaggerated claims exceptionally difficult. Such ambiguity blurs scientific signals …

Quickque: Enabling Quick Access To Information In User Reviews For Screen Reader Users, Mohan Sunkara, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Sandeep Kalari, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Efficiently perusing online customer reviews is presently challenging for blind users, who rely on a screen reader that supports predominantly one-dimensional narration of content via keyboard shortcuts. To address this, with restaurant reviews as seminal case study, we developed QuickCue, a browser extension prototype that enables screen reader users to quickly obtain the positives and negatives regarding different aspects of a restaurant (e.g., food quality, hygiene, ambiance), without having to sift through numerous reviews containing redundant information. At its core, QuickCue utilizes a large language model to perform aspect and sentiment-based joint classification of reviews to group them based on …

Accessmenu: Enhancing Usability Of Online Restaurant Menus For Screen Reader Users, Nithiya Venkatraman, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Suyog Dahal, Yash Prakash, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Online food ordering has become commonplace due to its convenience. The wide variety of culinary choices, combined with fast and economical door-delivery services, encourages more people to order food online. To facilitate this process, food vendors, including restaurants, often provide full menus on their websites, typically in visual formats such as images or PDFs. While this is convenient for sighted users, blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals face significant challenges accessing these visual menus with their screen reader assistive technology. An interview study with 12 BVI screen reader users revealed that present assistive tools do not adequately satisfy the needs …

Characterizing Language Use In Online Accessibility Discussion Forums, Nithiya Venkatraman, Anand Ravi Aiyer, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Discussion forums are one of the favored platforms for knowledge sharing. Given their popularity, copious research exists on understanding the linguistic and behavioral characteristics of forum conversations, so as to inform the design of many downstream applications including discourse visualization, sentiment analysis, and question answering. However, prior investigations have mainly focused on general forums designed primarily for sighted users, and as such the applicability of their findings to dedicated accessibility discussion forums frequented by blind screen reader users remains unanswered. To bridge this knowledge gap and facilitate the development of better-informed assistive technologies for blind people, we investigated language use …

Nexus: Network Exploration For Exploiting Unsafe Sequences In Multi-Turn Llm Jailbreaks, Javad Rafiei Asl, Sidhant Narula, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Eduardo Blanco, Daniel Takabi

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, yet remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks—particularly multi-turn jailbreaks that distribute malicious intent across benign exchanges, thereby bypassing alignment mechanisms. Existing approaches often suffer from limited exploration of the adversarial space, rely on hand-crafted heuristics, or lack systematic query refinement. We propose NEXUS (Network Exploration for eXploiting Unsafe Sequences), a modular framework for constructing, refining, and executing optimized multi-turn attacks. NEXUS comprises: (1) ThoughtNet, which hierarchically expands a harmful intent into a structured semantic network of topics, entities, and query chains; (2) a feedback-driven Simulator that iteratively refines and prunes these chains …

Territory And Border Dynamics Among Small Pre-Hispanic Polities In Western Chiapas, Mexico, Antonio Martinez Tunon

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines the concept of territory in premodern polities, challenging modern assumptions that territory is a static or obsolete notion in the face of globalization. It critiques the conventional Westphalian model of state sovereignty, emphasizing that premodern political entities often exhibited flexible, overlapping territorial arrangements rather than fixed, linear boundaries. By analyzing territorial organization in premodern societies, this research explores the historical evolution of territoriality, identifying continuities and transformations over time.

Drawing from archaeology, anthropology, and historical geography, the research investigates how different societies have defined and maintained territorial control based on factors such as political authority, economic resources, …

Families’ Experiences Participating In A Collaborative, Multimodal Writing Workshop: Agency, Home Literacies, And Home/School Connections, Erin M. Faeth

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Students benefit academically and socially from strong home and school partnerships (Padak & Rasinski, 2010; Patrikakou et al., 2003; Risko & Walker-Dalhouse, 2009), yet there is often a gap between these contexts (Nelson, 2019; Padak & Rasinski, 2010; Risko & Walker-Dalhouse, 2009). To bridge the divide between these spaces, I drew on a sociocultural view of writing, the paradigm of family literacy, and third spaces of literacy to investigate four families’ experiences participating in a collaborative, multimodal writing workshop. Through practitioner research and case study methods, I explored the following research questions: (1) How do families talk about writing while …

First-Gen Latinx/Afro-Latinx And Complex: Keeping Resilient Responses On Shuffle, Tibisay I. Hernandez

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This qualitative study examined the racialized experiences of first-generation Latinx and Afro-Latinx students in higher education. Fourteen participants engaged in pláticas, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups to reflect on how their identities, race, and institutional dynamics shaped their collegiate journeys. The study examined how these students navigated both personal and institutional settings, revealing the emergence of tensions around belonging, authenticity, and cultural responsibility in everyday interactions. Using Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) alongside Multidimensional Identity Negotiation Theory (MINT) and Co-Cultural Communication Theory (CCCT), this study developed an emergent framework—the Resilient Response Model—to better understand how students respond to complex identity …

The Benefit Of New Perspective: An Analysis Of Postcolonial Adaptation, Sara L. Tilbe

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In our modern world, the concept of literary adaptation is not unheard of. Each release of a new, popular text comes with an underlying chance that it will likely be snatched up by Hollywood executives to be told through a cinematic setting. However, there is less fanfare when it comes to the topic of literary adaptation, particularly of famous texts that are deemed “classic” of the literary canon. Usually, any news of a literary adaptation of a classic book is meant with polarizing views from the general public. Some welcome the change, excited for what a new author can bring …

School Contexts And The Construction Of Literacy Practices And Identities Among Middle School Students Of Color, Eugene K. Gyekye

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation investigates how middle school students of color construct and negotiate their literacy identities within an urban public school's institutional, classroom, and online contexts. The study is situated at Oakville Middle School, a culturally and linguistically diverse setting that reflects the complexities of adolescent literacy education in contemporary urban environments. The research explores how students' literacy practices are shaped by their interactions with school structures, pedagogical approaches, peer dynamics, and digital platforms and how these experiences influence their development as literate individuals.

The study responds to the persistent challenge of educational inequity, particularly the disconnect between students' cultural identities …