Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Help / Hurt Duality At Work In Makeupalley.Com Product Reviews, Lisa Wortman Raring

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines online product reviews posted by members of an online beauty social network called MakeupAlley (commonly referred to by its members as MUA). A mixed method study involving quantitative and qualitative content analyses of MUA product reviews was conducted to explore and test a framework identified here as a “duality” at work in MUA product reviews – specifically, a help / hurt duality framework. The help / hurt duality framework is tested by examining the extent to which MUA enables its members to (1) help one another circumvent advertising by distinguishing “good” or effective products from “bad” …

Movement Media, Energy Activism, And The Politics Of Hometown In The Anti-765kv Power Transmission Tower Struggle Of Miryang In South Korea, Su Young Choi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues for expanding a practice approach to media combined with cultural studies to address the continuing problems of technological deterministic tendencies in the field of alternative, radical and citizen’s media research. Applying this approach specifically, this study offers the concept of movement media as an organized set of practices that creates spaces of action to connect what is separated and mediate cultures for social change. Drawing on twelve months of online and off-line fieldwork, the dissertation develops an ethnographic account of movement media in the Miryang environmental struggle against the Korea Electronic Power Corporation’s 765,000-voltage transmission line construction. …

Social Reproduction In The New England Community College System: A Critical Cultural Studies Perspective, Sarah Marmon

Masters Theses

Statistical data on community colleges confirms how vast the community college institution is: Serving 46% of all undergraduates in the country, or 12.4 million students. A large body of literature exists on the specifics of social reproduction in four-year universities; as well as the specifics of social reproduction in racially and economically segregated high schools. However, there exists a blind spot in this literature when it comes to social reproduction at the community college.

Through conducting interviews with students, faculty and staff at three local community colleges, this ethnographic study explores this theoretical and empirical blind spot by using a …

The Billion Object Platform (Bop): A System To Lower Barriers To Support Big, Streaming, Spatio-Temporal Data Sources, Devika Kakkar, Ben Lewis, David Smiley, Ariel Nunez

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

With funding from the Sloan Foundation and Harvard Dataverse, the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) has developed a big spatio-temporal data visualization platform called the Billion Object Platform or "BOP". The goal of the project is to lower barriers for scholars who wish to access large, streaming, spatio-temporal datasets. Since once archived, streaming data gets big fast, and since most GIS systems don't support interactive visualization of millions of objects, a new platform was needed. The BOP is loaded with the latest billion geo-tweets and is fed a real-time stream of about 1 million tweets per day. The CGA …

Geopoll - Integrate Cartographic Questions In Web Forms, Polls Or Surveys, Adrien Bigler, Olivier Ertz, Daniel Rappo, Sarah Composto, Florent Joerin, Maude Luggen Risse

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

Most of the web forms, polls or surveys are composed with classical input fields (check boxes, radio buttons, select lists, etc.) and a lot of standards web forms builders or services (e.g. Typeform, WuFoo, Google Forms, Survey Monkey, etc.) help to build and deploy them. Nowadays, offering a text area to catch a ZIP code or a select list to point out a country remains the best way to explicitly collect geospatial data. But what about mapping interfaces to integrate cartographic questions and/or cartographic answers as a more suitable solution? How to let form’s respondents indicate in which area(s) they …

Verbal -S Productions In The Structured Writing Samples Of Variable Aae-Speaking Fourth-Grade Students With And Without Language Impairment, Jacklyn High Felton

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers in speech-language pathology and ethnolinguistics have worked to gain knowledge about typical and atypical language patterns of African American children who are identified as African American English (AAE) dialect speakers. Much progress had been made, but limitations in this field of knowledge have persisted, especially for AA children who demonstrate variable use of AAE, presumably through the process of assimilation in the school setting. Therefore, more information is needed to provide diagnostic markers for deviations in typical language development for variable AAE-MAE speakers. Prior empirical research has found that third- and fourth-grade AAE-speaking children with typical language development overtly …

Do I Deserve To Spend? Social Support And Spending Pleasure, Kawon Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite evidence of people posting their consumption experience on online social networks to fulfill the needs of social support, a systemic understanding of how social support obtained via online social networks affects post-consumption behaviors related to spending remains elusive. This dissertation aims to answer the question of how social support via online social networks affects consumer’s post-consumption behavior by investigating in what form and from whom consumers obtain online social support. To do so, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine how online social support from others influences perceptions of deservingness which then influences spending pleasure. This dissertation focuses …

Local Aid Workers In The Digital Humanitarian Project: Between "Second Class Citizens" And "Entrepreneurial Survivors", Jonathan Corpus Ong, Pamela Combinido

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

This paper examines the experiences of Filipino workers recruited for technology and communications work by international aid agencies involved in the Typhoon Haiyan response. Filipino workers, many of whom were personally coping with the social and economic impact of this disaster, were hired on short-term contracts to test and implement various digital humanitarian innovations such as feedback and hazard mapping technological platforms. These workers were doubly marginalized: first, as tech workers whose work was viewed by aid officers on the ground as less substantial than that of food or shelter programs; and second, as local voices often drowned out by …

The Filipino Aid Workers Of Typhoon Yolanda: A Commemorative Feature, Jonathan Corpus Ong, Pamela Combinido

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

According to project leader Jonathan Corpus Ong, professor of communication in University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Convenor of the Network, “The book aims to recognize the Filipino aid workers who gave voice to communities that they are part of. It captures the hard work, ingenuity, and compassion of these aid workers that made these humanitarian projects not only possible but even successful.”

The book retells the stories of: Angelo Melencio (Plan International Philippines), John Vergel Briones (formerly IOM), Jerby Santo (formerly IOM), Aivon Guanco (World Vision Philippines), and Arnold Salvador (World Vision Philippines), who managed community feedback projects to enhance community …

Television And The Cultivation Of Authoritarianism: A Return Visit From An Unexpected Friend, Michael Morgan, James Shanahan

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

The 2016 Presidential election brought a surprise: the rise of Donald Trump as a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. What started as a seeming publicity stunt morphed into something more. Trump raised fears of authoritarianism—and even fascism—that were thought to be mostly confined to other countries. This study uses a national sample to examine television viewing's relationship to authoritarian values. We find that heavy viewers of television are more likely to be authoritarian, and that authoritarians are more likely to support Trump. We find an indirect relationship between amount of viewing and Trump support through authoritarianism. These findings have …

Christine De Pizan's The Book Of The City Of Ladies As Reclamatory Fan Work, E. J. Nielsen

Communication Graduate Student Publication Series

In what ways can medieval texts be looked at as fan works? How might the rhetorical tools of fan studies or affect theory aid in further understanding of these texts? Likewise, can we use medieval understandings of literary production to look at modern fan works in order to complicate our contemporary ideas of authorship? Here I consider how Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames) can be read as a reclamatory fan work addressing issues of representation and gender within both the texts it responds to and the …

Friends With Benefits: Plausible Optimism And The Practice Of Teabagging In Video Games, Brian Myers

Communication Graduate Student Publication Series

Recent scholarship in gaming studies has challenged the field to investigate and critique the hard core gaming audience (stereotypically seen as straight, White, cis-gendered male gamers) in a way that does not reinforce either the perceived marginalization of gamers or broader social hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and class. This article demonstrates a way to acknowledge the complexity of this audience without dismissing its most virulent tendencies via practice theory and weak theory. Using data drawn from a qualitative survey of 393 self-identified first-person shooter video game players, this article looks at the specific practice of “teabagging” in online competitive gaming …

The Cultural Cold War Goes "Vulgar": Radio Serial Melodrama In Post-Korean War South Korea, 1956-1960, Bohyeong Kim

Communication Graduate Student Publication Series

This study explores the birth of the popular radio serial drama under the Cold War doctrine of national broadcasting in 1950s South Korea. By examining texts, critiques, production practices, and writers, I interrogate how the anti-Communism propaganda mandate was negotiated in radio drama, influenced not only by the South Korean government and the field of radio production but also by the U.S. cultural Cold War programs and Americanization. As the result of historical contingencies within radiodrama production, the propaganda mission of national broadcasting morphed into “vulgar” melodrama, focused on romantic triangles and urban lifestyles. Whereas themes contrasted with the government …

Cultivating Conceptions Of Masculinity: Television And Perceptions Of Masculine Gender Role Norms, Erica Scharrer, Greg Blackburn

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

The potential of television to both reflect and shape cultural understandings of gender roles has long been the subject of social scientific inquiry. The present study employed survey methodology with 420 emerging adult respondents (aged 18 to 25) in a national U.S. sample to explore associations between amount of time spent viewing television and views about “ideal” masculine gender roles. The viewing of particular television genres was explored in addition to (and controlling for) overall amount of time spent with the medium, using cultivation theory as the theoretical foundation. Results showed significant statistical associations between viewing sitcoms, police and detective …

Practices Of Topic And Dialogue Activity Management In Dispute Mediation, Alena L. Vasilyeva

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

This study examines the mediator practices to bring the interaction back on track when the participants of dispute mediation go off-task. An existing collection of 18 transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation center in the western United States serves as a source of interactional data. First, the study examines the moves mediators make to perform interventions to bring the current state of activity more in line with mediation activity. Second, it accounts for the variety of interventions mediators perform using the concepts of face and facework. The article discusses what the findings mean in terms of …

Queer Cosmopolitanism In The Disaster Zone: "My Grindr Became The United Nations", Jonathan Corpus Ong

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

This article reflects on the significance of cosmopolitan socialities and intimacies following disasters, and the opportunities and risks they offer for restorative and reparative action for survivors and their communities. Reporting in particular on the experiences of LGBTQ Filipinos in post-Haiyan Tacloban, I discuss how the presence of foreign aid workers in everyday social spaces provided opportunities for queer identity expression and social attachments. I argue that cosmopolitan socialities, including new connections initiated via mobile dating platforms, were embraced by LGBTQs for their potential to share and repurpose wounds after rupture, especially in a conservative small-town context where LGBTQ identities …

Strategic Maneuvering In Dispute Mediation, Alena L. Vasilyeva

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

The study examines transcripts from dispute mediation to explore mediators’ strategic maneuvering for keeping the disputants on task – that is, on negotiating plans about caring for their children. The article discusses mediators’ institutional practices to keep disputants on task and to constrain what becomes arguable. It analyzes strategic maneuvering at the levels of topical potential, audience demands, and presentational devices. The study also suggests that the concept of strategic maneuvering can be further developed by including identities as another type of interactional resources employed to shape argumentative activity. It focuses on how mediators use interactional resources to balance institutional …

The Real Housewives, Gendered Affluence, And The Rise Of The Docusoap, Alison Brzencheck, Mari Castañeda

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

In this paper we position gendered affluence as a representational trend in dramatic comedies (e.g., Sex and the City [SATC]) and docusoaps (e.g., The Real Housewives [TRH]) that coalesces around themes like hyper-femininity, nouveau riche values, and conspicuous lifestyle. Through our analysis we suggest that institutional practices (identity politics, cybernetic commodification, and post-feminist technological interactivity) situated in a neoliberal context and a remediated environment enable the systematic reproduction of gendered affluence in the broader landscape of women’s television. The process of remediation is used as a lens to examine how the docusoap differs from (the immediacy …

Creative Resonance And Misalignment Stance: Achieving Distance In One Hebrew Interaction, Gonen Dori-Hacohen

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

This paper elaborates on one element of the theory of Dialogic Syntax, Du Bois’s main tool for stance-taking, namely creative resonance. The examples are taken from a recording of a car ride which was part of data collected for the analysis of Hebrew. The focus in the analysis is on misalignment, when participants use stance acts to distance themselves from each other. The main claim of this paper is that whenever a stance act takes place, the relations between the participants are at stake. I show how creative, and to a lesser extent pre-existing, resonance can be used for creating …

Umass Amherst Guide To Zero-Waste Events, Kevin J. Hollerbach, Ainsley Brosnan-Smith

Student Showcase

As the University of Massachusetts Amherst continues to grow, and as programming for the campus community becomes an ever-rising priority, events organizers will need to consider the waste implications of every event to comply with state and University standards, goals, and policies. This "Guide to Zero-Waste Events" aims to streamline the planning process as well as provide tips and examples for follow-through to implementing a successful zero-waste event. The guide also presents actionable policy recommendations for the University to reduce waste and increase diversion from large-scale outdoor events on the UMass Amherst campus.