Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Adjustment And Social Media Use During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Alexis Banner

Honors College

Adolescents are highly susceptible to developing depression, given the wide range of social and biological changes that happen during this developmental period. Many late adolescents transition to college, and this experience is associated with more responsibility, higher academic demands, and gains in independence from family, which have been associated with higher levels of depression. Most adolescents today use social media, and this has been linked to many positive effects, such as exploring one’s identity and staying in contact with peers. However, social media use also has been associated with negative effects, such as body-image issues and increased depression levels. The …

A Study On The Effect Of The #Metoo Movement On State Level Policy Making, Claire Shaw

Honors College

This thesis analyzes the effects of social movements, specifically the #MeToo Movement, on state legislation. To do so, this thesis examines the timing and processes of two cases of passed legislation in Missouri and Texas. Though the #MeToo Movement was founded in 2006, the height of the movement in 2017 provided an open policy window in which political actors and entrepreneurs were able to pursue their prepared proposals. In Missouri, the rise of #MeToo inspired political ally Senator Holly Rehder to first publish a personal essay detailing her experience with sexual assault before sponsoring and introducing Senate Bill 775. This …

Imagining Gender Euphorias, Willow Wind

Honors College

Our society needs to talk about gender, but we aren’t very good at it. Avoiding these discussions has harmful impacts on body image and various health disparities (The Trevor Project, 2020). What if we have better and regular conversations about ways we can positively experience gender? This study’s model of negotiating gender can be used by families and educators seeking affirming exploratory learning opportunities. Insights into meanings of gender euphoria help validate diverse sets of experiences, informing a broader cultural discourse that increasingly questions gender binarism (Griffin, 2020).

This study explores conceptualizations and enactment of gender euphoria across demographics and …

Tabletop Roleplaying Games, And Depression, And Social Anxiety, Noelle B. Ott

Honors College

Tabletop roleplaying games are a form of in-person, multiplayer games structured around group interaction, set rules of gameplay, strategic group decision-making, and active character roleplaying. While such games have existed in some form for thousands of years, more recent and modern versions such as Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu have increased attention not only to their use as a form of entertainment, but as a potential extension of play and drama therapies in a clinical setting (Henrich & Worthington, 2021). Research into therapeutic roleplaying, both with and without gameplay supervision, has shown a promising association with increased understanding …

"Phone Bad": A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Case Study Analysis Of Social Media And Ostracism, Emmeline Willey

Honors College

Foundational theories of social psychology were written before the existence of social media. As evolving technology has created an environment where users maintain constant social contact, there exists a need for research concerning how human social needs manifest in an online environment, and even moreso for how constant interconnectedness affects people. Previous research indicates a positive correlation between experienced ostracism and social media addiction. However, social media usage tends to be high among users who feel connected, as well as users who feel disconnected, thus indicating that the link between social media and social disconnection may be a ‘chicken-and-the-egg’ situation. …

Speak For Yourself: Examining Subjectivity And Trauma In American Literary Journalism, Nathaniel Poole

Honors College

Due to their relevance and emotional draw for readers, stories of tragedy and suffering are a nearly inescapable aspect of journalism. However, the routine reporting and formulaic styles associated with coverage of these events has contributed to audience compassion fatigue. Studies have been done on the success of some journalists who have historically pushed the boundaries of style and deployed literary strategies to elicit emotion and subvert compassion fatigue in their reporting. However, there is more room in the scholarship on this subject for studies of the specific strategies that contemporary literary journalism writers use and how they adapt them …

“But You Have To Have Been There To Know What We Are Talking About”: An Examination Of The Rhetorical Environments Of Cults And Other Extremist Groups And How They Lead To Violence, Katherine Camille

Honors College

Popular culture often cites charismatic leaders as the catalysts for violent acts in cults and other extremist groups. This explanation is insufficient and oversimplified, and this thesis challenges the idea that a single speech or person can move a large group to act violently and without their own best interests in mind. This thesis examines two well- known cults: The Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate, to determine what compelled their followers to commit violent acts 3⁄4 particularly mass suicide. I then take this analysis and look at QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group, whose participation in the January 6th, 2021 …

An Examination Of Pervasive Language Around Sexual Harassment Through The Lens Of Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, And #Metoo, Elizabeth Theriault

Honors College

This thesis explores the hypothesis that the #MeToo Movement and Twitter have contributed to the changes in language used by individuals to describe sexual harassment and the survivors that come forward with their stories. To do so, this thesis identified common themes derived from language used in New York Times articles published during the Hill and Thomas hearings of 1991, as well as Tweets published between the dates surrounded the Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh hearings, September 25, 2018 and September 29, 2018, to create a comparable platform for language used in similar settings 27 years apart. It contains a literature …

“Things Are Going To Get A Lot Worse Before They Get Worse”: Humor In The Face Of Disaster, Politics, And Pain, Sierra Semmel

Honors College

From the Holocaust and slavery victims to medical professionals to firefighters, coping humor has been used throughout history even in the darkest of times. While it is common among victims of unfavorable situations, it is also utilized by late-night television shows to package the news of the day in a format that both addresses the issues and eases the emotions surrounding them. This thesis critically analyzes selected clips from late night shows and sketch comedy surrounding three different news events: Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings, the Boston Marathon bombing, and Hurricane Sandy. By studying a political event, a domestic terrorist …

Emotional Engagement Of Consumers: A Case Study Between Peloton And Classpass And Their Differences In Branding Initiatives On The Facebook Platform, Meredith Stephens

Honors College

This thesis investigates two companies whose products offerings are alike, yet their branding via the Facebook platform is different. Throughout this thesis, there will be research gathered from organic Facebook posts between the two companies’ brand pages on the Facebook Platform. The research consists of total reactions as well as comments on a per post basis for various posts throughout September of 2018 and 2019. The raw data that this thesis will be using will be positive emotionality scores from LIWC1 (after comments are entered and run through the software) as well as the total number of reactions (likes, loves, …

Women’S Mental Health In The 19th Century: An Analysis Of Sociocultural Factors Contributing To Oppression Of Women As Communicated By Influential Female Authors Of The Time, Jamie Lovley

Honors College

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the impact of sociocultural factors of 19th century domestic gender roles, as they affected women’s mental health specifically in the area of depressive disorders. Using modern psychological research on gender-influenced proclivity toward depression as a lens through which to understand 19th century mental health diagnoses, this thesis investigates how these gender-biased diagnoses and treatments compounded the mental health struggles women faced. This thesis employed the use of literary review to examine the lives of women as expressed by female authors during the 19th century through their writing, information about their lives as …

Health Campaign Plan: Increasing Familial Conversations About Organ Donation, Olivia Vibert

Honors College

Organ transplantation is a medical practice dates back to the 1920s and has led to tens of thousands of lives being saved. Currently, there is a massive shortage of organs suitable for donation in the United States with more than 114,000 men, women, and children on the organ waiting list, with less than 20,000 registered donors (Department of Health and Human Services, 2019). This paper covers the history of organ donation, where the issue of the lack of organs currently stands, and the role communication plays in carrying out one’s choice to donate. Understanding these factors has led to a …

Inanna: A Modern Interpretation, Erin Butts

Honors College

Sumer has a culture lost to history. Currently, the University of Maine offers no courses about ancient Mesopotamia, one of the first civilizations. Over the years, historians have been translating the cuneiform tablets containing their religion and history. There has been one adaptation of those translations, by Diane Wolkstein in 1983 to bring the stories to a wider audience through a collection of stories around the goddess Inanna. Wolkstein’s Inanna is a second wave feminist icon but reliant on an essentialist idea of womanhood. This thesis seeks to broaden her audience, analyze the context in which Wolkstein produced her adaptation, …

Prosthetic Gods, Taylor C. Cronin

Honors College

Freud describes us as “prosthetic gods,” or creatures of free will and choice. This aspect of human nature is an important part of what makes us inherently human. It is, unfortunately, part of the human condition to struggle with the paradox of free will and human agency versus the idea of fate and destiny. Addiction intensifies this struggle by removing control from individuals’ lives, pushing them down the path of destruction. Without the idea of control, that part of what makes us human is gone.

The process of writing, editing, casting, and performing a play highlights this same struggle, in …

Declining Journalistic Freedom In Turkey, Aliya Uteuova

Honors College

Currently, Turkey is the country with the most jailed journalists. According to the Journalists Union of Turkey, 145 journalists and media workers are in prison as of February 2018. In the decades that press freedom was monitored in Turkey, the suppression of press and violations of the free expression rights under the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unprecedented. Turkey once had a potential of emerging as the first modern democracy in a Muslim majority nation. However, if Turkey's current state is not soon reversed, the country will be left with with a media landscape where the voices of pro-government …

Facilitating Meaningful Interpersonal Connections Through A Virtual Space, Gene Herrschaft

Honors College

Interactive virtual experiences are known to be a viable medium to elicit emotional reactions from their users and to provide meaningful experiences. However, establishing meaningful interpersonal connections through interactive experiences can also be difficult, due to the toxic online environments that can stem from anonymity, and a general online hostility towards women or other traditionally under-represented groups. This project aims to create a welcoming online virtual space that gives users the opportunity to establish meaningful interpersonal connections with one another. These connections are facilitated by encouraging users to work together, interact with each other, and talk about themselves while in …

Television, Interpersonal Communication, And College Students’ Attitudes Toward Mental Health, Abby Bellefleur

Honors College

This thesis explores the relationships between television viewing habits, interpersonal communication, personal experience, and college students' attitudes toward mental health. Using a survey, results revealed that talking with friends or family members about mental health challenges is correlated with positive attitudes toward mental illness. This thesis offers support for peer-to-peer mental health programs on campus.

Creating A Future With Female Coders; Supporting Women Through Community, Ruth Leopold

Honors College

In the last two decades, the proportion of women earning bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences has declined from 28% to 18% (NSF/NCSES 2015c), even though the proportion of freshmen women declaring a computer sciences major when first enrolled in a 4-year institution has remained stable (at about 20% in recent years)” (NSF, Retention of Women in Computer Science). My undergraduate capstone aims to lessen the amount of women dropping out of computing fields by creating a sense of community. The key components and benefits of community that I targeted were peer support, shared experience, confidence and interest. I approached each …

Fostering Scientific Discourse Through The Development Of An Online Journal, James Robe

Honors College

Scientific information and data have become more readily available to populations that may not have had easy access to science content prior to increases in internet use and availability. Website creation platforms continue to be democratized by efforts to limit the amount of knowledge and money needed to launch, operate, and maintain websites. The internet also allows scientists to communicate with publics in more meaningful ways beyond education, such as scientific discourse. The opportunities that accompany expanded internet and website capabilities creates need for a comprehensive guide to help scientists or scientific groups take advantage of the internet’s unique ability …

Then And Now: The History And Effectiveness Of The University Of Maine System Sexual Assault Mandatory Reporting Policy, Kathleen O'Toole

Honors College

This thesis describes the legal, social and cultural landscape of campus sexual assault, the campus climate and its role in perpetuating sexual assault, mandatory reporting regarding students, as well as potential policies and practices that outside higher institutions have implemented and how the University of Maine may consider adopting these in order to encourage faculty reporting while still complying with federal law and remaining sensitive to the needs of the victim.

It Brings Me Back: A Look At Personally Collected Musical Memories And Their Kinetic Typographical Representation, Kathryn Galley

Honors College

This project examines personal accounts of music related memories. In January of 2017, an initial survey was launched to reach out into the University of Maine community which asked participants to recount specific music related memories. After receiving 107 responses, the survey was closed in February of 2017. The data was examined and selected from the responses, a list of 30 participants were selected, each with differing life experiences, song choices and well-rounded responses necessary for a successful multimedia portrayal. A total of 17 interviews from this list of 30 were conducted on the University of Maine campus, each session …

Dropping The Gloves: Fighting For Varsity Status Under Title Ix— The Rise Of Women’S Ice Hockey At The University Of Maine, Emily K. Mcnair

Honors College

Ice hockey at the University of Maine is a culture, of sorts. The university has a long tradition of supporting and growing a large fan base around its Division 1 varsity men’s ice hockey team. On the opposite end of that, the university’s female counterpart, the varsity women’s ice hockey team appears to get lost in the fray when discussing the hockey culture at the school. The purpose of this thesis is to tell the story of UMaine’s women’s ice hockey team. From the creation of the team as a club in the late 1970s, the organization battled through a …

The Role And Rhetoric Of Interest Groups In Obergefell V. Hodges’ Amicus Briefs, Heidi Mills

Honors College

This thesis explores the expression of polarization surrounding the most recent same-sex marriage case in the Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges. 28 amicus briefs, submitted from interested groups and concerned individuals in support of either the petitioners or the respondents, were analyzed for the major points of concurrence and disagreement between the two sides. The aim of the study was to come to a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which both sides express their arguments either for or against same-sex marriage. What the findings of the content analysis suggest is that interest groups on both side of the …

Extra! Extra! This Just Thin: Identifying And Evaluating Framing Of Obesity-Related News Coverage In Maine, Alan D. Bennett

Honors College

Obesity is an important health issue, and understanding both its origins and its remedies is critical. More than 78 million people in the United States — more than one- third the nation’s population — are obese, making obesity one of the most newsworthy health concerns of the time. The first step in addressing public health issues is to inform the public, for which news media act as the primary source. However, news media overwhelmingly frame obesity reports through a lens of individual responsibility, which blames people for their eating habits while ignoring systemic factors of obesity such as food industry …

Ideologies Of Empire: Perpetuating Imperial Culture Through Definitive British Literature Of The Congo, Shelby Lynne Hartin

Honors College

The Congo reform campaign in Britain was the largest humanitarian movement in British Imperial politics during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The texts used in this analysis emerged from the conflict and attempted to make sense of the atrocities committed against the people of the Congo Free State.

This analysis examines the impact of imperial ideology on the subjects of empire. It uses the texts of three authors, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and E.D. Morel, analyzing the literary underpinnings of imperial culture. It utilizes theoretical frameworks through which this literature can be understood and considers three manifestations of …

How Journalism Influenced American Public Opinion During The Vietnam War: A Case Study Of The Battle Of Ap Bac, The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident, The Tet Offensive, And The My Lai Massacre, Kyle Hadyniak

Honors College

The Vietnam War was a hallmark in journalism history. Not only was newspaper reporting placed in a prominent role, both on the front lines and at home, but for the first time television was also utilized to bring the horrors of war into the living room. Vietnam may have been in Southeast Asia, but half the fighting occurred in the United States because journalists in Vietnam brought a different, pragmatic view to the American public than what the government was providing. The latter’s misleading optimism and, in some cases, outright deception soon ignited an anti-war movement previously unseen on American …

Fan-Funded Film: How Audience Participation Is Shaping The Future Of Motion Pictures, Renee E. Moody

Honors College

A look at intellectual property rights in the Internet Age. Fan-Funded Film examines the omnipresent issue of piracy and the financial strategy of crowdfunding. Both have existed in film for decades, but have increased dramatically in recent years. Through the use of several theories and real life examples, I explore the problem of piracy's popularity and how audience participation through crowdfunding could be the answer.

Staking Out Gender: A Poststructuralist Analysis Of Gender Roles And Identity In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Patrick Pittis

Honors College

My aim in writing this thesis was to show that, contrary to the underlying themes of most critical approaches to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is more to be gained by approaching the series from a poststructuralist, postmodern feminist perspective, an approach that is aligned with the works of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. From this approach, one can see that the show’s rhetoric suggests gender is an unfixed, discursively constructed phenomenon, rather than a static oppositional masculine/feminine binary. The show’s subversive rhetoric is indicative of its agency, which can also be identified by the impact BtVS has had on …

Objecting To Objectivity, Elizabeth R. Kevit

Honors College

This study was designed to gauge how hyperlinks are used by four news organizations in order to provide suggestions about using hyperlinks to attain a more transparent style of journalism. The idea for the study grew out of discussion about the shortcomings of the traditional ideal of journalistic objectivity, such as a reliance on “he said/she said” reporting in order to avoid accusations of bias by not giving the sides of an argument equal play in an article. I propose that news organizations can better inform their readers if they eschew the idea of objectivity and, more specifically, the idea …

The Use Of Mass Communication In Animal Rights Fundraising Campaigns, Jaime E.R. Shorter

Honors College

Animal abuse and neglect is an ongoing, documented problem for society. Cases of animal harm stream in and out of news reports and public discussion. With changes in technology, mass communication has become more than a convenient outlet for publicizing stories about animal harm. Not-for-profit organizations look to mass communication as a way to gain support from the public.

Animal welfare organizations use mass communication to benefit their causes and reach multiple groups through their use of fundraising campaigns. Animal welfare organizations were created to address the problem of abuse and harm. But, as not-for-profit organizations, they rely heavily on …