Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

From Polygraphs To Truth Machines: Artificial Intelligence In Lie Detection, Jo Ann Oravec

Critical Humanities

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced lie detection tools in business, educational, community, and governmental contexts signals a new era of deception detection. With these AI developments, collections of intimate biometric information such as facial and retinal data, keystroke patterns, brain scans, and physiological changes in the cardiovascular system are combined with personal profiles to produce analyses of a subject’s supposed veracity. This article explores some early lie detection technologies (such as the polygraph) and discusses the influences that lie detection initiatives have had in human interactions through the decades. It addresses the empirical issues of whether specific AI technologies …

The Othering Of Donald Trump And His Supporters, Stephen D. Cooper Ph.D.

Communications Faculty Research

The 2016 presidential election was extraordinary in many respects. One was the way in which the Republican candidate and his supporters were disparaged in the establishment press. Although it is a truism that politics can often be rough (as in the sayings, 'It ain't beanbag" and "It’s a contact sport') and any apparent civility in the rhetoric is often just a mask in front of bareknuckle tactics, many observers have noted that the 2016 election became especially rough.

Further, the attacks on candidate Donald Trump and his supporters came not only from political opponents- which would be expected-but also from …

The Alt-Right's Use Of President Donald Trump's Twitter Account As A Propaganda Device, Erin Nicole Jorden

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The long campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act situated President Donald J. Trump in a context where attacks on President Barack Obama’s signature legislation symbolized a broader repudiation of his legacy. Even more than mainstream Republican partisans, the altright blogosphere celebrated the demise of the law to symbolically cleanse the nation of Obama’s influence. Trump attempted to honor his pledge to end Obamacare in his first year of office with his support of the American Health Care Act (March 2017), Better Care Reconciliation Act (July 2017), and the Graham-Cassidy Bill (September 2017). Members of the alt-right reframed …

Relationship Between Media Use And Cultural Adjustment: A Study On International Students At Marshall University, Haruka Yanagihara

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Due to the development of technology and globalization, the media environment for international students has been dramatically changing. International students who use the Internet now have more access to media produced in both home countries and host countries; they have more options to select media produced in either country compared to students of the past who lived without the Internet. Many scholars presume the media environment directly influences international students’ lives in the host countries, including their level of cultural adjustment. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between media use and cultural adaptation among international students …

The Storm After The Storm: A Comparative Framing Analysis Of Governmental And News Reporting On Hurricane Katrina, Evan T. Zuverink

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Hurricane Katrina is widely regarded as the greatest natural disaster to ever befall the United States. Following the storm’s devastation of the Gulf Coast region, a media firestorm unleashed, seeking to ascribe responsibility to governmental actors for the “failed” response effort. Through a comparative framing analysis, this study sought to investigate how major news outlets, the White House, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency framed the response efforts that followed Hurricane Katrina.

Containing The Beat: An Analysis Of The Press Coverage Of The Beat Generation During The 1950s, Anna Lou Jessmer

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The early Cold War era was a period marked by a fear of Communist subversion and a distrust of the other. It was during this time that the Beat Generation emerged in literature and society as a minority opinion group—failing to conform to mainstream norms and living outside the margins of acceptable American culture. In response to the Beat Generation and their dissenting viewpoints, the media framed the Beats in a mostly negative manner. This negative framing was fueled by a desire to delegitimize the Beats as well as any other dissenting groups that posed a threat to American ideology. …

Conservative Media And Political Socialization: Immigration, Gay Marriage, And Abortion As Presented By Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, And Cnn, Jeff Mckay

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study addresses the political socialization of politically conservative individuals and how political ideologies seem to coalesce among individuals from various socioeconomic backgrounds. The main issue that this study aims to tackle is the impact of conservative media on the political socialization of conservative individuals and how media as an agent of socialization might influence them to support ideas that are not to their benefit economically. For instance, conservative individuals from various backgrounds wholeheartedly support the same free market principles. However, the negative effect that capitalism has had on the liberty of middle and lower class citizens of the United …

Lessons From Libya: A Situational Approach To The Generic Criticism Of President Obama's March 28, 2011 Address To The Nation On Libya, Amy L. Schumacher

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Many scholars have called the utility of the generic method of rhetorical criticism into question. Adopting a situational approach to generic rhetorical criticism increases the value of the method considerably. By analyzing situational constituents (scene, purpose, agent, act, agency, and audience) surrounding a discourse, a critic gains a holistic understanding of that text. When coupled with generic comparisons - whether the critic proceeds inductively or deductively - he or she can then trace the recurrent rhetorical strategies across time and place and, simultaneously, highlight the elements unique to the particular rhetor and discourse. I demonstrate this approach through an analysis …

George W. Bush, The American Press, And The Initial Framing Of The War On Terror After 9/11, Stephen D. Cooper, Jim A. Kuypers, Matthew T. Althouse

Communications Faculty Research

President George W. Bush's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations on November I 0, 200 I, marks an important moment in the history of the War on Terror. 1 It followed closely upon the joint U.S.-Northern Alliance military capture of Mazari Sarif, Afghanistan, which significantly disrupted the Taliban's operations and arguably marked the official beginning of America's War on Terror. As President Bush stated, "The time for sympathy has now passed; the time for action has now arrived."2 In some ways, the speech offered nothing new. It reiterated words and ideas that the president frequently used to …

The Effects Of A Web Presence On Sportscasting Audiences, Adam Cavalier

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this research is to determine how much and what type of Web presence/content effectively draws listeners and viewers to the major sportscasts a station presents. Ad revenue, viewership/listenership and audience fragmentation all are conundrums in today's fluctuating media landscape. Combine those issues with the present economic crisis and the vast majority of media companies must rethink the way they do business. This research seeks to lay groundwork as to what new strategies effectively draw listeners/viewers back to the traditional media of radio and television while expanding upon the relatively new online media offerings. Furthermore, this research is …

The Opppositional Framing Of Bloggers, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

As a new feature of the media system, the blogosphere is an extremely interesting subject for scholarly inquiry. One might spend research time along a variety of lines: why people blog, why people read blog content, the relationship of the blogosphere to the established media outlets, the who/what/when of blog content production and consumption, the subject matter of blog posts, the effects of exposure to blog content, the potential for and limitations on interactions, and so on, for quite a long list. Given that the blogosphere is a recent addition to the media mix, and itself a (presumably) unintended consequence …

A Detailed Case Study Of Unusual Routines, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

Everyone working in organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. In such cases it is normal for people to find ways of completing their work in such a way that hey can get around, or just simply avoid, the procedure or system that has caused the problem. This is an unusual routine – a recurrent interaction pattern in which someone encounters a problem when trying to accomplish normal activities by following standard organizational procedures and then becomes enmeshed in wasteful and even harmful subroutines …

Over The Hills: Locating The Politics In Redneck Discourse, Brent M. Heavner

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This project offers a critique of popular redneck discourse in the United States from a perspective that draws from Marxism, cultural studies, and whiteness studies. Three individual studies are presented in order to map out the tenor of popular discourse: a content audit of major print media that use the term redneck, a textual analysis of print media that use the term redneck, and a textual analysis of entertainment media that construct and encourage identification with a redneck lifestyle. The redneck construct, it is argued, serves to mark the boundaries of normative whiteness and obfuscate white privilege. As a commodified …

Accent, Linguistic Discrimination, Stereotyping, And West Virginia In Film, Teresa L. O’Cassidy

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examines connections between accent, linguistic discrimination, and stereotyping in portrayals of West Virginia film characters. Ten films featuring West Virginia characters were examined for accent and stereotyping: The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983), Matewan (Sayles, 1987), Blaze (Shelton, 1989), The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991), October Sky (Johnston, 1999), Hannibal (Scott, 2001), A Beautiful Mind (Howard, 2001), The Mothman Prophecies (Pellington, 2002), Wrong Turn (Schmidt, 2003), and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (Luketic, 2004). Coders were employed to score character accents. Stereotyping data was gathered by comparing portrayals with stereotypical traits associated with Appalachian and/or hillbilly characters. …

Connecting The Dots: Implicit Commonalities Among Cultural Morphogenesis, Structuration, And Market Economics, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

Perhaps the central foundational issue of our time is the relationship of human agency and social structure. If human actors are constrained by the rules and rhetoric of the social system, how is it that those actors can yet bring about radical change in that social system? A similar puzzle exists in economics: how is it that individual transactions both maintain and transform the marketplace? This paper begins to identify common ground implicit in the work of Margaret Archer, Anthony Giddens, and Friedrich Hayek. Emergence, change, reproduction, time, agency, power, and knowledge are themes which can be read in these …

Press Controls In Wartime: The Legal, Historical, And Institutional Context, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

News coverage of warfare poses a dilemma for social systems with a free press, such as the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflict is inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The importance of secrecy to the conduct of warfare heightens the issue in the current counterterrorism operations. The competitive advantage of live coverage raises the stakes in a crowded media market. The military’s control over newsgathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy …

Mountaintop Removal: An Assessment Of The Propaganda Model Of The News Media, Tonya Lynn Adkins

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This research used the method of content analysis to examine how the issue of mountaintop removal mining was presented in four print media sources: the Logan Banner, the Charleston Gazette, the Herald Dispatch, and Graffiti. The propaganda model put forth in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, was used as the model upon which the research was based.

The purpose of the research was to determine whether or not the coal industry exerts a form of censorship over print media sources in West Virginia. It also sought to determine if there …