Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Captain America: The Delicate Masculinity Of An American Icon, Lauren Rezac

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

What makes a good man? For this research, I examine the ways that Captain America, also known as Steve Rogers, portrays masculinity in the highest grossing movie franchise of all time — The Marvel Cinematic Universe. I propose that the ways in which an American icon who represents the ideal man behaves reflects larger cultural expectations of masculinity, specifically the expectations for white men. In addition to holding up a mirror to society’s expectations for a ‘good man’, the social messaging about masculinity in these films should be examined to understand what American men of every generation are idolizing. I …

Digital Masculinity: An Analysis Of How Masculine Values Are Manifested In Online Spaces, Catherine Thompson

Honors Projects

In this research paper, I utilize previous research to demonstrate how the history of masculinity in America impacts views of social hierarchy in gendered spaces online. I describe how hegemonic masculinity affects how men view themselves and others to understand why men’s online groups like incels, pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, 4chan, and 8chan develop and thrive by providing men with groups where they can demonstrate hegemonic masculinity to other men through degrading women. Using this framework, I use a binary logistic regression model to quantify the relationship between men’s opinions surrounding internet behaviors and attitudes towards the internet with …

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Civilian Response And Expectations, Celeste Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

On October 14, 1962, an American U-2 spy plane flying over the island of Cuba discovered Soviet missiles being constructed. This discovery led President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro into a thirteen-day negotiation period to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba. During this time, the world was the closest it had ever been to nuclear destruction, causing stress and anxiety to many worldwide, especially the American populace, who believed they were invincible in a home front attack. Throughout this thesis, I aim to examine the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear fallout through the …

Young Children’S Tv Show Preferences And Perceptions Of Women In Stem, Lauren Berck

Undergraduate Theses

Women are joining STEM fields at higher rates, yet the stereotype of math and science being for men is still reinforced to children by their parents, their teachers, and especially what they watch. Children tend to trust characters of their same gender and are more likely to retain the lessons from the characters they trust. Since most of the shows children watch tend to display gender stereotypes, especially the stereotype of men being good in STEM, children are likely to enforce these stereotypes. The increase of women in STEM has increased interest in STEM for girls, but boys still tend …

Socially Constructing The #Metoo Movement In The New York Times, Hannah Jureller

Sociology

In 2017, The New York Times published an article titled, “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades” written by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (2019), exposing one of the most abusive sexual predators in Hollywood. This sparked a movement among victim-survivors and their allies now known as the #MeToo Movement. This movement brought issues of sexual assault to the forefront. The New York Times covered this movement extensively and can be considered very influential in their coverage of the movement. For this project, I conducted a content analysis of 31 New York Times articles to identify how The …

Feminine And Masculine Linguistic Comparison: Investigating Team Sports Through Notre Dame University Media News Archives, Ellie Lengacher

Honors Projects and Presentations: Undergraduate

This unobtrusive qualitative research was aimed to explore the linguistic differences in media news archives between male and female athletes in sport. Data was collected unobtrusively through Notre Dame University’s athletic online website where media news archives were gathered from the sports of soccer, basketball, and lacrosse in the 2019 year. Open coding was then achieved with the help of varying verbs and adjectives collected. Upon analysis, four patterns emerged from the open coding process. These themes being latent gendered linguistics, a double standard, overemphasizing qualifications of female athletes, and structural disparities. Results concluded that there continues to be major …

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 …

And Then They Boned: An Analysis Of Fanfiction And Its Influence On Sexual Development, Lindsay M. Mixer

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how young adults come to understand their sexuality (from sexual and gender identities to sexual likes and dislikes) through reading and writing fanfiction. Previous studies show that fanfiction promotes non-heterosexual orientations, but little research has been done on how it contributes to overall sexual development. In conducting an online survey of fanfiction readers, I explore how fans use these works to generate an understanding of themselves as sexual beings. Explicit stories make up a sizable portion of the fanfiction available, and there is a wide range of sexual acts depicted in those …

Desire And Fantasy Between Commercialism And Personal Room, Yukimi Otagiri

Theses and Dissertations

I apply two aspects of my life history to my art; my childhood experiences and my advanced studies in sociology. My work therefore combines a highly personal reading of my experiences of social interactions and my ongoing analysis of the nature of capitalism and socialism, commodification and media, especially in regard to the experiences of women in particular and consumers in general.

A Content Analysis Of Gender-Specific Media Coverage Of Sport: Ncaa Athletic Department Home Webpages, Margo R. Malik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Studies have found that media coverage of women’s sports is inadequate when compared with coverage of men’s sports. The results of these studies have revealed inadequacies in terms of amount of coverage as well as type of coverage. Findings demonstrate that there is a certain way media frame female athletes when they are covered. Female athletes are often portrayed in overly sexualized images, as feminine role models, as passive rather than active, and in sports that are considered gender-appropriate. These types of portrayals can perpetuate gender bias and stereotypes, undermine the true athletic ability of female athletes, and give the …

In His Image: A Content Analysis Of Evangelical Youth Books For Their Representation Of Gender Roles And Ideals, Taryn Renee Vis

Honors Projects

This content analysis discusses the results of the analysis of twelve major Evangelical books for young adults and their representation of gender roles and gender ideals. The background of the Evangelical church’s handling of gender, particularly in relation to media beginning in the 1970s is established and discussed at length in order to situate this analysis amongst previous discussion of Evangelical gender roles. This analysis found that each of the books discussed four main themes of gender roles and relations: biological essentialism, complementarianism, counter-cultural branding of gender, and sexual purity (especially for young women).

How Women Of Color Are Portrayed On The Cover Of Magazines: A Content Analysis On The Images Of Black/African, Latina, Asian And Native American (Balana), Connie Johnson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Historically, women of color with little knowledge can blindly imitate the images of themselves as portrayed in mass media, which can be harmful to their self-esteem, contradictions of self-identification, and daily interactions with majority people. Media literacy is important in understanding how images of minority women are distorted to fit the dominant group's ideals and cultural relevance, which affect the identity of minority women. The researcher through the use of BALANA and content analysis examined some attributes of how women of color (WOC) are portrayed on the cover of eight selected magazines, for example, 1) Good Housekeeping, 2) Cosmopolitan, 3) …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Social-Economic Status Of Successful Women In Business, Politics, And Media In The U.S., Jasmin Bramlett, Sara Whitworth

Social Sciences

This project is an attempt to analyze how women achieve success in spite of the historical disadvantages that they have faced. We will examine nine women of the most professionally accomplished women in the United States in business, politics and media. We will compare and contrast the lives of Meg Whitman, Sheryl Sandberg and Ursula Burns for our section on business; Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Nancy Pelosi for the political sector; and Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric and Gloria Steinem for the area of media.

It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of Femininity, Affluence, And Whiteness In The Martha Stewart Phenomenon, Melissa A Click

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

This study examines the ideologies of gender, race, and class present in Martha Stewart's unprecedented popularity, beginning with the publication of Stewart's first magazine in 1990 and ending in September 2004, after Stewart's conviction for her involvement in the ImClone scandal. My approach is built on the intersection of American mass communication research, British cultural studies, and feminist theory, and utilizes Hall's Encoding/Decoding model to examine how social, cultural and political discourses circulate in and through a mediated text and how those meanings are interpreted by those who receive them. Drawing from textual and ideological analysis of over thirteen years …