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Mass Communication

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

2009

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Stigma Cities: Dystopian Urban Identities In The United States West And South In The Twentieth Century, Jonathan Lavon Foster Aug 2009

Stigma Cities: Dystopian Urban Identities In The United States West And South In The Twentieth Century, Jonathan Lavon Foster

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines how historical events and representation of those events relative to the wider historical context have allowed the media, opinion setters, and the ordinary public to use the names of San Francisco, California, Birmingham, Alabama and Las Vegas, Nevada as denigrating adjectives and the effect of this usage on those cities. Exploration of Birmingham’s image as a racist city, San Francisco’s as a gay Mecca, and Las Vegas, Nevada’s as an adult playground or sinful city serves this purpose. These case studies support a central argument that the nature of place-based stigmatization’s influence depends upon ever-shifting cultural values …

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Torturing Terrorists For National Security Imperatives: Mediated Violence On "24", Michael D. Sears May 2009

Torturing Terrorists For National Security Imperatives: Mediated Violence On "24", Michael D. Sears

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study analyzed mediated violent content as seen on the FOX television program 24. The study covered a seven year period, or six seasons, of 24 , with a sample set of 43 episodes and 445 individual acts ofviolence. Three research questions guided this study. The first research question sought to determine if a relation exists between heroic characters inflicting torturous violence and justifying the act with a national security imperative. The second research question examined the prevailing mode of violence and the use of nonlethal and lethal weapons. The third research question examined the portrayed efficiency of violence on …

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Parasocial Relationships With Celebrities: An Illusion Of Intimacy With Mediated Friends, Amanda R. Laken May 2009

Parasocial Relationships With Celebrities: An Illusion Of Intimacy With Mediated Friends, Amanda R. Laken

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This research looked at parasocial interactions among college students. The study looked at the differences in gender and parasocial interaction, ethnicity/race and parasocial interaction, and the type of entertainment the celebrity was in and parasocial interaction. The research looked at celebrities as themselves and not as the characters they play as previous studies have. The research consisted of a revised parasocial interaction scale along with basic demographic questions. Although there have been studies examining levels of worship among different celebrities, they have been no correlations or differences stated concerning parasocial interactions. In addition, there has been no previous research stating …

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Analyzing Policy Issues In Presidential Speeches And The Media: An Agenda-Setting Study, Jessica L. Hughes May 2009

Analyzing Policy Issues In Presidential Speeches And The Media: An Agenda-Setting Study, Jessica L. Hughes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

For decades, researchers have maintained that the president has a significant role in setting the policy-making agenda. In this study, a grounded theory approach was applied to determine President George W. Bush's success in focusing the media's attention toward policies mentioned in his State of the Union Addresses (2002-2008). Bush's issue priorities were determined by coding individual paragraphs as themes. To identify the frequency of these same themes in the media, the front pages of The L.A. Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post were analyzed one week before and after each address. Coding was limited to every …

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Zoroastrians On The Internet, A Quiet Social Movement: Ethnography Of A Virtual Community, Helen Gerth Jan 2009

Zoroastrians On The Internet, A Quiet Social Movement: Ethnography Of A Virtual Community, Helen Gerth

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Zoroastrians today are a small but vibrant ethno-religious diaspora estimated at 130,000-258,000. They are members of the oldest monotheistic world religion originating in the Inner Asian steppes in approximately 1500 B.C. living as a religious minority in widely dispersed communities across the world. Increasingly they have turned to the Internet to discuss challenges of declining population, maintaining an ethno-religious identity, conversion, and intermarriage. The question grounding this research is how does this small ethno-religious minority maintain its boundaries and cohesion in the modern world? This study found that Zoroastrians maintain group boundaries and cohesion in the modern world, in part, …

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Brothers Are Better Than Sisters: A Semiotic, Feminist Analysis Of Hbo's "Rome", Patricia Mamie Peers Jan 2009

Brothers Are Better Than Sisters: A Semiotic, Feminist Analysis Of Hbo's "Rome", Patricia Mamie Peers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 2005, the Home Box Office and British Broadcasting Corporation partnered to produce Rome , a television series that retells the Roman histories of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Augustus through the lives of two centurion soldiers, Titus Pullo and Lucious Vorenus. The show's producers endeavored to bring Roman streets to life and included more storylines of women, men and children of all classes. At first considered a more egalitarian approach to history, Rome 's women are said to "challenge expectations" (Vu, 2005) and "forge a new path" (Ragalie, 2007, p. 2). But does this new representation challenge the old …

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Communication Technologies: Diffusion Of Online News Use And Credibility Among Young Web Users In The Information Age, Chee Youn Kang Jan 2009

Communication Technologies: Diffusion Of Online News Use And Credibility Among Young Web Users In The Information Age, Chee Youn Kang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The increasing popularity and extensive usage of communication technologies, particularly the Internet and online news, makes it important to obtain an insightful perception of the new media. The purpose of this study is to examine the diffusion of online news use and credibility among young web users in terms of how these main users adopt, use, and trust the new media. This study attempts to find which online news sites are widely used by this group, based on the credibility of online news adopted among undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), in which demographic …

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Send For Success: A Descriptive Look At Prescriptive Manuals For Email, Jean Reid Norman Jan 2009

Send For Success: A Descriptive Look At Prescriptive Manuals For Email, Jean Reid Norman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Email has existed for almost forty years, but in the past ten, it has become a dominant form of communication in the business world. A sign of the maturation of email and its dominance in commerce is the rise of how-to books on writing effective emails. This paper analyzes six of those recent texts to develop a taxonomy of current prescriptive advice for email. It examines contextual issues as well as issues of content, such as structure and tone; format, such as length of paragraphs, forms of salutation and farewell, and use of emoticons and abbreviations; and grammar and correctness. …

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