Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Learning And Listening: A Podcast On Navigating Latinx/E Identities, Lilianna A. Rivas

Communication Studies

Utilizing the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), the present podcast seeks to explore and understand how individuals with intersectional identities in the Latinx/e community communicate their identity to others in the Latinx/e community and society. Research in the fields of Ethnic Studies, Psychology, Education, and Communication focuses on issues and identities in the Latinx/e community. Much existing research focuses heavily on intersectionality, and the podcast will seek to do the same. These intersections of identities can conflict or be perceived as in conflict. This creates a gray area in the spectrum between interpersonal and intergroup interactions. Some examples …

Experiences Of Appalachian People With Conflicting Christian And Lgbtq+ Identities, Zacharias Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the experiences of six LGBTQ+ individuals living in Appalachia who have felt conflict between their LGBTQ+ and Christian identities. Using data from six one-on-one intensive interviews, the study examines the various kinds of conflict participants experienced, the strategies they used to manage those conflicts, and the role that Christianity played in their lives. The author found that participant conflicts were grounded in struggles to find acceptance from others while living authentically, to reconcile ideological disputes with the church, and to accept themselves as LGBTQ+ and/or Christian. Included among their various management strategies were finding accepting people and …

The Use And Importance Of Gaming And Roleplay In Identity Negotiation, Sam Weigel, Justin Rudnick

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

This paper presents roleplaying games as a safe and effective venue for self-expression that can help to mitigate the effect of societal pressures when exploring identity. Interviews with 11 participants from the roleplaying game community demonstrate how roleplay can help facilitate the creation of safe spaces and foster creativity and inclusivity. A thematic analysis revealed roleplaying games contribute to the creation of safe spaces, opportunities for self-expression and individual agency, and steps towards greater self-actualization. This study builds upon existing research into identity adaptation theory, queer theory, symbolic convergence theory, organizational communication theory, and the performance of identity.

The Reluctant Feminist: Angela Merkel’S Cautious Leadership, Ls Gaiek, Marlyn Garcia

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Abstract: What does it mean to be a modern feminist global leader today? Global leadership research is growing, but less research focuses on female leaders, even though the 21st century thus far contains a significant rise of female leaders. Angela Merkel’s infamously historic reticence and aversion, concerning speaking about feminism, irrevocably dissolves in an interview in January of 2019. This interview offers a glimpse into Angela Merkel’s cageyness, and provides an intimate insight into her circumspect perspective concerning feminism. This article aims to explore barriers and challenges to Angela Merkel’s rise as a global leader, how crisis forged and …

Difficult Conversations Concerning Identity And Difference: Diverse Approaches And Perspectives, Jordan Soliz, Srividya Ramasubramanian

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay is an introduction to the special issue on “Difficult Conversations Concerning Identity and Difference.” The essay begins with our argument that inquiries into difficult conversations are important as these interactions are key to addressing social inequities, creating and/or maintaining community and relational solidarity, amplifying voices of marginalized populations and/or diverse experiences, and enacting social change. Following this, we introduce the articles in the special issue highlighting the theoretical frameworks and methodological pluralism across the various relational and social contexts represented in the research (e.g., health care, higher education, community organizations, personal relationships). To complement the implications discussed by …

Lgbtq+ Divergent Paths In Utah: Identity And Space-Making Practices In Queer And Religious Spaces, Taliah C. Mortensen

Masters Theses

This research explores the unique and divergent experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults as they engage in identity and space-making practices at the intersection of gender/sexuality and religion. Utilizing queer theorists’ conceptualization of identity as a form of embodied and spatial labor, I critique the approach of existing scholarship that constructs LGBTQ+ and religious identities as incompatible or at least in need of reconciliation. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ young adults in Utah, my research makes visible how vulnerability and risk impact the strategies that LGBTQ+ young adults employ to navigate their identities and make space. It shows that …

The Negotiation Of Muslimah Identity In Hijab Cosplay Phenomenon, Hilda Balqis Hasba

Jurnal Komunikasi Indonesia

The identity of Muslimah is often associated with the idea of using hijab as a form of obedience to religion. This research examines the experiences of hijab women who use cosplay culture to represent their talents and creativity by creating a new culture. This research uses circuit of culture theory by Paul du Gay and Stuart Hall to analyze hijab cosplayers’ experiences in making hijab cosplay. The method used in this research is the qualitative research method and photo study technique to collect the data. This research shows that the process of creating hijab cosplay passes through identity, production, consumption, …

The Lived Experiences Of Transmasculine Speakers: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Vocal Quality And Function In Relation To Gender, Micah Wylie

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to learn how transmasculine individuals perceive the quality and function of their voices, and how those perceptions influence how they experience gender identity and communicate with others. This qualitative study adopted a hermeneutical phenomenological approach that involved using content analysis and thematic analysis to describe and interpret phenomena. This approach assumes that the researcher is not biased, but is a part of the world being studied and, therefore, understands the phenomenon by interpretive means. Saturation was achieved when all relevant information was introduced, and patterns of information had been identified. Sixteen interviews were conducted. …

Operating The Digital Space In The Age Of Protest Participation, Kyle Stanley

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines young African American adults’ usage of social media and other digital spaces as tools to build community given the rise in protest participation in North American (U. S.) society while at the height of a global health pandemic. Since early adulthood is a time where African Americans are most active online, this study will examine how and why those African Americans are turning to digital spaces to find social connections. Racism and racial injustice are two of the most pressing issues in the African American community, and it is clear that it can be an emotionally laborious …

The Machine As An Extension Of The Body: When Identity, Immersion And Interactive Design Serve As Both Resource And Limitation For The Disabled, Donna Z. Davis, Shelby Stanovsek

Human-Machine Communication

This research explores how the technological affordances of emerging social virtual environments and VR platforms where individuals from an online disability community are represented in avatar form, correspond to these users’ development of embodied identity, ability, and access to work and social communities. The visual attributes of these avatars, which can realistically reflect the user’s physical self or divert from human form entirely, raise interesting questions regarding the role identity plays in the workplace, be it gender, race, age, weight, or visible disability. Additionally, the technology itself becomes fundamental to identity as the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), motion …

Decomorose: The Somatic Flowering Of The Living Quality, Shaun J. Martin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This essay is an exploration of the human maturation process from a transpersonal point of view. The main premise of the essay is the notion that our maturation on the level of consciousness (the living quality) is not synonymous with our bodily maturation or the ongoing construction of our social personality (the identity project). It suggests that transpersonality is a fundamental component in human development, but has been overlooked and left out in most areas of modern culture. The recent rise of mental illnesses and the overall frustration or discontent within our society is a direct result of infrastructures that …

Finding A Middle Ground: A Compromise For Gendered Pronouns, Esther Kim

Emerging Writers

This article explores this history of gendered pronouns and the movement to create nonbinary pronouns and offers solutions to objections raised about their use.

Unveiling Race And Japanese Identity Through Kokusai Kekkon, Manami Matsuoka

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Kokusai kekkon, marriage among Japanese and non-Japanese nationals, are common, yet sometimes it comes with difficulties. The study aims to uncover Japanese people’s hidden perceptions of gaikokujins, foreigners, and Japanese identity shaped in relation to gaikokujins based on race and ethnicity within cross-national marriage. 18 Japanese spouses of U.S. Americans were interviewed for the study. The study employed thematic analysis to disclose Japanese beliefs and worldviews through interpreting Japanese interviewees’ experiences and their families’ discourses regarding marriage with U.S. Americans. The study found that whiteness and the sense of inferiority to the West and superiority toward the East influence Japanese …

Umuwi: Coming Home: Decolonizing Filipinx-American Identity, Theresa Joyce Esmejarda Arocena

Communication & Media Studies | Senior Theses

This study investigates Filipinx-American identity using contextual understandings of decolonization as a conceptual framework. We will explore some of the long-term consequences of colonization on identity in the Filipinx-American community, including labeling theory’s current psychologies within the community, the formation of certain ideologies, and the attempts to reconcile transgenerational trauma and dismantle negative ideologies within the community. Seven participants were selected through non-probability sampling and were interviewed individually over Zoom video conferencing. Participant interviews revealed five interconnected themes regarding how identity is formed and sustained. Given the complexity of identity, more research is needed to explain other nuances of the …

The Subaltern Magazine, Rebecca Fox, Riese Nichols

Social Sciences

The Subaltern intends to reach Cal Poly students who do not feel as if their voices are heard and allow them the platform to share their stories. Our focus is on unheard stories from our campus - whether this involves race, class, gender identity, mental health, ethnicity, culture, or any unique part of one’s identity or experience. We hope that these stories will begin to shed light on what we usually consider “taboo” topics and allow students to feel as if they aren’t alone.

Being a very homogeneous campus, it is important for us to realize that privileged voices are …

The Invisible Professional: Visual Culture Of Successful Black Women, Sophonie Gaspard

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Black women in the United States have been arguably the most underrepresented, stereotyped, and hypersexualized groups in society; their contributions in the workplace often reduced in significance. Similarly, the perceived values of the white majority have historically dictated the images of minorities in the media. In their research on visual culture, Keifer-Boyd, Amburgy & Knight (2007) suggest that those with social, political, and economic power define how groups without power are represented and stereotyped, illuminating the privileges of having visible positive portrayals. As contemporary American society shifts towards greater inclusion and participation from black women, the media is encouraged to …

Video Killed The Drag Star: Identity Presentation, Language, And Queer Habitus, Hayley Neiling

Graduate Theses

Pierre Bourdieu defines habitus as “the ability to produce classifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (taste), that the represented social world, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted” (170). In other words, habitus is the combination of our habits, perceptions, and presentations that are formed from the ingrained ideas of our society. Our habitus is both performed and perceived, and in this way, we gain cultural capital, which is the curating of knowledge, skills, and behaviors which demonstrate our value. Habitus is deeply affected by our position in society, particularly class. …

Painted Nails: The Gender(Ed) Performance Of Queer Sexuality, Justin Rudnick

Communication Studies Department Publications

In this essay, I interrogate my own experiences performing my queer identity through my painted nails. I attest to the ways queer bodies might performatively challenge and/or reinforce rigid norms of sexuality through mundane performances of (gendered) identity. To accomplish this, I engage in an autoethnographic exploration of queer performativity. I recount and analyze a series of anecdotes that illustrate how performances of queer identity in everyday life are accomplished—and policed—in mundane situations. In turn, I reflexively investigate the ways in which these performances situate me within a nexus of aesthetic, embodied, and ethical social interaction and performative resistance. I …

Food And/As Communication, Leda M. Cooks

Sustainability Education Resources

This is a two-semester, eight-credit Communication Honors Thesis Seminar focusing on the ways we create and reflect meanings made about food. The seminar delves into the material and social meanings of food and implications for identity, culture and social justice. Students will have the opportunity to research food in the context of the meanings made about it in various institutions, businesses, nonprofit organizations, neighborhoods, cultures and communities. The first semester HONORS 499 CL (Fall 2020) will 1) introduce students to food as a vehicle through which society and social life is communicated; 2) introduce methods and tools for conducting survey …

Critical Incidents In The Development Of (Multi)Ethnic-Racial Identity: Experiences Of Individuals With Mixed Ethnic-Racial Backgrounds In The U.S., Megan Cardwell, Jordan Soliz, Lisa Crockett, Gretchen Bergquist

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Secure ethnic-racial identity (ERI) is tied to well-being, especially for minority individuals; however, there is still little consensus on the key processes and optimal outcomes of various multiethnic-racial (ME-R; i.e., individuals with parents from different ethnic-racial groups) identity development models. In this study, we examine the critical incidents in personal and social relationships that are central to ME-R identity development. Twentynine ME-R individuals provided retrospective accounts of incidents and conversations they self-perceived to be critical to their ERI development. Four major themes emerged: incidents and conversations surrounding intergroup contact, confrontation, heritage, and appearance were all recalled as …

"Just Call Me Poe": An Autoethnographic Look At Codeswitching And Passing, Paola Andrea Joya

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis is an autoethnographic look at codeswitching and passing in the children of immigrants. Specifically, this thesis uses methods of poetry, frameworks of re-photography, and narrative to investigate my personal experiences with these cultural phenomena over a lifetime. Grounding my work in theories on identity, culture, and co-cultural understandings, I investigate the evolution of my name from Paola, Paula, to Poe, as a representation of the length at which I attempted to assimilate and accommodate to the dominant group (U.S). It is my hope that this thesis helps to create community amongst those who have shared similar experiences …

The Communication Identity Of Drug Dealer, Lintang Nur Hemas, Prahastiwi Utari, Mahendra Wijaya

Jurnal Komunikasi Indonesia

This research aims to find out how drug dealers showed their identity communication. This research is a qualitative research which applied a case study as its research method. The data were collected by interviews. Then, the collected data were analysed using data reduction, presentation, and conclusion. The research took place at the detention centre of the Central Java National Narcotics Board. The conclusions of this research using four layers are personal, enacted, relational, and communal on the communication of identity theory by Michael Hecht. It show that partisipants hide or disclose their identities based on how others respond to them. …

Challenging Girlhood, Mary Ann Harlan

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

The Affective Politics Of Twitter, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Given the increasing encroachment of Twitter into offline experience, it has become necessary to look beyond the formation of identity in online spaces to the ways in which identities surface through the formation of affective communities organized through the use of technocultural assemblages, or the platforms, algorithms, and digital networks through which affect circulates in an online space. This essay focuses on the microblogging website Twitter as one such technocultural assemblage whose hashtag functionality allows for the circulation of affect among bodies which “surface” within the affective communities organized on Twitter through their alignment with and orientation by hashtags which …

Goblin: Microaffirmations, A Theory Of Communication, Haunt Pitcher

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

This project is a study of nonbinary identity and the ways in which nonbinary individuals find validation from nonbinary communities, cisgender friends and family members, and themselves. It advances a theory of “microaffirmations,” or small acts that can have a large, positive impact on nonbinary individuals, with a significant focus on humor, language, and other forms of communication. Research for this project was conducted through a series of personal interviews with friends and families, as well as analyzing the author’s own experiences as a nonbinary individual. These interviews and experiences are filtered through lenses of feminist theory, trans theory, and …

Delicate Moments: Kids Talk About Socially Complicated Issues

Occasional Paper Series

The author offers an analysis of the failures and insights she experienced working with adolescents at a progressive school while discussing how the students understood and experienced race and identity -- their own and that of others. While she encountered students who were willing to take her into their worlds, her efforts fell flat when her questions turned out to be about their experiences of race and class. In response to such questions, Bauman received, on the whole, confusion, a few stories that distanced the teller from the events, and queries about whether this was "what she wanted." At that …

Hybrid Media Activism: Ecologies, Imaginaries, Algorithms, Dorothy Kidd

Media Studies

Review of Treré, Emiliano. Hybrid Media Activism: Ecologies, Imaginaries, Algorithms. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-21814-7.

Constructing Lumbersexuality: Marketing An Emergent Masculine Taste Regime, Mark A. Rademacher, Casey R. Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This article examines the online retailer Huckberry.com as a singular, centralized authority responsible for marketing “lumbersexuality” as an emergent, gender-normative taste regime. As an evolution of the devalued hipster marketplace myth, analysis reveals Huckberry promotes an adaptable taste regime to its young, educated, urban, White male clientele that unites goods, meanings, and practices across multiple fields of consumption that reconnect indie consumption and taste with a fantasy of “authentic” masculinity. We argue that Huckberry offers men semiotic resources that merge the urban with the outdoors in a way that enables the enactment of a fraught though seemingly durable masculine identity …

Asian American Heritage Seeking: Personal Narrative Performances Of Ancestral Return, Porntip Israsena Twishime

Masters Theses

Asian American belongings, migration patterns, and transnational identities are largely constructed in the United States as static, unidirectional, and invisible. Asian Americans complicate these constructions through the practice of ancestral return. In this thesis, “ancestral return” is constituted through one’s participation in a university study abroad program to a specific place to where one traces her heritage. I use “return” not necessarily to account for a form of reverse migration; rather “return” here names the multiple, sometimes contradictory kinds of return, including “return” to a place that one has not yet been. This project examines how Asian American identities are …

A Layered Account Of The Ways In Which Multiracial Identity Is Communicated Within Interpersonal Relationships, Jessica Frydenberg

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

This layered account examined the ways in which multiracial identity is communicated within interpersonal relationships, with a focus on the microaggressions that make up the multiracial experience. Issues of isolation and marginalization, internal identity conflicts, denial of multiracial identity and experiences, interrogation, and racial stereotypes all play a role in how the multiracial experience is formulated and communicated by mixed race peoples. A social constructionist and creative arts-based approach was used to provide an impressionistic sketch of the lived multiracial experience along with the constructed meaning and communication of what it means to be a multiracial person in 21st century …