Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Digital Equity: Difficulties Of Implementing The 1:1 Computing Initiative In Low-Income Areas, Demetric D. Williams

Dissertations

Successful One-to-One Computing Initiative implementation requires educators to communicate and collaborate effectively with everyone in the learning community. However, other factors such as teacher’s professional development, student’s perception, and parent’s perception often affect the implementation of the One-to-One Computing Initiative. School districts, which serve low-income areas in Mississippi, have difficulties ensuring students and communities have access to the information technology they need to participate outside the school setting. The concept is often called digital equity. However, when officials do not address the capacity, there is a vital threat to the participants’ civic, cultural, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential …

Get Into It: Unpacking The Relationship Between Hegemonic Norms And The Race And Gender Of Pop Artists, Bailey Shelton

Master's Theses

Many contemporary popular musical artists are victims of media controversy while they simultaneously make musical chat history. As a culture founded and sustained by a white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy, race and sex appear to influence the way hegemonic in-groups treat minorities and the way minorities are perceived and live within the confines of said hegemony. With the context of understanding feminist theories, hegemonic norms, parasocial relationships, celebrity appeal, and norms, the researcher wanted to understand if there are clear relationship among these frameworks in modern society. This study employed a 2x2 2between subjects factorial design method to gather information about …

Leadership, Job Stress And Uncertainty Among Nurses During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Impacts And Implications In Lieu Of Pertinent Theoretical Constructs, Davis Woodson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on practicing nurses in the United States. The study considered the effect of communication, self-efficacy, intolerance to uncertainty, and life satisfaction on nurses’ job satisfaction; additionally, this study considered the extent to which nurses perceived organizational response efficacy was predicted by their perceptions of communication and perceived threat susceptibility. A total of 191 nurses participated in the online survey. The study revealed that life satisfaction was positively predicted by communication, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction in multiple regression analyses. Perceived communication positively predicted perceived organizational response efficacy …

Vocal Response Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) To A Novel Stimulus, Lindsey Johnson

Master's Theses

Bottlenose dolphins utilize acoustic signals as their primary mode of communication. Although some aspects of dolphin vocal behavior are well understood, less is known about vocalizations in different behavioral contexts and how these vocal behaviors may indicate habituation and sensitization. The focus of this study was to investigate how bottlenose dolphins respond vocally to a novel stimulus. Archival data from three populations of bottlenose dolphins (N = 20) living in a human-care facility were exposed to a novel apparatus (a mirror) for 10 trials, each lasting 20 minutes. Five of the trials presented the mirror covered with an opaque …

Development Of Semantic Reference For Location Symbols By Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) Using A Two-Way Communication Keyboard, Alyssa Taylor

Master's Theses

The ability for humans to communicate with another species has been an aspiration and well documented. One example is through training animals to make associations between a designated cue and conditioned response (Pryor, 1986). Two-way communication, however, in which both species can express wants/needs has been predominantly pursued with apes and dolphins. Studies conducted by Louis Herman demonstrated the capabilities of dolphins to comprehend complex semantic and syntactic commands in an artificial language system (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984). Researchers working with primates have used American Sign Language, a computer keyboard system with discrete lexigrams, and a portable lexigram keyboard …

Gendered Speaking Patterns In Supreme Court Oral Arguments From 1981-2016, Gillain Purser

Honors Theses

This research attempts to discover whether or not the Supreme Court of the United State is subject to implicit gender biases during oral argumentation, largely through examining speaking time and the number of questions each justice is able to ask during a case's oral argumentation period. While there is substantial research on gender’s impact on communication and decision-making processes, as well as gender’s impact on court decisions, most research stops before it gets to the Supreme Court of the United States. There are two main goals to this research: First, to determine whether or not women Justices are impacted by …

Pragmatic Understanding Of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) Use Of A Two-Way Communication System, Pepper Reid Hanna

Dissertations

Pragmatics focuses on how a communication system is used to achieve a communicative goal, the social context of the communication, and the organizational structure of communications (Horn & Ward, 2004; McLaughlin, 1998). There is evidence of pragmatics within animal communication systems. For example, context appears to be an important component in both signal production and a receiver’s response in vervet monkeys (Seyfarth et al. 1980).

MA Thesis: http://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/170/

The current study used an underwater keyboard to establish a two-way communication system between humans and dolphins. The purpose of this study was to determine if, under these conditions, dolphins displayed pragmatic …

The Captivity Of Opportunity: The Conversation Surrounding Church-Going Hispanic Immigrants, Nicolet Hopper Bell

Master's Theses

Immigration is a long-standing topic of discussion in the United States. Hispanic immigrants, or families of Hispanic immigrants, living in America face unique challenges. Through focus group interviews, participants from a predominantly Hispanic Protestant church narrated their experience of living in the United States. Guided grounded theory data analysis revealed three categories and 14 subcategories, or themes of conversation, surrounding this hot topic. Participants shed light on the distinctive challenges they faced, how these challenges affected them, and how they attempted to overcome these difficulties. By exploring these results through the lens of social stigma theory (Goffman, 2009) and intergroup …

Being With Bees: An Anthropological Study On Human-Animal Relations In Southern Beekeeping, Kori Nadine Armstrong

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates the complex and dynamic communicative relationship between beekeepers and their managed honey bee colonies, providing insight into the relationship between bees, their stewards, and the interface between nature and culture. It also helps unravel the ways in which this interspecies relationship changes a beekeepers’ perception of what it means to be human. Data collection features extensive participant observation with 21 semi-structured interviews with Southern beekeepers.

The interrelationship between communication and interaction, as well as diverse ways in which messages and cues manifest in the bee yard are explored through olfactory, optical, touch, and mechanical modalities. Variables including …

The Voice And Action Of Service: Exploring Nonprofit Volunteerism From A Dual Perspective, Colleen L. Mestayer

Dissertations

Key factors emerged for communicating with volunteers and staff in the nonprofit sector using a mixed methods approach in two phases. Phase I sought to explain volunteer satisfaction through the development of a new model that included motivation, identification with the nonprofit organization, attachment to the nonprofit organization and its mission, and the impact of interpersonal relationships formed between staff members and volunteers. Findings indicated that the model was an accurate predictor of volunteer satisfaction, and all variables were significantly correlated to volunteer satisfaction. Phase II sought to discover the communication patterns used by internal stakeholders of the nonprofit organization …

Overcoming The Loss Of Nonverbal Cues Encountered By The Adventitiously Blind: Reconstructing Relationships And Identity, Vernon Floyd Humphrey

Dissertations

In this study, couples shared their experiences adjusting to one of the members loss of sight. Through interviews, their narratives expressed their values, actions, inactions, successes, failures, needs, obstacles, and feelings. Participants explained their standpoint/perspective about vision loss, when it happened, how it affected them, how they reacted and responded, through hindsight how they thought they should have responded, and how they reconstructed a shared interpersonal relationship. Narratives about situations and events after the loss of sight revealed descriptions of their relationships and interactions with each other and other people in their circle. Through constant comparative analysis the individual narratives …

A Description Of Vocalizations And Their Association With Mouthing Behaviors And Social Context In Bottlenose Dolphins, Tursiops Truncatus, Christina Elyse Perazio

Master's Theses

Dolphin communication is multimodal and incorporates physical behaviors and vocalizations. Dolphins often exchange information with conspecifics using different types of vocalizations, and these vocalizations are sometimes associated with specific behaviors. However, the relationship of vocalization type and mouthing behavior type has not been investigated. This thesis examines simultaneous acoustic and visual recordings of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) to determine the relationship between type of mouthing behavior and type of vocalization (whistle, whistle-squawk, chirp, moan, burst-pulse type A, burst-pulse type B, and click trains). The role of the social context of a mouthing behavior is also evaluated. Data were obtained opportunistically …

Disconnected: College Freshmen Experience Communication Without Technology, Lacey Myers

Honors Theses

We are in a technological revolution, where “Generation Next” is surviving and thriving in a digital world. New and improved methods of communication through technology have altered the way we live and communicate. Today’s young adults, who have grown up with personal computers, cell phones and the internet, are living in a whirlwind of innovation and advancement “and are now taking their place in a world where the only constant is rapid change” (Pew Research Center, 2007). They cannot remember or imagine a world without such advanced technology. Modes of digital communication such as the cell phone, internet, and social …

A Cross-Cultural Study Of Intergenerational Communication In Workplace, Yan Guan

Dissertations

This study investigates intergenerational relationships in organizational settings and uses Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) to examine the influence of age, power, culture, and self-construal on young workers' perceptions of intergenerational communication. According to CAT, communication is stereotypical due to outgroup bias, people favor their own age or power group more than other age or power groups. CAT research showed that young Asians' perceptions of intergenerational communication may be more negative than their Western counterparts. Self-construal was studied to understand the nature of culture's influence. Research and theory supported nine hypotheses and three research questions.

A study using self-report measure was …

Communication, Crisis, And Identity: Dialectical Tensions In Family Narratives About Hurricane Katrina, Laura Poole Rogers

Dissertations

In this study victims of Hurricane Katrina ordered their experiences with the crisis into meaningful themes which expressed their values, actions, inactions, occupations, needs and losses, and feelings. In interviews participants explained what happened, when it happened, how they responded, how they thought they should have responded, and how they handled situations surrounding the storm. Narratives about situations after the storm revealed descriptions of their and others' relationships in interactions with representatives of larger social units. The dialectical analysis revealed dialectical tensions that emphasized participants' dynamic and changing relationships and identities. Dialectical analysis of narratives about those relationships revealed dialectical …