Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Media And Gender: How Has The Story Of Chaz Bono Impacted Media’S Portrayal Of Transgender People?, Scott A. Eldredge, Iveta Imre

Annual Research Symposium of the College of Communication and Information

The coverage of transgender issues in serious media is relatively new and has been on the rise. In fact, the amount of stories covering this issue on the major networks and cable news programs in the United States nearly doubled in 2007 compared to 2006 (Hollar, 2007). Despite the fact that this topic is becoming less taboo, and is more frequently treated as socially and politically important, the coverage has still been predominately sensationalistic. For example, the controversy surrounding the pregnancy of a transgender male, Thomas Beatie, in 2008 was headline news for months, while the first-ever congressional hearing on …

Horatio Alger Is Dying: Has U. S. Tv News Noticed?, Mark D Harmon

Annual Research Symposium of the College of Communication and Information

Terms such as “rags to riches,” “Horatio Alger,“ and pulling one’s self up by one’s “own bootstraps” are important to American self-identity. Several analyses, however, show social and economic mobility in the United States is in trouble. It is less frequent than in past generations, the U. S. now trails many nations in measures of movement, and one mechanism of mobility, education, is losing its effectiveness in that regard.

The researcher conducted a content analysis regarding social mobility terms in transcripts from NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News, MSNBC and Fox News. By various measures U. S. …

Consumers’ Optimistic Bias And Responses To Risk Disclosures In Direct-To-Consumer (Dtc) Prescription Drug Advertising: The Moderating Role Of Subjective Health Literacy, Hoyoung Ahn

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite a substantial body of research in direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs, what is missing from much of the existing discussion on DTCA disclosure is a focus on the roles of consumers’ individual motivation and ability factors in processing risk disclosures. Guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and the Motivation-Ability- Opportunity (MAO) framework, this research focuses on the roles played by individuals’ optimistic bias as motivation and ones’ subjective health literacy as ability to process and evaluate risk disclosures in DTCA. Specifically, this study examined whether the degree of optimistic bias affected consumers’ risk disclosure processing in terms …

Understanding The Dimensions Of Trust In Public Relations And Their Measurements, Joosuk Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Trust judgment of an organization’s publics validates the existence of an organization as well as being one of the most powerful moderators of public relations effectiveness. The ideas of trust as one of the key dimensions to explain relational status between an organization and its key publics has been around more than a decade. Over the last two decades, the idea of trust in fact has been showing rising prominence across many diversified studies of relationship and relationship management. In relationship management, one of the important goals of public relations is to build mutually beneficial relationships among organizations and their …

Students’ Writing Self-Efficacy, Motivation, And Experience: Predictors In Journalism Education, Matthew Bryan Broaddus

Doctoral Dissertations

The field of journalism has gone through several years of turmoil as new technology, platforms, and economic hardships have swept away traditional journalistic practices and models. Print media continues to hemorrhage jobs and money while media outlets adjust to technology-enhanced reporting. College journalism majors often face changing curriculum and graduate feeling unprepared to be competitive in the journalistic job market. While many things have changed in the field, one pillar of journalism that has not changed is the need for journalists to possess an excellent writing ability, supplemented with the ability to think analytically. The connection between students’ ability to …