Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Loneliness Post-Pandemic And Immersed In The Upcoming Political Election, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Gwen Pratt, Abigail Kludt, Amy Barone, Kwadwo Osei-Poku, Lihan Wang

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab emerged with a partnership between Real Chemistry and the Public Relations department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication and serves as a multidisciplinary research center focusing on analytics, artificial intelligence, digital and emerging media for a number of organizations regarding communications.

Healthcare professionals and organizations are interested in identifying how mental health impacts different U.S. generational groups after the COVID-19 pandemic and the intersectionality of U.S. Politics. Our team focused on two generational cohorts – Generation X (1965-1980) and Generation Z (1997-2012) – as an entry point into navigating the impact of …

Examining Connectivity And Mental Health Amongst Generation Z And Millennials, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Alexandra Hosilyk, Nyah Jones, Grace Kos-Dondlinger, Runchu Lang, Katerina Miller

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab tasked our research team to develop findings based on two generational cohorts and mental health. Our team decided to research Millennials and Generation Z in relation to their mental health and connectivity habits. In addition to these general topics, we analyzed how remote work, the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. political turmoil have played a role in the mental health status of these two generational cohorts.

The Millennial generational cohort is defined as individuals born from 1981 to 1996. The Generation Z generational cohort is defined as individuals born from 1997 to 2012. In order …

The Study Of Baby Boomers And Generation Z’S Attitudes Towards Generational Mental Health Dynamics, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Hunter Harpin, Emma Grace Reville, Yunxiang Yu, Abagail Sweeney

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The purpose of this research is to compare and contrast how different historical events have impacted Generation Z members’ and the Baby Boomers’ attitudes towards mental health and how those attitudes have guided members of these generations to feel about medical experts and the technology that they use to deliver their services in the post-COVID era. Studying these topics allows our group to make recommendations as to how medical experts should go about interacting with members of the Generation Z and Baby Boomer generations respectively, based on how historical events have influenced their attitudes towards mental health topics, their perceived …

Outbreak Communication: Exploring The Relationships Between Health Information Seeking Behaviors, Vested Interests, And Covid-19 Knowledge In U.S. Midwest Populations, Alicia Mason, Josh Compton, Elizabeth Spencer, Kaitlin Barnett

Faculty Submissions

On February 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated at a Munich Security Conference, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676). The term ‘infodemic’ refers to the onslaught of both accurate and inaccurate health information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of an ‘infodemic’ was quickly integrated into mass media, popular culture (i.e., documentaries, podcasts), and eventually scholarly literature. In response to COVID-19, health communication scholars have centered on understanding specific messaging strategies such as the use of fear appeals (Stolow et al., 2020), nature of advertising …

Small Historically Black Colleges And Universities Bridging Social Capital: The Use Of Language, Tone And Content To Share Information On Instagram, Pamela Peters

Journal of Research Initiatives

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained higher education institutions, especially small Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). As campuses closed and reopened, Black communities' digital divide grew, adding to the need to stay connected. This study uses social capital to examine how institutions use language, tone, content, and information to bridge social capital. An analysis of 35 small liberal arts HBCUs’ Instagram posts was undertaken to compare post frequency, types of information, engagement, tone, language, and content in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and during the pandemic, 2020 and 2021. This study indicates that post-oversaturation in 2020 and 2021 and information …

Media Literacy And Covid-19 Communication: Work And Home Sphere Differences, Donnalyn Pompper, Tugce Ertem-Eray

Journal of Media Literacy Education

As a learning process wherein we ask questions to enhance knowledge, media literacy offers a powerful lens for examining how people practice communication across diverse applied contexts such as professional communicators shaping messages about COVID-19. Borrowing a page from Renee Hobbs’ (1998, 1999, 2010, 2011, 2021) media literacy education research, we sought to compare/contrast media content creators’ (journalism, advertising, public relations, marketing communication) information-seeking behaviors during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic for both their paid work and unpaid volunteer work, as well as for their own and family edification. Blending the media literacy lens with social construction theory (Berger & Luckmann, …

Catholicism Online: How The Church Is Communicating In The Visual Field, Alexandra Barfield

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

Given the rise and importance of social media in the last two decades, religious institutions, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have an important place online to fulfill their mission and belief of spreading the Gospel message. Communicating this message on social media and with contemporary marketing practices is an opportunity and a challenge for churches, Catholics, and apostolates alike. In this study, I analyze a variety of Catholic-related Instagram accounts and interview individuals involved in Church management and content creation. This primary research is prefaced with secondary research exploring the status of the Catholic Church in the United States, …

Faking And Conspiring About Covid-19: A Discursive Approach, Rosa Scardigno, Alessia Paparella, Francesca D'Errico

The Qualitative Report

In the more general climate of post-truth - a social trend reflecting a disregard for reliable ways of knowing what is true, mostly acted through massive use of misinformation and rhetoric calling for emotions - an alarming “infodemic” accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting healthy attitudes and behaviors and further lessening trust in science, institutions, and traditional media. Its two main representative items, fake and conspiracy news, have been widely analyzed in psycho-social research, even if scholars mostly acknowledged the cognitive and social dimensions of those items and devoted less attention to their discursive construction. In addition, these works did not …

The Second Watcher At The Gate: Local Newspaper Framing Of Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Immigrants, And Migrants At The Border In The Age Of Covid-19, Gabriel Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a repeat of a historical association between migrants and disease with the re-activation of Title 42, which gave the federal government the power to bar and expel migrants and asylum seekers without the opportunity to contest their expulsion, under the basis of public health. Based on a content analysis of the frames employed in the coverage of the pandemic by five newspapers located on the southern U.S. border for the period of 2020 to 2021, this study explored how these English-language newspapers gave priority to as sources, how they framed immigrants and immigration issues during the …

The Great Resignation Among Restaurant Workers: A Content Analysis Of News Sources’ Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage, Mackenzie M. Williams

The Cardinal Edge

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Private Censorship, Disinformation And The First Amendment: Rethinking Online Platforms Regulation In The Era Of A Global Pandemic, Tzu- Chiang Huang

Michigan Technology Law Review

The proliferation of online disinformation and the rise of private censorship are paradigmatic examples of the challenges to traditional First Amendment jurisprudence in an algorithmic society. The limitations of traditional First Amendment jurisprudence are amplified by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in two ways. On the one hand, in the wake of the pandemic, we have entered an “infodemic” era where the volume of disinformation, as well as the harm it causes have reached unprecedented levels. For example, health disinformation has contributed to vaccine hesitancy. On the other hand, even though the proliferation of online disinformation seems to suggest …

The Effects Of Covid 19-Related Social Media Hate Crime On Asian And Asian Americans' Self-Esteem, Saachi Chugh

LSU Master's Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people communicate, live, socialize and perhaps the way they feel about the Asian population. The United States has seen a rise in the Asian hate crimes on online and offline platforms since the beginning of the pandemic which has affected the overall well-being of the Asian population. To our knowledge, the present study is one of the first studies to address the effects of COVID 19-related online perceived racial discrimination on the self-esteem of Asians. Additional objectives were to reveal the different coping mechanisms being used by the Asian population to cope with …

The Effects Of Covid 19-Related Social Media Hate Crime On Asian And Asian Americans' Self-Esteem, Saachi Chugh

LSU Master's Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people communicate, live, socialize and perhaps the way they feel about the Asian population. The United States has seen a rise in the Asian hate crimes on online and offline platforms since the beginning of the pandemic which has affected the overall well-being of the Asian population. To our knowledge, the present study is one of the first studies to address the effects of COVID 19-related online perceived racial discrimination on the self-esteem of Asians. Additional objectives were to reveal the different coping mechanisms being used by the Asian population to cope with …

Local Broadcast Reporters Maintaining Social Responsibility And Mental Health While Serving A Community Under Lockdown, Mary-Morgan Ellis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at local broadcast news reporters working in Northwest Arkansas before, at the start, and during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Research for this study includes a content study of the tweets and Twitter accounts of eleven local reporters. This study considers the social responsibility theory and examines how these eleven local reporters use the theory in their everyday work. Research found, though these reporters don’t credit the theory by name, they are still putting its guidelines into effect as a sort of moral compass when creating objective and representative news for their communities. The research also found that …

Governmental Persuasion Strategies On Social Media During Covid-19: A Comparative Study Of The Us And China, Fan Wang

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This study compared persuasive strategies of the governments of the U.S. and China during a public health crisis using social media messages. Collecting data with R and Python from two national public health sectors' official accounts on Twitter (N = 1,630) and Sina Weibo (N = 3,554), the researcher investigated how the organizations' messages reflected Cialdini's seven principles of persuasion and whether other emergent messaging patterns occurred. According to the different phases that the two countries had gone through during the pandemic, the researcher also conducted a pooled times series analysis to investigate the relationship between the frequency of daily …

The Politicization Of School Reopenings: Media Coverage Of Teachers Unions, Sarah King

Master's Theses

The process of school reopenings during the COVID-19 pandemic has garnered a significant amount of attention from various stakeholders including parents, school administrators, teachers, teachers’ unions, and the media. Negotiations over elements of school reopening policies, such as mask mandates and remote-learning options have, in certain school districts, been fraught with contention. The politicization of school reopening policies has been the source of a growing body of research, which tends to analyze policy decisions in conjunction with COVID data. However, a large gap in the literature has appeared concerning the politicization of school reopenings and the impact of the media, …

Can High School Students Check The Veracity Of Information About Covid-19? A Case Study On Critical Media Literacy In Brazilian Esl Classes, Karin Paola Meyrer, Dorotea Frank Kersch

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In a globalized world, critical media literacy is imperative when selecting the content we consume amid countless offers. Therefore, the purpose of this case study is to analyze which resources 3rd year high school students (16-17 years old) from an English as a Second Language class in Brazil use in the construction of authorial journalistic articles demystifying fake news about COVID-19 and if the interventions conducted previous to the task were helpful in their process of developing critical media literacy. To this end, firstly students analyzed news about COVID-19 from international websites; secondly, they discussed aspects of a video that …

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Communicating Through A Crisis: An Analysis Of The University Of Mississippi's Initial Covid-19 Crisis Communications, Sydney Waitley

Honors Theses

This thesis, in effort to examine modern-day crisis communications, focuses on the analysis of University of Mississippi’s initial crisis communications during the COVID-19 pandemic during March 2020. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the university’s communication efforts during this crisis in order to determine the effectiveness of the University of Mississippi’s initial COVID-19 crisis communications. First, the researcher analyzed historical case studies on three notable crisis communications (the Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis of 1982, the United Airlines Crisis of 2017, and the Crock-Pot Crisis of 2018). From these case studies, qualities of good crisis communications were determined …

Ua45/6 Commencement Program, Wku Registrar

WKU Archives Records

Combined fall 2021 and spring 2022 commencement programs.

Extending Psychological Reactance Theory To Include Denial Of Threat And Media Sharing Intentions As Freedom Restoration Behavior, Noel H. Mcguire, Hannah Ball

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study extends psychological reactance theory by examining denial of a public health threat and resistance toward media sharing as two novel types of freedom restoration. Participants (N = 220) were randomly assigned to watch a video advocating COVID-19 guidelines and completed an online survey assessing corresponding perceptions and behavioral intentions. Results of structural equation modeling supported the two-step model of reactance: greater perceived freedom threat was related to greater reactance, which in turn was linked to lower intentions to comply with COVID-19 guidelines, lower intentions to share the video with one’s online social network, and greater denial of COVID-19 …

Exploring Introductory Communication Course Administrators' Relationship Management During Covid-19, Ashley N. Aragón, Drew T. Ashby-King

Basic Communication Course Annual

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed the context of higher education during the Spring 2020 semester. As the virus began to spread across the United States, colleges and universities canceled in-person classes and activities, closed campus, and moved all operations online. Within the communication discipline, introductory communication course (ICC) administrators and instructors were not only dealing with these challenges, but they were also navigating the transition of large multi-section, often standardized, courses online at large institutions. This research project used semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 18 ICC administrators from institutions located in 14 states across the Midwest, mid-Atlantic, Southeastern, and West Coast …

Art As Politics? How Fox News Manufactures Its Hosts’ Performances To Acquire Cable Prestige, Matthew Mcguirk

The Graduate Review

Fox News is the most popular cable news network in the United States, drawing millions of conservative viewers who trust it more than any other outlet. Although many of the network’s claims are subject to controversy or rooted in falsities, these viewers continue watching, offering a never-before-seen devotion to the network. Using Fox’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as insight from Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin, this paper demonstrates how Fox manufactures its hosts’ performances to advance its fetishizing of the commodity of cable prestige.

A Proportionality-Based Framework For Government Regulation Of Digital Tracing Apps In Times Of Emergency, Sharon Bassan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Times of emergency present an inherent conflict between the public interest and the preservation of individual rights. Such times require granting emergency powers to the government on behalf of the public interest and relaxing safeguards against government actions that infringe rights. The lack of theoretical framework to assess governmental decisions in times of emergency leads to a polarized and politicized discourse about potential policies, and often, to public distrust and lack of compliance.

Such a discourse was evident regarding Digital Tracing Apps (“DTAs”), which are apps installed on cellular phones to alert users that they were exposed to people who …

Examining Media Dependency And Parasocial Relationship On Protective Action Behaviors During Covid-19, Amy Hyman

Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the significant role that mass media plays in disseminating messages to the public during disasters and public health crises. Information disseminated during a disaster influences individuals’ decision-making process regarding protective actions, or mitigation behaviors. This study examined the relationship between media dependency theory, parasocial relationship, and media effects (cognitive, affective and behavioral) during the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative approach was used with a convenience sample. The sample focused on residents in the state of Arkansas and specific generational cohorts. The results found that the generational cohorts had different media preferences during the height of …

Ua19/16/2 Basketball Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Archives Records

Press releases, photos and game statistics for WKU basketball team from August to December 2021.

Ua12/2/1 Fresh Start, Vol. 97, No. 1, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

College Heights Herald magazine regarding returning to WKU in person after COVID-19 lockdown.

• Stone, Damon. Fresh Faces, Familiar Traditions Come to Campus with Incoming Class – Class of 2025
• Jones, Jake. WKU Commons Sees Delays, Expected to be Completed In the Fall – University Libraries
• Murray, Debra. Living Learning Communities Bring a New Sense of Home to WKU
• Murray, Debra. What You Missed on the Hill This Summer – Garrett Conference Center, First Year Village, Munday Hall, COVID-19, Retirement
• Fisher, Brittany. Reclaiming the Hill – MASTER Plan
• Burris, Lily. Dear Readers
• Stryker, Shane. The Usual Take on My Unusual College …

What Are People Searching During The Pandemic? Exploring The Determinants Of Public Interest Through Google Searches, Justin Weng

LSU Master's Theses

In 2020, COVID-19 became a serious health concern to people worldwide, regardless of their socioeconomic status, cultural characteristics, or political freedom. Even though this unprecedented crisis was the most impactful and dominant issue in 2020, COVID-19 was not the only issue that people were interested in. This study explored if and how national characteristics influenced global public interests during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Using popular online searches in 23 nations, this study categorized global public interests into two ways: COVID-19 related and non-COVID-19 related issues, with four and 13 sub-categories, respectively. Results showed that people in higher political freedom …

Ua52/1 Out Of The Box, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Records

Newsletter created by and about WKU Archives and the records management program.

A Feverish Spring: A Comparative Analysis Of Covid-19 News Framing In Sweden, The Uk, And Egypt, Hend Abdelgaber Ahmed El-Behary

Theses and Dissertations

Based on framing and the social responsibility theoretical frameworks, this comparative study analyzes the dominance of frames in the media coverage of the COVID-19 global pandemic across three countries that have adopted different preventative measures: Sweden (herd immunity) the United Kingdom (full lockdown) and Egypt (partial lockdown ‘curfew’). While several studies have investigated the media’s role during COVID-19, few have analyzed the frames used by the media. The analyses that were made here, for the most part, is on individual countries. The current study bridges a gap by using a comparative approach to interpret the frames discovered in news articles …