Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Influence Of Preaching’S Rhetorical Appeal On Evangelical Listeners’ Motivation, Nicholas Anene Oji

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Preaching is a form of rhetorical narratology aimed at persuading its audience via sermons to experience a renewal of the mind and the transformation of their life. While previous research established the fact that listeners comprehend sermons through their rhetorical appeal, it has been unclear how this has motivated evangelical listeners to act. The purpose of this qualitative narrative study was to explore how the rhetorical appeal of preaching influences evangelical listeners’ motivation at evangelical churches in Savannah, Georgia. A comprehensive approach to exploring a sermon’s rhetorical appeal was utilized by focusing jointly on individual perception and social context. The …

What Outfit Shall The Protagonist Wear? New Models Of Revenue Creation In Online Fiction Platforms, John Rodzvilla

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

Online fiction platforms like Wattpad, Tapas, Choices, and Episode have created new models of digital storytelling that serve billions of readers a month who access the content through apps and websites. Through a free-to-read (F2R) model these platforms offer access to thousands of online prose narratives. Instead of requiring money upfront for access, they have found a way to monetize narrative through ad-supported serialization and paywalls. Some companies have also begun to offer reader customization through microtransactions similar to those in the mobile game world. This paper examines how these platforms are using the F2R model to create a compelling …

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

The Role Of Story In The Creation And Life Of Man, Leah Ginion

Senior Honors Theses

Story was created by God as a vehicle for the revelation and glorification of Himself. Man, made in the image of God, was created as an innate storyteller. The world was created through story, and story is how it progresses and is sustained. As such, story is the foundation of all culture and the most natural and effective method of human communication. Research points to all of man’s stories being derivatives of the Great Story: the metanarrative of Scripture. Exploring man’s relationship with story reveals his place within the metanarrative and ultimately provides evidence for the existence and active presence …

Hiv Stalks Bodies Like Mine: An Autoethnography Of Self-Disclosure, Stigmatized Identity, And (In)Visibility In Queer Lived Experience, Steven Ryder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines self-disclosure of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) status within the context of communication between long-standing friends. For the purposes of my study, I define this type of friendship as those who have known me for at least two years and with whom I communicate regularly. These are friends who tend to know a variety of personal details about me, ranging from superficial to private and trivial to essential. I use autoethnography to ground the study in my lived experience. By doing so, I present intimate accounts of my communication with others across my lifespan to function as background …

Paradox As Resistance In Male Dominated Fields And The Value Of (Sur)Facing Enthymematic Narratives, Jennifer J. Mease (Also Peeksmease), Bronwyn Neal

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Women working in masculine organizational contexts face a challenge of balancing (1) access to power by co-opting masculine discourse in ways that risk reinforcing it, with (2) challenging and resisting practices that privilege masculinity. In this manuscript, we address one communication strategy for navigating that challenge: The denial/acknowledgment paradox in which women explicitly deny that gender affected their experience, but also describe the many ways it affected their experience. To do so, we examined transcripts of interviews with 11 women candidates who ran in the 2017 Virginia House of Delegates election in the United States and demonstrated this paradoxical communication …

The Study Of Crisis Narratives Over Time: Mayfield, Ky In The Aftermath Of The 2021 Tornadoes, Rebecca Freihaut

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

This study was a year-long longitudinal qualitative research project using the case study of Mayfield, KY after the catastrophic tornado event that impacted their community on December 10, 2021. Oral histories were collected from 18 participants who lived in or were closely connected to Mayfield at the six month and 1.5 year marks after the disaster. Later, after the oral histories were archived and made available to the public, the transcripts were used to extract the crisis narratives from the oral histories and the data was thematically analyzed using the existing theory and theoretical framework of Narratives of Crisis: Telling …

Vietnam Continued: The Battle For American Public Memory In Public School History Textbooks, Donnie Owens

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The question of “how do we actively remember the past?” can perhaps best describe the purpose of public memory studies. Acknowledging this question, I analyze popular public-school textbooks to assess the way in which educational literature constructs the public memory of the Vietnam War. In total, the narratives of the texts construct a public memory of Vietnam as a controversial conflict contained within a decade of American uncertainty. However, these narratives also take care to minimize or leave aside the details of Vietnam’s lasting impact and in favor of reaffirming American exceptionalism. Ultimately, this thesis finds that students who read …

Un-Earthing Popular Climate Narratives: Maintenance And Prophecy In Settler World, Hannah Oxford

Communication ETDs

Climate change is fundamentally rooted in facts such as rising global temperatures, carbon emissions, losses in biodiversity, etc. However new information about our changing world is translated and incorporated within the narratives we live by and give form to our personal and collective worlds. While climate change is scientific, our mitigation efforts are entirely storied. This thesis looks at popular climate narratives that frames climate change as an issue of Earthly mechanics fixable through innovative technology. The goal of this thesis is to understand the ways in which settler colonialism, as a communicable mechanism of cultural production, organizes this particular …

Outside The Boundaries Of Biomedicine: A Culture-Centered Approach To Female Patients Living Undiagnosed And Chronically Ill, Bianca Siegenthaler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a community who voices feeling misunderstood, unheard, and uncared for by the medical system, female patients who live undiagnosed and chronically ill and their health narratives lie beyond biomedical boundaries. To examine how chronically ill and undiagnosed female patients narrate their experiences in and with the biomedical system and how these narratives resist biomedical health standards, I employ semi-structured interviews with 20 female patients living undiagnosed and chronically ill as well as engage in critical autoethnography to recount my own health experiences living a part of this community. In utilizing the culture-centered approach to health communication as a theoretical …

Fight For Flight: The Narratives Of Human Versus Machine Following Two Aviation Tragedies, Andrew Prahl, Rio Kin Ho Leung, Alicia Ning Shan Chua

Human-Machine Communication

This study provides insight into the relationship between human and machine in the professional aviation community following the 737 MAX accidents. Content analysis was conducted on a discussion forum for professional pilots to identify the major topics emerging in discussion of the accidents. A subsequent narrative analysis reveals dominant arguments of human versus machine as zero-sum, surrender to machines, and an epidemic of mistrust. Results are discussed in the context of current issues in human-machine communication, and we discuss what other quickly automating industries can learn from aviation’s experience.

Instagram Engagement: Comparing Sportswear Companies To Running Brands, Christian Schaaf

Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Achieving an engaged social media presence is a crucial task for sports organizations in today’s expanding digital realm. “Instagram Engagement: Comparing Mainstream Sports Brands to Running Brands” explores the evolution of the sports-media relationship and specifically analyzes the engagement rates and types of content posted throughout five sportswear and running organizations’ Instagram accounts. 393 posts were analyzed and classified into three categories: metacommunicative, conceptual, and narrative (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Romney & Johnson, 2018). Overall, sportswear companies posted the most narrative images while running brands shared the greatest number of conceptual images. Significant difference was discovered between the number …

Q/A: A Semiotic Deconstruction Of Narrative Transportation On Episodic Television, Josh Grube

Masters Theses

Narrative transportation is a captivating phenomenon in which an audience member psychologically departs from material reality and immerses into the narrative world (Gerrig, 1993). Existing literature on narrative transportation mostly consists of audience-level studies, primarily focused on the phenomenon’s persuasive effects and audience attributes that mediate their ability to be transported. From a theoretical media perspective, transportation is conceived as an aspect of the larger audience cultivation process (Gerbner, 1998) due to its persuasive influence, revealing the importance of viewing it from the textual level. This thesis fills a significant gap in narrative transportation theory by examining television narratives through …

Nonprofit Narratives: How Two Organizations Use Social Media And Rhetorical Appeals To Address Issues Of Sexual And Domestic Violence, Samuel Hiester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Though often seen as a panacea for organizational objectives, nonprofits must be judicious in deploying social media, particularly due to resource limitations. Nonprofits deploy many types and styles of digital texts, including social media. Classical rhetorical appeals can be effective means for achieving positive impact in that context. When used correctly, these ‘digital texts’ can be leveraged for maximum engagement with audiences. This study examines both a large, national organization – the National Sexual Violence Resource Center – and a small, regional one – Branch House Family Justice Center – for not only what sort of digital texts are utilized, …

Ambedo: Immersive Storytelling Through Augmented Reality, Dr. Diane Derr, Law Alsobrook, Sadia Mir

Frameless

The territory of locative media, coupled with augmented reality, offers unique opportunities to excavate and unpack rich historic events, in immersive storytelling. In September of 1943, during World War II, approximately 5,200 Italian soldiers were massacred on the Greek island of Kefalonia by Nazi troops. This massacre is credited as one of the largest ever prisoner-of-war massacres in recent history (Lamb, 1996) and left an indelible mark on the island of Kefalonia. In 2019, Configuring Kommos: Narrative, Event, Place and Memory, an interdisciplinary research project, began an investigation into the triangulation of narrative within the complexity of this tragic …

What Is This Noise?: A Comparison Of Narrative And Statistical Program Notes' Ability To Affect Enjoyment, Luke Henderson

Theses

Program notes, brief written statements provided to attendees of classical music performances, have in some cases increased audiences’ enjoyment of what they hear, but results from such research are inconsistent. This study sought to explore the effects of program notes on enjoyment, eudaimonic appreciation, and intention to attend a concert, as well as whether narrative or statistical styles of notes would be more effective. Participants in an experiment were randomly assigned to one of three conditions--no program notes, narrative style program notes, and statistical program notes--then asked to listen to a piece of music. Those who received program notes reported …

Faith In Film As Depicted By The Final Scenes Of 'Life Of Pi', Jackson Werner

Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research

The following essay seeks to analyze the ending scenes of the 2012 film Life of Pi and discover the rhetorical patterns and devices it employs to create an effective conclusion. The essay ultimately decides that the film employs prominent usage of patterns of repetition and anomaly (with assistance through patterns of omission, relationship and sequencing) to both establish narrative probability and fidelity as well as create a satisfying ending for its characters and its audience. The essay also asserts that the final scenes of the film are a rhetorical situation, and that the film attempts to give its main character …

Ancestral Pursuits: A Multicultural Celebration Of Identity & Race, Charlotte Cates Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using critical historical rhetorical methods along with critical race and decolonial theory, this project situates ancestral pursuits as a communication-centered discursive formation by investigating the rhetorical strategies modern biotech and genealogy companies utilize to influence contemporary discourse around identity and belonging and narrate ethnicity and genealogy as acts of consumption. Through direct-to-consumer DNA testing and complimentary services, modern day biotech and genealogy companies like Ancestry and 23andMe market personalized insights into ancestry, genealogy, inherited traits, and health data that promise to connect users to their past, as well as to situate them in present-day society, through a deeper understanding of …

How Divergent Risk-Characters Rewrite The Anti-Vaccination Narrative, Shelby C. Luttman

Masters Theses

The modern narrative originates in 1998, when a paper by a British medical journal The Lancet alleged that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine may cause autism and bowel disease (Wakefield, Murch, Linnell, & Casson, 1998). The funding of the publication was deemed erroneous, yet the research sparked a connection between vaccines and disorders that would soon undermine public confidence in vaccines. Still today, the debate on vaccines poses a threat to public health in the United States of America as “opt-out” rates, particularly in states with recent outbreaks are increasing (Ratzan, 2011).

This study sought to examine what factors contribute to divergent …

The Loudest Voice In The Room Is Our Silence: Narrative Possibilities Of Silenced Adults, Rebeccah Avila

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Using muted group theory and communication privacy management theory as the theoretical framework, a deeper examination of adults who have experienced a childhood traumatic experience who now exhibit silencing behaviors as adults will be reviewed. Adults who were victims of childhood trauma were interviewed to listen for the themes in their narratives and how they make sense of why they participate in self-silencing behaviors. For this study, I am interested in examining two main ideas revolving around the phenomena of silence: (1) how do childhood traumatic experiences affect adults; and (2) how do adults make sense of how and why …

“It's Like A Phantom Limb. It Feels Like It’S There. It's Supposed To Be There, But It's Not.”: Birthmothers’ Metaphors Of Ambiguous Loss, Melodee Lynn Sova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Birthmothers are a population with unique experiences and challenges. Among those challenges is the difficulty understanding and managing a loss for which they do not have a readily available coping strategy. As a birthmother, the author of this dissertation was uniquely situated to connecting with, and understanding the ways in which, birthmothers expressed their narratives. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the ways in which birthmothers make sense of their experiences with ambiguous loss by examining the metaphors they employ when narrating their adoption story. The use of metaphor in the birthmother narrative was especially important because metaphor …

No Future For Academic Crips: An Autoethnographic Crippling Of Academic Futurity, A. Adams

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

No Future for Academic Crips attempts to situate crip theory, critical disability studies, and communication theory squarely in the context of academia, problematizing the constraints placed on autistic identity by the demands of a graduate education. Utilizing autoethnographic vignettes along with theoretical writings regarding the creation and consolidation of crip identity, this thesis theorizes what a “neuroqueer future” looks like for academics. Six vignettes are presented to demonstrate strategies for survival employed in academic spaces, followed by analysis contextualizing and criticizing those strategies. Finally, implications for neuroqueer futurity and identity are discussed.

When Darkness Descends: A Narrative Analysis Of Maternal Resilience Following Hurricane Maria, Sara Potter

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Within the last 40 years, academic research on disasters has focused on resilience as applied to individual adaptive capacities, rebuilding resources, and policy-driven solutions. While there has been an increased awareness of the many gendered dimensions of post-disaster recovery, women’s and mother’s agency in such situations is still largely ignored. Thus, this dissertation adopts a maternal focus, arguing that mothers are not merely vulnerable subjects but critical agents of post-disaster recovery for families, communities, and social systems more generally.

To analyze mothers’ resilience, I looked to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico as an illustrative case and field …

Grand Challenge No. 5: Communicating Archaeology Outreach And Narratives In Professional Practice, Todd J. Kristensen, Meigan Henry, Kevin Brownlee, Adrian Praetzellis, Myra Sitchon

Journal of Archaeology and Education

Communicating archaeology to non-expert audiences can convey the role and value of the discipline, implant respect for heritage, and connect descendant communities to their past. A challenge facing archaeology communicators is to translate complex ideas while retaining their richness and maximizing audience engagement. This article discusses how archaeologists can effectively communicate with non-experts using narrative and visual tools. We provide a communication strategy and three case studies from North America. The examples include the packaging of archaeological theory in the shape of mystery novels for student consumption; the use of artwork to anchor archaeological narratives in public outreach; and, the …

The Influence Of Message Type, Environmental Attitude, And Political Ideology On Perceptions Of Aquaculture In The United States, Tabitha C. Boze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, aquaculture receives varying degrees of support based on individuals’ perceptions of the industry. This study analyzes the factors that contribute to those perceptions; namely, message type, affect, political orientation, and environmental attitude. We collected data through a nationwide survey, distributed by Qualtrics, which recruited a representative sample of U.S. residents. The survey included multiple-choice, Likert scale, and open-ended questions regarding individual characteristics (e.g., age, income, political orientation, etc.) and opinions on aquaculture. In order to study message type, we employed four experimental conditions (narrative video, narrative text, infographic video, and text) and one control group with …

Walmart's Opioid Stewardship Initiative Rhetorically Constructed As An Act Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Rachel Kaplan

Speaker & Gavel

Walmart is the largest publicly owned retailer in the world (Fishman, 2008). Walmart operates in a contested rhetorical environment because of an aggressive pricing strategy, low-paying wages, and discrimination claims made by women. This paper argues Walmart created several Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs to help improve corporate image and reputation. CSR encourages companies to consider a triple bottom line: people, the environment and profit. Consumers who practice socially responsible consumption choose to support companies they perceive give back to the community, participate in CSR initiatives to help people, and incorporate sustainable practices into the lifecycle of their products. This …

Young, Gifted, And Black: A Narrative Of Persistence Of Black Women In Academia, Zelda Tackey

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the storied experiences of Black women at predominantly white institutions (PWI) of higher education. I adopt a phronetic iterative approach to the qualitative analysis of interviewed Black women to explore how the image of a Strong Black Woman mediates a storied understanding to microaggressions, invisibility and racial battle fatigue. I present that survivor narratives typically employed to explain Black women’s encounters on the PWI are ill-suited for interpreting their experiences of campus life, and that the storying of persistence may be more insightful for generating an understanding of a Black womanhood that …

Communicated Perspective-Taking (Cpt) And Storylistening: Testing The Impact Of Cpt In The Context Of Friends Telling Stories Of Difficulty, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jonathan Baker, Megan Cardwell, Mackensie Minniear, Haley Kranstuber Hortsman

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Grounded in communicated narrative sense-making theory (CNSM), the purpose of the current study was to test the effects of storylisteners’ communicated perspective taking (CPT) on storytellers’ well-being and evaluations of storylisteners’ communication skills in the context of telling stories about difficulty. Pairs of friends (n = 37) engaged in a storytelling interaction in which one person told a story of a difficult life experience (DLE). Listeners’ CPT was rated by observers using the Communicated Perspective-Taking Rating System (CPTRS) and tellers reported on listeners’ behaviors and their own psychosocial health. Results indicate that observed CPT relates positively to tellers’ perceptions …

Institutional Narrative As A Means For Evaluating Mission Alignment At Community Colleges, Paul Wesley Lundburg

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Community colleges have expanded their goals and their mission statements to accommodate more students, introduce new programs, and respond to community needs. One result of this expansion has been the perception of mission misalignment: the idea that community colleges are struggling to fulfill their missions. Recent literature has focused on causes and problems presumed to be associated with mission misalignment; however, there is a gap in the empirical research on whether mission misalignment occurs. The purpose of this study was to examine mission misalignment in community colleges, thereby helping to fill the gap in the literature. The research question was …