Communication Commons^™

Organizational Visibility In The Nonprofit Sector: Perspectives Of Communication Professionals, Theophilus Femi Alawonde

All Theses

Nonprofit organizations need to manage relationships with their stakeholders and audiences for varying reasons, one of which is the desire to stay visible. Given the peculiarities of the nonprofit sector, this study sought to understand how visibility is conceptualized in practice, and how nonprofit professionals work towards optimizing and evaluating visibility efforts, given organizational and sectoral constraints.

Drawing on Structuration Theory’s duality of structure framework, the study examined the structural constraints that shape visibility in the nonprofit sector, and extends the literature by examining the role of agency in enacting visibility among selected nonprofit organizations in the United States.

Communicating Sustainability: Exploring How Nongovernmental Organizations In Ghana Use Internal Communication For Philanthropic Development, Ama A. Assenso-Onyinah

All Theses

Internal communication is an important area in organizational structure. In the NGO sector, it can be used strategically to navigate resource constraints. The main objective of this study is to highlight the importance of internal communication and its role in navigating resource dependency in NGOs in Ghana. In recent times, NGOs in Ghana have been struggling as funding drops, especially after the stop order by the US government on USAID. Using qualitative data drawn from six participants who work with NGOs in Ghana, the study identified internal communication as a foundational structure to philanthropic partnerships. Through the lens of resource …

Connection Through Crisis: A Thematic Analysis Of Dialogic Public Relations And Renewal In Social Media Posts From Nonprofit Organizations During Hurricane Helene, Cassidy L. Gruber

All Theses

During a crisis, nonprofit organizations must communicate quickly and ethically with their stakeholders to maintain a good relationship. Data was collected from nonprofit organizations’ Instagram and X accounts during a one-month period surrounding Hurricane Helene in 2024 to see how organizations were communicating with their stakeholders during a crisis. This study found that nonprofit organizations were implementing elements of dialogic communication and renewal into their social media messages. It was also found that national and global organizations were more vocal than local and regional organizations during the crisis. This research highlights the importance of communicating ethically with stakeholders during a …

Religiously Online: A Digital Media Communication Audit Of A Midwestern Church According To The Frameworks Of Uses And Gratifications Theory And Affordances Framework, Jada N. Ortiz

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the digital media practices of a faith-based organization through how leadership communicates with internal congregation members. By applying the theoretical framework of uses and gratifications theory and affordances framework, a communication audit was conducted of a Midwestern Protestant church to uncover any gaps between congregational members' uses for digital media and how the church leadership was gratifying those needs through their digital media practices. Accordingly, this study investigated (1) what digital media content needs congregants expect their church to fulfill, (2) what the church is currently doing to gratify congregants' digital media content needs and (3) church …

The New Wild West: A Case Study Analysis Of The Communication Methods Surrounding Ai Infrastructure In West Texas, Thomas Sorensen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past several years, artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. It has enabled numerous innovations across all sectors, and its usage continues to grow daily. This increase in demand for AI products has led to the development of AI data centers nationwide. Fueled by competition between the public and private sectors, many projects are underway. This study focuses on one such project in West Texas: the Stargate Data Center. This project is being constructed near Abilene, Texas, and has had an instrumental impact on the daily lives of its citizens. This research project seeks to answer the …

Feast And Faith: An Ethnographic Study Of Communication And Culture In Noemuti's Fole Mako, Inosensius Enryco Mokos

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This article investigates Fole Mako, a significant traditional communal feast in Noemuti, North Central Timor, Indonesia. The event is analyzed in the context of its deliberate timing to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish and the consecration of a new church. Using the Ethnography of Communication framework, a detailed analysis is provided of the intricate communication practices, profound cultural meanings, and vital social functions embedded within this elaborate feast. Data for the study were meticulously collected through direct observation and engaged participation. The findings reveal that Fole Mako is much more than a mere …

Current Situation, Problems, And Countermeasures Of Science And Technology Societies In China Under Global Technology Governance, Yangyang Li, Yaoyu Nie, Xiaoxiao Xiong, Guangxi He

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The “15th Five-Year Plan” period presents both opportunities and challenges for scientific and technological societies in China, meaning that they shall further refine their functional positioning beyond traditional academic exchanges and provide full-chain services. Since the reform and opening up, the development of science and technology societies in China has flourished, and their governance capacity has been continuously enhanced, playing a sustained role in gathering scientific and technological talent, participating in national and social governance, and driving multi-dimensional innovation. Nevertheless, there are also problems such as low management efficiency, insufficient integration into the national innovation system, and overall low level …

Digital Touchpoints: Investigating Contact Page Accessibility And Visual Authenticity Within Medical Tourism Health Websites, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kristen Livingston, Treyton Meyers, Sakshi Bhati, Himika Akram

Faculty Submissions

This study examines two critical digital touchpoints on medical tourism provider (MTP) websites: (1) the accessibility of contact pages which often function as entry points for inquiries, scheduling, and pre-travel coordination, and (2) the authenticity of visual imagery used to shape expectations about care environments, personnel, and technological capacity. A sample of 105 MTPs across all six World Health Organization regions were analyzed using quantitative web accessibility testing and qualitative visual analysis. Results indicate pervasive accessibility errors on contact-page touchpoints and extensive reliance on inauthentic imagery to depict patients, providers, and medical technologies. Together, these practices may distort user expectations …

Beyond The Badge: How Internal Culture Contradicts External Service In Urban Police Departments, Rowan Bari Eiselman

Educational Studies Student Papers and Posters

This ethnographic study examines how gendered workplace culture and mental health culture shape officer retention in two urban police departments: the Orange Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th District. Through ride-alongs, observations, and informal interviews with nine current and retired officers (four female, five male) across various ranks conducted between March and April 2026, this research reveals a troubling contradiction: departments tasked with serving diverse communities struggle to support diversity within their own ranks. Female officers navigate professional isolation, prolonged competence-proving expectations, and implicit career-versus-motherhood choices, with experiences varying significantly between the more supportive Orange PD and …

Nbc Peacock North Spring 2026 Newsletter, Peacock North Staff

NBC Peacock North Newsletter

Highlights include: NBC Through the Years -- A Year-Long Celebration as NBC Turns 100 -- SNL’s U.K. News -- Peter Alexander Joins MS NOW -- Mike Noseworthy Salutes Danny Miller’s Retirement -- Legendary Late-Night TV Director Hal Gurnee Turns 101 -- Silent Microphones

Spe 2400-Career Communication Course Syllabus, Alyse Anna Keller Johnson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus outlines a 12-week asynchronous Career Communication course focused on developing practical communication skills for professional contexts. Through open educational resources (OER) and a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) approach, students engage in applied learning activities such as resume development, interview practice, and professional writing. The course is designed for adaptability across institutions and emphasizes accessibility, skill-building, and real-world application.

The Living Lab: Instructional Design Interventions To Improve Communication And Equity In Federal Housing Programs, Joana I. Camp

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

The Living Lab is an independent applied research project informed by my 25 years of lived experience as a Section 8 voucher holder, examining how instructional design strategies can improve administrative workflows, communication, and equitable access within the Housing Choice Voucher Program. Drawing on sustained participation, the research identifies two primary systemic barriers: the federally mandated 15-day inspection period and incomplete Request for Tenancy Approval (RFTA) packets. To address these issues, the project developed the RFTA Roadmap—a zero-cost, clarity-driven communication tool that embeds sequential instructions directly within procedural workflows, mitigating the Split-Attention Effect and cognitive “Bandwidth Tax” associated with standard …

Book Review: Communications Internships Handbook: What All Comms Students Need To Know, Karen Mccullough

Applied Business Faculty Publications

Review of: Daniel, R. R., & Haynes, K. A. (2025). Communications internships handbook: What all COMMS students need to know. Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 120 pp.

College students who successfully complete internships and other forms of experiential learning while in college benefit from greater average starting salaries, receive a higher number of job offers, and express increased satisfaction with their careers than students who do not participate in internships or other experiential learning opportunities. Students also indicate that they feel their career has progressed faster than they expected, according to results from a 2025 study by the National Association of …

Why We Must Commune: Rethinking The Role Of Marketing Communications In Turbulent Times, Javier Garcia

Publications and Research

“Communications” is often thought of as a noun, representing the messages we receive on a daily basis from people, brands, and institutions alike. 

"Communications" is also often associated with an industry that exists to produce such messaging in service of capitalism, with a commercial or otherwise actionable outcome desired from its receiving audience. 

This presentation, hosted by two-time CCNY graduate and senior marketing communications professional and Assistant Professor Javier Garcia, will examine the urgency and opportunity in rethinking the value and study of marketing and communications. 

In his presentation, Professor Garcia will offer suggestions on how to guide students towards …

Trusted Forms—The Case Of Barack Obama’S Birth Certificate, Karl-Heinrich Schmidt, Frederik Schlupkothen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents can be understood as containers for information that enable remote communication between people across space and time. They are therefore fundamentally subject to issues of trust. The theoretical treatment of documents as a means of remote communication has a long history and has arrived in the age of electronic document exchange, as shown by the work of R. T. Pédauque, which is taken as a starting point here.

To take theory further, form-based documents are discussed here as an example. Form-based documents control the information provided by fillers by specifying form fields. The core of this paper is to …

Discourse Markers In Conflict Management: A Literature Review, Erica W. Martin, Krystle L. Hunter

Peace and Conflict Studies Journal Conference

Discourse Markers in Conflict Management: A Literature Review

Discourse markers, often seen as fillers in conversation, are important for managing interpersonal conflicts. This literature review aims to show how these markers influence conflict dynamics, with implications for promoting peace and strengthening community relationships. By combining research from linguistics, communication studies, and conflict resolution, the review looks at how discourse markers function during three phases of conflict: initiation, escalation, and de-escalation. The authors aim to improve both theoretical understanding and practical approaches to engaging constructively in conflicts, enhancing cohesion within global and local communities through better communication.

Using a qualitative synthesis …

Managing The Mood: How Managerial Communication Shapes The Experience Of Emotional Labor Among Restaurant Employees, Brynn Olverson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Restaurant work is emotionally demanding work for servers and bartenders. Organizational Support Theory (Eisenberger et al., 1986) suggests that employees’ perceptions of their organizations’ support can bolster the negative side effects of such work. However, past instruments used to measure these perceptions do not distinguish between types of emotional experience, nor separate perceptions of emotional support from other forms of support. Likewise, OST notes that supervisors play a key role in influencing perceptions of organizational support, but more work is needed to determine specific communicative behaviors that can increase perceptions of organizational support. The study at hand proposes that managers' …

Merger Crisis Role-Play: Organizational Behavior In Action, Jyro B. Triviño

Leadership and Strategy Faculty Publications

To advance professionally, students must be prepared to navigate dynamic and contentious organizational environments by articulating their varied views, protecting their personal and professional intentions, anticipating challenges, and then fostering consensus. This paper addresses a high-stakes, multi-round immersive role-play simulation of a company merger in an undergraduate Organizational Behavior course. Grounded in the core pillars of experiential learning, adaptive leadership, and organizational sensemaking, this classroom exercise places students in a pre-set, realistic post-merger leadership team facing immediate business challenges. Compared to traditional case studies, this method requires students to demonstrate real-time organizational behavior competencies, providing a powerful platform for negotiation …

Nbc Peacock North Winter 2026 Newsletter, Peacock North Staff

NBC Peacock North Newsletter

Highlights include: Al Roker is our Guest Speaker, NBC Turns 100! --Tom Wolzien interviewed by Karen Curry and Marilyn Altman -- When Vinnie Novak Met Fidel Castro -- Silent Microphones -- The Oscars will be Streamed in 2029

Impact Of Instagram Flyers In Higher Education: Within Resident Assistant Program Attendance Marketing, Mary J. Mcdonald

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

This exploratory pilot study examines whether posting Instagram digital flyers affects Resident Assistant (RA) program attendance in the higher-education Housing and Residence Life (HRL) context. Instagram has emerged as a dominant channel of communication among Generation Z (1997-2012). As a result, higher education institutions have increasingly used social media to prompt student engagement and foster belonging, in hopes of strengthening retention. Using a quasi-experimental matched comparison design, attendance data from the 2024 academic year without Instagram flyers were compared to the 2025 academic year with Instagram flyers. The independent variable was the implementation of Instagram digital flyers, and the dependent …

Digital Diplomacy And Activism: Sustaining Institutional Legacy Through State-Proxy Discursive Competition In The Aftermath Of The Usaid 2025 Suspension, Maryam Alaa Elprince

Capstone and Graduation Projects

This study examines how the 2025 suspension of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) transformed the arena of U.S. foreign-aid diplomacy by eliminating the agency’s operational capacity and erasing its digital presence, thereby redistributing discursive authority across a fragmented communicative field. The research aims to determine how diplomacy adapts when a bilateral institution central to American soft power is dismantled through top-down decision, and whether discursive power exercised online can extend institutional relevance and legitimacy beyond structural collapse. Using an interpretivist qualitative design that combines digital-forensic reconstruction, document-based content analysis, and elite interviews  with top ranking officials, the …

The Effects Of Inadequate Training On Knowledge Management Systems: Retention Crisis Of Captains In The United States Army, Lexis R. Grudzinski

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the relationship between the United States Army’s communication strategy in knowledge management for officers and the desires of captains to continue serving beyond their service obligation. Amidst the current retention crisis (Winkie, 2023) at the captain rank, blame often falls on factors outside of the Army’s control. This research, however, seeks to investigate a factor within the Army’s control and offer workable solutions.

For this research, we will use the common definition of knowledge management (KM): the process of creating, capturing, and organizing knowledge within an organization in a way that improves efficiency. KM includes both explicit …

Crisis Communication Guidebook For Small And Medium-Sized Food Business: From Theory To Practice, Yixin Li

Masters Theses

This creative thesis aims to develop a practical crisis communication guidebook for small and medium-sized food businesses. Compared with larger businesses that have greater human and financial resources, small and medium-sized food businesses are often more vulnerable to the influences of crises on revenue and reputation. For this reason, they have a bigger need for practical and systematic crisis guidance. This project is grounded in crisis communication theory and analyzes existing literature in order to translate academic research and theoretical knowledge into an applied guidebook.

The guidebook is organized into three sections based on the timeline of crisis development: before …

“We Do Things A Little Different Exactly As You'd Expect Here...": Egocentric Network Structures As Predictors Of Organizational Culture Type, Ray Celeste S. Tanner

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This dissertation examines organizational culture as an outcome of communication structures by integrating the Competing Values Framework (CVF) with egocentric network analysis. Although CVF is one of the most widely used frameworks for diagnosing organizational culture and predicting organizational effectiveness, prior research has overwhelmingly treated culture as an independent variable. Responding to calls for greater attention to the antecedents of culture, this study reconceptualizes organizational culture as a dependent variable and investigates how individuals’ perceived communication networks predict perceptions of CVF culture types. Using egocentric network data collected from employees across a diverse range of organizations and industries, this study …

Crisis Communication In The Influencer Era: A Crisis Response Analysis Of Poppi And Alani Nu, Meredith E. Staley

Honors College Theses

As social media continues to reshape modern public relations practice, beverage brands like Alani Nu and Poppi offer relevant examples of influencer-driven communication and crisis response. This honors thesis compares and contrasts these brands following two major crises: Poppi’s influencer vending machine campaign and the health concerns and backlash surrounding Alani Nu’s energy drinks. Despite the well-known prevalence of these brands, there is little scholarly research examining their crisis communication strategies. Guided by Situational Crisis Communication Theory, this study uses a combination of social and news media content analysis to evaluate how each brand responded to its respective crisis. Each …

Communicating Wildfire Risk In Real Time: An Idea Model Analysis Of Watch Duty Alerts, Audrey E. Miller-Greene

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Traditional wildfire public information systems often rely on fragmented data provided through multiple government agencies and platforms. Historically, community members have been required to identify and piece together information necessary for preparation, evacuation, and decision-making during wildfire events. Watch Duty, a 501(c)(3), works to address this gap by compiling fragmented wildfire information for the public. The platform has undergone rapid growth and increased public reliance, providing a rationale for this research project. As Watch Duty expands its capabilities, its messages should be evaluated against established risk and crisis communication best practices. This study evaluates alerts released by Watch Duty during …

Enhancing International School Implementation Capacity: Supporting Contextualized Learning At An International Baccalaureate School In China, Christopher J. Hayden Iv

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

International schools allocate substantial resources to implement progressive curricular innovations; however, the advantages offered by these developments are contingent on their effective execution within classroom settings. This mixed methods action research (MMAR) study examined the implementation of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Global Context (GC) Strategy in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) at an international school in China and asked how the school might strengthen its capacity to enact this and similar innovations. Following a sequential MMAR design, a reconnaissance phase combined a whole-staff survey (n=87) with qualitative interviews to diagnose the individual, organizational, and contextual factors shaping implementation. Analyses identified …

Making Sense Of Membership: Organizational Socialization Of African Immigrant Employees In U.S. Workplaces, Ikeola J. Bodunde

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This dissertation examines how African immigrant employees make sense of organizational socialization in U.S. workplaces. As global mobility reshapes the labor force, nearly one in five U.S. workers is foreign-born, making organizational socialization an increasingly complex communicative process. Classic socialization models assume linear, uniform adjustment, yet international employees often face ambiguity, cultural mismatch, and racialized expectations that complicate early workplace experiences. Guided by sensemaking theory, this study conceptualizes socialization as an ongoing, nonlinear process through which newcomers notice cues, construct interpretations, act on provisional understandings, and revise meanings as contexts shift. Using a qualitative, interpretive design, I conducted semi-structured interviews …

Bilingualsim In The Workplace: How Work Attitudes Influence Burnout And Turnover Intentions, Andrea Del Aguila

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Understanding whether language status functions as a risk or protective factor for employee well-being and retention is essential for developing organizational policies that support workers from varied demographic backgrounds. This study examined how work attitudes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work engagement are seen among bilingual and monolingual workers and how these outcomes relate to employee burnout and turnover intentions. An outside researcher from Talent Metrics Consulting collected data via an online survey utilizing previously validated measures of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, burnout, work engagement, and turnover intentions. Participants were recruited through online advertising and social sampling obtaining …

Critical Feminist Editorial Praxis: My Tenure As The First Journal Editor Of Color Of Communication Monographs, Srivi Ramasubramanian

Media Studies - All Scholarship

In this essay I theorize about Critical Feminist Editorial Praxis, which envisions journal editing as a site for scholar-activism. I use the term activism because to counter the hegemonic whiteness and coloniality of Communication knowledge requires active efforts to go against the taken-for-granted processes and practices. Journal editing is a significant location for interventions because this is often where we learn what is considered cutting-edge scholarship within our discipline. This significance is especially clear when the journal in question is a flagship publication of a leading professional organization. As I end my tenure as the first editor of color of …