Communication Commons^™

La Leche League, The Media, And The Nursing Mother: A Broader Perspective On Persona Theory, Erin F Doss

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation builds on current breastfeeding-related scholarship by suggesting that the lived experiences of nursing mothers could be effective arguments for initial and continued breastfeeding. To do this, I analyzed archival materials related to La Leche League, specifically League newsletters, and media articles from publications across the United States to determine how the "nursing mother" functioned as a persona throughout the second half of the twentieth century. First, in my analysis of League newsletters I theorized a new category of personae, the constitutive persona, which includes personae used by a collective to attract new members and provide them with language …

Explaining Associations Between Relational Turbulence, Communal Coping, Stressors, And Relational Satisfaction During Military Reunions: At-Home Partners' Perspectives, Jennifer Sue Owlett

Open Access Dissertations

The current study examined how 179 romantic partners of U.S. service members perceived that they and their service members experienced the reintegration transition following a recent deployment. The relational turbulence model (Solomon & Knobloch, 2004) and the theoretical model of communal coping (TMCC; Afifi, Hutchinson, & Krouse, 2006) were used to frame this study. These frameworks had not been previously joined in this context. A revised communal coping measure was constructed to examine 17 hypotheses and 8 research questions because of challenges with the construct and external validity in prior measures. Participants completed an online questionnaire that assessed their perceptions …

Online Naturalization: Evolving Roles In Online Knowledge Production Communities, Jeremy David Foote

Open Access Theses

Web-based peer production communities, like Wikipedia and open source software, have created digital artifacts of growing cultural, financial, and technological importance. Understanding how and why people choose to join these communities, and why they eventually leave them, is therefore an important topic.

We take all of the edit data from six years of activity on the online genealogy wiki WeRelate, and create monthly snapshots of behavior and interaction networks for all 9,570 users who edited the site. We use machine learning to cluster these behavioral snapshots into four "behavioral roles". We identify one of these roles as being indicative of …

Computer Animation For Learning Building Construction Management: A Comparative Study Of First-Person Versus Third-Person View, Jun Yu

Open Access Theses

In this paper, we have explored the effect of perspective view in educational animations on students' learning of building construction management tasks and on students' preference of perspective views. We conducted a pre-test and post-test and found no significant advantages of computer animation presented in different perspective views across three different groups. Results showed that although students have preference on perspective views, perspective views did not influence learning outcome. The study also investigated the efficacy of animation as a teaching/learning tool in comparison to the traditional textbook. Findings showed that animation enhanced student learning, although the difference was not statistically …

Playing On The Periphery: Metagaming And Transgressive Play, Patrick S. Love

Open Access Theses

Gaming and play exist in connection to forces outside of the game systems themselves. Together, all these intersecting forces make up a meta game that informs and enables variance in play as well as creates barriers to entering play. This thesis fleshes out the framework of a metagame and shows how players can take a metagame perspective to transform, transcend, or even transgress barriers. This thesis discusses sources of metagaming and encompasses examples from video and traditional games.

The Rhetorical Constitution Of Online Community: Identification And Constitutive Rhetoric In The Community Of Reddit, Bradley Stephen Ludwig

Open Access Theses

The concepts of online identity and online community within the context of social media have been major research interests in the field of communication in recent years. Questions of interest include how the Internet and social media contribute to the construction of identity both online and offline, and what factors encourage participation in and contribution to online communities. This thesis will address these questions related to online identity and community from a rhetorical perspective to examine the role rhetoric plays in these processes and build on the application of rhetorical approaches to online contexts. Specifically, this project proposes a rhetorical …

Dismantling The Great Wall Of Prejudice: A Look At Centrality And Issue Importance In The Perpetuation Of Influence And Prejudice Reduction, Zachary Robert Wittrock

Open Access Theses

This study sought to utilize social network analysis to better understand how prejudice reduction can be spread from one person to another via interpersonal influence. Different types of prejudice reducing interventions were combined into one intervention. The role of centrality in the spread and perpetuation of influence was examined by measuring prejudice reduction in socially connected individuals who did not undergo the direct intervention. To further understand the role of centrality in prejudice reduction, the concept of issue importance was included to understand the differential impact that centrality has on interpersonal influence. Study 1 examined the effectiveness of the intervention, …

More Than A Game: Examining Sensemaking And Self-Organisation In Alternate Reality Games, Yeo Yun Ting Alanna

Open Access Theses

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are an emerging brand of online role-playing games, immersive and highly interactive. This new genre of games pioneered an effective and efficient form of collective play and problem-solving in loosely-defined situations, showcasing powerful and efficient sensemaking and self-organization at work. I intend to study an ARG titled "We Are Earthborne" in order to understand the processes of communication, sensemaking, and selforganization that occurs in the course of an ARG. Using the structure of Weick's organizational sensemaking and Latour's Actor-Network Theory as a lens, this study intends to break down how distributed groups of people can come …

Is Maternal Touch Used Referentially?, Rana Abu-Zhaya

Open Access Theses

Early social interactions are highly multimodal and include a wealth of cues (e.g., speech, facial expressions, motion, gestures and touch). Infant-directed speech (IDS) by itself may aid in language development. Touch by itself has been also shown to play an important role in dyadic interactions affecting both the infant and the caregiver. However, little is known about the impact of the combination of these two modes of communication on infant language development. In this thesis, I hypothesize that caregiver touch is provided in synchrony with speech, providing the language-learning infant with cues that may not only help her to find …

Libraries Respond To Mobile Ubiquity: Research And Assessment Of Mobile Device Usage Trends For Academic And Medical Libraries, Megan M. Hurst, Eleanor I. Cook, J. Michael Lindsay, Martha F. Earl

Charleston Library Conference

The authors consider trends in mobile device usage for the Internet as a whole, for EBSCO Discovery Service across all client libraries, and at two specific libraries: Preston Medical Library, serving the University of Tennessee (UT) Graduate School of Medicine and UT Medical Center, and the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, serving students and faculty on the main campus. Librarians at Preston Medical Library conducted a survey to determine which mobile devices, platforms, and apps were used by their patrons in 2012. East Carolina University piloted an iPad and e-reader lending program in 2010–2011. The results of each are …

Jpmorgan Chase, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, And The Mortgage Crisis Of 2008, Lauren Berkshire Hearit

Open Access Theses

The practice of financial public relations is widespread in the field of public relations, but there is little research concerning the practice of financial public relations. In response to the call for additional research on financial public relations, this paper will examine the intersections of financial public relations, issue management, and organizational communication. Specifically, this project will explore how contemporary issue management requires companies to maintain their actional and institutional legitimacy. ^ Following the Financial Crisis of 2008, major banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo attempted to rebuild stakeholder and shareholder trust in the American …

Don’T Worry, I Am Fine: A Qualitative Analysis Of Family Communication And Depression In Chinese International Students In The Us, Lan Jin

Open Access Theses

Depression and associated mental health problems are increasingly a critical health issue for Chinese international students in the U.S. (Lyubomirsky, Kasri, & Zehm, 2003; Cheung, 2011; Liu, 2009). Recent studies in different U.S. universities found a 32% to 47% rate for depression symptoms among Chinese international students (Cheung, 2011; Wei et al., 2007). The statistics suggest that Chinese students face a high prevalence of depression problems (Han et al., 2013). To address the depression problems, family communication provides substantial support for Chinese students (Liu, 2009). However, little is known about family communicative practices of this population (Wei et al., 2010). …

Software Architecture And Development For Controlling A Hubo Humanoid Robot, Anne Giulia Pellicciotti

Open Access Theses

This study considers the level of involvement of participants viewing bilingual and English language TV commercials. It analyzes results from 295 non-Hispanic participants studying at a Midwestern university. In the study, participants were asked to view four commercials. Using Zaichkowsky's (1994) 10-item Personal Involvement Inventory (PII), participants scaled the advertisements on a 7-level scale. The scale evaluated participants' emotional and cognitive involvement with the ad. This between-subjects design required that participants be randomly separated into viewing all-English or all-bilingual advertisements. Findings showed no significant difference in involvement levels between bilingual or English commercials within this demographic group. Those with higher …

Immigrant Women’S Experiences Of Using Mobile Phones: Counting Pennies To Connect Across Continents, Parul Malik, Lorraine Gayle Kisselburgh

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

There are many success stories of women around the world using information communication technologies (ITCs) to empower themselves. Most research on ICT-enabled empowerment tends to focus on rural women in emerging economies. Little attention has been paid to their low income, immigrant counterparts living in North American cities. Using 30 interviews with Bangladeshi and Ethiopian women who recently immigrated to New York City, this exploratory study describes the barriers to the use of mobile phones amongst immigrant women. A majority of these women were dependents of construction workers and cab drivers, while the others had operative level positions in retail …

Appreciating Episodic Mentoring: Reconsiderations Of And Interventions For A Comprehensive Mentoring Process For Engineering Faculty, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Ziyu Long, Klod Kokini, Lindsey B. Anderson, Jennifer C. Batra

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

The benefits of formal and informal mentoring systems in academe and other organizational settings are well documented. However, a third form of mentoring—known as episodic or spontaneous mentoring as well as mentoring moments—offers a different entrée point into the everyday construction of mentoring. Whereas most mentoring either focuses on one-on-one long-term relationships or group/cluster mentoring arrangements, episodic mentoring emphasizes processes, relational aspects of the mentoring experiences, multiple inputs, and individual empowerment. Based on inductive-deductive analyses of in-depth interviews and other empirical data about engineering faculty members' mentoring experiences in a mid-western university, we discuss how episodic mentoring is a way …

Navigating Pregnancy And Parenthood: Work-Family Considerations For Men And Women Graduate Students In Stem And Other Disciplines, Ziyu Long, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Abigail Selzer King

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

Scholars and non-academicians consider popular key advantages to be flexibility in career trajectories as well as autonomy and control over one’s schedule and the work that one chooses to do (e.g., Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006, 2013). Although academic careers seem to offer these benefits, there are questions about whether and how such flexibility actually occurs, particularly in times of pregnancy/adoption, family leave, and work-life “balance” (e.g., Stone, 2008). Implicit in academic flexibility is that graduate student careers might evidence some of the same flexibility but within institutional structures that can range from lockstep to a build-you-own-plan and timetable model. In …

Expanding Audiences For Online Writing Labs: Owls In The English As A Foreign Language Context, Joshua Paiz

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation from the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) discusses online writing labs (OWLs), specifically the Purdue OWL, in the traditionally-defined English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The ELF context often presents unique challenges for the teaching of English writing, including challenges of finding appropriate resources. This may lead EFL writing practitioners to rely on the information presented by OWLs to supplement their teaching. However, many OWLs were originally designed for the so-called native speaker (North American, UK, Australian, New Zealand) audience. This raises the question of whether or not OWLs are meeting the needs of …

Online Writing Labs: Resources For Second Language Writers, Joshua Paiz, Ghada Gherwash

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation at the 2014 TESOL Developer's Showcase discusses best practices and special considerations for using Online Writing Labs as L2 writing support tools. This discussion is grounded both in recent OWL/Writing Center theory, as well as from the presenter's experiences working on a large­scale OWL in a variety of capacities. To add to the discussion on special considerations when using OWLs, this presentation also provides a discussion of a recently completed research project involving the Purdue OWL and how it is used to support EFL writing. It will highlight how, even in resources labeled as "ESL," can be overly …

Encouraging The Growth Of Owls Worldwide: Utilizing Intercultural Rhetoric To Inform Best Practices, Joshua Paiz

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation for the 8th Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse Conference discusses work on the Purdue OWL, focusing on the resources targeting L2 writers writing for particular contexts (e.g., Writing for the Chinese Business Context), as these resource-types tend to be some of the early Purdue OWL spaces where the findings of intercultural rhetoric maybe more readily applied. This discussion will also provide an overview of recent research looking at the place of and practitioner attitudes towards OWLs in general and, more specifically, the Purdue OWL. The presenter will conclude by discussing new content development initiatives at the Purdue OWL and …

Viewing An Interdisciplinary Human-Centered Design Course As A Multiteam System: Perspectives On Cooperation And Information Sharing, Elizabeth S. Fleming, Alexandra E. Coso

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Many design projects, including human-centered design (HCD) projects, incorporate multiple teams cooperating within what is referred to as a Multiteam System (MTS) environment. These teams mutually rely on resources and processes provided by other teams. As an MTS increases in complexity, knowledge is distributed to more individuals. While effectively distributed knowledge increases creativity and productivity, it is also can hinder team effectiveness. Team members may fail to exchange relevant information or to integrate pertinent information into reasoning for design decisions. Our research addresses information sharing among teams and individuals in HCD by examining interactions between and within the MTS (i.e., …

Peering Into The Discourse Of Industrial Design Training Through A Sustainability Lens, Norman M. Su, Haodan Tan, Eli Blevis

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Now well established in HCI, the lens of sustainability may be applied to educational practices in industrial design and interaction design. By sustainability, we mean to include notions of mitigation of the environmental effects of climate change. In this paper, we present an analysis of student projects in a junior and senior industrial design class dataset. Drawing from discourse analysis, we examine how the industrial design classroom serves as a space to socially construct the philosophies and goals inherent in “good” design. We then examine how the lens of sustainability is implicated into the industrial design “way” as espoused by …

Assessing The Preparedness Of The Veterinary Profession To Communicate With Limited English Proficient Spanish-Speaking Pet Owners, Ruth Ellen Landau

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to assess the preparedness of the veterinary profession to communicate with limited English proficient Spanish-speaking pet owners (LEP SSPOs). Results of surveys with 393 Latino pet owners, 383 small animal veterinarians and staff, and over 2000 veterinary students indicate that interaction between veterinary professionals and LEP SSPOs is not a rare occurrence: Veterinarians in states with large established or fast-growing Latino communities are seeing LEP SSPOs and their pets on a regular basis: 89% of veterinarians have LEP Spanish-speaking clients, over half of these practitioners are seeing LEP SSPOs weekly, and over half …

Best Practices & Resources For Teaching Esl Written Communication, Linda S. Bergmann, Vicki Kennell

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Presentations

This presentation, given at the Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE) Series II: Expanding Your Teaching Toolkit, offers instructors information on understanding and accommodating the ESL writers in their classrooms. Material is presented on the language abilities of the writers, on the ways in which cultural differences may be manifested in the writing itself, and on the types of accommodations that can be made in writing assignments and assessments. The talk includes information on best practices in writing for all writers and a bibliography of resources about L2 writers.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab: Engaging With Local And Global Communities Of Writers, Joshua Paiz, Caitlan Spronk

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

In 1995, then writing center director Muriel Harris and her staff developed and launched the precursor to the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). Originally, this was an in-house writing resource for Purdue University faculty and staff. Since then, however, the Purdue OWL has become a prime location for community engagement both locally and globally, with over 200,000,000 hits annually. This poster at the Purdue University Academic Community Engagement Poster Presentations demonstrates the impact of the Purdue OWL both locally and globally. It will also highlight how that engagement has changed overtime, through the growth the Purdue OWL’s static resources, to …

Owls Across Borders: An Exploratory Study On The Place Of Online Writing Labs In The Efl Context, Joshua Paiz

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

The study reported on in this presentation at the 2013 Symposium on Second Language Writing (SSLW) examined the content creation best practices of four content development teams working on the Purdue OWL. Utilizing focus group methods the study sought to examine what strategies developers utilized to overcome the challenges faced while developing L2 instructional content for a global audience. By examining the various drafts of resources before they finally went live on the Purdue OWL, this study investigated the linguistic and rhetorical choices that developers made in an attempt to create content that would be of maximal user to L2 …

Stories Of Journalistic Careers: From Serial Killers To The Changing Nature Of Journalism, Linda Hughes-Kirchubel

Open Access Theses

A career narrative is a story that helps a person define who she is, and how she should act, within the context of career (Meijers & Lengelle, 2012). This thesis is an analysis of three distinct, yet related, career narratives: a metanarrative, a mesonarrative, and a micronarrative. I examine the field of journalism through metanarratives that reflect the sea-change brought about by the advent of the Internet and the production of on-demand news (see 111th Congress, 2009; Rainey & Wellman, 2012; Weldon, 2008). Using the story of two serial killers, I show how the industry has begun to think differently …

Narratives Of Loss And Order And Imaging The Belgian Landscape 1900-1945, Bruno Notteboom, David Peleman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Narratives of Loss and Order and Imaging the Belgian Landscape 1900-1945" Bruno Notteboom and David Peleman analyze a number of publications on landscape, focusing on narratives constructed by means of landscape images published in Belgium. With the work of Jean Massart and Emile Vanderwelde as a point of departure, Notteboom and Peleman discuss popularizing publications in the fields of botany, agricultural education, and tourism, as well as an urban planning. They address the three realms of landscape narratives defined by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton as story, context/intertext, and discourse. Notteboom and Peleman distinguish three recurrent operations …

The Erotic Conception Of Ancient Greek Landscapes And The Heterotopia Of The Symposium, Jo Heirman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Erotic Conception of Ancient Greek Landscapes and the Heterotopia of the Symposium" Jo Heirman discusses the conception of natural landscapes in ancient Greek lyric poetry from the seventh until the fifth century BC and its ideological background. Heirman analyzes lyric poems by Sappho, Ibycus, and Theognis in which landscapes of fields, gardens, and meadows are presented. Heirman's analysis reveals a recurrent erotic pattern in the conception of ancient Greek landscapes constructed as places which suggest various forms of eroticism ranging from lesbian desire to homosexuality. Further, Heirman discusses the preoccupation with eroticism by suggesting a connection …

English Architectural Landscapes And Metonymy In Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, Bart Eeckhout

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "English Architectural Landscapes and Metonymy in Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child" Bart Eeckhout analyzes Alan Hollinghurst's novel in light of Hollinghurst's interest in architectural representation. Eeckhout analyzes the novel's principal scenario of architectural change in the course of the twentieth century and postulates that Hollinghurst employs unconventional genre codes and queers the social realist novel, the family saga, and the country house novel. Eeckhout analyzes The Stranger's Child as a comedy of metonymies which impresses upon its readers the structural necessity of diverse perspectives, labyrinthine metonymical constructions, and the dynamics of place. Further, Eeckhout argues that Hollinghurst …

Blurring The Boundaries Between City And Countryside In Photography, Steven Jacobs

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Blurring the Boundaries between City and Countryside in Photography" Steven Jacobs discusses how, in recent decades, a new landscape has emerged in which the differences between city and countryside have been blurred. As a result, the urbanized environment is increasingly viewed and interpreted as a landscape. It is because of the hybridity of this contemporary cityscape that urban planners such as Mirko Zardini have argued for a revaluation of the notion of the picturesque linked with a sensitivity to irregularity and a mixture of the cultural and the natural. Since the late 1960s, the post-urban landscape has …