Communication Commons^™

International Advertising Education In A Digital World: Achieving Global Competency, Frauke Hachtmann, Nancy Mitchell, Bruce Mitchell, Sheila Sasser

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Alphabet To Internet: Media In Our Lives, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Technology has changed virtually every aspect of communication. As more of us adapt to news and information delivered almost instantly on devices that handily fit into a pocket, we’ve become accustomed to new tools and quick changes. Irving Fang’s second edition of Alphabet to Internet puts it all in perspective, starting with the dawn of writing and including today’s 140-character Tweet. In a word, the impact is mind-boggling.

Integrating Evidence-Based Practices Into Public Relations Education, Karen Freberg, David L. Remund, Kathy Keltner-Previs

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Public relations continue to play an essential and changing role in society, requiring the regular reassessment of the education of future public relations practitioners. Academics and practitioners often differ in how they view the public relations field, how they define the discipline, and how they view the major pedagogical approaches. This paper explores the impact of integrating three different perspectives in public relations education, including practitioner perspective, client perspective, and the evidence-based perspective. Results from students’ reaction papers and an online questionnaire suggest that integrating an evidence-based approach improves the competence and clarity of communications counsel provided by aspiring practitioners.

Adpr 357: Account Planning—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Sriyani Tidball

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

A course portfolio investigating student learning in ADPR 357, complete with case studies of student work.

Jomc 486: Mass Media Law—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, John R. Bender

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Mass Media Law, JOMC 486, is a required course for all majors in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. This includes majors in journalism (traditional print journalism and online journalism), broadcasting and advertising-public relations. The purpose of this portfolio is to assess whether the learning objectives of the course are achieved. The evidence compiled for this portfolio suggests that the students are learning basic information about mass media law. Further, analysis of the tests shows that they are also learning how to apply the principles of media law to situations they have not encountered, thus preparing them for dealing …

The Roma And Wall Street/Ceos: Linguistic Construction Of Identity In U.S. And Canadian Crime Reports, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Discriminatory practices against Roma (also known as Romanies) occur on a daily basis in many countries around the world through media discourse. This paper investigates the representation of Romanies in U.S. and Canadian online newspaper crime reports and compares this representation to Wall Street/CEOs in crime reports demonstrating how identity of both groups is constructed through a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic strategies. Drawing on Mayr and Machin’s (2012) critical linguistic analysis of the language of crime, this multimodal study incorporates a variety of tools such as Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics in order to dig below the surface …

Short And Tweet, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

The goal is to help students learn to write clearly and concisely. It reinforces William Zinsser’s advice in “On Writing Well.” He said, “Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.” The exercise helps students learn to find the focus of stories. It helps editing students write concise, clear headlines that pull readers into stories. It also helps reporting students learn to summarize stories accurately and briefly — a skill they need as they craft their own ledes.

The Amazing Twitter List Race, Michelle Carr Hassler

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

The goal of this assignment is to show students how curating lists on Twitter can help them discover news sources, monitor what is happening in their community and develop story ideas. They complete the assignment as part of a friendly competition in which each student tries to develop a Twitter list with the most news sources. Students often do not follow local news closely and struggle to come up with strong story ideas. This assignment helps them focus by creating one place where they can keep current on events and be inspired.

Prowatch: Critically Thinking About Reporters’ Work, Carla Kimbrough

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

ProWatch, an activity in critical thinking, is an assignment that I use in beginning reporting and editing classes, but it can be adapted easily for use in editing and advanced reporting classes. It is designed to make students read the newspaper, identify sources of story ideas, develop interviewing skills, identify Associated Press style, think about presenting stories across platforms and strengthen story organization skills. This assignment is used throughout the semester so that students can gain these skills by critically examining the published work of professional journalists.

Communicative Responses To The Painful Self-Disclosures Of Familial And Non-Familial Older Adults, Craig Fowler, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Data from 365 college students were used to assess young adults’ communicative responses to older persons’ painful self-disclosures (PSDs). Coupland, Coupland, and Giles (1991) proposed that recipients of PSD may respond to such disclosures via a variety of “next moves.” These responses may broadly be considered to reflect forms of prosocial engagement, passive disengagement, and active disengagement. We investigated whether young adults’ tendency to use certain responses to PSD were influenced by their affective reactions to PSD, their communicative background and characteristics, and the socio-relational context of the encounter in which PSD occurred. Results are discussed with respect to their …

Connecting With Volunteers: Memorable Messages And Volunteer Identification, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Many of the 1.8 million registered nonprofit organizations in the United States rely on the services of volunteers to be able to connect with and meaningfully serve their communities. However, volunteers are less likely to receive formal socialization and training than paid employees. Thus, this study employs the concept of memorable messages as a way for exploring the ways in which messages received by volunteers from a variety of organizational sources may affect their volunteer identification with the nonprofit organization they serve. Three results emerged from the data, including: (a) sources of memorable messages in volunteer organizations; (b) types of …

The Experience And Expression Of Stepchildren’S Emotions At Critical Events In Stepfamily Life, Sandra Metts, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Paul Schrodt, Tiffany R. Wang, Amanda J. Holman, Audra K. Nuru, Jenna Stephenson Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study explored the experience and expression of emotions of adult stepchildren during four critical events in stepfamily life. During semistructured, in-depth interviews, 57 adult stepchildren shared stories about four critical events: the parental divorce, remarriage of one of the parents, an event in the stepfamily that generated feeling more like a family, and an event in the stepfamily that generated feeling less like a family. A total of 402 pages of single- spaced transcripts were coded for emotion, target, and expression of emotion resulting in positive and negative emotion categories and subcategories for all four critical events. Five research …

Trailblazing Healthcare: Institutionalizing And Integrating Complementary Medicine, Barbara F. Sharf, Patricia Geist Martin, Kevin-Khristián Cosgriff-Hernández, Julia Moore

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Objectives — This study examines three integrative health centers to understand their (1) historical development, organizational goals, and modalities, (2) the processes and challenges of integrating complementary and allopathic medicine, while encouraging staff collaboration, and (3) how each center becomes institutionalized within their community.

Methods — We focus on three organizational case studies that reflect varying forms of integrative health care practices in three U.S. cities. Participant-observation and in-depth interviews with center directors were analyzed qualitatively.

Results — Important patterns found within the three cases are (1) the critical role of visionary biomedical practitioners who bridge complementary and allopathic practices, …

Accounting For Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers’ Responses To Discursive Challenges, Jody Koenig Kellas, Elizabeth A. Suter

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although lesbian mothers are often called to justify their family’s legitimacy, we know little about these interactions. The current study included 44 female coparents across 10 focus groups discussing the interactive process of discursive legitimacy challenges. Using the theoretical framework of remedial accounts (Schönbach, 1990), inductive and deductive coding revealed several existing and new types of challenges, accounting strategies, and evaluations relevant to interactions of lesbian mothers. Communicative processes unique to the interactions of female coparents included challenges emerging from societal master narratives (e.g., health care, education, politics, religion); accounting strategies such as leading by example; and evaluations related to …

Musician Bloggers: The Impact Of Niche Bloggers On Business, Charles Craine

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Blogs have become a staple for many online users as the world becomes more and more connected. Blogs are websites often maintained by individuals who comment on anything that interests them. They are diaries of sorts from which individuals can broadcast their thoughts and opinions to the world.

Musician blogs are websites where musicians discuss their lives and craft. These blog present the writer’s opinions about their specific instruments, genre, group and many things.

This study analyzes in-depth interviews with 20 musician bloggers to understand their motivations and satisfaction they receive from blogging. This study will analyze seven motivations for …

The Right Call: Baseball Coaches' Attempts To Influence Umpires, Kevin Warneke, David C. Ogden

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

On-field conversations and confrontations between baseball coaches and umpires have long been a part of the game. An umpire's decision can alter the course of the game, but little has been written about the exchanges between a coach or manager and umpire, especially in relation to theoretical considerations. This study applies management and leadership theories in exploring the strategies baseball coaches use to contest an umpire's decision. By using leadership scholar John E. Barbuto's concept of influence tactics and the various types of social power discussed by sociologists John R. French and Bertram Raven, the study also tests the congruence …

Neocolonialism And The Global Prison In National Geographic’S Locked Up Abroad, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the reformulation of colonial ideologies in National Geographic Channel’s Locked Up Abroad, a documentary program that chronicles the narratives of Westerner travelers incarcerated in foreign nations. An analysis of Locked Up Abroad evinces neocolonialism in contemporary media culture, including the historic association between dark-skin and savagery, the backwardness of the non-Western world, and the Western imperative to civilize it. The program’s documentary techniques and framing devices sustain an Otherizing gaze toward non-Western societies, and its portrayals elide a critical analysis of colonialism in its present forms. I advocate for neocolonial criticism to trace how NatGeo remains …

Book Review: The Ethics Of Emerging Media: Information, Social Norms And New Media Technology, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Discussions of new media and ethics sometimes include the notion that “ethics are ethics”—that doing the right thing is, and has been, a constant over time and across media.

The idea has a certain appeal. But it gets new twists in The Ethics of Emerging Media, by Bruce E. Drushel and Kathleen German, assistant professors of communication at Miami University. New media create new ethical questions and opportunities to cross ethical lines, as the thirteen contributors to this collection examine.

College Football Twitter Communities: The Husker Twitter Community During The 2012 Capital One Bowl, Kelly D. Mosier

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Our increasingly interconnected society has allowed total strangers to share insights in real time with increasing frequency and ease through the use of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Twitter, a social network based on the cell phone short messaging system, has previously shown an ability to aid in the sharing of information during major events such as presidential debates and breaking news.

Sporting events are also places where large groups of people share a similar experience. Traditionally, information has flowed to average viewers, through professional journalists. Due to social networking sites like Twitter, fans now …

Faith As News: A Christian Clergy Perspective On News Media Coverage Of Religion, John Baker

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Religion and the news media have had a long, contentious relationship. While the roots of American journalism lie in the particular theology and practices of Puritan New England, journalism’s clashes with authority, including the religious establishment, set it on its course to independence.

While the general public sees the news media as largely neutral toward religion, a significant segment of evangelical Christians see the news media as “unfriendly” toward them. This thesis suggests that group identification, as well as conservative political orientation, are prime factors shaping this perception of the new media.

Adviser: Carla Kimbrough

Changes In Narrative Sense-Making Over Time: The Role Of Mother–Daughter Communication During Conversations About Difficulty, Haley Kranstuber Horstman

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The mother-daughter relationship is one of the first and often most important sites for (effective and ineffective) social support in women’s lives. Effective mother support helps daughters to make sense of and cope with life’s stressors, which leads to improved physical and psychological health. Narrative theorizing suggests that individuals cope with and make sense of their (difficult) experiences through creating and telling stories with others. Likewise, research shows that when individuals’ sense-making increases over time, they are likely to experience higher rates of well-being (Pennebaker, 1993). Yet, although narrative meaning-making is largely an interpersonal process (Koenig Kellas, 2005) that often …

Examining The Role Of Family And Marital Communication In Understanding Resilience To Family-Of-Origin Adversity, Kristen Carr

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Resilience, or the “successful adaptation to adversity,” is often investigated as an individual response to stressful experiences (Zautra, Hall, & Murray, 2010, p. 4). After the experience of stress or adversity, most people seek to return to some degree of normalcy, but their ability to do so varies widely. To understand this variation in individuals’ responses to adversity, most researchers have focused on resilience as a process that occurs within individuals, rather than between them. However, in the current study, resilience is positioned as an interpersonal process as well as an individual one, in that people interpret and respond to …

Blind Trusts As A Model For Campaign Finance Reform, Perry Andrew Pirsch

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

In this thesis, I explore whether blind trusts present a viable option for campaign finance reform. More specifically, would either permitting (voluntary) or requiring (mandatory) anonymous donations for political campaigns allow for fully funded, yet privately funded, campaigns while preventing problems, whether real or perceived, such as buying influence (quid pro quo) or buying access, which are traditionally associated with large campaign donations? To study this question, I have examined the constitutional origins of the need to fund federal campaigns, Congress’ power to regulate campaigns under the Constitution’s Elections Clause, the constitutional protection of speech, and the concern of large …

Journalism Students As Community News Providers: Three Case Studies And An Analysis Of Intellectual Property Issues Related To Student-Created Content, Mary Kay Quinlan, John R. Bender, Charlie Litton

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

So many news outlets; so little news.

That could be the headline for the Federal Communications Commission’s 2011 report The Information Needs of Communities by Steven Waldman, which describes in detail the landscape of commercial and nonprofit media and the regulatory landscape in which they operate. The digital revolution has spawned a proliferation of online sources of information, but Waldman’s research documents a concomitant decline in news reporting, particularly that pertaining to state and local governments.

Citing numerous previous analyses and case studies, the report summarizes the evidence:

● In just four years, from 2006 to 2010, the workforce in …

Reversing The Brain Drain, Milan Wall

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Reversing the Brain Drain, presentation slides.

Includes a summary of demographic research conducted by Ben Winchester of the University of Minnesota, including information about the "newcomer trend." Also covers Buffalo Commons research conducted by Randy Cantrell or the University of Nebraska.

Selective Amnesia And Racial Transcendence In News Coverage Of President Obama’S Inauguration, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama the first African American US President as the realization of Martin Luther King’s dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama’s election functions as a site for the production of selective amnesia, a form of remembrance that routinely negates and silences those who would contest hegemonic narratives of national progress and unity.

Book Review: Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise And Reality Of A Citizen-Engaged Press, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Digital technology has changed journalism dramatically. Through a collection of research studies, essays, case studies, and interviews, Public Journalism 2.0 takes a detailed look at evolving public journalism and where audience-generated stories fit into that evolution. The editors divide the book into three sections: the history of civic and citizen journalism, current practices, and future possibilities. They conclude with their views of where professionals fit in to a citizen-engaged press.

Southwest Nebraska Community Builders, Graduate Reunion Meeting, May 1, 2012, Craig Schroeder

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Introduction:

2012 marks 20 years since Dr. Bob Manley brought Community Builder to Southwest Nebraska, as the region emerged from the devastation of the 1980's Ag Crisis. On May 1st, a group of former participants from communities through out the region came together to reflect on the impact Community Builders had on them personally, and on their communities and the region overall. Based upon this reflection it was unanimously determine that a new generation of emerging leaders would greatly benefit from Community Builders. The group then went through the process of evaluating what had been most valuable in the original …

Consumer Packaged Goods Trade Advertising During The December 2007–June 2009 Recession, Bridgid Agosta

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The purpose of this study was to use a content analysis to compare retail trade advertisements made by top U.S. consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers during the December 2007–June 2009 recession. This study extended Lord’s (1987) research that focused on consumer advertising to understand retail trade advertisements. This study analyzed 195 advertisements of U.S. CPG manufacturers in a nationally distributed U.S. retail trade print publication, Supermarket News. The results could indicate that retail trade print advertisements may help to enhance CPG manufacturers’ reputations among their trading partners. Specifically, findings from this research may indicate that because General Mills and Unilever …

The Impact Of Reporter Gender On Print News Coverage Of The 2008 Dole–Hagan U.S. Senate Race In North Carolina, Courtney Hunt Munther

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Four reporters covered the 2008 U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole and Democrat challenger Kay Hagan – two male and two female – all of whom worked for the same news organization. This study analyzed the coverage the four reporters produced about the Dole-Hagan race, looking specifically at story structure, topic selection, descriptive language used, tone and source selection. Due to study limitations, no clear relationships were established between reporter gender and the news coverage of the Dole-Hagan race that reporters produced.

Advisor: John Bender