Communication Commons^™

Surviving Reality: Survivor & Parasocial Interaction, Pedro Davila-Rosado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parasocial interaction is the name that Horton & Wohl coined to describe a viewer's attachmentent toward onscreen persona that they had never physically interacted with (1956). A. Rubin, Perse, & Powell (1985) continued the research and created the Parasocial Interaction Scale. The scale has become the standard in gauging parasocial interaction in various forms of media from soap operas to newscasts. The purpose of this study was top examine parasocial interaction and see if the concept could be applied to the current television trend of reality television. Simultaneously, the study also examined parasocial interaction and its possible connections to loneliness, …

A Social Cognitive Approach Towards Understanding The Effects Of Popular Poker Television Shows On College Students, Marc Londo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tournament poker shows have become a leading ratings draw on American television. Since ESPN and the Travel Channel began airing their innovative poker shows in 2003, the game has reached a new following, particularly among college students. There are unique and psychologically significant factors that characterize the college population that make students particularly receptive to popular characterizations in media. This study investigates the potential exacerbating effect that these widely popular poker television shows have on the gambling behavior of college students. 444 college students completed a survey designed to assess gratifications sought through media along with measures of attitudes, gambling …

Media Influence On Young Adults Sexual Attitudes And Behaviors, Heather Hackbarth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that sexual content is prevalent in television programming and that this content can have an effect on the viewer's attitudes about sex. This study examined this relationship within the theoretical framework of cultivation and social cognitive theories. This study used a survey to examine these relationships in young students at a large southeastern university. The researchers targeted freshmen, many in their first semester, for this study to get the best measure of attitudes, before they were influenced by college life. In addition to examining the effects of television viewing, the researcher looked at the effects of exposure …

Distancing From Problematic Coworkers, Jon A. Hess

Communication Faculty Publications

Troublesome relationships are a universal aspect of human social interaction (Levitt, Silver, & Franco, 1996). Perhaps nowhere besides the family are problematic relationships so commonplace as in the workplace. Although relationship research primarily focuses on positive relations and thorny problems that occur even in the best of relationships, virtually everyone who has worked in an organization can relate stories of problematic relationships. The challenges these relationships pose resonate with people’s deepest feelings and most significant experiences at work. Problematic work relationships are often as memorable as they are challenging. Workplace relations are largely nonvoluntary relationships. They are created when people …

Turning Points In Relationships With Disliked Co-Workers, Jon A. Hess, Becky Lynn Omdahl, Janie M. Harden Fritz

Communication Faculty Publications

Although most people begin their employment with the education and on-the-job training to handle the tasks their jobs entail, few long-term employees boast that they feel competent in dealing with all the difficult people they encounter in the workplace. Unpleasant coworkers range from annoying nuisances to major sources of job frustration and career roadblocks. Given that periodic preoccupation with unlovable coworkers is nearly a universal feature of organizational life, it is not surprising that such relationships are given due attention in the media and popular press (e.g., Bramson, 1989; Topchik, 2000). What is surprising is how little scholarly attention has …

The Road To Tenure: Obstacles For The Media Adviser, Jeffrey M. Demas

Communications Faculty Scholarship

Tenure has been the topic of various journal articles, but few have examined the process from within specific disciplines. This study surveyed 136 advisers of campus radio and television stations to ascertain what obstacles to tenure were associated with this position. Respondents reported that 1) advising a media outlet takes time from teaching and research; 2) advising the station and producing programming is not highly valued by tenure committees; 3) tenure is essential to job security because students tend to push the envelope in on-air activities, and; 4) tenure is an archaic concept and they have no interest in pursuing …

Rendering Whiteness Visible In The Filipino Culture Through Skin-Whitening Cosmetic Advertisements, Beverly Romero Natividad

Theses Digitization Project

This study seeks to confront the current Filipino cultural identity by investigating whiteness within the mass media context there.

Ua19/16/1 2006-07 Hilltopper Golf, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Media guide for the 2006-07 golf season.

Ua3/9/5 Legislative Priorities, Wku President's Office

WKU Administration Documents

Legislative priorities talking points card used by WKU president Gary Ransdell when meeting with state legislators in 2006.

Chuck Palahniuk And Jean Baudrillard: The Terminal State Of Human Subjectivity, Elisabet 'Osk Takehana

Theses Digitization Project

Examines Chuck Palahniuk's novel Invisible monsters using the theories of Jean Baudrillard as a lens through which to better understand Palahniuk's commentary on the effects mass media have on human subjectivity in the terminal state.

A Comparative Study Of Editorials In Chinese And English, Meiyen Huang

Theses Digitization Project

The study reveals national cultures may influence the use of politeness strategies and organizational patterns in editorials written in the two languages, English and Chinese. Due to a newspaper's political orientation and its regional and national background, the rhetorical form of linguistic features in editorials might vary among cultures.

Consumer Concerns Towards Privacy: An Empirical Study, Maria Nicolaou

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of the study was to determine consumer attitudes toward privacy and the influence of demographic factors on these attitudes. The study also sought to determine the willingness of participants to disclose selected individual information items and determine the awareness and acceptance level of technological innovations such as radio frequency identifiers (RFID) as they relate to privacy. A quantitative instrument was developed and a convenience sample of university students (N=203) was tested. Results showed that educational background played a role in the way participants perceived the applications of RFID.

Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos

Selected Works Temporary Series

Scholars have debated extensively the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and congressional behavior, but have largely ignored the determinants of what the president actually says. This inattention is partly the result of the difficulty of acquiring systematic observations of presidential speech crafting. We devise a method of quantifying White House staff influence over the composition of rhetoric that captures the multistage negotiations between the president's speechwriters and his policy advisors and provides a framework for future studies on the determinants of presidential rhetoric. We employ our method to study influence over the writing of President George H. W. …

Golfer Celebrity Endorsements On Consumers' Attitude Toward The Advertisement And The Brand, Onvadee Tunsarawiput

Theses Digitization Project

Many companies choose to use celebrities as endorsers for their advertising campaigns. The two most common types are athletes and entertainers. The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how celebrities, especially professional golfers, are used as endorsers in advertising.

Ua1f Wku Archives Vertical File - E.A. Diddle, 1988-2006, Wku Archives

WKU Administration Documents

Digitized vertical file materials regarding E.A. Diddle's career as WKU basketball coach.

Ua19/16/1 Wku Football Media Guide, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Media guide for the 2006 football season.

Myspace Or Ourspace: A Media System Dependency View Of Myspace, Andrew Schrock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

MySpace is a type of "social networking" website where people meet, socialize, and create friendships. The way MySpace members, particularly younger individuals, interact online underscores the changing nature of mass media. Media system dependency states that individuals become reliant on media in their daily life because of fundamental human goals. This reliance, termed a dependency, leads to repeated use. Media system dependency was applied in the current study to explain how and why individuals became habitual MySpace users. To attain results a survey was administered to a convenience sampling of 401 adult undergraduates at the University of Central Florida. Members …

Ua12/8 Departmental Update, Wku Police

WKU Administration Documents

WKU Police departmental newsletters for 2006.

Ua1f Wku Archives Vertical File - Bowling Green Business University, 1958-2006, Wku Archives

WKU Administration Documents

Digitized vertical file materials regarding Bowling Green Business University.

Ua19/16/1 The Tradition Continues, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

WKU volleyball media guide for the 2006 season.

Ua3/9/2 Poaching In Kenya, Wku President's Office

WKU Administration Documents

Images used taken by Gary Ransdell and used in his presentation Poaching in Kenya - Economic Disaster or Necessity.

Ua12/11/2 Volunteerism, Wku Leadership & Volunteerism

WKU Administration Documents

Booklet highlighting the activities of WKU Leadership & Volunteerism.

Taxaminer: Improving Taxonomy Label Quality Using Latent Semantic Indexing, Cartic Ramakrishnan, Christopher Thomas, Vipul Kashyap, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The development of taxonomies/ontologies is a human intensive process requiring prohibitively large resource commitments in terms of time and cost. In our previous work we have identified an experimentation framework for semi-automatic taxonomy/hierarchy generation from unstructured text. In the preliminary results presented, the taxonomy/hierarchy quality was lower than we had anticipated. In this paper, we present two variations of our experimentation framework, viz. Latent semantic Indexing (LSI) for document indexing and the use of term vectors to prune labels assigned to nodes in the final taxonomy/hierarchy. Using our previous results of taxonomy/hierarchy quality as the baseline we present results that …

Data Processing In Space, Time, And Semantics Dimensions, Farshad Hakimpour, Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

This work presents an experimental system for data processing in space, time and semantics dimensions using current Semantic Web technologies. The paper describes how we obtain geographic and event data from Internet sources and also how we integrate them into an RDF store. We briefly introduce a set of functionalities in space, time and semantics dimensions. These functionalities are implemented based on our existing technology for main-memory based RDF data processing developed in the LSDIS Lab. A number of these functionalities are exposed as REST Web services. We present two sample client side applications that are developed using a combination …

Measure The Process To Improve The Results, Kevin Cooper

Graphic Communication

No abstract provided.

Recruiting Gen X And Millennial Employees To Grow Your Business, Malcolm Keif, Lorraine Donegan

Graphic Communication

For graphic communication companies, recruiting talented personnel will continue to be a key to success in upcoming years. One characteristic common among great businesses— regardless of industry—is a strong culture and a capable workforce. With so much attention given to JDF and the digital smart factory, one might conclude that a strong workforce can be substituted with technology. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Businesses that position themselves for growth are focusing on building a dynamic business culture for understanding and recruiting today’s employees.

Ua12/6 The Black Pages, Wku Diversity Programs

WKU Administration Documents

Booklet created by WKU Diversity Programs to aid ethnic minority students find and build support systems on campus. Includes information on clubs, organizations, minority teacher recruitment, African American faculty, African American Studies Department and community organizations.

What Do We Want The Other To Teach About Us?, David L. Coppola, Center For Christian-Jewish Understanding

Sacred Heart University Press Books

Based on five conferences, 'What Do We Want the Other to Teach About Us," held in Jerusalem (2000) on theological traditions; in Edmonton, Canada (2000) on historical traditions; in Rome, Italy (2001) on prayer and liturgy; in Bamberg, Germany (2002) on historical traditions; and in Fairfield, Connecticut (2003) on ethical traditions, and sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding of Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut, in collaboration with the Elijah Interfaith Institute, Jerusalem; the Edmonton Interfaith Centre for Education and Action, Canada; the University of Bamberg, Germany; and Sacred Heart University.

Construction Of National Identity And National Pride Of Germans In The Intercultural Context, Nadja Koening

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

National identity and patriotism are very problematic and highly sensitive concepts in contemporary Germany. Many scholars agree that a positive national identity is crucial for a nation’s well-being. This research attempts to investigate the process of forming a national identity and the display of national pride in the intercultural communication context. One focus group was conducted to analyze how Germans construct and/or reinvent their national identity when communicating with individuals from other nations.

The results show that German national identity and national pride are strongly intertwined and poise a unique problem for every German. Germans have major difficulties in developing …

Review Of "Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics And Cultural Context," By Carol Vernallis., Ann M. Savage

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This article reviews the book "Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context," by Carol Vernallis.