Communication Commons^™

Notions Of Distance: Communication Constraints In Long-Distance Dating Relationships, Jenny Marie Farrell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study addressed communication constraints perceived by individuals in long-distance dating relationships (LDDRs) and how these constraints are managed. Internal constraints are identified within the boundaries of the individual or relationship and external constraints are those that originate from outside the boundaries of the individual or relationship. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 27 participants; ages ranged from 18-35. Participants reported perceiving 11 internal constraints (mediated communication, avoidance, talk habits, physical absence, emotions, view of outsiders, uncertainty and expectations, effort, notions of distance, visits, and miscellaneous) and five external constraints (schedules, social network, finances, and technology, miscellaneous). Participants reported managing …

Brothers Are Better Than Sisters: A Semiotic, Feminist Analysis Of Hbo's "Rome", Patricia Mamie Peers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 2005, the Home Box Office and British Broadcasting Corporation partnered to produce Rome , a television series that retells the Roman histories of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Augustus through the lives of two centurion soldiers, Titus Pullo and Lucious Vorenus. The show's producers endeavored to bring Roman streets to life and included more storylines of women, men and children of all classes. At first considered a more egalitarian approach to history, Rome 's women are said to "challenge expectations" (Vu, 2005) and "forge a new path" (Ragalie, 2007, p. 2). But does this new representation challenge the old …

Defining Leadership: Understanding Desired Traits Of Leaders, Alex Acton

Theses and Dissertations

What do people want from leaders? That question has been asked for generations. In recent history, a huge growth in leadership studies has produced a wealth of information on this topic, but because of the multitude of publications, there are now many competing schools of thought about what qualities make a great leader. This paper seeks to understand the qualities that people look for in leaders and to understand if any consistent patterns emerge from these desired traits. This is done through two avenues.

Firstly, a survey of the existing leadership publications in several different established leadership genres provides an …

Assessment Tool Or Edutainment Toy, Patrick Griffis

Library Faculty Research

The use of Clickers as a tool for library instruction has been growing in popularity because library instructors view this technology as a mechanism to foster interactivity within library instruction sessions in order to increase overall student engagement. However, a newly emerging area of interest for library instructors is the use of Clickers as a tool for library instruction assessment. This paper posits some of the viewpoints of various instructors using Clickers including the viewpoints of library instructors. The central question considered in this paper is whether Clickers are an effective and feasible tool for library instruction assessment. This examination …

2009- 2010 Unlv Mcnair Journal, Kathleen Bell, Danetta Bradley, Vacheral M. Carter, Nydia Diaz, Kathryn E. English, Sarah Harrison, Michelle Israel, Christina Macke, Erica Orozco, Pilar Palos, Sandra Ramos, Soraya A. Silverman, Susan Taylor, Sajar Camara, William Mccurdy, Yvonne C. Morris, Maxym V. Myroshnychenko, Ricardo Rios, Monique Sulls, Bremen Vance, Barbara Wallen

McNair Journal

Journal articles based on research conducted by undergraduate students in the McNair Scholars Program

Table of Contents

Biography of Dr. Ronald E. McNair

Statements:

Dr. Neal J. Smatresk, UNLV President

Dr. Juanita P. Fain, Vice President of Student Affairs

Dr. William W. Sullivan, Associate Vice President for Retention and Outreach

Mr. Keith Rogers, Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach

McNair Scholars Institute Staff

To The Instruction Cave, Librarian!: Graphic Novels And Information Literacy, Steven Hoover

Library Faculty Research

Information literacy librarians have been known to troll the waters of popular culture for phenomena that are capable of teaching information literacy skills and simultaneously engaging student interest. For these librarians, graphic novels have reached a point where they are too big to ignore.

Enhancing Opac Records For Discovery, Patrick Griffis, Cyrus Ford Zarganj

Library Faculty Research

This article proposes adding keywords and descriptors to the catalog records of electronic databases and media items to enhance their discovery. The authors contend that subject liaisons can add value to OPAC records and enhance discovery of electronic databases and media items by providing searchable keywords and resource descriptions. The authors provide an examination of OPAC records at their own library, which illustrates the disparity of useful keywords and descriptions within the notes field for media item records versus electronic database records. The authors outline methods for identifying useful keywords for indexing OPAC records of electronic databases. Also included is …

Smartphones: A Potential Discovery Tool, Eva Stowers, Wendy Starkweather

Library Faculty Research

The anticipated wide adoption of smartphones by researchers is viewed by the authors as a basis for developing mobile-based services. In response to the UNLV Libraries’ strategic plan’s focus on experimentation and outreach, the authors investigate the current and potential role of smartphones as a valuable discovery tool for library users.

Silencing And Assaulting The Feminine: An Analysis Of Institutions That Perpetuate A Rape-Supportive Culture, Melissa Territo

Masters Theses

Since 1700, rape has been a publicly discussed topic. Past research has focused on the effects that socialization practices, patriarchy, and hegemony have on sexual violence and mediated representations of gendered violence in the United States. This thesis explores two institutions, social structures, and cultures that contribute to and perpetuate a rape supportive culture in the United States-the penal and fraternity systems. By approaching and analyzing sexual assault as socially constructed and communicated through the institutional structures of the penal and fraternity systems, we are equipped to better understand how society and media (re )create and perpetuate a patriarchal rape …

Taking Out The Trash: Critiquing The Equipment For Living Of White Trash Films, Tasha Rose Dunn

Masters Theses

Over the past decade, class has become a lightning rod issue in the United States as the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. One of the main reasons for growing class segregation is the mere fact that U.S. culture carries enormous social anxieties about poverty and, in turn, blame the poor for being poor. As a result of hegemonic beliefs about class, crude discourses are formed and fostered through the mainstream media creating both inaccurate and damaging portrayals. Such damaging portrayals are immediately evident in a variety of mainstream Hollywood films produced in the past decade …

Zoroastrians On The Internet, A Quiet Social Movement: Ethnography Of A Virtual Community, Helen Gerth

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Zoroastrians today are a small but vibrant ethno-religious diaspora estimated at 130,000-258,000. They are members of the oldest monotheistic world religion originating in the Inner Asian steppes in approximately 1500 B.C. living as a religious minority in widely dispersed communities across the world. Increasingly they have turned to the Internet to discuss challenges of declining population, maintaining an ethno-religious identity, conversion, and intermarriage. The question grounding this research is how does this small ethno-religious minority maintain its boundaries and cohesion in the modern world? This study found that Zoroastrians maintain group boundaries and cohesion in the modern world, in part, …

The Cuban Missile Crisis Speech: An Analysis Of Text Evolution, Ashlyn Gentry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy delivered a televised speech announcing the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. This speech has been a subject of scholarship in the field of communication, yet no critic has performed a comprehensive analysis of its multiple drafts and their relationship to the final version. By using a comparative analysis, one can examine the process of presidential decision-making, the translation of those decisions into prose, and the strategic language used to communicate a particular message. This project follows the evolution of Kennedy's address, tracing the changes from one draft to the next, in …

Unlearning Fear Of Out-Group Others, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this brief Comment, Maroney offers a perspective based in the scientific study of fear and social-group judgment. She discusses research showing that humans display heightened, persistent fear responses to "outgroup" faces, and suggests ways in which such research might inform our assessment of intergroup conflict resolution. Comment responsive to Douglas H. Yarn & Gregory Todd Jones, A Biological Approach to Understanding Resistance to Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Group Conflict, 72 Law & Contemp. Probs. 63 (2009).

Beyond Public Health : The Cultural Politics Of Tobacco Control In Hong Kong, Wai Yin Chan

Lingnan Theses

This work provides cultural and political explanations on how and why cigarette smoking has increasingly become an object of intolerance and control in Hong Kong. Since the 1980s, the smoking population has been falling. Smoking behavior, sales and promotion of cigarette products have been under close surveillance by the government, medical experts and society at large. Cigarette smoking, as well as smokers, has increasingly been rejected and demonized in the public discourse. What are the conditions that make the growing intolerant discourses and practices against cigarette smoking possible and dominant? Why and how has the tobacco control campaign become prevalent …

Web-Based, Gendered Recruitment Of Women By Organized White Supremacist Groups, Angela King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the hate group watchdog organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the United States rose 54 percent since 2000 (SPLC 2009 a & b). Literature on organized white supremacist groups suggests that women have become increasingly more important to such groups for a variety of reasons, many of which are not always agreed upon by and within said groups. In addition, it is believed by many in the hate monitoring world that the World Wide Web has become progressively more dynamic as a medium of recruitment, as a tool of communication among members, …

Predicting Compensation And Reciprocity Of Bids For Sexual And/Or Romantic Escalation In Cross-Sex Friendships, Valerie Akbulut

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With more opportunities available to men and women to interact, both professionally and personally (i.e., the workplace, educational setting, community), friendships with members of the opposite sex are becoming more common. Increasingly, researchers have noted that one facet that makes cross-sex friendships unique compared to other types of relationships (i.e. romantic love, same-sex friendships, familial relationships), is that there is the possibility and opportunity for a romantic or sexual relationship to manifest. Communication research has yet to investigate how one decides whether to begin a romantic or sexual relationship or choose to remain platonic with their cross-sex friend. Given that …

Claims Of Mistaken Identity: An Examination Of U.S. Television Food Commercials And The Adult Obesity Issue, Cristina Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Obesity is one of the major public health issues in the United States, often regarded as part of a global crisis. Companies invest billions of dollars each year towards television advertising campaigns aimed at convincing audiences how their ground-breaking discovery 'battles the bulge' or somehow offers an increased health benefit. This study examined how advertisers presented health-related claims, including health and nutrient-content claims, in U.S. adult-targeted television food commercials. The claims were compared to FTC, FDA, and USDA laws, regulations, and recommendations. A content analysis of food advertising was conducted of commercials from major and cable network programs broadcast during …

Effects Of Instructor Immediacy And Student Need For Cognition On Student Motivation And Perceptions Of Learning, Sabrina Kalish

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study built on previous literature linking instructor immediacy, student motivation, and student learning. The purpose of this research was to examine main and interaction effects of instructor immediacy and student trait motivation on student state motivation and cognitive learning. A main effect of instructor nonverbal immediacy on student state motivation and cognitive learning was found to be statistically significant. Further exploratory research did not yield statistical significance for a main effect of trait motivation, as measured by need for cognition, on student state motivation and cognitive learning, nor an interaction effect of immediacy and trait motivation on both state …

The Role Of The Internet As A Tool To Aid In U.S. Adult Consumers' Weight Loss, Jaclyn Kirby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on ways the Internet can positively influence and educate U.S. Americans to become healthier and eventually lose weight. Throughout the past 30 years, the percentage of overweight and obese adults in the U.S. has increased immensely, resulting in a nationwide epidemic (American Association for Public Opinion Research, 2006; Center for Disease Control, 2006; Goodman, 2005; The Obesity Society, 2008). The research question for this thesis is the following: What are the perceptions of U.S. adult consumers regarding the positive influence the Internet has on weight loss? In order to determine the influence of the Internet on U.S. …

If We Seek, Do We Learn?: Predicting Knowledge Of Global Warming, Leeann Kahlor, Sonny Rosenthal

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Derived from the risk information seeking and processing model (RISP), this study sought to isolate predictors of the public's knowledge of global warming. Using a national sample ( N = 805), multiple regression yielded a number of significant relationships among 13 moderators. Notably, the number of media sources used for information about global warming, information seeking effort, and general education were relatively strong predictors of knowledge. Counter to expectations, informational subjective norms were inversely related to knowledge.

What Do We Expect From Our Friends?, Stephen Leider, Markus M. Mobius, Tanya S. Rosenblat, Quoc-Anh Do

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. While recipients’ beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e. directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity towards named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no …

Offering Rss Feeds: Does It Help To Gain Competitive Advantage?, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nowadays, many Websites have adopted the really simple syndication (RSS) technology to deliver online content to visitors. In this paper, I build an analytical model to examine how the offering of RSS feeds impact the number of visitors, total traffic load, and profit of Websites in a competitive setting. I show that although RSS can always attract more visitors, it may reduce the Website's profit. Interestingly, in a competitive market there are cases that the RSS feeds hurt the offering Website but benefit the competing Website instead. The conditions under which these will happen are derived. I also study the …

Echo, Winter/Spring 2009, Columbia College Chicago

Echo

Student-produced magazine formerly published as Chicago Arts and Communication, changed to Echo magazine in 1997. Cover Articles: Left side story: the everyday struggles of a southpaw; Does your budget make cents?; the Daley Show: why Chicago loves political comedy; WoW! we take on BlizzCon; Six quick fixes (from cars to colds); Check out our Facebook page. 66 pages.

Third-Party Imagined Interactions: Expanding Imagined Interactions As False Memories In Understanding Interactions, Marcus Allen Porter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Previous studies have found imagined interactions (IIs) help individuals recall past interactions and plan for future interactions. Those studies have not investigated what occurs when individuals imagine the interactions of others (third-party imagined interactions hereafter TPIIs), how the II varies with the party imagined or what happens when those imagined interactions create false views of what happened. To fill this research gap, this study proposed one research question and nine hypotheses investigating TPIIs, how they vary with the individual in the TPII, if they contribute to false memories and how they affect communication plans. A survey was conducted to gain …

0769: Roger And Eve (Alwyn) Hinchman Papers, 1871-1994, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Eve Alwyn-Hinchman was born August 15, 1914 and died on November 16, 2005. She was a successful television and radio personality with her mother Laurie Alwyn, both in Boston M.A. and Fort Lauderdale FL. Eve and Lauri hosted radio shows in the Baltimore MD area for over 7 years before moving to Florida where they hosted a radio and later a Television show in the Palm Beach FL area for many years. Eve was married to Roger Hinchman (b. November 28, 1912; d. January 1, 1991) on June 1, 1964 after the moved to Florida. Lauri, a health educator and …

The Murrow Tradition: What Was It, And Does It Still Live?, Raluca Cozma

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the differences in the quality of radio foreign news and foreign correspondents between CBS during World War II and NPR during the Iraq War II. Triangulating quantitative and qualitative methods (content analysis, historical research, and in-depth interviews), this study proposes a model of quality foreign news to help determine what the Murrow tradition means. The model is then used to test if that celebrated tradition lives on in a non-commercial setting at NPR. The two-pronged model pulls together theories of mass communication and historical accounts to assess (1) the quality of the foreign correspondents at the two …

An Ethnography Of "Hang It Out To Dry", Danielle Sears Vignes

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study is an ethnography of a performance ethnography. The performance “Hang It Out To Dry” explores the experiences of residents from Saint Bernard Parish, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This dissertation traces “Hang It Out To Dry” from the beginning of fieldwork to the aesthetic staging of collected narratives and through two years of community building as the performance toured the nation. Particularly, I develop methods for collecting materials from fieldwork for adaptation to the stage. The study demonstrates the intellectual work of performance composition in scripting and staging a performance ethnography. In doing so, I mark …

Female Stereotypes In 21st Century News And Business Magazines, Gosia Gizycki

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Impact Of A Proposed Federal Shield Law, Lisa Dahlke

Honors Program Theses

This study will examine how current proposals for a federal shield law compare to protections offered by state legislatures and state courts. My research will address the effectiveness of current state-level protections for journalists' use of confidential sources using analysis of data from a national survey of news outlets. By determining how different aspects of state protections influence subpoena frequency and compliance, I attempt to evaluate the key aspects of legislation currently being considered in Congress, the Free Flow of Information Act of 2009. I find clear evidence that the presence of a statute and a number of its provisions …

Telos: An Interactive Platform For Broadcast Management, Andrew L. Knight

Honors Program Theses

The following thesis project is an attempt to consolidate a number of media management tools under a single interface, allowing for a streamlined, yet powerful, approach to the organization and distribution of multimedia content. The Total Electronic Listing Operations Suite, or Telos, is the main component of the thesis and the result of over a year of research and development. The two adjunct components are this review article (a commentary on the process, design, and implementation of the software), and the product overview, available at http://www.uni.edu/unitv/guide.html