Communication Commons^™

Radio Broadcasting In Europe: The Search For A Common Digital Future, Brian O'Neill, Helen Shaw

Books/Book chapters

Europe’s radio is also characterised by a long history of being defined and driven by the state, in highly centralized fashion in the case of countries such as France (Meadel 1994), or indeed in former totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe (Paulu 1974), and along more federal or devolved lines in countries such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands (Kuhn 1985). The development of state broadcasting monopolies in most European countries, established in the early years of the twentieth century following the invention of sound broadcasting, has ensured that there is an enduring shared common ideological approach to radio broadcasting, which …

Exploring Wearin And Wearout In Web Advertising: The Role Of Repetition And Brand Familiarity, Sang Y. Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

One of the most researched variables in advertising is repetition. Due to its theoretical and practical importance, repetition has received substantial attention from researchers. However, on the web, there has been little empirical evidence as to how repetition affects advertising effectiveness. This research reports an experiment that examined the effects of repetition and brand familiarity in the web advertising environment. The participants were exposed to 1 of 12 experimental conditions via the web. The results showed that while repetition had weak main effects across the dependent variables, it interacted with brand familiarity on attitudes and purchase intention. Polynomial trend analyses …

A Positive Deviance Inquiry Of Communicative Behaviors That Influence The Prevention Of Hispanic Teenage Pregnancy, Alejandra Margarita Diaz Salamanca

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Teenage pregnancy is a highly complex problem and the arrival of a baby affects multiple lives - directly and indirectly - in a rippling chain reaction. The odds of finishing school or college are highly stacked against teenage parents, and the future of the children who are born to teen parents is fraught with challenges. Rates of teenage pregnancy are especially high among Hispanics, and even higher among those who live in the border city of El Paso, This research project was an exploration of what communicative behaviors keep some young Hispanic women in the city of El Paso free …

Social Networking And The Perception Of Privacy Within The Millennial Generation, Andra Gumbus, Frances S. Grodzinsky, Stephen J. Lilley

WCBT Faculty Publications

Has technology caused a generational divide between current college age users (Millennial Generation) who have no problems posting intimate details of their personal life on the Web and more traditional older users who seem to value privacy? This paper presents the results of a survey of 251 university students and follow-up focus groups on the topic of the perceptions of social networking and privacy. We will use Facebook as an example of social networking, and review attitudes about privacy and control over personal information among traditional and non-traditional college age users and light and heavy users of social networking sites.

The Unity Of Division: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Selected Speeches From Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign, Reymond Levy

Department of Writing and Communication Theses

No abstract provided.

Explaining The 2004 Exit Poll Error As A Product Of Response Bias And Not Fraud : A Comparison Of The "Spiral Of Silence" And "Political Ambivalence" Perspectives As Heurism For Analyzing The Causal Structure Of Differential Response In The Exit Polls, Tamas Bodor

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Leaked exit poll data on the 2004 Presidential election suggested that John Kerry was ahead in several key states and was winning the election. Yet the official vote tallies showed that George W. Bush easily secured his second term. The unprecedented degree of discrepancy between the exit poll estimates and the official tallies fuelled a fierce controversy. Since no particular methodological shortcomings had been identified, some advanced the "reluctant Bush respondent" hypothesis, arguing that the exit polls overstated the Kerry vote because Bush supporters were less willing to express their views by participating in the exit polls. Since no information …

The Schenectady Virtual Community : Exploring The Ecology Of Political Discourse In A Local Context, Andrea B. Baker

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

From Facebook to Twitter, ordinary citizens' use of social media to discuss, organize, and participate in the political process continues to grow in popularity (Davis, 2005; Rainie, 2005; Kohut, 2008). Researchers interested in this area have explored the demographics, patterns of behavior and motives of participants in online communities (Stromer-Galley, 2002, 2003), the dynamics of the online discussions (Dahlberg, 2001; Davis, 2005; Wilhelm, 2000), the effect of online participation on other forms of political activity (Brunsting, 2002; Kavanaugh & Patterson, 2001), and more recently the relationship between social media and the conventional press (Hiler, 2002; Park, 2004; Cornfield, 2006; Lenhart …

The Myth Of Fragmentation : Assessing Political Information Online, Alexis Marie Wichowski

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Internet technology has provided people with unprecedented abilities to filter the information they encounter, leading many scholars to fear that people will be exposed to less diversity of perspectives and fragment into homogeneous interest groups. Exposure to a wide range of topics and perspectives about political information in particular is considered necessary by many scholars in order for citizens to be informed participants in democratic life. However, fears that the Internet leads to fragmentation rest on three assumptions: 1. online, opportunities for unintended encounters with a diversity of information are limited, 2. people primarily pursue narrow interests when consuming online …

Radical Localism In The Network Society, Edward Russell Cole

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This is an ethnographic study conducted upon third-party sociopolitical movements in American society. The research included participant observation in a Midwestern State Green Party, in addition to the Populist Party of America: a micro-party based in Los Angeles.

Consumer Responses In Sales To Multiple Media Advertising Exposures : The Impact Of Synergy Based On A Study Of Project Apollo Single Source Data, Leslie Wood

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The primary focus of this dissertation is to answer the question: how does exposure to advertising affect purchasing behavior, and in particular, how does synergy resulting from exposure to advertising in multiple media influence purchasing behavior? This is a critical piece of information in the business decision process of media planning. It determines which media to include in a media plan and how to allocate a limited budget across media in order to optimize the return on investment from advertising. This question has been studied in many ways since it has been a central question for the advertising industry for …

Discursive Construction Of Identities Of Young Homosexual Males., Zainon Shamsudin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This dissertation reports a study addressing the issue of identity construction of four young Malay homosexual men in Malaysia.  Through their narrative discourse of their life experiences and aspirations, this study explores these participants‟ linguistic repertoire and discursive strategies in the formation, negotiation, and establishment of their identities. The narrative data were gathered through a semi-structured interview-cum-conversation which allowed the participants to express sentiments about their lives in a heterosexual dominated society.  Using an adapted framework of discourse-historical approach of Critical Discourse Analysis proposed by Reisigl and Wodak (2009), this study analyzed the participants‟ emergent language use and discursive strategies …

Exploring Science Through Media: The Omaha Science Media Project 2009–2010, Belita Kalala, Scott Barry, Rebecca Aiken, Soo Hui-Lee, Mary Claire Rice, Elizabeth Gamez, Nkem Kalu, Amy Struthers, Adam Wagler, Bruce Mitchell, Julie Nichols

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

The Omaha Science Media Project represents the efforts of more than a hundred people across eight organizations. Working together, these individuals explored innovations in teaching and learning science that challenged and contributed to Omaha’s learning community. This program owes tremendous gratitude to Katie Weitz White and the Sherwood Foundation for their vision, support, and enthusiasm. The Sherwood Foundation’s work has been critical to inspiring students, energizing teachers, and building strong programs for all. We also thank the Omaha Schools Foundation for its guidance and support. The project’s principal investigator is Judy Diamond, Ph.D., Professor and Curator of Informal Science Education …

State Farm: "Talk To An Agent", Tyler Thomas, Jessica Williams, Kate Stevenson, Kala Mosel, Derek Dillon, Chelsea Thompson, Shea Samani, Katie Sorensen, Matthew Berg, Jennifer Larson, Aaron Jarosh, Kyle Stebbins, Mike Sammons, Daniel Scheyer, Sara Leimbach, Doug Flegle, Brett Tesmer, Maggie Geist, Will Sharpe, Jamie Ksieski, Nicholas Huff, Andrew Ciaccio, Drew Guiney, Michael Taylor, Erin Sorensen, Phil Willet

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

Established in 1922, State Farm has become a trustworthy, reliable company that prides itself on the dedication of its agents and their ability to provide personalized insurance policies. Even though State Farm leads the insurance industry, the company is struggling to gain customers in the 18-25 year old demographic.

As a part of this demographic, many of us were guilty of quickly purchasing our insurance policies online. We thought that we had the coverage we needed — that was before we talked to an agent. In one hour, local State Farm agent Vincon Krikac changed 25 minds. We learned how …

90.3 Krnu Get Indied, Power Of X (Ten)

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

Situation Analysis Since KRNU first started experimenting with broadcasting over 80 years ago, the University of Nebraska—Lincoln has recognized the importance independent radio stations play in a college community. For the last 20 years, 90.3 KRNU has relied on a format of alternative/indie music mixed with eclectic specialty shows. Through our research we discovered that 90.3 KRNU no longer has top-of-mind awareness among its target audience, which is primarily UNL students. Rick Alloway, KRNU station manager, saw the need for things to change. Through the collaboration of UNL supporters and KRNU supporters alike, it was decided that the station format …

The Role Of Guanxi Network In The Corruption-Efficiency Relationship, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Why do some countries like China thrive economically despite of corruption? The effect of corruption on economic efficiency is moderated by whether a society has an extensive informal social network such as the guanxi network in China. In societies with a thick, extensive informal social network, bribery- corruption relationship can be easily established and the risk of being reported is low. This relation-based trust makes the dissemination of corruption goods--the sale of government goods for private gains--more market-based. The competition among potential bribers increases the efficiency of corruption (or making corruption less wasteful). In societies that lack such strong informal …

Accessing Children's Perspectives Through Participatory Photo Interviews, Jane Jorgenson, Tracy Sullivan

Communication Faculty Publications

In this article we seek to contribute to the emerging conversation on child-centered research methods by reflecting on the use of participatory photo interviewing to understand children's experiences with household technology. Participatory photo interviews attempt to engage children as active research participants by giving them cameras and inviting them to take pictures dealing with various aspects of their lives. The photos are later used in the interview process to jointly explore the subjective meaning of the images. We focus here on how children oriented to the research task, and in particular, on the ethnographic insights obtained by attending to the …

Public Opinion And Public Engagement With Genetically Modified Foods : A Qualitative Study, Celeste Laurana Moser

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the current study was to understand public opinion formation by determining what factors influence opinion leaders in the organic food community to engage in the genetically modified food debate, and how opinion leaders describe American lay publics' engagement in the debate.

Will The Real Elena Kagan Please Stand Up? Conflicting Public Images In The Supreme Court Confirmation Process, Keith J. Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

What images of judging did the Kagan confirmation process project?

My response to this question begins with a brief overview of existing public perceptions of the Supreme Court. I argue that a large portion of the public sees the justices as impartial arbiters who can be trusted to rule fairly. At the same time, a large portion of the public also sees the justices as political actors who are wrapped up in partisan disputes. Given these prevailing public views, we should expect the Kagan confirmation process to transmit contradictory images of judicial decisionmaking, with a portrait of judging as a …

A Reasonable Semantic Web, Pascal Hitzler, Frank Van Harmelen

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The realization of Semantic Web reasoning is central to substantiating the Semantic Web vision. However, current mainstream research on this topic faces serious challenges, which forces us to question established lines of research and to rethink the underlying approaches. We argue that reasoning for the Semantic Web should be understood as "shared inference," which is not necessarily based on deductive methods. Model-theoretic semantics (and sound and complete reasoning based on it) functions as a gold standard, but applications dealing with large-scale and noisy data usually cannot afford the required runtimes. Approximate methods, including deductive ones, but also approaches based on …

Automated Isolation Of Translational Efficiency Bias That Resists The Confounding Effect Of Gc(At)-Content, Douglas W. Raiford, Dan E. Krane, Travis E. Doom, Michael L. Raymer

Kno.e.sis Publications

Genomic sequencing projects are an abundant source of information for biological studies ranging from the molecular to the ecological in scale; however, much of the information present may yet be hidden from casual analysis. One such information domain, trends in codon usage, can provide a wealth of information about an organism's genes and their expression. Degeneracy in the genetic code allows more than one triplet codon to code for the same amino acid, and usage of these codons is often biased such that one or more of these synonymous codons is preferred. Detection of this bias is an important tool …

Linked Open Social Signals, Pablo N. Mendes, Alexandre Passant, Pavan Kapanipathi, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

In this paper we discuss the collection, semantic annotation and analysis of real-time social signals from micro-blogging data. We focus on users interested in analyzing social signals collectively for sensemaking. Our proposal enables flexibility in selecting subsets for analysis, alleviating information overload. We define an architecture that is based on state-of-the-art Semantic Web technologies and a distributed publish subscribe protocol for real time communication. In addition, we discuss our method and application in a scenario related to the health care reform in the United States.

Continuous Semantics To Analyze Real-Time Data, Amit P. Sheth, Christopher Thomas, Pankaj Mehra

Kno.e.sis Publications

Increasingly we are presented with dynamic domains involved in social, mobile, and sensor webs. Such domains are spontaneous (arising suddenly), follow a period of rapid evolution, involving real-time or near real-time data, involve many distributed participants and diverse viewpoints involving topical or contentious subjects, and involve feature context colored by local knowledge and sociocultural backgrounds. This article present continuous semantics can help us model such dynamic domains and analyze the related real-time data. Capabilities include crating dynamic domain model by mining social data, and using dynamic models for semantic analysis of real-time data.

The Google Book Settlement And The Fair Use Counterfactual, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

The sprawling Google Book Search litigation began as a dispute between the search engine colossus and a variety of authors and publishers over the legality of Google’s book digitization effort, the Google Book Search project (“GBS” or “Google Book Search”), for the purpose of indexing paper collections and making them searchable on the Internet. However, through the metamorphic power of class action litigation, a dispute over mere indexing and searching has been transformed into a comprehensive agreement over the future of the book as a digital commodity. Understanding this transformation and its implications is the central ambition of this article. …

Discovery: The Student Journal Of Dale Bumpers College Of Agricultural, Food And Life Sciences - Volume 11 2010, Several Authors

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Thinking Outside Of The Assessment Box: Assessing Social Communicative Functioning In Students With Asd, Janet L. Dodd

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

The assessment of a student suspected of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis requires the integration of information collected by a variety of professionals across various domains of functioning. One of the core deficits of students with ASD is a deficit related to social communicative competence (SCC). SCC requires the integration of language, social cognition, and higher order executive functions (Coggins, Olswang, Carmichael Olsson, & Timler, 2003) This article will propose an assessment model of social communicative functioning that was developed based on the SCC framework of Coggins and colleagues as a component of the Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Assessment Protocols for …

Interactive Text-Image Conceptual Models For Literary Interpretation And Composition In The Digital Age, Beth Nixon Weaver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on text-image conceptual models for literary interpretation and composition in the digital age. The models investigate an interactive blend of textually-based linear-sequential approaches and visually-based spatial-simultaneous approaches. The models employ Gestalt-inspired figure-ground segregation models, along with other theoretical models, that demonstrate the dynamic capabilities of images as conceptual tools as well as alternate forms of text. The models encourage an interpretative style with active participants in openended, multi-sensory meaning-making processes. The models use the flexible tools of modern technology as approaches to meaning-making with art strategies used for research strategies as well as a means to appreciate …

Deceptive Cultural Practices That Sabotage Hiv/Aids Education In Tanzania And Kenya, Mary Oluga, Susan Kiragu, Mussa K. Mohamed, Shelina Walli

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

In spite of numerous HIV/AIDS‐prevention education efforts, the HIV infection rates in Sub‐Saharan Africa remain high. Exploring and understanding the reasons behind these infection rates is imperative in a bid to offer life skills and moral education that address the root causes of the pandemic. In a recent study concerning effective HIV/AIDS‐prevention education, conducted in Tanzania and Kenya among teacher trainees and their tutors, the notion of mila potofu (defined by educators as ‘deceptive’ cultural practices) emerged as a key reason for educators’ difficulties in teaching HIV/AIDS prevention education in schools and for high HIV infection rates. Since these cultural …

Reality Hackers: The Next Wave Of Media Revolutionaries, Aaron A. Delwiche, Evan Barnett, Andrew Coe, Patrick Crim, Kendra Doshier, Christopher Dudley, Ender Ergun, Ashley Funkhouser, Cole Gray, Sarah Hellman, John Key, Christopher Kradle, Patrick Lynch, Shepherd Mcallister, Mark Mccullough, Justin Michaelson, Alyson Miller, Robin Murdoch, Aaron Passer, Maricela Rios, Laura Schluckebier, Raelle Smiley, Andrew Truelove, Richard Bartle, Annalee Newitz, Ekaterina Sedia, Steven Shaviro, R.U. Sirius

Faculty Authored and Edited Books & CDs

Just as the printing press gave rise to the nation-state, emerging technologies are reshaping collective identities and challenging our understanding of what it means to be human.

Should citizens have the right to be truly anonymous on-line? Should we be concerned about the fact that so many people are choosing to migrate to virtual worlds? Are injectible microscopic radio-frequency ID chips a blessing or a curse? Is the use of cognitive enhancing nootropics a human right or an unforgivable transgression? Should genomic data about human beings be hidden away with commercial patents or open-sourced like software? Should hobbyists known as …

Do Web Users Care About Banner Ads Anymore? The Effects Of Frequency And Clutter In Web Advertising, Sang Y. Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study investigates the effects of frequency of exposure to banner ads and ad clutter in web pages upon online users’ psychological responses. In a 7 (frequency 1 through 7) x 2 (clutter vs. non-clutter) between-participants factorial experiment, participants (N = 250) were randomly assigned to one of fourteen news websites, each with 20 separate pages of news stories and animated banner ads downloaded from various websites. Results indicated that frequency of exposure is a powerful psychological cue affecting users’memory, attitudes, and behavior. However, contrary to expectation, banner clutter does not lead to negative effects on recall, attitudes, and behavior. …

Ad-Induced Affect: The Effects Of Forewarning, Affect Intensity, And Prior Brand Attitude, Sang Y. Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Emotion in marketing communication is important because it influences the manner consumers process information. Using emotional appeal ads, a between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the role of forewarning of persuasive intent, affect intensity, and prior attitude. Results indicate that forewarning of persuasive intent of the advertiser had negative attitudinal effects on the dependent variables regardless of experimental conditions. Forewarning of persuasive intent had negative attitudinal effects even among participants who had positive attitudes toward the company, and those who had high affect intensity. Results also indicate that participants who already had negative attitudes toward the brand were not influenced …