Communication Commons^™

Turtle Cam: Live Multimedia Interaction For Engaging Potential Visitor Population To Canaveral National Seashore, Brian Alfred Tortorelli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project expands the outreach of the Canaveral National Seashore to its visitors, potential visitors, and virtual visitors through its goals in conservancy and preservation of its natural resources. This paper is involved with the current iteration of a series of digital media projects, the Sea Turtle Nest Camera, also known as, Turtle Cam. It details how and why this project was designed to be an ongoing initiative to assist in those goals.

News Coverage Of The Sergio Hernández Case In Newspapers Of The Border Region, Rodrigo Giovan Barragan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study analyzes the news coverage of two newspapers from the border region between the United States and México (El Paso Times) from El Paso, Texas; and (El Diario de Juárez) from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, about the case of Sergio Hernández, a 15 year old Mexican teenager who was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the boundary zone between both countries on June 7, 2010. Using a textual analysis of the stories published about this case in these newspapers, the research seeks to identify news frames and competing meanings of community and identity embedded in the …

The Management Of Feral Pig Socio-Ecological Systems In Far North Queensland, Australia, Gabriela Shuster

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The development of management programs for socio-ecological systems that include multiple stakeholders is a complex process and requires careful evaluation and planning. This is particularly a challenge in the presence of intractable conflict. The feral pig (Sus scrofa) in Australia is part of one such socio-ecological system. There is a large and heterogeneous group of stakeholders interested in pig management. Pigs have diverse effects on wildlife and plant ecology, economic, health, and social sectors. This study used the feral pig management system as a vehicle to examine intractable conflict in socio-ecological systems. The purpose of the study was …

Adding Within-Utterance Emotion Decay For More Human-Like Dialog, Michael Hans Durcholz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While spoken dialog systems have been used for commercial applications for several decades, most commercial spoken dialog systems provide only simple information exchange capabilities. Emotion synthesis in spoken dialog systems has become an active research area recently, and use of emotion-adaptive dialog systems has demonstrated improvements in user experience and rapport. This thesis seeks to improve how emotions are conveyed in dialog systems to enable robust emotional support that improves user experiences with dialog systems and models human speech characteristics more accurately than current dialog systems.

Prior work with Gracie (GRAduate Coordinator with Immediate response Emotions), an emotion-adaptive dialog system, …

Vamonos Al Baile! Corridos, Regionalism, & Cultural Symbolism: An Expressive Narrative Approach To Los Tigres Del Norte, Jorge Luis Aguilar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study seeks to understand how qualities and characteristics of the study's participants are influenced not only by their families and humble roots, but also for how they are influenced specifically by corridos of Los Tigres Del Norte in which the theme of the songs speak of immigrant life, values, and experiences as bicultural citizens and naturalized citizens. In this study, these ideas are explored and examined using various methodological approaches, including in-depth interviews, open-ended questions, and participant observations. This study also demonstrates how corridos communicate with their listeners, how they are influenced by the corridos, and more importantly, how …

This Is The Art Form: Examining Concept Albums' Methods Of Constructing Meaning In The Digital Age, Mario Alonzo Dozal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examined how the communicative characteristics of concept albums (music albums that center on a specific theme) have been adapted from a traditional physical form to exist in the digital age. Using three rock concept albums, this study examined how three different formats (vinyl, audio compact disc, and digital download) of the same concept album communicated the overall theme of the album to listeners, and also examined the advantages and disadvantages of each format. Additionally, using discursive analysis, this study sought to expand the academic literature on concept albums by examining the role that supplementary material plays in helping …

Deaf Culture: The Creation Of Self And Socialization Through The Use Of Sign Language, Marisela Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

There is a strong perception of the physicality of disabilities. The review of literature in this project shows that there is a large number of disability related studies in the field of communication that focus primarily on physical and/or visible disabilities. The purpose of this study is to incorporate research on hidden and/or invisible disabilities, specifically deafness. The literature in the field of communication relating to hidden disabilities is limited and much more limited in deaf related research. There are an estimated two thousand deaf individuals in El Paso. Their participation and integration in the community is hindered by societal …

Getting The Message Across: Message Dissemination Through The Social Media Platform As A Public Relation Tool As A Media Richness Perspective, Ana Isabel Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Prior studies that evaluated social media recommended the use of social media in PR efforts. But they lacked the theoretical framework to fully evaluate the richness of the communication medium. Through Media Richness Theory, the investigator assessed the perceptions of 162 PR professionals to shed light on the richness of social media as a communication tool and, most importantly, as an effective tool for the purposes of PR. While this study revealed that social media is not a fully "rich" communication outlet, there are components that provide value to PR professionals. This study suggests that social media not simply be …

“If You Can Dream It, You Can Achieve It”: Parent Memorable Messages As Indicators Of College Student Success, Haley Kranstuber, Kristen Carr, Angela M. Hosek

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

This study investigated various aspects of parents’ memorable messages about college as they relate to indicators of college student success. Findings revealed that parents’ memorable messages about college focused on working (and playing) hard, the necessity of attending college, providing encouragement and support, and general advice based on parents’ own experiences. Although these message themes were not uniquely predictive of college student success, the students’ perceptions of message and sender characteristics emerged as significant predictors of cognitive learning indicators, learner empowerment, college motivation, and satisfaction with college. Theoretical and practical implications for findings are discussed.

Brand And Public Relations In The Taiwanese Not-For-Profit Sector : A Case Study Of The Eden Social Welfare Foundation, I-Hsuan Wu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In a competitive environment in Taiwan, not-for-profit organisations (NPOs) seek to differentiate themselves from other NPOs. ‘Brand’ improves the internal functions and competitiveness of these NPOs; attracts funding to them by making use of public relations (PR) strategies and techniques and expanding the access to public resources; and also conveys a slick corporate image to the public. This research project has adopted a PR perception of leading marketing concepts to look at charity brand strategy. This approach has been taken instead of the more common marketing-oriented perspective. NPOs exist because of their public service or social welfare missions. The best …

Designing Microblogging-Based Class Activities, Tian Luo, Fei Gao

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Microblogging tools such as Twitter have been frequently adopted in educational settings to facilitate learning. This study examined how a microblogging tool, Twiducate, was incorporated into a graduate-level class of ten students. During the 1.5 hour lesson, students participated in a series of Twiducate-supported collaborative and reflective activities. The analysis of in-class discussion transcripts, text-based posts on Twiducate and a pre- and post-test survey results revealed that students were highly engaged in classroom collaborative learning and there is a high level of interaction. Students reported the challenges of using microblogging tools, such as the possibility of creating distraction and disorder …

Nature Is Ordinary Too: Raymond Williams As The Founder Of Ecocultural Studies, Rodney Giblett

Research outputs 2012

In a recent article in Cultural Studies, Jennifer Daryl Slack called for the jettisoning of ecocultural studies as an add-on to Cultural Studies and the revitalizing of Cultural Studies with the eco as integral to it. One way I propose of doing so in this article is to revalue and re-establish the beginnings of Cultural Studies, and of ecocultural studies, in the work of Raymond Williams in which both were integral to the other. I call Williams both a founder of Cultural Studies and the founder of ecocriticism and ecocultural studies, though of course he did not use these terms, …

Digital Games In Journalism Education, Evaluating A Police And Journalism Joint Training Initiative, Kayt Davies

Research outputs 2012

In early 2010, the Edith Cowan University (ECU) journalism programme and the Western Australia Police Academy Detective Training School launched a novel collaboration that involved running joint training days, in which a ‘media pack’ of journalism students interview trainee detectives about mock crimes they have been tasked with investigating. The training improved the trainee journalists’ and detectives’ understanding about the constraints the other parties face. It also made them more confident about their ability to elicit and convey accurate information, and more willing to attempt to do so than before the training.  This article presents a description of the training …

Indigenous Voice Closing The Gap And Putting Communication For Social Change Into Practice, Trevor Cullen, Michael Williams, Heather Stewart, Michelle Johnston, Gail Phillips, Pauline Mulligan, Leo Bowman, Michael Meadows

Research outputs 2012

Australian journalism schools are full of students who have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and who do not know their history. Journalism educators are illequipped to redress this imbalance as the large majority are themselves non-Indigenous and many have had little or no experience with the coverage of Indigenous issues. Such a situation calls for educational approaches that can overcome these disadvantages and empower journalism graduates to move beyond the stereotypes that characterise the representation of Indigenous people in the mainstream media. This paper will explore three different courses in three Australian Tertiary Journalism Education Institutions who …

A Framing Analysis: The Nba's "One-And-Done"Rule, Daniel Ryan Beaulieu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2006, the NBA introduced the "one-and-done" rule that restricted high school graduates to enter directly into the NBA draft following high school. In turn, a high school prospect would essentially now have the option of playing professionally elsewhere (most likely overseas), enter the NBA's Developmental League, or play NCAA basketball. The rule has proved to be quite controversial, as it has had a great effect on both NBA and NCAA basketball, as well as the players. Various media outlets have been quite vocal not only about the rule itself, but the perceived effects it has had on both collegiate …

Unlocking The Black Box Of Policymaking: A Discursive View Of The Florida Commission On Mental Health And Substance Abuse, Ardis Hanson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Discourse creates the world of policy. Discourse plays a key role within policy formation; political discourse is made visible within particular discursive (spoken and written) practices. Hence, mental health policy is the endpoint of a discursive process and that it is, in itself, an institutional process. The shared understanding necessary to formulate policy is crucial to persons who are responsible for policy decisions and recommendations. Since the public perception is that public policy problems are too complicated for ordinary people to deal with, the policy problem is reframed into manageable "bits." It is how these "bits" are framed, named, and …

Communicating During An Organizational Crisis: Using Facebook As A Relationship Management Tool, Vjollca Hysenlika

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine how organizations communicate on Facebook during a crisis, from a relationship management perspective, and how their interactivity, responsiveness, and transparency affect their Fan page's relevance, importance, and appeal. In this study, the researcher conducted a controlled experiment to examine if a strategized Facebook Fan page that contained a high level of interaction, responsiveness, and transparency contributed to long-lasting relationships with fans or helped organizations recover/prevent a crisis. The researcher created eight different conditions (Facebook Fan Pages) presenting a crisis message, and recruited 200 students (25 participants per condition) from the University of …

An Exploration Of The Organization-Public Relationship Through Online Media: The Case Of The Tampa Bay Rays, Steven Lynch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Organizations are working to establish and maintain relationships with their target publics using a wide variety of communication tools. How they work at developing this organization-public relationship (OPR) is open to the organization, but previous research suggests there are measurement scales that can indicate what factors an organization may be doing right and those they may need to improve on.

This study examines relationship building efforts of the Tampa Bay Rays organization and the representation it has demonstrated through online content. Utilizing a content analysis, sample articles were collected and coded to examine if relationship components could be found …

Masculinity, Sexuality, And Soccer: An Exploration Of Three Grassroots Sport-For-Social-Change Organizations In South Africa, Sarah Theresa Mcghee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Programs that utilize soccer as a tool for social change are steadily emerging throughout townships and rural areas in South Africa, the most economically disadvantaged areas of the country. In South Africa, grassroots sport-for-social-change organizations are compensating for failed government policies and programs that seek to help at-risk youth. As a result, program staff are often members of the community who are not versed in academic critiques of the use of sport in development initiatives. Additionally, much of the existing literature on sport-for-social-change champions the advancement of specific projects without asking critical research questions, which should include the appropriateness of …

Dissecting And Critically Analyzing The Product Red Campaign, A Review Of L. A. Richey And S. Ponte's Brand Aid: Shopping Well To Save The World, Kati Tusinski Berg

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Search For Home: Navigating Change In Battlestar Galactica, Kimberly S. Yost

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation explores the various ways in which the multiple leaders portrayed in the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) navigate extreme conditions of continual change. In addition, the dissertation contains a discussion of the larger narrative themes of love, forgiveness, redemption, and embracing the Other as principles effective leaders must cultivate. Through an interpretation of this specific popular media text, a deeper emotional sensitivity to and understanding of leadership, positive and negative, during extreme crises is gained. Furthermore, the series serves as a vehicle through which viewers can reflect on and engage in their own self-awareness about issues …

Justice Owen J. Roberts On 1937, Edward L. Carter, Edward E. Adams

Faculty Publications

The motivations for Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts’ so-called “switch in time that saved nine” in 1937 remain largely obscured. For much of the past 75 years, judges, lawyers and scholars have discussed—including recently in this journal—why Justice Roberts would vote to uphold minimum-wage legislation in March 1937 when he had voted to invalidate similar legislation in June 1936. Given that President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled his court-packing plan on February 5, 1937, externalists have ascribed political motivations to Roberts and the Court. Internalists, meanwhile, have pointed to legal reasons for the switch. However, with the exception of a …

Order And Disorder: Rational Acumen And Emotional Incompetence In The Television Detective Story, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Communications: Faculty Publications

‘Order and Disorder’ examines the relationship between emotional disorders and the exquisite rationality of contemporary televisions detectives as portrayed in such series as Monk (USA), House (Fox), and Cracker (ITV). Television heroes who combine both emotionality and rationality would seem a more integrated form of human characterization. However, the permitted configuration of emotion and reason is highly constrained. Theirs is an ongoing struggle between thinking and feeling, in which rationality is their gift and emotionality, depicted as illness, is the constant curse that both threatens and enables their gift. These characters’ conflicts become a barometer for contemporary attitudes about emotional …

Overcoming Poverty Through Digital Inclusion, Marco Figueiredo, Paola Prado, Mark Cramer

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

A growing body of research is showing how digital inclusion can help communities overcome poverty and injustice. The main challenge lies in how best to achieve this goal. The authors argue that digital inclusion must occur in two distinct stages. The first stage is digital literacy, accomplished with the Symbiotic Computer (SC)-smartphones and tablets. The second stage will be professional capacity-building, accomplished with the more traditional Personal Computer (PC).

Mining Diversity On Social Media Networks, Lu Liu, Feida Zhu, Meng Jiang, Jiawei Han, Lifeng Sun, Shiqiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The fast development of multimedia technology and increasing availability of network bandwidth has given rise to an abundance of network data as a result of all the ever-booming social media and social websites in recent years, e.g., Flickr, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Social network analysis has therefore become a critical problem attracting enthusiasm from both academia and industry. However, an important measure that captures a participant’s diversity in the network has been largely neglected in previous studies. Namely, diversity characterizes how diverse a given node connects with its peers. In this paper, we give a comprehensive study of this concept. …

Trust In The Information Society, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Trust is an important feature for all users of the Internet who rely on the safety and security of network technologies and systems for their daily lives. Trust, or the lack of it, has also been identified by the European Commission’s Digital Agenda as a major barrier to further development of the information society in Europe. One of the areas in which concerns have been raised is in relation to children’s safety online. As a result, substantial efforts have been made by policymakers and by the industry to build greater trust and confidence in online digital safety. This paper examines …

Evaluating The Similarity Estimator Component Of The Twin Personality-Based Recommender System, Alexandra Roshchina, John Cardiff, Paolo Rosso

Conference Papers

With the constant increase in the amount of information available in online communities, the task of building an appropriate Recommender System to support the user in her decision making process is becoming more and more challenging. In addition to the classical collaborative filtering and content based approaches, taking into account ratings, preferences and demographic characteristics of the users, a new type of Recommender System, based on personality parameters, has been emerging recently. In this paper we describe the TWIN (Tell Me What I Need) Personality Based Recommender System, and report on our experiments and experiences of utilizing techniques which allow …

Journalism Education And Children's Rights: New Approaches To Media Development In Cee/Cis Countries, Michael Foley, Noirin Hayes, Brian O'Neill

Articles

This article gives the background to a project entitled Children's Rights and Journalism Practice, which was carried out for UNICEF in university journalism faculties in CEE/CIS countries

By focusing on journalism in the context of the academy and raising awareness of children’s rights from a journalistic perspective, the project seeks to provide a relatively safe space for critical engagement with journalistic ethics and values. Children are targets of, or are implicated in, nearly all aspects of public policy, yet are largely invisible in news-media coverage, and rarely have their voices heard in matters affecting them. By using the UNCRC as …

An Investigation Into The Moderating Role Of Fear Appeals On The Relationship Between Regulatory Fit And Persuasion, Nam Young Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As one of the ways to persuade young people effectively, several scholars have indicated that using a tailored message that is consistent with individuals’ concerns and interests can influence their attitude and behavioral changes. Among diverse tactics to construct tailored health-messages, this research especially paid attention to individuals’ motivational goals (i.e., regulatory focus) that make them more inclined to a certain outcome. While promotion-oriented individuals primarily focus on how to achieve a desired ending, prevention-oriented individuals mainly focus on avoiding undesirable outcomes (Higgins, 1997; Higgins et al., 2001). Although numerous studies support the positive effects of the congruency between regulatory …

Composing A Method: Écriture Féminine As Performance Practice, Brianne Waychoff

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The overall aim of this project is to theorize and invent a method of performance based on écriture féminine. This method is meant to be useable, generative, and transferable to other practitioners. Following a heuretic practice of reading selected texts for what they suggest about making new texts, writerly method that invites expansion in future research is revealed. This project is but a beginning of an articulation and proposes only one path through these texts. The tracking of the process of reading and experimenting with performance provides a space for reflection that illuminates gaps to be explored in future work. …