Communication Commons^™

Don't Put Me In "Quotes": Examining Communication Episodes Of Health-Related Stigma, Ashley Archiopoli

Communication ETDs

This study examined communication episodes of health-related stigma, which includes instances where individuals were made to feel bullied, excluded, rejected, blamed, or embarrassed due to a health condition they or someone they know possesses. This study used the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) to approach this study; in particular the DICA model advanced by Pearce (2007), which moves through a process of description, interpretation, critique, and action was used in study design. Six research questions were developed that roughly correspond to the DICA model. This study used a grounded approach to data collection and analysis: data were collected in two …

Playing On The Periphery: Metagaming And Transgressive Play, Patrick S. Love

Open Access Theses

Gaming and play exist in connection to forces outside of the game systems themselves. Together, all these intersecting forces make up a meta game that informs and enables variance in play as well as creates barriers to entering play. This thesis fleshes out the framework of a metagame and shows how players can take a metagame perspective to transform, transcend, or even transgress barriers. This thesis discusses sources of metagaming and encompasses examples from video and traditional games.

The Rhetorical Constitution Of Online Community: Identification And Constitutive Rhetoric In The Community Of Reddit, Bradley Stephen Ludwig

Open Access Theses

The concepts of online identity and online community within the context of social media have been major research interests in the field of communication in recent years. Questions of interest include how the Internet and social media contribute to the construction of identity both online and offline, and what factors encourage participation in and contribution to online communities. This thesis will address these questions related to online identity and community from a rhetorical perspective to examine the role rhetoric plays in these processes and build on the application of rhetorical approaches to online contexts. Specifically, this project proposes a rhetorical …

Dismantling The Great Wall Of Prejudice: A Look At Centrality And Issue Importance In The Perpetuation Of Influence And Prejudice Reduction, Zachary Robert Wittrock

Open Access Theses

This study sought to utilize social network analysis to better understand how prejudice reduction can be spread from one person to another via interpersonal influence. Different types of prejudice reducing interventions were combined into one intervention. The role of centrality in the spread and perpetuation of influence was examined by measuring prejudice reduction in socially connected individuals who did not undergo the direct intervention. To further understand the role of centrality in prejudice reduction, the concept of issue importance was included to understand the differential impact that centrality has on interpersonal influence. Study 1 examined the effectiveness of the intervention, …

More Than A Game: Examining Sensemaking And Self-Organisation In Alternate Reality Games, Yeo Yun Ting Alanna

Open Access Theses

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are an emerging brand of online role-playing games, immersive and highly interactive. This new genre of games pioneered an effective and efficient form of collective play and problem-solving in loosely-defined situations, showcasing powerful and efficient sensemaking and self-organization at work. I intend to study an ARG titled "We Are Earthborne" in order to understand the processes of communication, sensemaking, and selforganization that occurs in the course of an ARG. Using the structure of Weick's organizational sensemaking and Latour's Actor-Network Theory as a lens, this study intends to break down how distributed groups of people can come …

Is Maternal Touch Used Referentially?, Rana Abu-Zhaya

Open Access Theses

Early social interactions are highly multimodal and include a wealth of cues (e.g., speech, facial expressions, motion, gestures and touch). Infant-directed speech (IDS) by itself may aid in language development. Touch by itself has been also shown to play an important role in dyadic interactions affecting both the infant and the caregiver. However, little is known about the impact of the combination of these two modes of communication on infant language development. In this thesis, I hypothesize that caregiver touch is provided in synchrony with speech, providing the language-learning infant with cues that may not only help her to find …

Impact Of Social Media On Power Relations Of Korean Health Activism, Kyu Jin Shim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This case study explores how the Korea Leukemia Patient Group (KLPG) uses social media in its internal communication strategy and how that empowers its relationship with external counterparts. The findings of this study indicate that the local health NGO’s communication strategy is changing in response to the increased effectiveness and impact of social media. With the use of social media like Twitter, the KLPG can construct an issue-based advocacy group quickly and effectively. Consequently, more legitimacy and representativeness through collected support from general publics has further empowered the KLPG. Yet, the sustainability component in the relationships built through social media …

Influences Of Influential Users: An Empirical Study Of Music Social Network, Jing Ren, Zhiyong Cheng, Jialie Shen, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Influential user can play a crucial role in online social networks. This paper documents an empirical study aiming at exploring the effects of influential users in the context of music social network. To achieve this goal, music diffusion graph is developed to model how information propagates over network. We also propose a heuristic method to measure users' influences. Using the real data from Last. fm, our empirical test demonstrates key effects of influential users and reveals limitations of existing influence identification/characterization schemes.

Predicting The Popularity Of Web 2.0 Items Based On User Comments, Xiangnan He, Ming Gao, Min-Yen Kan, Yiqun Liu, Kazunari Sugiyama

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the current Web 2.0 era, the popularity of Web resources fluctuates ephemerally, based on trends and social interest. As a result, content-based relevance signals are insufficient to meet users' constantly evolving information needs in searching for Web 2.0 items. Incorporating future popularity into ranking is one way to counter this. However, predicting popularity as a third party (as in the case of general search engines) is difficult in practice, due to their limited access to item view histories. To enable popularity prediction externally without excessive crawling, we propose an alternative solution by leveraging user comments, which are more accessible …

On Predicting Religion Labels In Microblogging Networks, Minh Thap Nguyen, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Religious belief plays an important role in how people behave, influencing how they form preferences, interpret events around them, and develop relationships with others. Traditionally, the religion labels of user population are obtained by conducting a large scale census study. Such an approach is both high cost and time consuming. In this paper, we study the problem of predicting users' religion labels using their microblogging data. We formulate religion label prediction as a classification task, and identify content, structure and aggregate features considering their self and social variants for representing a user. We introduce the notion of representative user to …

The Importance Of Community Resilience: Developing The American Red Cross International Services Department In The New Hampshire Region, Sarah Romac

Capstone Collection

Disaster management and humanitarian aid organizations have had to reevaluate how communities and individuals can better adapt and prepare for future disaster events. One concept organizations are incorporating into their overall framework is strengthening community resilience. Increasing a community’s resilience level increases its ability to cope with the changes that affect it. Creating awareness of the vulnerabilities in an area, addressing these vulnerabilities with preparedness training, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and sustainable changes made over the long-term can develop a community’s adaptive capacity to be more resilient.

For my practicum, I was given the opportunity to be the International Services …

The Politics Of Memory, Nicole Maurantonio

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter considers the definitional and disciplinary politics surrounding the study of memory, exploring the various sites of memory study that have emerged within the field of communication. Specifically, this chapter reviews sites of memory and commemoration, ranging from places such as museums, monuments, and memorials, to textual forms, including journalism and consumer culture. Within each context, this chapter examines the ways in which these sites have interpreted and reinterpreted traumatic pasts bearing great consequence for national identity. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges set forth by new media for scholars engaging in studies of the politics of …

Improving The Effectiveness Of Print Advertising Copy Using The Theory Of Planned Behavior As A Guide, Nkenge Kirton

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The purpose of this study was to discover whether the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) could be applied and tested toward the improvement of destination advertisements. Specifically, the purpose was to understand the process through which a destination advertisement could influence behavioral intention. Understanding this process would help advertising professionals in the tourism industry. The destination used in this experiment was fictitious. The study used a posttest-only experiment with three conditions. One condition saw an advertisement with a behavioral belief appeal. Another condition saw an advertisement with a descriptive normative belief appeal. The third condition saw an advertisement …

The Transformative Power Of Narrative As A Behavioral Change Communication Tool To Reduce Health Disparities In Cervical Cancer Among Latinas: Global Implications, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, Joyee S. Chatterjee, Lauren B. Frank, Sheila T. Murphy, Meghan B. Moran, Lisa N. Werth, Nan Zhao, Paula Amezola De Herrera, Don Mayer, Jeremy Kagan, Dave O'Brien

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cervical cancer is the third most common type of cancer in women globally. Latinas carry a disproportionate burden of this disease. In the United States, when compared with non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), Latinas endure much higher incidence rates (13.86 vs. 7.70 per 100,000) with mortality rates 1.5 times greater than for non-Hispanic white women . In order to address this disparity, a multidisciplinary team engaged in a transformative study to test if narrative, developed in culturally specific ways as a behavioral change communication tool, works better than non-narrative in increasing knowledge and changing attitudes and behaviors and, if so, why. This …

Computer Animation For Learning Building Construction Management: A Comparative Study Of First-Person Versus Third-Person View, Jun Yu

Open Access Theses

In this paper, we have explored the effect of perspective view in educational animations on students' learning of building construction management tasks and on students' preference of perspective views. We conducted a pre-test and post-test and found no significant advantages of computer animation presented in different perspective views across three different groups. Results showed that although students have preference on perspective views, perspective views did not influence learning outcome. The study also investigated the efficacy of animation as a teaching/learning tool in comparison to the traditional textbook. Findings showed that animation enhanced student learning, although the difference was not statistically …

“One More Drinkin’ Song”: A Longitudinal Content Analysis Of Country Music Lyrics Between The Years 1994 And 2013, Keith Mckay Evans

Theses and Dissertations

The lyrical content of pop music has rarely been studied, particularly for country music. The lyrics of the top 50 country songs for each year between 1994 and 2013 were coded for violent, sexual and substance use-related content. Violence had increased, as had sexual references, substance use, and substance use associated with sexual activity. Of particular note is the frequency of references to alcohol; 21% of the 1,000-song sampling frame contained alcoholic references, and the average for the final five-year period (2009-2013) was 1.01 references per song. This research should serve as a springboard into further studies about the lyrical …

"Do You Bant?" William Banting And Bantingism: A Cultural History Of A Victorian Anti-Fat Aesthetic, Jaime Michelle Miller

English Theses & Dissertations

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a retired Victorian undertaker named William Banting (1796-1878) dramatically altered attitudes toward fat by initiating the profoundly consequential idea of the diet as a saleable commodity capable of marking identity within particular social and racial contexts and connecting obesity with degeneracy, illness, and evil. His work Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the General Public self-published in 1863 describes how, with physician William Harvey, Banting reduced his weight by nearly fifty pounds by following a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. Banting and his dieting phenomenon transformed the English cultural consciousness of fatness, and created a …

Visual Propaganda And Extremism In The Online Environment, Cori E. Dauber, Carol K. Winkler

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

Visual images have been a central component of propaganda for as long as propaganda has been produced. But recent developments in communication and information technologies have given terrorist and extremist groups options and abilities they never would have been able to come close to even 5 or 10 years ago. There are terrorist groups who, with very little initial investment, are making videos that are coming so close to the quality of BBC or CNN broadcasts that the difference is meaningless, and with access to the web they have instantaneous access to a global audience. Given the broad social science …

The Writing Is The Wall: Expanding The Means Of Communication With Multimodal Approaches To Teaching Composition, Matthew Williams Schering

All Student Theses and Dissertations

As the paradigm of communication shifts into the digital realm, it seems only logical that instructors’ pedagogical approaches to teaching writing should shift as well. Though there is still much merit to teaching tradition approaches to composition, are there more modern methods that could be employed to teach communication in a contemporary setting? This thesis shall examine the role that new media can play in a multimodal composition course, as new media seems to be the most effective way to teach rhetorical communication skills in a modern setting. By looking at new media elements, such as podcasts, wikis, and images, …

Student-Directed Blended Learning With Facebook Groups And Streaming Media: Media In Asia At Furman University, Tami Blumenfield

Asian Studies Publications

Furman University prizes itself on being an engaged learning, liberal arts institution with extensive faculty-student interaction. 96% of students live on campus, leading some to question whether reducing face-to-face instructional time makes any sense pedagogically. Coming from a different institution that encouraged faculty to create hybrid courses, and seeing the creativity and freedom that offered, I wanted to experiment with the format in this new institutional environment. Would it still be effective? What adaptations would be necessary, and how would students react to this different course format?

In Fall 2013, I taught a carefully designed blended learning course that met …

Aesthetics In Visual Rhetoric: An Analysis Of The Volkswagen Beetle, Melanie Ann Barker

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis outlines how aesthetics can add to the current functionality of the field of visual rhetoric. A methodology for an aesthetic analysis was created and then executed using the classic Volkswagen Beetle as an artifact. The end result of this thesis will be an argument for the inclusion of aesthetics in visual rhetoric, and thus greater understanding of the emotional ties of audiences and the potential for stronger analyses.

Selling "Kawaii" In Advertising: Testing Cross-Cultural Perceptions Of Kawaii Appeals, Tao Deng

Master's Theses (2009 -)

"Kawaii" (cute) culture has become a major global consumer culture. Advertisers in Asia have adopted kawaii appeals to attract attention and promote product images. From a cultural value perspective, this literature review proposes that culture not only affects ad content and appeal, but also influences consumer attitude and ad effects. While kawaii appeals are culturally specified, the effects of those appeals across distinct cultures might be systemically predictable. Today, the concept of kawaii and its effects still remains vague to Western academia. This thesis provides a deeper understanding of kawaii examining the rich origin of kawaii culture in Japan and …

Communication, Romantic Reconciliation, And Emerging Adulthood: A Relational Dialectics Study, Ashley M. Poole

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Building on the extant research of on-again/off-again (on-off) romantic relationships, the current thesis focused on building upon past findings by utilizing a unique theoretical methodology in an emerging demographic. A sample of 22 emergent adult (ages 18-29) participants who were currently in or had recently experienced an on-off relationship completed face-to-face interviews discussing communicative processes during romantic reconciliation. The primary purpose of this thesis was to identify and define discursive struggles found within on-off relationships during reconciliation attempts, and understand how they are used between partners to give meaning to the terms "on" and "off" as a precursor to restructuring …

The Internet Vs. The Nation-State: Prevention And Prosecution Challenges On The Internet In Republic Of Türkiyi, Ersin Elibol

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Social, economic, and technological developments are widely accepted as powerful forces that affect the role, power, and functions of nation-states. Being one of the most influential technological developments in the recent decades, the internet has come into prominence in this regard.

With the use of the Internet, the monopoly of media and information controlled by official ideologies, capitalist barons, or elites is seriously challenged. Consequently the power balance between individuals and authorities in the mass media and communication has been transformed in a significant way. Though their reliability may sometimes be questionable, the number and type of information resources has …

A Choreography Of Living Texts: Selections From The Arst Oral History Project, Kenny Walker, Jennifer Malkowski, Damien S. Pfister

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Oral history projects about rhetorical studies contribute to transdisciplinary histories by creating living texts that reflect the dynamism of scholarly cultures. Through interviews conducted at the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST), we chart the organizational and intellectual history of a field, its contributions to science studies, and its potential future directions. These digitized, archived oral histories serve as an articulation point for transdisciplinary reflection, but they also represent an important strand of digital humanities work that creates living texts and keeps them open for future articulations.

Chasing The Dollar: An Ethnography Of The Traveling Welder., Jennifer Shepherd

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This is an ethnographic study of a group of men who work as traveling welders. This study looks at both the kinds of challenges the men face as well as the positive aspects of the work. The questions asked of the ten interview subjects were chosen in order to gain an understanding of a day in the life of the men in this profession, both on and off the clock.

The thesis will open with a pitch given by a welding school and segue into the literature review, delving into occupational and organizational culture definitions before comparing welding to other …

The Social Construction And Broaden-Build Effects Of Appreciation, Recognition, And Reward At Work As Portrayed In Four Contemporary Films, Andrew Gavin Leach

Communication ETDs

Many employees feel underappreciated, unrecognized, and undervalued in todays corporate, white collar environment (Herman& Dasborough, 2008; Ariani, D. W. 2013). Global economic crises, rising housing prices and high unemployment have all contributed to the prevailing thought that it an employee should just be happy with having a job. However, many organizations have found that evoking positive emotion in the workplace is a win-win situation for them and their employees (Lutgen-Sandvik, Riforgiate & Fletcher, 2009). In order to investigate what is enacted to produce positivity in the workplace, this project applied content analysis to four commercial film dated 2004 to 2013. …

A Content Analysis Spanning 30 Years Of Mental Health Communication Scholarship, Camille Velarde

Communication ETDs

Currently, the communication research concerning mental health is sporadic, unorganized, and disintegrated. Previous research has not looked at organizing the literature through content analysis. To address this gap in the literature, the purpose of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the current state of mental health communication research. This thesis has six key objectives: (1) systematically review the communication literature regarding mental health communication and identify current trends and future areas for research; (2) identify the aspects or topics regarding mental health communication in published research; (3) identify the theoretical underpinnings of mental health communication research; (4) …

Microblogging As A Facilitator Of Online Community In Graduate Education, Vincent Anthony Rhodes

English Theses & Dissertations

Part-time and distance-learning students can experience a sense of isolation from their peers and the university. Concern about this isolation and resulting student attrition has increased in the midst of explosive growth in online course enrollments. One possible solution: building a stronger sense of community within the online graduate classroom using microblogging technology such as Twitter. Unfortunately, scholars across disciplines define community in different ways with some rejecting the concept altogether in favor of other theoretical constructs. And, few scholars have examined the notion of online classroom community from an English Studies perspective exploring the rhetorical exigencies that underpin this …

"Warning: This Is A Must Read": Participation And Disruption In Social Artifacts And Spaces, Angela M. Harrison Eng

English Theses & Dissertations

As I show in three separate case studies, content, technology, and participant relationships are key components in the design of social artifacts and spaces. One study highlights the invention and evolution of content across multiple spaces. The second shows content used as leverage for authority. The last case study examines the relationship between content and technological interfaces and how disruption may not always be successful.

All of these components make up what I refer to as disruption. Disruption describes participant acts that are executed to change existing power-based structures of information sharing. Using the insights gained from this research, I …