Communication Commons^™

A Tapestry Of War: Three Veterans' Stories, Clancy Lane Smith

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to record and preserve the memories of American war veterans living in the Oxford area. The researcher interviewed local veterans and recorded their recollections in a narrative way, similar to how a feature story is written for publication in a newspaper or magazine. The results of this project demonstrate the stark contrast in a veterans' experiences based on differences in background, faith, family and decision-making. The stories are written so that they might be passed on to future generations.

Millennial Specific Techniques For Nonprofit Marketing Communications: A Messaging Study For World Relief, Taylor M. Davenport

Honors Theses

Nonprofit organizations are quickly catching up to for profit companies in their marketing communications endeavors. World Relief, a faith-based nonprofit organization that strives to empower the vulnerable, is one of those organizations. While they have made huge strides in recent years, they are missing the mark when it comes to reaching millennials. This thesis sought to research effective millennial specific messaging techniques and implement an integrated marketing communications (IMC) campaign using the findings. This thesis compiles research on millennials from the Pew Research Center and other sources as a background for primary research. A survey and focus group were conducted …

Women Hold Up Half The Internet: Examining The Political Identities Of Chinese Women Bloggers, Taylor Brack

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Marketing For Entrepreneurs: How To Promote One's Own Craft, Teresa Hendrix

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to serve as an alternative, cost efficient resource to those creative entrepreneurial ventures with a product (or service) that needs both people to consume it and a profit eventually sufficient to support its creators. By excluding excess details unrelated to promotion, and supplementing with specific, anecdotal advice directly from interviews with successful small business owners, this thesis aims to provide a plethora of marketing techniques that an entrepreneur can test before facing the daunting cost of an agency. Based on an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources*, this thesis explores three common components that manifest themselves …

An Examination Of Crisis Communications At Major Mississippi Universities, Virginia W. Mayo

Honors Theses

This thesis will examine current theory in how to prepare for, handle and communicate in a crisis supported by extensive research. The first chapter includes case studies from other college campuses, the importance of a crisis management plan, and dealing with the media in crisis situations. Next, the crisis communications theories will be applied to three major Mississippi universities through examination from interviews and the study of past crises at these universities. Interviews were conducted via email and in person, depending on the location of the school. The three Mississippi universities examined are The University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi State …

A Woman's Right: Promoting The Pursuit Of Gender Equality In The Workplace, Lauren Elizabeth Walker

Honors Theses

This thesis examines four questions. What is gender inequality, what is its level in the workplace especially in the public relations field, why does it exist, and what can we do to change that? Finally, an integrated marketing communications campaign will be planned to address the issue among students at the University of Mississippi The first chapter of this thesis examines the current level of gender inequality in the workplace and why these barriers exist in the workplace. In 2013, it was found that ratio of women's and men's median annual earnings was 78.3 percent for full-time/year round workers (Hartmann,1). …

Soul Food: An Interpretation Of The History, Significance And Southern Roots Of The American Cuisine, Sarah Bracy Penn

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of stories in which I explored several facets of soul food, the cuisine of the American South. It uses soul food as a prism to view the cuisine's connections to race, politics, economics, class, history and social consequences. Rather than write an academic paper, I presented my findings in a series of articles based on live interviews with food historians, culinary writers, entrepreneurs and chefs. I also examined various books, articles and blogs written by these culinary writers. This is not a comprehensive history of the cuisine, nor does it attempt to take sides with …

"Operation Red Campus”: An Experimental Analysis Of Crnc Advertisements Targeting The Millennial Generation, Ellen Mullee Schmidt

LSU Master's Theses

Using an experimental survey design, this study evaluated an advertising campaign developed by the College Republican National Committee targeting Millennials in the 2014 midterm elections. Three particular advertisements from “Operation Red Campus” were selected and tested using a pre-survey and two post-surveys. Due to data constraints, only the results of the first post-survey were used in this analysis. This campaign was designed in response to the Republican Party’s continued problems of low youth turnout and poor party perceptions. This thesis analyzes the effectiveness of the strategies employed by the CRNC to target 18-24-year-olds with this campaign, adding to the limited …

Different Approaches To Investigatory Journalism In The Muckraking Era, Tim Vest Klein

LSU Master's Theses

The muckraking era is seen as a golden age of investigatory journalism. This thesis argues that within the muckraking era, there were a number of distinct types of journalism. To understand the muckrakers, we must recognize these different types of investigatory journalism and the potential influence the different types of storytelling can have on public opinion. Fourteen of the preeminent muckrakers are analyzed based on their most important investigatory journalism articles

Natural Order: The Case For Applying Biomimetic Design Principles To Mass Communication Technology Design, William Glass

LSU Master's Theses

In this paper I tested the effectiveness of a biomimetically designed classifier algorithm in an effort to support a new argument for the systemic application of biomimetic design principles to mass communication technology. To supplement the purely system-level test, I conducted a series of interviews with interface-level designers regarding their own design strategies, generally accepted design strategies in the field of mass communication technology design, new design strategies, and the landscape of the field in general. The findings of my test lend strong credence to biomimicry's potential systemic contribution to mass communication technology design, and the tone of the interview …

The Unattainable Ideal: Walter Lippmann And The Limits Of The Press And Public Opinion, Amy Solomon Whitehead

LSU Master's Theses

Walter Lippmann’s classic work, Public Opinion, crystallized thinking about the dynamic relationship between the press and public opinion, and clarified the role of each in democracy. Evaluations of that book, however, tend to be one-dimensional. Public Opinion captured just one iteration of his thinking on the subject, not his final statement on the matter. A comprehensive survey of his writing reveals Lippmann’s views on the press and public opinion were not static, yet the attention Public Opinion receives continues to overshadow his other works; his evolving views on the press and public opinion are rarely mentioned. Although his views shifted …

In The Shadow Of Big Oil A Media Content Analysis Of The 'Big Oil' Stigma, Camille Nicole Ivy-O'Donnell

LSU Master's Theses

This study examined media frames newspapers use in their coverage of the oil and gas industry. A content analysis was conducted to analyze if the oil and gas industry was portrayed positively or negatively in Louisiana newspapers compared to Texas newspapers and how the coverage between states differs. This comprehensive content analysis of print media coverage analyzed newspaper articles and provided a detailed explanation of results about how the oil and gas industry was portrayed over a five-year period of time as compared to other studies, which only analyzed the industry during a crisis period. Through categorization of the frames …

Correcting The Conversation: An Argument For A Public Health Perspective Approach To University Timely Warnings About Sexual Assault, Ashley Hesson

LSU Master's Theses

Reports of sexual violence should be written from a public health perspective approach to appropriately frame the occurrence and encourage accurate understandings of sexual assault as a larger societal issue. This research consists of two studies to investigate the way universities do (and should) communicate about sexual violence with their students. For Study 1, interviews were conducted with a random sample of public state Universities regarding their emergency alert processes and template usage to determine current emergency communication practices. The majority of universities contacted do not have a template or best practice guidelines in place for creating timely warnings. For …

How Local Nonprofit Organizations Can Use Narratives To Build Organizational-Public Relationships On Digital Media, Ryan Patrick Delaune

LSU Master's Theses

The nonprofit sector’s adaptation and implementation of digital media is one that has received surprisingly little exploration. While some research has been conducted in this area, these studies tend to generalize results across all organization types within the nonprofit sector. Often, these studies overlook specific advantages nonprofits of varying types, sizes, and locations may potentially have in regard to fostering relationships with their communities. This study explores how these differences may impact organizational use of digital media, and how organizations can potentially use these media to more efficiently achieve their goals. Specifically, this study focuses on the use of narratives …

Engagement Across The Pond: The Nfl's Attempts To Increase Social Media Engagement Through The Cultural Targeting Of Messages, Isabelle Moore

LSU Master's Theses

With more and more sports organizations reaching saturation points in their current home markets, the search for new, untapped, international audiences is on. Reaching out to these new markets has been made much more simple by the digitization of communication, and particularly the global spread of social media. The NFL, as the United States’ most popular sports league has been targeting the United Kingdom as it’s next market since the mid-2000s, and has gone as far as setting up a separate UK branch of their communications division (NFL UK). The NFL faces several challenges in engaging new fans in this …

Defining Dad: Media Depiction Of The Modern Father In Print Advertising, John Robert Evans

LSU Master's Theses

From an advertising perspective fathers are a highly attractive consumer demographic. In order to market to this audience it is important to understand how fathers are framed. With an increase in the number of fathers identifying themselves as caregivers according to the 2012 census, effective marketers would be well-served if they understood what type of frame applies when fathers are employed vs. stay at home. This analysis used framing theory to determine how message givers use frames within their advertisements to explain which particular aspects of the father are given salience. This study is a content analysis of father frames …

Hesitation Rate As A Speaker-Specific Cue In Bilingual Individuals, Jamie Lynn Armbrecht

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hesitation use is common among all speakers, regardless of whether they are engaged in their dominant or non-dominant language (Fehringer & Fry, 2007; Reed, 2000). The question is whether a bilingual speaker will engage in the same types of hesitations in both languages. If hesitation patterns can be identified consistently across speakers regardless of language, their use as an acoustic cue for speaker identification may be possible. This study examines differences in hesitation use across languages and speaking contexts (reading vs. conversation) in bilingual speakers.

Twenty Spanish-English bilinguals (ages 19 -31 years) were tested as part of a larger speaker …

Straight Benevolence: Preserving Heterosexual Authority And White Privilege, Robb James Bruce

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes three current and popular media sites, exploring a term I coin “straight benevolence.” An ostensibly supportive and progressive attitude adopted by heterosexuals and expressed toward gay men in the United States, straight benevolence surreptitiously subordinates gayness and further entrenches white masculine heterosexual privilege. In my examination of hip-hop artist Macklemore’s “Same Love,” seven Major League Baseball “It Gets Better” gay-advocacy videos, and the “Suddenly, Last Summer” episode of ABC’s primetime U.S. television series Modern Family, I take an intersectional approach to address the interanimation of sexuality, gender, and race. I ask: In what ways is gay male …

Crisis Communication And Celebrity Scandal: An Experiment On Response Strategies, Leah Champion

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent allegations surrounding Bill Cosby presented an opportunity to combine, test, and extend situational crisis communication theory typology and image repair theory response strategies for celebrity use. Because Cosby did not respond to the numerous allegations against him, it presented an opportunity to experiment with new and existing typologies using a real case, as opposed to analyzing past response attempts or using a hypothetical case. This study used a 2 X 4 factorial design to test veracity of claims, a proposed concept, and response strategies via survey. Even though none of the hypotheses were supported, the present study opened up …

Heart Of The Beholder: The Pathos, Truths And Narratives Of Thermopylae In _300_, James Christopher Holcom

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that critical understanding of historical narratives needn’t be limited to cold, clinical applications of logic and reason. By doing a close textual reading of Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel, 300 and Zack Snyder’s 2007 film adaptation, I posit that critical analysis of popular narratives is better served when pathos takes a central role. Traditional rhetorical criticism tends to favor empirical evidence and fact over emotional, narrative truth. Yet, the writing, recounting and interpretation of history are more akin to arts than sciences. Historical narratives are subject to the same influences and techniques that make poetry, …

Evidence Of Things Not Seen: A Semi-Automated Descriptive Phrase And Frame Analysis Of Texts About The Herbicide Agent Orange, Sarah Beth Hopton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From 1961 to 1971 the United States and the Republic of South Vietnam used chemicals to defoliate the coastal and upload forest areas of Viet Nam. The most notorious of these chemicals was named Agent Orange, a weaponized herbicide made up of two chemicals that, when combined, produced a toxic byproduct called TCDD-dioxin. Studied suggest that TCDD-dioxin causes significant human health problems in exposed American and Vietnamese veterans, and possibly their children (Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection, 2011). In the years since the end of the Vietnam War, volumes of discourse about Agent Orange has been generated, much of which is …

Feeling At Home With Grief: An Ethnography Of Continuing Bonds And Re-Membering The Deceased, Blake Paxton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bereavement scholars Silverman, Nickman, and Klass (1996) have argued that rituals to continue a relationship with the deceased do not have to be considered pathological in nature. Since their work, scholars have offered specific strategies for the bereaved to actively construct a bond after death, including telling stories about those who have died, having imagined conversations with the deceased, celebrating their birthdays and anniversaries, and reviewing artifacts that represent or once belonged to them (among other strategies). Hedtke and Winslade (2004) call these “re-membering” processes by which the deceased can regain active membership in their loved ones lives. This dissertation …

What Female Candidates Need To Know: Current Research On Gender Effects In Campaigns And Elections, Lauren Michele Leist

LSU Master's Theses

Studies show that the vast majority of people have no problem voting for a woman and that when women run they win as often as men, yet female representation remains startlingly low in the U.S. Women are 50.8 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for merely 19.4% of the 535 seats in Congress, 24.5% of statewide executive positions, 24.2% of state legislatures, and 17.6% of mayors in cities with populations over 30,000 (Center for American Women and Politics 2015). There is certainly much research dedicated to gender and politics. But what is missing from current literature is an …

Organizational Twitter Use: A Qualitative Analysis Of Tweets During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Pratiti Diddi

LSU Master's Theses

One in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. The best-known awareness event to fight the health issue is Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM). Twitter is a growing source of health information amongst users; however, little research exists into understanding how various organizations use their Twitter accounts to communicate about breast cancer during BCAM, as well as implications of this use for the health information consumers. In this context, there is also a dearth of research about if, and how organizations use behavioral change theories to tailor their social media content or not. The paper explored through qualitative …

When ‘Seeking Love Is Travel By Bus’: Deliberate Metaphors, Stories And Humor In A Romanian Song, Elena Negrea-Busuioc, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drawing on a song by Romanian blues rock singer and satirist Alexandru Andrieș, Transport în comun, we argue that both listeners and metaphor researchers must sometimes assume that a metaphor has been deliberately used and transformed in order to make sense of a metaphorical story, particularly when the metaphor is embedded in a particular cultural and political context. On the face of it Transport în comun is a song about seeking love, but it opens with a decidedly unromantic metaphor, “women are buses,” then develops this song into a story that is intelligible only on the assumption …

“Nixon Stonewalled The Investigation”: Potential Contributions Of Grammatical Metaphor To Conceptual Metaphor Theory And Analysis, L. David Ritchie, Min Zhu

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Halliday’s (1985; 1998) theory of grammatical metaphor (GM) has been quite influential among scholars who study structural approaches to language but has received little attention among researchers in cognitive linguistics. In this paper we summarize the aspects of Halliday’s approach that are most relevant to cognitive linguists, and show how key aspects of grammatical metaphor are related to the analysis of lexical and conceptual metaphors. Using an example of scientific writing analyzed by Halliday (1998) as well as examples from discourse previously subjected to conceptual metaphor analysis, we show how the two approaches might usefully be combined to yield new …

Public Perception Of Male Athletes Vs. Female Athletes In The Media, Kaleigh Elizabeth Dickson

LSU Master's Theses

In this experiment, my goal was to determine if public perception of female athletes differed from public perception of male athletes. Female athletes are underrepresented in the media (Eastman and Billings, 2000), and because of this, public perception of male athletes might differ from their perceptions of female athletes in the media. I hypothesized that my respondents would best remember the female athletes appearance, best remember the male athletes interview content and that the female and male respondents who took my experiment would evaluate each athlete differently based on their own gender and the athletes’ gender. My results indicated that …

Framing Theory And Its Application To The Fracking Controversy In St. Tammany Parish, Lindsay Colleen Rabalais

LSU Master's Theses

When Helis Oil & Gas Company announced it was interested in drilling for oil in Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, it ignited a firestorm. The proposed drilling project would use hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” – causing some residents to voice their concerns for the parish’s wellbeing. My thesis looks to framing theory to analyze how local media covered the issue, as well as the effects those frames might have on public policy and the lawsuits that arose out of the proposed drilling operation. I performed quantitative and qualitative content analyses of local media coverage of this issue from April 2014 …

Multi-Mode And Single Mode Polymer Waveguides And Structures For Short-Haul Optical Interconnects, Kevin L. Kruse

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Single mode and multi-mode polymer optical waveguides are a viable solution for replacing copper interconnects as high speed and large bandwidth short-haul optical interconnects in next-generation supercomputers and data servers. A precision laser direct writing method is implemented for producing various single mode and multi-mode polymer waveguide structures and their performance is evaluated experimentally showing agreement with theoretically developed models. The laser direct writing method is the optimal solution for low-rate cost-effective prototyping and large area panel production.

A single mode polymer waveguide bridge module for silicon to glass optical fibers is designed, modeled, fabricated, and measured. The bridge module …

Comedian-In-Chief: Presidential Jokes As Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric, Don Waisanen

Publications and Research

To understand how jokes have functioned as part of U.S. presidents’ strategic communication, this project examined every available White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) speech over the last century, documenting various presidents’ approaches to humor. I argue that the ability to talk about difficult or taboo subjects through jokes’ deeply enthymematic ways of communicating has offered presidents expanded rhetorical spaces during crises, providing insights into why they started using humor with such routine frequency. Working with multiple factors shaping the modern presidency, presidents have used the elastic and inventive nature of enthymematic joking in attempts to move pressing issues outside immediate …