Communication Commons^™

Sticking To The Script: Sexual Scripts In The Slasher Sub-Genre, Jennifer L. Clay

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The “slasher” sub-genre has been immensely popular, even spawning television shows that invoke the familiar slasher conventions. This sub-genre has simultaneously become vilified by media researchers over the years. The slasher has received particular criticism for allegedly reinforcing regressive attitudes regarding female sexuality. This study applies sexual script theory to better understand the messages about sex found throughout the sub-genre. This study utilizes content analysis to study the more recent iterations of the slasher sub-genre including the re-make, the modern slasher film and the slasher television show. This analysis uncovered that the slasher sub-genre has evolved over time. While slasher …

The Impact Of Facebook, Twitter, And Youtube On Millennials' Political Behavior, Nicholas M. Njegomir

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Social media plays a prominent role in the daily lives of Millennials. The majority of Millennials use some form of social media, and with the amount of political content on various social media sites, it is worth examining how social media influences Millennials’ political behavior. This study focused on three social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This research was rooted in George Gerbner and Larry Gross’ Cultivation theory (1976), which states that long-term media exposure shapes reality. The study consisted of survey and focus group research, which attempted to determine how much time Millennials spend on each site, how …

Decoding Impressions: Understanding Appearances A Nonverbal Training Program, Michelle Lynn Spring

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Given the multitude of clothing options, jewelry, and adornments that exist in the modern world and the variety of colors these artifacts are available in, there is a need to understand the how appearance cues impact impressions. Saussure’s theory of Semiotics was used as the framework for this project as a means to decoding the sign structures associated with appearance cues that influence impressions. This project outlines an active training program that walks students through the semiotic theory, the elements of appearance cues and the resulting impressions that may be formed by artifact choices. The goal of this project is …

A Glimpse At Media-Framing Effects On Place Attachment In Rural Northwest Montana, Gregory D. Bruns

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examined how outdated media framing can disturb rural place attachment. Evaluating this concept against the backdrop of south Lincoln County, Montana, which is nearing the end of a years-long EPA Superfund cleanup, over 100 regional visitors were surveyed to learn if media framing affected place-attachment sentiments. The investigation revealed that existing news stories, some up to 15 years old, may be playing a lingering and consequential role in attracting first-time destination seekers to the region, in support of framing theory. Furthermore, these findings also lend credence to the significance of sound Internet search-engine optimization practices, and provide an …

Examining How Supervisor/Employee Communication Affects Employee Intentions To Leave An Organization, Courtney R. Malengo

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Americans who are full-time employees spend more hours at work than they do with family and loved ones. Management articles and research lament organizational communication woes, specifically amongst employees and their supervisors. This study explores supervisor/employee communication and the affect it has on employees’ decisions to stay or leave an organization. Specifically, the study examines how satisfied employees are with their respective supervisor and their organization, correlating findings to Deetz’s organizational communication theory and Graen & Uhl-Bien’s leader-member exchange theory. Respondents included 132 adults, 18 years and older, 58.4% were female and 41.6% were male, largely spanning the nonprofit/association and …

Call-Out Culture: How Online Shaming Affects Social Media Participation In Young Adults, Ethan M. Huffman

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Communication via social media is important to many young adults. While participation affords benefits, it can lead to acts of online shaming. This study hypothesized that young social media users are concerned that the information they post online could cascade out of control leading to a verbal attack by an anonymous crowd. As a result, users reduce the frequency of posting content to social media after witnessing or experiencing acts of online shaming. Academic attention has not focused on social media participation, or the lack thereof, as a behavioral trait akin to organizational silence. Drawing on Morrison and Milliken’s (2000) …

A Gendered Lens Of Understanding Confidence, Abbey Johnston

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Women make up approximately half of the U.S. workforce, yet far fewer women than men reach senior management and leadership positions. Women enter the workplace at levels similar to men, with comparable credentials and expectations, but their career paths rapidly diverge. This discrepancy among males and females can be associated, in part, to the documented difference in confidence between men and women. This study addressed the critical topic of how gender may impact an individual’s understanding and level of confidence and utilized the theoretical lenses of Mead’s (1934) Symbolic Interactionism and the Standpoint Theory of Harding (1991) and Wood (2004). …

Communication And Leadership Styles Utilized By Mill Managers Compared To Front Line Leaders, Ashley Meaghan Moore

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Paper mills can be a dangerous place to work; therefore, effective leadership by the mill manager and front line leaders are crucial to the safety of their employees. Leaders within all mills encompass many methods of leading and communicating with their teams. However, research on the consistency in these methods across the two levels of leaders is lacking. To help fill the gap, the author engaged in a case study and collected data through an online survey and guided interviews to examine their personal experiences with their leadership and communication styles within the mill environment with Mead’s (1934) Symbolic Interactionism …

Competing For Attention: U.S. Millennial Perception Of Traditional And Social Media, Carl Neal Hudson

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study examines how U.S. Millennials view information reported by traditional and social media using Christians and Fackler’s (1993) communitarian ethics and Entman’s (1989) ideas on media “frame analysis” as a foundation for analysis. For the purposes of this study, Islamic State – a radical extremist organization rooted in the Middle East – is widely reported on both platforms and is used as a focal point for the study’s purposes. U.S. Millennials who participated in this study address their concerns with how information is reported in today’s 24/7 news coverage and constant outreach from organizations that report on world events. …

Extroversion And Media Richness: An Analysis Of Media Preferences Of High Extroverts Within Sales Organizations, Donna M. Dudek

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Personality traits and vocational acumen have been the source of research in recent years. Using personality measures such as the Five Factor model, researchers have sought to find common traits which may predict success in critical organizational roles. Communication needs and desires, including media richness choices, have also been the subject of past research. The purpose of this thesis is to tie these two themes together. Using a survey instrument containing both a personality inventory and a questionnaire examining media preferences in different scenarios, the author gathered data from sales professionals, client service professionals, and managers to evaluate similarities and …

This Is Not A Cage Match, Joseph C. Shepard

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

During the 2016 presidential election season, Senator Ted Cruz’s use of social media to promote his campaign and build up a grassroots following was masterful. This case study explores Cruz’s digital outreach efforts in the shadow of GOP rival Donald Trump’s commanding use of traditional earned media. This case study views the Cruz campaign’s digital outreach strategy through the lens of the Agenda Setting theory of communication, which seeks to explain the mass media’s ability to influence what the important issues are to the public, and through the reverse agenda setting effect, meaning if the airtime is unavailable through traditional …

Upward Communication In Organizations: The Connection To Company Culture And Employee Engagement, Janet K. Clancy-Feliciano

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

In today’s American society, effective upward and downward communication between supervisors and subordinates is lacking now more than ever before. The importance of effective downward communication from organizational leaders receives ongoing attention, but more attention needs to be given to the importance of open reception to upward communication. It is critical that leaders in organizations build trust and encourage upward communication from employees in order to maintain organizational wellbeing and to avoid employee dissatisfaction. To help close the gap in this area of communication, this study focused on and collected data utilizing on-line surveys and employee interviews in order to …

The Uses And Gratifications Of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients’ Use Of A Facebook Group, Kathleen Jardim Schutt Tillman

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Social media continues to change the way that people communicate and engage with each other. As part of this change, the adoption of social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook facilitates communication amongst people in various ways, including through its ability to allow for the creation of interest-specific groups. Through this capability and the resulting democratization of information sharing via digital media technologies, there are also significant changes to health communication and how patients seek information and emotional support especially when facing chronic disease conditions such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Therefore, for this thesis, a study was conducted to examine …

Pre-Service Teacher Social Networking Decisions And Training Needs: A Mixed Methods Study, Helen Crompton, Kelly Rippard, Jody Sommerfeldt

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The use of social networks in America has risen nearly tenfold in a decade, rising from 7% in 2005 to 65% in 2015. This rise in the use of social networks has presented new ethical, legal, and professional challenges for educators. Teachers are held to higher standards of moral behavior than the general population. This mixed-methods study examined the types of social networks used by pre-service teachers and if they are making good decisions when using social networks. The findings show that the pre-service teachers were unsure what to post. Based on this finding, the researchers provide training suggestions to …

A Vous De Amatongas: The Voice Of Amatongas, Matthew T. Adler

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Air Traffic Communications In Routine And Emergency Contexts: A Case Study Of Flight 1549 ‘Miracle On The Hudson’, Angela Garcia

Natural & Applied Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper is a conversation analytic investigation of Air Traffic Control (ATC) communications with U.S. Air Flight 1549 and other flights before, during, and after a critical emergency in which the plane (safely) landed in the Hudson River. While foundational conversation analytic research on air traffic communications has already been done, this method has not yet been systematically applied to air traffic communications during actual emergencies. This project will therefore fill a gap in previous research by analyzing ATC/plane interactions during an actual emergency and investigating whether routinized procedures alone are the most effective when emergency situations occur. I will …

Picturing The Museum: How America's Leading Art Museums Use Instagram As A Public Relations Tool, Hannah S. Mclain

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

To Vaccinate Or Not To Vaccinate: A Qualitative Description Of The Information Available On Popular Search Engines Regarding The Vaccine Debate., Madeline Rhinesmith

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The current study looks at the assumption that that more information, along with improved access to that information could lead to more informed decisions through evaluating and critically reflecting on the vaccine debate. The research is done through the perspective of Science, Technology, and Society - an interdisciplinary field that analyzes the connection between scientific advancement and its implications on the world. This research seeks to replicate previous studies’ which simple search engine websites were used to look at the websites people, including parents, are likely to encounter when they are researching information on vaccinations. This research seeks assess how …

Stealing The Mic: Struggles Of The Black Female Voice In Rap, Miranda Flores

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Black women are objects and agents of pop culture that are rarely given a voice in a cacophony of heteronormative white noise. To navigate a male dominated industry, black female artists reappropriate black masculinity which, in turn is misappropriated by white female artists. This cultural appropriation is explored in a rhetorical analysis of the controversy between artists Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, and Miley Cyrus. The struggle of black female rappers to succeed against the stereotypes proffered by male rappers and profited on by white pop artists demonstrates the detrimental effects of post racial America on black female identity at a …

Ua1c11/89 Jim Burton Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs and negatives taken by Jim Burton documenting life in western Kentucky primarily between the years 1975 and 1980. Venues include Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Madisonville, Cumberland County and Scott County.

Band Formations - Burton was hired by WKU band director to photograph half time performances. It was a freelance job paying $250 per winter semester which allowed him to pay his car insurance.

Bobby Sandige - Bobby was from Burton's hometown of Madisonville and was married in college. Besides being a full-time student, he worked full-time at an underground coal mine. Burton did a feature story on …

Adaptation Of Phonetics Course Material To Accommodate A Blind Student, Mary Gospel, Kathleen Camire, Haley Summer

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

No abstract provided.

Communicative Action And Citizen Journalism: A Case Study Of Ohmynews In South Korea, Seungahn Nah, Deborah S. Chung

Information Science Faculty Publications

Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, this case study of OhmyNews in South Korea examines how citizen journalism operates in a broad organizational and social context. Through in-depth interviews with professional and citizen journalists, the study reveals that citizen journalism can be well understood at the intersection between the lifeworld and systems. Specifically, the study finds a coexistence mechanism by which citizen journalism competes, collaborates, coordinates, and compromises with professional journalism through communicative action, such as mutual understanding, reason-based discussion, and consensus building.

Law Book Catalog Of Patrick Byrne, Philadelphia Bookseller, 1802, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Professor Erwin Surrency laments the fact that "all too few of [the law book dealers] have been preserved."¹ One of the least known law booksellers of the early Republic era was Patrick Byrne. This short article provides basic biographical information and a review of his first law book catalog, one of the earliest law book catalogs published in the first years of the nineteenth century.

Literary Radicals In Radio’S Public Sphere, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Radio was THE emerging medium in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and radio historians have helped us understand some of the myriad ways it influenced the public sphere and created new forms of cultural consciousness and multivocal formulations of national community. Michele Hilmes has argued that radio was “significantly different from any preceding or subsequent medium in its ability to transcend spatial boundaries, blur the private and public spheres, and escape visual determinations while still retaining the strong element of ‘realism’ that sound—rather than written words--supplies.” Jason Loviglio has analyzed the techniques and implications of radio’s creation of …

Can Student-Built Gsas Provide Positive Development For Lgbt Youth In High Schools? A Review Of Literature, Beau Coggsdale

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Within school systems, there are sexual minority students that are not treated with the same amount of attention that the sexual majority gets. These minority students include individuals that identify as bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, or questioning. These students would fall under the category of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, or pan/polysexual (LGBTQQIAP). Many LGBT students in high school report feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Hong, Espelage, and Kral 885- 886). Many of these students, especially in rural areas, require some form of support within the school system for healthy positive development. Gay Straight …

From Me To You, Isabel Lee

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

As an artist, my work has allowed me to produce as a multidisciplinary thinker, maker, and communicator. Beyond the physicality of medium, much of my desire to make my work manifests in the nuances of human relationships and genuine experiences that I seek and recall in my own life. My most lasting work meanders around the elements of unspoken communication, intimate gestures, and quixotic quests.

Through performative sculpture, I pursue thinking and making through nontraditional materials, utilizing some form of human interaction in the process. Exploring my curiosity for relational and performative art, I’m interested in works that are exist …

A Preliminary Study Of Workgroup Dynamics: A Critique And Reconceptualization Of Oetzel's Effective Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory, Renata Kolodziej-Smih

Wayne State University Dissertations

The primary focus of this research was to critique and reconceptualize Oetzel’s (2005) Effective Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory (EIWCT). The research explored the foundational research concepts in Oetzel’s theory: situational features (history of unresolved conflicts, equal/unequal status, and ingroup/outgroup), self-construals, face-concerns, interaction climate, and task and relational group effectiveness and satisfaction. The central critique of Oetzel’s theory was the operationalization of group diversity through self-construals, face concerns and ethnic identification. The current study proposed that relational models and horizontal/vertical individualism/collectivism may more completely and accurately capture diversity dimensions because they are considered deep-level diversity features (Fiske, 2004; Triandis & Gelfand, …

Empirical Analysis Of Socio-Cognitive Factors Affecting Security Behaviors And Practices Of Smartphone Users, Joseph P. Simpson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The overall security posture of information systems (IS) depends on the behaviors of the IS users. Several studies have shown that users are the greatest vulnerability to IS security. The proliferation of smartphones is introducing an entirely new set of risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. Smartphone devices amplify this data exposure problem by enabling instantaneous transmission and storage of personally identifiable information (PII) by smartphone users, which is becoming a major security risk. Moreover, companies are also capitalizing on the availability and powerful computing capabilities of these smartphone devices and developing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program, which makes companies susceptible to divulgence …

A Study Of The Success Of Group Formation In Virtual Teams Using Computer-Mediated Communications, Eliel Melón-Ramos

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

In the digital domain, virtual teams within organizations and corporations are becoming common. Restructuring an organization or corporation is vital because competition and globalization are increasing. In this era of globalization, distributed working groups need to develop a competitive advantage in these ever-changing environments. Historically, teams had experienced problems stemming from geographical and temporal limitations. With the increase of technology in telecommunications, organizations are increasingly forming virtual teams, which have become critical to the survival of nearly any corporate entity.

Virtual teams have some of the same problems that regular teams have. One of the key challenges is the method …

Use Of Student Created Video Podcasts To Promote Foreign Language Grammar Acquisition In Middle School, Sergio Parra

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of video podcasts in education has emerged as a phenomenon that has gained a considerable amount of attention over the last few years. Although video podcasting is becoming a well-established technology in higher education, new multimedia instructional strategies such as student-created video podcasts in grades K-12 are under-researched.

The study investigated the effects of video podcasts created by students to promote foreign language grammar acquisition at the middle school level and find how students described such experience. The current investigation was conducted by using the explanatory sequential design, which is a mixed methods research design that occurs in …