Communication Commons^™

Science Communication In The Time Of Covid-19, Inez Z. Ponce De Leon

Department of Communication Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Risk Perception And Response Among International Students Of The University Of Southern Mississippi, Elida Lopes Souza Rocha

Master's Theses

Given the exposure of university campuses to hazards, disaster mitigation is a critical element of higher education policy. Although U.S. higher education institutions are leaders in the global education market, emergency warning systems give little consideration to how international students perceive risk, prepare for hazards, or access warning technologies available to them. This poses several questions regarding the suitability of hazards mitigation practices and the welfare of international students.

This thesis investigates the relationship between USM international students and natural hazards. Responses from online surveys and semi-structured interviews data were analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods to document the extent …

Ua45/6 Commencement Program, Wku Registrar

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program for fall 2021.

Robo-Ump: A Study Of The Prospective Impact Of Automated Strike Zone Use In Major League Baseball Games From The Perspective Of Broadcasters And Media, Bob Greene

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

A qualitative analysis of the Major League Baseball industry’s perspective on the use of technology within the game, specifically the incorporation of an automated strike zone in place of traditional umpires, through targeted survey results from current MLB broadcasters and journalists or media members. Evidence from the research suggests that though those who are in favor of umpires being replaced by technology within the game, at least in some fashion, there are concerns that the technology in place is currently ready to provide the type of experience desired for MLB play when it comes ruling on balls and strikes with …

Supporting Online Doctoral Student Socialization Through Talk About Writing: A Case Study Of The Short Life Of A Graduate Writing Center, Maureen J. Barney

Faculty & Staff Publications

This dissertation project was a qualitative case study of one writing center for online graduate students, the Graduate Writing Center at Concordia University–Portland. This study focused on synchronous interactions between peer writing consultants and online doctoral students to determine if the synchronous writing support sessions were a space where online doctoral students experienced affective support and socialization experiences. In this research, I analyzed four document sets: seven transcripts of synchronous sessions conducted via Zoom, interviews with three writing consultants and six online doctoral students, anonymous responses to appointment feedback surveys, and my fieldnotes.

A Word From The Writing Team (December 2021), Pam Walter, Mfa

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

This issue includes:

• New Writing Specialist, Liz Declan
• Saying Farewell to Jen Wilson
• Coming Soon -- Find the Time: Time Management

Brothers - In - Arms: Visual Commonalities Between The Us And Is Recruitment Strategies, Maha Ghalwash, Lawrie Phillips

Political Science

This article claims that the visual image contributes to, reflects and supports the dominant discourse of two powerful armed groups that have operated in Iraq and Syria: the US military and the Islamic State (IS). This research uses multimodal discourse analysis to explore two crucial insights into the ideological power of the visual image: the power of the image as spectatorship or spectacle and the sublime or transcendental nature of the visual image. The authors conclude that US and IS recruitment and propaganda videos share these two crucial ideological elements: pride in the spectacle of their military power, discipline and …

Kicking The Way Through A Global Pandemic: How Ncaa Division I Soccer Players And Institutions Have Responded To The Covid-19 Pandemic And Related Protocols, Celia Clare Gaynor

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic rapidly spread throughout the United States in 2020, affecting many lives in the process. As health communicators, dealing with this disease and sharing effective health messaging in a fluid and unknown situation was key to preventing greater spread of COVID-19 and keeping the public safe from harm. For athletics, like all other aspects of society, protocols needed to be put in place to ensure that athletes could safely participate and compete in their sport. The present study looks to examine NCAA COVID-19 protocols of mask wearing and social distancing and how NCAA Division 1 …

Bringing Instagram Posts Into Being: A Study Of Fyc Students' Self-Sponsored Posting Practices And Transfer Opportunities, Jessica Kester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Social media platforms have offered students—and all of us—more opportunities for self-sponsored writing. In response to calls from researchers to explore students' 21st-century writing practices and their relevance to college writing instruction, this dissertation articulated and applied a feminist teacher research methodology and a mixed-methods research design to explore first-year composition (FYC) students' self-sponsored writing practices, attitudes, and transfer opportunities on a popular, albeit under-examined, social media application: Instagram. This study found that students have developed elaborate, rhetorical, multimodal composing processes that include planning, drafting, evaluating, selecting, and styling images as well as planning, drafting/revising, and styling captions. Additionally, though …

Studying Users Interactions And Behavior In Social Media Using Natural Language Processing, Sultan Alshamrani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Social media platforms have been growing at a rapid pace, attracting users' engagement with the online content due to their convenience facilitated by many useful features. Such platforms provide users with interactive options such as likes, dislikes as well as a way of expressing their opinions in the form of text (i.e., comments). As more people engage in different social media platforms, such platforms will increase in both size and importance. This growth in social media data is becoming a vital new area for scholars and researchers to explore this new form of communication. The huge data from social media …

Cultivation 2.0: The Mediated Environment As Message In The 21st Century, Chelsea Slack

All Dissertations

It is hard to deny social media and its omnipresence is affecting users. What’s more, the online mediated environment is becoming increasingly diverse, with more social media platforms being created and used each year. What is social media doing to us? How do different platforms affect views of users? To answer these questions, this study applied cultivation theory to the mediated environment, which included the social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. With 413 respondents, the results of this study indicated that Facebook consumption is related to first order cultivation effects, and non-Facebook platforms contribute to …

Communities Of Play And Practice: Collaborating With Audiences And Coworkers In Performative Online Spaces, Paul Oppold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This study describes an ethnographic investigation of Communities of Play within Communities of Practice. As professional 'content creators', whose 'work' is 'play', are increasingly interacting with non-professional content consumers, whose 'play' is a kind of 'work', the barriers between 'work' and 'play' are increasingly dissolving. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and frequency of the professionals' interactions with coworkers in an office and with the content consumers while working from home. Data were collected in the form of gameplay videos uploaded by the professional streamers from January of 2017 to March of 2018, downloaded by the …

Why Science Is Important To Us All: Identity And Environment, Anita K. Foeman

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Professor Anita Foeman, Communication and Media - Why Science is Important to Us All: Identity and Environment

Lindenwood Digest, December 1, 2021, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

The Future Is Full Of Monsters: Queer Survival One Click At A Twine, 'Aolani N. Robinson

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Spurred by a desire to explore queer rhetoric through interactive forms of media, this project analyzed the game-making program Twine to uncover how independent queer creators use the tool to explore queer survival against time, capitalism, and constrained identities. A more accessible platform than other game-making tools, Twine’s unique interactivity puts the ability to make interactive games and stories into the hands of indie marginalized creators who are often overlooked in both mainstream gaming and queer rhetorics (Anthropy, 2012). Thus, this thesis contributes to queer rhetoric, game studies, and trans rhetorics by exploring the strategies indie Twine creators use in …

Textq—A User Friendly Tool For Exploratory Text Analysis, April Edwards, Marylyn Sullivan, Ezrah Itkowsky, Dana B. Weinberg

Publications and Research

As the amount of textual data available on the Internet grows substantially each year, there is a need for tools to assist with exploratory data analysis. Furthermore, to democratize the process of text analytics, tools must be usable for those with a non-technical background and those who do not have the financial resources to outsource their data analysis needs. To that end, we developed TextQ, which provides a simple, intuitive interface for exploratory analysis of textual data. We also tested the efficacy of TextQ using two case studies performed by subject matter experts—one related to a project on the detection …

Theological Practices For Sustaining Community Renewal At Speedway Church Of Christ, Kent A. Ellett

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This project assembled a group of potential small-group facilitators for the purpose of drafting a small-group discussion guide to be used at the Speedway (Indiana) Church of Christ. The guide was intended to aid the discernment of missional practices which sustain the renewal of the wider community. Focusing on the Gospel of John, the intervention attempted to recover a temple Christology, construing the incarnation, ministry, death, and the lifting up of Jesus within the larger story of the temple’s ongoing re-creation of the world. In bestowing his glory upon the church, Jesus sends the church into all the world, as …

Cultural Impact On Identity And How It Is Expressed Through Dress, Jenifer Thao

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examined how students at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Arkansas incorporate their cultural background into their clothing as a form of self-expression. The study included an online survey platform, Qualtrics, created with a series of Likert-type and open-ended response questions to gather data regarding student opinions on clothing impacts. Results indicated that there were no significant associations when it comes to cultural influences on identity and how it is expressed through dress.

Covid-19 Masks In Terms Of Functional, Expressive, And Aesthetic Consumer Needs, Lily Highley

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess consumers' perspectives of COVID-19 masks under the functional, expressive, and aesthetic areas. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have become an “accessory” to everyday life, and it was essential to research masks under these unique areas and explore consumer perceptions.

This study took place after background research on the topic and the FEA model. The study included a survey sent to Bumpers College students upon approval from the IRB. The data was analyzed and interpreted specifically in the FEA areas and can be useful to better understand the students at the University …

Using Expectation Violation Theory To Evaluate Dialectal Bias In Courtroom Contexts, Christina Joseph

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

There is much evidence to indicate the role of speaker accent expectations and its impacts on the subsequent rating of the speaker. Additionally, examples including the Central Park Five as well as Rachel Jeantel of the Trayvon Martin case indicate the impacts of this speaker rating particularly in the context of the courtroom. This necessitates the further evaluation of the impact of dialectal bias on speaker ratings especially in the context of a courtroom due to the severity of the impacts. Utilizing a 4x2 between subjects experimental design manipulating on the basis of both dialect and speaker expectation, this study …

Mapping Out The Vietnamese American Experience: Parenting Styles And Communication Satisfaction Among Vietnamese American Generations, Angie Vo

Communication Theses - Archive

Communication is vital for all communities and is particularly relevant for families. This study explored intergenerational communication on health and political topics within Vietnamese American communities. While a large body of research explores family communication themes in Asian American (especially Chinese American) communities, little exists about Vietnamese American communities, especially on family, health, and political communication. The study surveyed 869 Vietnamese Americans aged 18 to 35 who have Vietnamese American immigrant parents, asking them questions pertaining to their family’s parenting styles, family communication styles, and willingness to communicate health and political topics. Results found that authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting …

Further The Field: Revamping Collegiate Athletic Digital Marketing Efforts, Ryan Sells

Theses

This paper closely analyzes digital marketing strategies and athletic communications campaigns in a more technologically and content-driven era. Recent scholarly research has indicated the shift from traditional marketing methods to more current applications. This thesis paper helps to guide potential sports marketing or communications professionals in the everchanging industry of collegiate athletics. Successful campaigns have been closely analyzed and serve as an indicator of potential future marketing plans that can be put in action. Scholarly articles were strong components in the research process and helped to explain the impact of two-way communication and personalization content ideas. To implement successful digital …

2d Motion Graphics Enhancement Of The User Experience On Web Applications, Lora Paro

Theses

This project focuses on the creation and use of 2D motion graphics to enhance the user experience of applications on the web including but not limited to social media, educational and entertaining digital videos. The aim of this project is to enhance skills in the creation of 2D motion graphics using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Character Animator, and Adobe Illustrator while benefitting the user experience of visually delivered moving graphics to capture more of the audience’s attention rather than the traditional use of static imagery. Experience gained with research on 2D motions graphics and Adobe After Effects with then be …

The Game Of Life: How Playing Gamified Interactive Narratives Affects Career Planning In Cambodia, Lauren B. Frank, Paul Sparks, Sheila T. Murphy, Lizzie Goodfriend, Paul Falzone

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

To improve economic opportunity in Cambodia, we used social cognitive theory to develop gamified, interactive narratives using mobile phones. Participants guided their chosen character toward their “dream job” goal while encountering a series of barriers along the way. Participants (N = 1,625) were randomly assigned to one of four message frequency experimental conditions: a no-play control condition or playing the interactive narrative one, two, or five times. Compared with not playing the interactive narrative (control), those who played showed higher perceived self-efficacy, response efficacy, and behavioral intentions. Playing more times was associated with less attentional focus and enjoyment, but greater …

Shaping Success For Mobile Applications Of Integrated Resorts, Krista Larsen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As smartphones have become indispensable in society, it has become critical for integrated resorts to develop mobile applications ("apps") that serve as a marketing tool and an enhancement in the customer's travel journey. This research reviews the features of existing mobile travel apps, in addition to areas of opportunity for future innovations regarding this platform. Based on this research, this study recommends best practices for an integrated resort's mobile app. The findings of this study can be leveraged as a resource when developing and maintaining mobile apps within the hospitality industry to provide an optimal guest experience throughout the entire …

Effects Of Abstinence-Based Sexual Education Compared To Evidence-Based Sexual Education In K-12 Schools, Lily Probst

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background: Historically, sexual education in the United States has been abstinence-based (ABSE), meaning that sexual education is centered around encouraging adolescents to abstain from sexual activity outside of wedlock. On the other hand, evidence-based sexual education (EBSE) includes abstinence in its curriculum but does not emphasize it, instead highlighting contraception and prevention strategies. Additionally, EBSE teaches adolescents about healthy relationships, attitudes towards sexuality, gender roles, and provides resources for sexual and reproductive health services. Supplying adolescents in K-12 schools with access to evidence-based sexual education may not only decrease teen pregnancy rates and incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) but …

An Exploration Of Effective Patient Education With An Emphasis On Concussion, Kayla M. Ruopp

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Undergraduate Honors Theses

Concussion is a prevalent healthcare issue in the US, with approximately 1.6-3.8 million sports and recreation-related concussions each year in all ages. A concussion can be defined as a traumatic brain injury caused by biomechanical forces. When an athlete sustains a concussion, a physiologic cascade of events occurs. The most common signs and symptoms of a concussion include: loss of balance, disorientation, headache and confusion. Concussion assessments are important in order to determine the presence of an impairment and there are a multitude of tests that clinicians can use in order to isolate each type of damage. Studies have shown …

Memetic Rhetorical Theory: An Analytic Model For The Spread Of Information Online, Carleigh J. Davis

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern discourse is often characterized by such extreme polarization that participants operate from entirely different sets of facts. These alternative facts represent a new line of inquiry for rhetoricians, who must determine how false facts gain credibility. This article outlines Memetic Rhetorical Theory (MRT), a model for understanding how information evolves to become credible in a given environment.

The Role Of Sex: An Analysis Of U.S. Attitudes Toward Climate Change, Chloe Riggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the intersection of sex, environmental risk perception of climate change, and feminism. More specifically, with a sample size of 8,280 respondents from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Times Series Study, this research examines the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and sympathy for feminism, controlling for sex, as well as if a measure of sympathy for feminism influences pro-environmental attitudes, controlling for demographic (age, education, race, sex, and income) and political preference (political ideology and party affiliation) variables. Previous literature strongly supports a sex gap in risk perception, a pattern known as the White Male Effect (WME) …

Does Whispering Improve Children’S Memory? Comparing Auditory Vigilance And Salience Hypotheses, Christina M. Barnes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oral communication is one of the primary tools children use to learn new information and speech registers can deliver additional meaning to the words someone uses. Cirillo’s (2004) vigilance hypothesis states “Whispering can affect the psychobiological state of recipients, and in particular raise their auditory vigilance” (Cirillo, 2004, p. 76). Building on this theory, the current study investigates the role of whispering and children’s memory by examining a whispering vigilance, whispering salience which focused on the changes between normal and whisper registers, and combined vigilance and salience hypotheses to determine if whispering contributes to the recall of information. Using video …