Communication Commons^™

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

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 …

Examining The Effects Of Information And Communication Technologies In The Legal Representation Of Latin American Asylum Seekers, Victor M. Portillo Ochoa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how legal defense nonprofit organizations (NPO) are using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to provide legal defense for asylum seekers and improve the conditions of immigrants at detention centers. In addition, this research explored the impact of ICTs on legal defense NPOs, bottlenecks, and security implications when supporting vulnerable communities. ICTs profoundly impacted the way we interact in a post-pandemic world, and it presents new challenges and possibilities for legal defense nonprofit organizations that are helping vulnerable communities. This study consists of staff and volunteers from different legal defense nonprofit organizations NPOs …

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 …

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 …

Media Influences On Fear Of Immigrants, Mira Eissa

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s administration, tapped into U.S. citizens’ polarization regarding the topic of immigration. There was and is a clear negative depiction of immigrants in many different local and national outlets including social media. Using the data collected from Chapman's survey of American fears in 2021, I analyze how fear of immigrants is related to media consumption. Social media and news outlets' coverage of immigrants directly influences the public’s attitudes. Agenda setting, priming, and framing help us understand that news and media construct a perception for people that might not be accurate. Citizens have formed their …

Social Media Activism: Did We Say What We Meant To Say? A Thematic Analysis Of Slutwalk Los Angeles Hosted By Amber Rose, Yahindra Maxey

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined the convergence of activism and social media to analyze how messages are conveyed using an online platform. Using the official Instagram page of SlutWalk Los Angeles as the object of study, this paper examined what messages were being communicated online and how it reflected the movement. As social activism continues today, this study is relevant because it will provide insight on using visual imagery as a form of protest. Through thematic analysis, several themes emerged which include, inclusion, sexual liberation, re-appropriation, and rape awareness. These themes are explored and detailed, ultimately confirming the complex, polysemic nature of …

Designing A Brand Identity And Visual Marketing Collateral For Jaxxon Von Baxter, Benson P. Moore

Graphic Communication

This project involves the creation of visual marketing collateral to be used for the album release and ensuing tour of a fictional musician named Jaxxon Von Baxter. Portrayed by Benson Moore in all imagery, this project explores techniques in creative photography, photo editing, illustration, and typography, among others. Ben would like to someday continue as a designer in the music industry and hopes this project will further him down this path.

Video 101: Video Production Basics, Visually Explained, Chris Flanery

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

As video becomes more prevalent in all aspects of life, the demand for competent video production skills continues to grow. Having the technical literacy to capture professional-level video is highly sought-after and begins with proper education and training. This project found the process for learning video production often fails to maximize on its full potential. Despite being a visual medium, most individuals surveyed and interviewed for this project who work in the video production industry report visuals are rarely used to demonstrate fundamental concepts in learning video production. These same individuals and additional research indicate visual aids help illustrate many …

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 …

How “Interested” Criticism Fueled The Formulation Of Nineteen Eighty-Four’S Cultural Afterlife, John Cameron Bosch

All Theses

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four carries a “cultural afterlife” as a result of “interested” criticism, which has a set political/practical barometer or motive. While everyone agrees that the novel presents a frightening dystopia, many also consider it a prophetic piece that illuminates the possible corruption of executive power of a nation thanks to this cultural afterlife; the modern and popular term “Orwellian” resulted from these sorts of analyses and have only escalated in the years since its inception. As a result, within the past decade, multiple scholars, analysts, and journalists have referenced Orwell’s novel as a factual representation of this executive …

They Say, We Say: A Standpoint Analysis Of Stay-At-Home Mothers’ Engagement With Public Discourse, Ayesha Tanzila

All Theses

The purpose of this research was to study stay-at-home mothers’ engagement with the prevailing discourse surrounding them. Staying home and engaging in "invisible and unpaid" labor has led this group of mothers to be out of public sight and somewhat voiceless. Thus, public discourse about SAHMs without significant input by SAHMs has resulted in a monolithic and static identity. Using standpoint analysis as the theoretical framework and textual analysis as the methodology, I have analyzed opinion pieces written by SAHMs, published on popular magazine portals, and on their blogs, through which they attempt to navigate this public depiction of themselves. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Influences Of Medicaid On Mental Health Practitioners, Matthew Mohan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Medicaid is the largest publicly funded health insurance program which influences the mental health practitioners’ treatment of low income individuals (Altman & Frist, 2015; Rowland et al., 2003). To understand how Medicaid influences mental health practitioners, this study utilizes institutional theory by using the five propositions from Lammers and Barbour (2006) to analyze how Medicaid’s communicative practices influence mental health practitioners who treat those who are in poverty. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 mental healthcare practitioners who accepted Medicaid: two psychologists, five social workers, one psychiatrist, and two psychiatric nurse practitioners. The results demonstrate how mental health practitioners respond …

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 …

Lindenwood Magazine, Fall 2021, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Magazine (2017- )

Lindenwood University news magazine.

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 …

Trends Of Armed Conflict In Kenya From 1997 To 2021: An Exploratory Data Analysis, Peter Kimani, Caroline Mugo, Henry Athiany

Graduate School of Media and Communications

Armed conflict patterns have drastically changed since the post-cold war period. In Sub-Saharan Africa, armed conflict continues to be persistent and on the rise. Kenya has not experienced civil war, but has experienced intra-state conflicts which display themselves as political, natural resources, ethnicity, land, and environmental conflicts. This study aimed to identify patterns and trends of armed conflict in Kenya. Secondary data from Armed Conflict and Location Events Data (ACLED) for the period 15th January 1997 to 25th February 2021 was used. Exploratory data analysis and generalized additive model were used to identify patterns and trends. For the period studied, …

Nonprofit Narratives: How Two Organizations Use Social Media And Rhetorical Appeals To Address Issues Of Sexual And Domestic Violence, Samuel Hiester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Though often seen as a panacea for organizational objectives, nonprofits must be judicious in deploying social media, particularly due to resource limitations. Nonprofits deploy many types and styles of digital texts, including social media. Classical rhetorical appeals can be effective means for achieving positive impact in that context. When used correctly, these ‘digital texts’ can be leveraged for maximum engagement with audiences. This study examines both a large, national organization – the National Sexual Violence Resource Center – and a small, regional one – Branch House Family Justice Center – for not only what sort of digital texts are utilized, …

How Couples Youtube Channels Forge "Friendships" With Their Viewers: A Thematic Textual Analysis, Marisol Botello

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

A “couples YouTube channel” is a YouTube channel where a real-life romantic couple posts videos about their relationship. On YouTube there are hundreds of such channels, and some are so popular that those couples actually make a living creating and sharing their stories. How do they do this? More specifically: what marketing techniques, specifically storytelling practices, do these YouTube couples use to resonate with audiences?

This exploratory, qualitative study seeks to answer this question through a thematic textual analysis of three couples YouTube channels. Using narrative theory and parasocial interaction as theoretical frameworks, the study interpretively analyzes a total of …

The Influence Of Social Media On The Tourism Industry: A Content Analysis Of Culinary Tourism Brands Via Instagram, Angela White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tourism industry in the United States is constantly changing and being influenced by social media, specifically Instagram. Culinary brands use Instagram to advertise their restaurants and dishes in a creative, visual way. As a result, Instagram is now being used as a tool by tourists and both potential and current customers to share their dining experiences and find these locations based on the visual appeal. This study provides a content analysis of Instagram account information and photo composition within eight popular culinary tourism destinations by examining the strategies used by the accounts. 50 randomly selected photos were used from …

Public Relations Of Inclusion: A Critical Reframing Of Autism Inclusion With Professors Of Teacher Candidates, Jessica Block Nerren

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There is a problem when inclusion is broken in our communities and in our schools while preliminary teachers call out for more preparation for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) inclusion in their credential programs (Bryant, 2018; Busby et al., 2012; Finch et al., 2013; Loiacono & Valenti, 2010; Morgan, 2015; Robertson et al., 2003; Walters, 2012). The purpose of this study is to explore the framing of ASD inclusion by professors of multiple and single subject preliminary teacher candidates. At this stage in the research, the framing of inclusion is defined as a pre-conscious sensemaking of inclusion for individuals with ASD …