Communication Commons^™

“Did That Just Happen?”: Influence Of Embodiment And Immersion On Character Identification In Virtual Reality Environments, Shane Burrell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore character identification in virtual reality (VR) in connection to embodiment and immersion. Using previous data gathered from a qualitative study investigating character roles and character identification, I conduct a mixed-method study (survey and qualitative data analysis) to operationalize the concepts of character identification, embodiment, and immersion, study their relationships, and investigate the mediating role of character identification. This study, is a step toward building and validating measurement scales for character identification, embodiment, and VR immersion, suggests future avenues for exploring how character identification shapes user experiences in VR.

Decolonial Lessons From Historical African American Community Leaders: Reconstructing African American Identity As Resistance In Praxis, Rhejean King-Johnson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study analyzes the communication praxis for the purposes of decolonization of four community leaders, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells and Malcolm X in efforts to reconstruct African American (AA) identity by exposing the inhumane speech, behavior and thought of white supremacy. Their work employs specific communication strategies such as descriptive narrative, allegory, two-ness, anaphora, and metaphors to address the oppressive white-centric representation of AA identity and provide a decolonial shift in U.S. Eurocentric ideology. Through a close reading and textual analysis of representative works such as, Frederick Douglass’s book, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” (2005), …

Communication Apprehension: A Pressing Matter For Students, A Project Addressing Unique Needs Using Communication In The Discipline Workshops, Brenda L. Rombalski

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Speaking skills are one of the most desired outcomes for university students. Competent communicators have more opportunities for professional development and upward mobility. On the other hand, research shows that several types of communication are on the "greatest fears" list for a majority. This project contains six one-hour workshops to help reduce communication apprehension. Communication apprehension (CA) is the concept; Communication in the Disciplines (CID) is the theoretical foundation, applied to this project. Researchers expect to see a rise in communication fears, Nevertheless, these workshops are timeless and pragmatic, each contributes to reducing communication apprehension by teaching strategies to …

Translating Risk Information To Protective Action: Examining Household Response To Information About Earthquake Hazards And Risk, Carson C. Macpherson-Krutsky

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Natural hazards have been a part of the landscape since its existence, but they are becoming more devastating as they intersect with growing populations and as climate change increases their frequency and intensity. As these changes occur, the need to understand how to reduce disaster impacts becomes paramount. Despite growing concern and increasing costs of disasters over the past decade, household preparedness, which is at the foundation of disaster readiness, has seen little to no improvement. Using two research experiments, we adopt the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM; Lindell & Perry, 2004; 2012) as a framework to investigate what motivates …

(Re)Discovering I Am Worthy: A Black Feminist Autoethnographic Confrontation Of Abuse, Sarah Elizabeth Keeton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis is a Black Feminist Autoethnographic confrontation of white supremacist, racist ideology. I assert that Black people are in an abusive relationship with America. Utilizing the Cycle of Violence, the relationship abuse framework, Critical Race theory and Black Feminist Thought, this thesis explores the violent ways America abuses Black bodies and how that abuse affects our very beings. Utilizing autoethnography to record what others have erased, I confront my abusers in all of their different forms, including the internalized abuse of self. This writing is a process of uncovering and (re)covery. This recovery process will examine the convergence …

Environmental Rhetoric And An Ecology Of Transcendence: A Rhetorical Criticism Of Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock, Alyssa Kahn

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My project blends Burkean theory with Indigenous rhetoric to argue that the counter- story of Awake proposes an ecology of transcendence to make sense of human-nature relationships. I wanted to analyze Awake A Dream From Standing Rock. The documentary is explicitly about Indigenous peoples. This documentary tells the story of the peaceful protests and resistance led by Native people at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation or Lakota Tribe in North Dakota. The activists were protecting the water otherwise known as water protectors/warriors from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The assembly of DAPL is intended to carry perforated …

Cancel Culture: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Social Media Practice Of Canceling, Samantha Haskell

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Unlike previous forms of public shaming, canceling is a product of Web 2.0 and the boom of social media. The act of canceling is inherently tied to the word “canceled,” however, how the public defines a cancellation is not static. Instead, how those on social media partake and understand canceling is due to consistent strategies that emerge during a cancellation. In this research, I conducted a case study of the cancellation of Kevin Spacey that took place in 2017. Over 1700 tweets discussing Kevin Spacey’s cancellation were captured in order to determine the process of canceling. Through qualitative content analysis, …

Investing In Social And Behavior Change Is Cost-Effective For Improving Malaria Behaviors In Côte D’Ivoire, Breakthrough Research

Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Choices

Social and behavior change (SBC) interventions are considered an essential part of malaria prevention and treatment interventions, yet gaps in information on the cost and impact of SBC mean decisionmakers have underappreciated the value of SBC for contributing to improved health outcomes. To address this issue, Breakthrough RESEARCH has leveraged evidence from 112 studies on the impact of SBC interventions on malaria health behaviors and 70 studies on general SBC intervention costs to model the cost-effectiveness of SBC programming for malaria in the Business Case for Investing in Social and Behavior Change for Malaria.

The Curious Cases Of Cancel Culture, Loydie Solange Burmah

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Cancel culture is a complex phenomenon that challenges our notions of civic practices, perpetuates surveillance practices amongst individuals who encourage digital public shaming and obscures communal ideas regarding accountability. Hence, it is imperative to complicate and nuance “cancel culture” to understand the different meanings derived from its diverse mechanizations. Other matrices such as power, platform governance, decoloniality, and more bolster ideas about the phenomenon’s extensive sociocultural reach. Using a critical digital ethnographic approach, I exemplify with the analysis two cancel culture cases uncovering themes such as selective cancelations, cancelation effectiveness, performative activism, performative wokeness, hypocrisy, victimization, and empathy. This study …

Donald Trump’S Securitizing Speech Acts And Theunited States Maximum-Pressure Strategy Towardsnorth Korea In 2017, Nida Rubini, Yandry Kurniawan

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

Intersubjective process of international communication may shape security issue which requires extraordinary policy. This article aimed to analyze how speech acts of a country leader securitize an issue and result in an extraordinary or distinct foreign policy. Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America, demonstrated his blunt talkativeness through social media and formal speech acts, including on the North Korean nuclear issue during his presidency term. Despite of the regular focus placement of North Korea’s nuclear in the United States’ foreign policy since the 1990s, Trump leaves the issue during his campaign. Nevertheless, in 2017, the …

Performance On Digital Dramaturgy Regionin Simultaneous Video Conferences, Nurul Robbi Sepang, Sari Monik Agustin

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

Pandemic has forced us to work and learn from home. Data shows a significant increase in internet usage during the pandemic. People have longer working time, online meetings and sometimes they have to do several meetings at the same time (simultaneously). Then, how do you make a presentation when it has to be fragmented? This paper aimed to identify how you perform digital dramaturgy through simultaneous video conference. The frame of reference was built using Goffman’s Dramaturgy and Mead’s Self. The study was carried out under the construction paradigm and data were collected from observations and interviews with educators who …

0878: The Herald-Dispatch Archives, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The collection consists of 4 “groupings” of materials that were donated by the Huntington Herald Dispatch when it moved from former offices in Huntington to its newer one in 2021. These groupings include the Herald Dispatch Subject Files, the Name Files, the Photograph Index Files, and the Office Materials (materials boxed up from individual offices in the Herald Dispatch). The first grouping of Subject Files came to the archive in 23 cabinets with 4 drawers each and contains approximately 16,000 folders of subject headings spanning the 1950s to the 2000s. The second grouping of Name Files is in 7 large …

Inherent Frictions And Deliberate Frustrations: Examining The Legal Variables Of State Foi Law Administration, A.Jay Wagner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

FOI laws are of a category of laws acutely predisposed to internal resistance and erosion. The study seeks to better understand these limitations by examining legal elements of the laws through an exploratory field study, or audit, of nine state FOI laws. Among the study’s findings are two uniquely strong predictors of better FOI results: The existence of an independent FOI advocacy organization in the state and a legislature subject to the law. The findings suggest cultivating a culture of transparency may be as or more important than any of the generally considered legal variables, such as deadlines or penalties.

Examining Antecedents To Accuracy- And Defense-Motivated Information Insufficiency In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Timothy K.F. Fung, Po Yan Lai, Robert J. Griffin, Sharon Dunwoody

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Although the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model recognizes that people seek and process risk information in various ways and for various motives, no research, to date, has examined the model beyond accuracy motive. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to advance the model by examining (1) the antecedents that induce individuals’ accuracy- and defense-motivated information insufficiency and (2) the effect of a broader array of the RISP’s perceived hazard characteristics and affective responses. To do so, we used the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study because COVID-19 is a newly emergent infectious disease with highly politicized, controversial …

Approaching Trans Debates As Fascistic Sites Of Engagement., Sarah Jump

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the past decade, trans rights issues have been a legal topic of discussion and are still discussed publicly in 2021. This thesis researched how arguments surrounding anti-trans issues were successful in the United States. The arguments surrounding these issues are important to study to see how they pass within society and if traditional rules of argumentation are changing. This thesis proposes that traditional dialectical argument is no longer occurring and has taken a post-dialectical turn. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the kinds of arguments used in these issues and build the case that they are evidence …

A Quantative Study Of Heol Students' Perceptions Of Communication Within The Lms, Holly Walker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this applied study was to provide knowledge and information concerning students’ perceptions of communication within the LMS platforms for higher education institutions, using a quantitative study surrounding communication, sense of community, and LMS tools to address the problem. The quantitative design used a survey that consisted of various closed-ended questions, including Likert, multiple choice, and outcome measures of True/False and Yes/No questions. Various social media platforms were leveraged to provide a convenience sampling method to attract potential participants, and a total of 986 qualified respondents completed the survey. Data was analyzed through a series of descriptive statistics, …

The Rhetoric Of The Double-Voiced: Strategic Ambiguity In The Silent Protest Parade, Shelby R. Crow

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Examinations of historical social movements offer great insight into contemporary social justice activism. In this thesis, I analyzed the Silent Protest Parade of 1917. The Silent Protest Parade consisted of approximately 10,000 African American men, women, and children who marched in complete silence to illuminate racial violence and the lynchings of African Americans. I argued that through the concept of strategic ambiguity, protesters were able to communicate between African American and powerful White audiences, many of whom held racist beliefs and attitudes.

Community And Cultural Reentry: Exploring Reverse Culture Shock Among Returning Missionaries Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Sydney Pond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Considerable research asserts that individuals who have immersive experiences in foreign cultures may experience mental and emotional challenges upon returning home, a phenomenon known as reverse culture shock. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints annually sends tens of thousands of proselytizing missionaries to various locations around the globe, and the nature of their missionary service places them at risk of experiencing problems during reentry. Despite this risk, reverse culture shock among returning Latter-day Saint missionaries remains relatively unexplored. The aim of this study was to examine how former Latter-day Saint missionaries made sense of their experiences returning to …

Media In A Time Of Crisis: Newspaper Coverage Of Covid-19 In East Asia;, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How have newspapers covered Covid-19 in Asia? To answer this question, I studied East Asian English-language newspapers published between January and July 2020. First, I measured the level of news media attention on Covid-19 among all reports. Second, I analyzed the tone and content of 330 editorials. I divided the analysis into two time periods: the initial crisis breakout period, when the number of infections was rising or high, and the crisis abatement period, when new infections declined to manageable levels. Findings show that although newspapers were slow to begin addressing the pandemic, their early editorials carried an alarming tone, …

The Embeddedness Of Traditional Economy Transforming Towards An Alternative Economy: A Case Study Of Lumbung Pitih Nagari (Lpn) Limau Manis, West Sumatra, Indah Sari Rahmaini, Arie Sujito

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

This article seeks to observe the modernization of economic institutions that were originally working traditionally, into alternative economic institutions that continue to apply the value of locality. Previous studies on LPN Limau Manis only discussed its role in poverty alleviation and the management of its economic organization, but did not provide a comprehensive explanation of the transformation of LPN that combines traditional and modern concepts. This article argues that the institutional modernization of LPN Limau Manis that occurs remains attached to the customary values of the Nagari society. The qualitative method was used to collect data using a case study …

Cleavages And Electoral Support To Islamist Party In Javan Urban Areas: The Case Of Prosperous Justice Party, Andi Rahman Alamsyah

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

Several studies have noted that electoral support for one of the Islamist parties in Indonesia, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), is mostly concentrated in urban areas. While I agree with this observation, I found that these studies did not pay adequate attention to the diversity of socio-political conditions in urban areas that contributed to the varying electoral support for PKS. One of these socio-political conditions is what Lipset and Rokkan (1967) conceptualized as cleavages (divisions of society). Based on the results of 2014 and 2019 local parliamentary elections in Javan urban areas, I argue that there are three cleavage patterns …

Tourism Gentrification In Bali, Indonesia: A Wake-Up Call For Overtourism, I Wayan Suyadnya

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

Many tourists destinations experience revitalisation through funding from foreign capital that is brought by gentrification. As a result, tourist areas transform into regions that are friendly toward tourists and investment. Various studies see gentrification as an expression of consumer demand, individual preferences over the law of supply and demand. However, this article argues that tourism gentrification shows a different dynamic, namely driving the significance of tourism growth that supports overtourism. This article focuses on the reason why Balinese do not feel that the phenomenon of gentrification and the development of protests are a part of the symptom of overtourism. Research …

Sentiment Analysis Of Digital Nomad In Indonesia: A Case Study In Bali, Dewi Puspita Rahayu, Ayu Kusumastuti, Wida Ayu Puspitosari

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

The digital nomad is a new type of worker who works from a location other than a “traditional office,” with the freedom to choose where and when to work as long as they have good internet access. The presence of digital nomads has an impact on the dynamics or social changes in society. The public’s reaction to the appearance of this digital traveler was mixed. Some people believe that these new ways of working will harm the work system, but many are gradually adopt it. Bali has become one of the strategic locations and is widely used as a destination …

Communication And Learning: The Bilateral Information Transmission In The Cobweb Model, Eran Guse, M. C. Sunny Wong

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Communication is a natural activity to gain information and exchange ideas for making proper economic decisions. The mechanism of social interaction remains inadequately understood. Previous studies have investigated the consequences of communication under a one-way information transmission mechanism from moreinformed leaders to less-informed followers. This mechanism leads to the ‘‘boomerang effect’’—a reduction in leaders’ forecasting efficiency due to the information transmission. However, communication should be interactive. This paper devises a two-stage interactive cobweb model with a generalized information diffusion process called the bi-directional information diffusion (BID) process, which allows both information transmission and feedback mechanisms. Numerical analysis and simulations show …

Lindenwood Digest, July 28, 2021, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

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

Challenging The Illusion Of Diversity: A New Theoretical Paradigm Towards Newsroom Inclusion., Paromita Saha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past forty years, the news industry has attempted to diversify the racial composition of their newsrooms from the perspective of representing their markets better mirroring best business practices in the industry. The statistics show that an affirmative style of recruitment has produced minimal, superficial results with a high turnover of minority journalists who are hardly promoted to editorial positions, as well as skewed representations of minority racial groups. The literature indicates that hegemonic ideological forces and the White male professional ethos behind journalism is not conducive to minority journalists producing meaningful changes to news content. My study indicates …

The Challenges Facing Press Freedom In The West Bank After June 2007: A Study On A Group Of Communicators In The Palestinian Media, Saib Nasr Allah, Dr. Mohammed Ahmad A Dawabsheh

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study aims to identify the powers given by the Palestinian Press and Publication Law to the administrative authority in the West Bank in restraining the media content, recognize the procedures and the constrains imposed on the media by the Palestinian Press and Publication Law and identify the media laws regulating the freedom of press in the Palestinian Territories.

This study is descriptive, which use surveys and e-mail investigation as tools to collect data from a 90-communicator group in the West Bank. The subjects work for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. The study concluded that the Palestinian Press and Publication Law …

The Guardian, Week Of July 26, 2021, Wright State Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

News articles from The Guardian for the week of July 26, 2021. The Guardian is the official student-run newspaper for Wright State University. It has been published regularly since March of 1965.

Subjective Cognitive Decline Higher Among Sexual And Gender Minorities In The United States, 2015–2018, Jason D. Flatt, Ethan C. Cicero, Nickolas H. Lambrou, Whitney Wharton, Joel G. Anderson, Erin D. Bouldin, Lisa C. Mcguire, Christopher A. Taylor

Social and Behavioral Health Faculty Research

Introduction: Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) represents self-reported problems with memory, a possible early sign of dementia. Little is known about SCD among sexual and gender minority (SGM) adults who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender or gender non-binary. Methods: Data were weighted to represent population estimates from 25 states’ 2015–2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to describe SCD in adults ≥ 45 years by SGM status. Logistic regression tested associations between demographic and health conditions. Results: SCD prevalence was higher in SGM (15.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI]:13.1–18.2) than in non-SGM adults (10.5%; 95% CI:10.1–10.9; P < .0001). SGM adults with SCD were also more likely to report functional limitations due to SCD than non-SGM adults with SCD, 60.8% versus 47.8%, P =.0048. Differences in SCD by SGM status were attenuated after accounting for depression. Discussion: Higher prevalence of SCD in SGM adults highlights the importance of ensuring inclusive screenings, interventions, care services, and resources for SGM adults.

Media And Social Media Best Practices For Feminist Activist Groups And Organizations, Arien Rozelle

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

Feminist organizations and activist groups from the Women’s Suffrage movement to the Women’s March have utilized media relations tactics and techniques to share organizational messages. Over time, the art of media relations has evolved from a tactical role to a strategic necessity, one that is vital to the success of any activist organization or group as they seek to inform, educate and/or persuade their intended audience through the use of media and social media.

This essay identifies best practices for feminist activist groups and organizations to help begin or improve their media relations efforts, ranging from initial hiring, to media …