Communication Commons^™

Drama: A Burlesque And Melodramatic Frame Analysis Of The January 6Th Committee Final Report, Makayla Chadwick Lindsay

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

On January 6^th, 2021, former president Donald Trump stated "...if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore". Following his speech thousands of Trump supporters marched to the United States capitol under the belief that they were stopping nationwide voter fraud. In the months following, the U.S. congress created The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol with the goal to investigate those responsible for the insurrection that took place at the U.S. capitol. This paper examines the committee's communication as they attempted to hold Trump …

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …

Something Wicked: Witches And Rhetorics Of Resistance, K. Scarlett Harrington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project joins other academic conversations regarding the dynamics of power, modernity, witchcraft, and magic within the contexts of Western hegemony. Occasioned by kairotic cultural events and the reinforcement of ideologies like those found in the Dobbs decision, QAnon conspiracy, and rise of Christian Nationalism, this project contends that evaluating the potential political power residing in witchery is necessary in understanding some of the nuances of hegemonic control and resistance to oppressive authority. Predominantly following rhetorical evaluations of magic found in the works of Gunn and Covino, I maintain a non-universal methodological practice that works to understand the various instrumentality …

Nebraska Politics And The Environment: Framing Political Communication In The State Of Nebraska In Comparison To National Level Discourse, Samuel Taylor

Honors Theses

Environmental public policy has seen little change on the national level in recent decades due to Congressional gridlock. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have entrenched their opposing viewpoints, and their communication on the topic utilizes issue frames to help sway the public to see their side. On the Republican side, these issue frames take the form of the “scientific uncertainty” and “economic consequences” frames. This study, based on issue framing, surveys the communication of Nebraska’s Republican State Senators to determine if they utilize the same issue frames or if they diverge from their national counterparts. By analyzing recent …

An Exploration Of Parenting Style, Parental Influence, And Relational Satisfaction, Lauren Richards, Ava Johnston, Kaylee Pierson

Communication Studies Student Works

No abstract provided.

Black Quarterback, White Masks: A Critical Analysis Of The Nfl Anthem Protests, Cody Walizer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The NFL anthem protests were and are an important cultural moment and social movement. The widespread emulation of the protest, and the adoption of the kneel as a symbol of unity, reverence, and silent objection demonstrates the protests’ continued relevance. This dissertation critically analyzes Colin Kaepernick’s protest through the lens of racial rhetorical criticism (Flores, 2016) and Fanonian communication studies (Towns, 2020). Through the case studies of David Brooks, Lee Siegel, and Colin Fleming, and their New York Times opinion pieces on Kaepernick from 2016-17, this study argues that the common discourses surrounding the protest exist within the strategic rhetoric …

Understanding Boundary Turbulence And Privacy Rules From The Receiver’S Perspective In Mental Illness Disclosures, Ian Maltas

Honors Theses

The present study aims to address a gap in current research focusing on relational outcomes of mental illness disclosures by studying the perspective of people who listen to the disclosures (called “receivers”). This study uses Communication Privacy Management Theory to analyze the process of disclosure, and its main research focus is on motivations for disseminating private information, and how that impacts relationships and privacy rules between co-owners of information. A thematic analysis was conducted to answer this inquiry, and a data conference was held to determine relevant themes in the data. The present study finds that people chose to tell …

2020 Usf Open Educational Resources Grant Report, Allison R. Thorson

USF OER Faculty Grant

Please find attached my final report from my $1000 2020 USF Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant. Although COVID-19 delayed the submission of this report, the global pandemic has also made open access materials even more essential to supporting student’s access at USF. I am appreciative of the funding to facilitate this project.

Throughout this process, I was able to ensure that the materials/readings I was offering to students for free did not violate copyright laws and open my eyes to resources that I did not know were available. Based on the findings of my analysis, my course readings have been …

Memorable Messages Received By Bereaved Parents: Using Attribution Theory To Understand Hurt And Compassion, April Samaras

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The communication bereaved parents have with family members, friends, colleagues, and healthcare providers following the death of a child can serve as a great comfort or exacerbate their grief. In order to understand this communication and why bereaved parents find it helpful or harmful, this study examines bereaved parents' experiences of compassionate and hurtful communication using the frameworks of memorable messages (Stohl & Reardon, 1981) and attribution theory (Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967). Fifty bereaved parents who lost a child between birth and 25-years-old completed an online survey. Tracy’s (2018) iterative analysis method revealed four types of compassionate messages: …

The Examination Of Social Support Received After Traumatic Experiences, Emily Abellon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to explore what constitutes effective and ineffective social support after an individual endures trauma. Participants were recruited mainly through social media to complete an online survey with open-ended questions. The survey provided participants with the opportunity to reflect and share the social support they received after the endured trauma, specifically disclosing what support messages were effective and ineffective, and why these messages were effective and ineffective. The messages found to be effectively supportive after the endured trauma, and the ones most frequently mentioned were emotional and appraisal support. These messages were found to be effective due to …

Women Of Appalachia: Common Ground, Different Matriarch, Cecelia A. Bagnoli

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

"Not Liberating Women Means The Building Of A Socialist Society Is Only Half-Way Done": A Feminist Analysis Of Ho Chi Minh's Advocacy For The First Law On Marriage And Family In 1959 Vietnam, Hannah Nguyen

Senior Independent Study Theses

In October 1959, Ho Chi Minh attended and spoke before the North Vietnamese National Assembly at the “Meeting to Discuss the Draft of the Law on Marriage and Family.” The purpose of this study is to provide a feminist rhetorical analysis of this address to explicate the rhetorical strategies Ho employed to advocate for this law. I argue that Ho reframed the Marriage and Family Law into a policy that corresponded to the needs and demands of the National Assembly through methods of dissociation, association, and strategic repetition. I also found that Ho employed a dual leader/uncle first persona to …

Goals Of Care Documentation: Insights From A Pilot Implementation Study, Marie C. Haverfield, Ariadna Garcia, Karleen F. Giannitrapani, Anne Walling, Joseph Rigdon, David B. Bekelman, Natalie Lo, Lisa S. Lehmann, Josephine Jacobs, Natalia Festa, Karl A. Lorenz

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Context
The Life Sustaining Treatment Decision Initiative is a national effort by the Veterans Health Administration to ensure goals of care documentation occurs among all patients at high risk of life-threatening events.
Objectives
Examine likelihood to receive goals of care documentation and explore associations between documentation and perceived patient care experience at the individual and site level.
Methods
Retrospective, quality improvement analysis of initiative pilot data from four geographically diverse Veterans Affairs (VA) sites (Fall 2014-Winter 2016) before national roll-out. Goals of care documentation according to gender, marital status, urban/rural status, race/ethnicity, age, serious health condition, and Care Assessment Needs …

Feminist Praxis Of Comparative Rhetoric, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Why is a feminist praxis necessary for a comparative study of rhetoric? What would a feminist praxis of comparative rhetoric do? mean? be? What can we come to know with a feminist praxis of comparative rhetoric? Offering first a critique of the idea of a comparative approach through feminist theories challenging binary epistemology and metaphorical meaning making, this essay proceeds to theorize a feminist praxis of comparative rhetoric. This feminist praxis engages the study of histories and theories of rhetoric across cultures by analyzing along intersectional lines of power exposing injustices and exploring potential for equity, decolonizing knowledge, and deconstructing …

On Healing Hearts: A Saudi Woman Perspective On The Experience Of Baby Loss, Art, And Compassion, Alaa Saeed Alkhalaf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation, “On Healing HeARTs: A Saudi Woman’s Perspective on the Experience of Baby Loss,” investigates how Shia Saudi bereaved mothers create meaning and make sense of their experience of baby loss. It explores the importance of art and compassion in the healing process. Using a multi-method design that includes art-based methods and autoethnography, I narrate my own experience of baby loss. The study relies on theories of sense-making and constructivism to interpret my findings. Looking at the experience from a unique cultural lens enables the readers and health providers to comprehend how certain cultural factors contribute to both the …

The Ghost Town: An Autoethnographic Study On The Effects Of Loss And Trauma On A Saudi Arabian International Student’S Well-Being, Salman J. Alzowibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We all have fought on grief’s battleground; some of us started at early ages, while others during their developmental age, teen’s years, or later in their adulthood. All of them are valuable resources and sites of knowledge that need to be explored. Yet, recent studies reduced grief into clinical psychological well-being. However, as I lived these experiences, trauma, loss, and grief impact all well-being dimensions. Grief intersects with large structures (e.g., social, economic, cultural, locations, etc.); all these components impact our way of grief how socially displayed (mourning). This dissertation encapsulates my personal experience elevating it to an academic work …

Fatty Fatty Two-By-Four—Can’T Get Through The Dressing Room Door?: An Examination Of Excess As Queer Failure, Miranda Dottie Olzman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Failure and fat are not linear. It is taught, learned, reminded, and internalized. Our bodies have memories that are built through repeated moments. And for me, failure has been a part of my body’s map since I was born. This project is the culmination of many failures. In this dissertation, I am examining queer failure in multiple contexts including body size, as well as religion to create a corpulent critique. I do this by examining the lineage of queer failure as well as queer temporality as it is linked to failure (Edelman; Muñoz; Halberstam; Love) with fat queer bodies serving …

“It's Like A Phantom Limb. It Feels Like It’S There. It's Supposed To Be There, But It's Not.”: Birthmothers’ Metaphors Of Ambiguous Loss, Melodee Lynn Sova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Birthmothers are a population with unique experiences and challenges. Among those challenges is the difficulty understanding and managing a loss for which they do not have a readily available coping strategy. As a birthmother, the author of this dissertation was uniquely situated to connecting with, and understanding the ways in which, birthmothers expressed their narratives. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the ways in which birthmothers make sense of their experiences with ambiguous loss by examining the metaphors they employ when narrating their adoption story. The use of metaphor in the birthmother narrative was especially important because metaphor …

The Ghosts Of Grief: An Exploration Of Gothic Influence In 2010s Horror Cinema, Halen Gifford

Senior Independent Study Theses

The purpose of this project is to examine gothic influences in contemporary horror cinema of the 2010s. To fulfill this purpose, the study employs comparative film analysis methods to analyze The Babadook (2014), The Invitation (2015), and Crimson Peak (2015) in order to identify intertextual gothic references in the cinematography, mise en scène, and narratives of the films. Specifically, this project examines the haunted house trope in the horror genre as characterized by the presence of ghosts and the personification of the setting. Through this analysis, four common themes emerged: “Houses with Personality,” “Tragic Losses,” “Memories and Ghosts,” and “Isolation.” …

“Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves”: Creating A Financial Literacy Workshop For College-Aged Women On The Relationship Among Spending, Saving, And Investing, Lesley Chinery

Senior Independent Study Theses

The purpose of this study is to create a financial literacy workshop for college-aged women to increase understanding of the relationship among spending, saving, and investing. Utilizing relevant scholarship on gender and economics, the Elaboration Likelihood Model, and interviews with experts in economics and with facilitators of financial literacy workshops, I created a virtual workshop for college-aged women. This research found that successfully enabling both central and peripheral processing routes plays a significant role in attracting potential participants to workshops and in turn, cognitively engages them during workshops. Moreover, planners of workshops need to ensure consistent appealing messaging in communication …

Breaking News: Sustainable Fashion Is In And Fast Fashion Is Out; Constructions Of Sustainable Consumption In Fast Fashion Advertising, Camryn Eve Rosenstein

Senior Independent Study Theses

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the pivotal role advertising plays in fast fashion consumption and shaping young consumers ideas and values about the fashion industry, fast fashion, sustainable consumption, and sustainability. This study contributes to limited research into greenwashing and consumer perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable consumption. Moreover, this study highlights the increased relevance of the sustainable fashion movement in mainstream society. The researcher recruited 30 college students to participants in focus group sessions and individual interviews. An H&M advertisement and a video clip from a documentary, The True Cost, were shown to participants, so …

Black Outside: A Film Exploring Black People’S Relationships With Outdoor Spaces, Zoie Bills

Senior Independent Study Theses

Spending time in nature is regarded as a great way to have fun and improve one’s mental or physical health. Black people are largely underrepresented in public parks and other outdoor spaces. My film explores the lack of Black presence in outdoor spaces in an effort to promote Black people’s usage of these places. I used interviews with students, environmental activists, and my own family in order to explore the scholarly, structural, cultural, and personal factors that impact Black folks’ engagement with the outdoors. The interviews revealed several major takeaways including that Black people have historical roots in outdoor spaces …

Branding Small Businesses In Small Communities, Lacey Jenkins

Masters Theses

Branding has grown into a vital part of communicating a brand to its audience members. Unfortunately, large portions of branding tactics are geared towards large corporations in large communities. Small and mid-sized businesses require different tactics in order to create a brand that effectively communicates its purpose and values to its consumers. Because of this, this thesis is looking at the branding tactics of a small business in Charleston, Illinois. This business, Phoenix Elite, showed weaknesses in multiple areas of its branding package. Using a literature review, the goal is to create a better understanding of what branding is, as …

Social Distancing: The New Professional Civility, Benjamin Hunt

Graduate Research

As a naturalistic paradigm dictated by dialectal practices, culture must be understood in relation to a time and place in order to make ethical sense of society. Similarly, culture cannot be appropriately measured and studied without a reference to prior historical and geographical contexts. Naturalism is a dialectic that manifests as a type of evolution within our society. This cultural phenomenon allows human beings to reflect on those constructs through empirical means in order to understand the world, and to best prepare a society for how to move forward. The actions of the United States Government in regard to social …

An Empirical Analysis Of Individual Events In Collegiate Forensics, Jordan Duffin Wong

Honors Theses

Anecdotally, it is a widely accepted notion in the United States’ collegiate competitive speech and debate community that a competitor’s strong record of competitive performance in the activity at the high school level is a powerful predictor of similar success in the activity at the collegiate level. However, no evidence has been brought to bear supporting this claim. This paper uses the universe of American Forensic Association National Individual Events Tournament results from 2013 to 2018 and links collegiate competitors to their respective high school performance data. I demonstrate evidence that high school experience does, in fact, appear to play …

Performances Of An Able, Academic Mind, Caleb Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Western culture individualizes issues of public health. This is especially clear in academic life, where the structures of the university disable atypical bodies and minds in order to force them to simultaneously perform the roles of scholar, teacher, and colleague. The university not only fails to accommodate afflicted minds and bodies, it also produces more precarity in the process. This project is a performance ethnography of my time in the academy, starting with my life as an undergraduate being disciplined into academic life, moving toward recruitment for graduate school, and ending with events surrounding the construction of this very project. …

The Colored Pill: A History Film Performance Exposing Race Based Medicines, Wanda Lakota

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Of the 32 pharmaceuticals approved by the FDA in 2005, one medicine stood out. That medicine, BiDil®, was a heart failure medication that set a precedent for being the first approved race based drug for African Americans. Though BiDil®, was the first race specific medicine, racialized bodies have been used all throughout history to advance medical knowledge. The framework for race, history, and racialized drugs was so multi-tiered; it could not be conceptualized from a single perspective. For this reason, this study examines racialized medicine through performance, history, and discourse analysis.

The focus of this work aimed …

Performing Ir, Charles Darwin Lulevitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an attempt to create a new way of understanding international relations, which is defined here as knowledge and practice that informs us of the nature, goals, and actors of international politics. At the core of the research is a simple concern, but one I am still rather unsure I have thought of enough: what does it mean to create a different discourse? The argument made is that international relations as we know it, is a discourse centered on state, sovereignty, and anarchy, and also white, hegemonic masculine culture, which forces us to maintain that culture’s social dominance. …

Dis/Ableist Consumption: A Critical Thematic Analysis Of Avowed And Ascribed Neuro-Identities In The Classroom, Shaundi C. Newbolt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, faculty and students are publicly claiming neurodivergent identities and support for the neurodiversity movement. This study uses Collier and Hecht’s cultural identity theories with Lang and Chen’s two-step process, critical thematic analysis (CTA), to examine avowals and ascriptions with four diagnostic terms, ASD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and dyslexia, of students and professors from Rate My Professors (RMP) with Ritter’s frame of RMP as a phenomenon.

A total of 1,022 posts are analyzed to understand how students resist or re-inscribe popular medical model/deficit discourse in the classroom: student avowals (N = 232), professor avowals (N = 51), …

Rhetorical Genealogy And The Ethics Of Eugenics, David Mark Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation strives to critique contemporary rhetoric on eugenics. In recent years, scientists succeeded in mapping the human genome and subsequently developed new gene editing technologies. To situate current ethical discourses about eugenics, I trace histories of these discourses at several scales of society – from the macroscopic level of the body politic to the meso level where modes of assessment have been deployed purportedly to accurately evaluate human characteristics to the microscopic level of the gene. I employ Foucauldian genealogy to highlight how, despite marked differences over time in specific eugenic discourses and practices exist, the underlying rhetoric has …