Communication Commons^™

Associations Between Adolescent And Parent Media Connection And Perceptions Of Emotional Climate In The Home, Laura A. Woodland

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An overwhelming increase in technology and media use this past decade has been found to affect family relationships in various ways. Devices such as cell phones, tablets, and computers, have been found to both be the means of bringing family members closer together by communicating from a distance, while also disrupting and straining family connection, in particular the adolescent to parent relationship. Data from the Flourishing Families Project was used to analyze the varying perceptions of adolescent and parents regarding technology communication with one another and their personal perception of the emotional climate in the home. Results from this study …

Extreme Far-Right Murder-Suicide Attacks In The U.S. And Germany: A Comparative Storyline Analysis, Hayden Lucas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite increasing empirical research on suicide terrorism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, prior studies have focused primarily on radical Islamic terrorism in non-Western contexts. As a result, less is known about how murder-suicide attacks committed by other ideological movements unfold, particularly the extreme far-right in North America and Europe. Researchers have begun to theorize the social and psychological processes believed to play a role in the radicalization of suicide terrorists. However, the observable, situational processes shaping radicalized individuals when planning, preparing for, and executing suicide terrorism remain underexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify intervention points by …

“We’Re Sinking And We’Re Sinking Quick”: Family And Feeding Work During The Covid-19 Pandemic For Single, White, Middle-Class Mothers, Debora Garrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the work of single, white, middle-class women feeding and caring for their families during the COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020. The study draws from qualitative analyses of one-on-one interviews conducted with seven single mothers. After situating single mothers and family food provision in the academic literature, as well as and current knowledge about the pandemic in the U.S., the author explores ways that the pandemic disrupted family life. Findings indicated that the single mothers were keenly impacted by being cut off from child care, schools, and other social connections they needed to maintain employment. Further, their …

Artistry In Air: The Story Of The Younkins, Beth Lewis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For sixty years, a Northwest Arkansas family has dominated the world of general aviation by drawing upon its wealth of expertise, innovation and exceptional talent. Jim Younkin, an electrical engineer, invented an autopilot series that revolutionized the industry. His son, Bobby became one of the top aerobatic pilots in the world and Jim’s grandchildren, Matt and Amanda, also became critically acclaimed performers in the air show business. Like his father, Matt is ranked among the best of pilots in the industry. Jim also received national recognition for his stunning recreations of and restorations of historical aircraft. Bobby operated Younkin Airshows, …

The Relationship Between Social Skills And Coping Drinking Motives: A Test Of The Social Skills Deficit Vulnerability Model, Jaimee A. Smart

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Because drinking alcohol to cope has many negative outcomes (e.g., alcohol use disorder, problematic drinking patterns, etc.), it is vital to understand what contributes to drinking to cope. Having adequate social skills and social support has been found to help overall mental health. As such, it was logical to reason that social skills and social support could also impact physical health. Specifically, social skills and social support were examined as potential ways to buffer coping drinking development. This study utilized information from 176 adults living in the United States to understand the role social skills and social support play in …

The Root Of The Problem: Mississippi And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Matthew Brennan Hendley

Honors Theses

The Root of the Problem: Mississippi and the School-to-Prison Pipeline is a solutions journalism piece about the “schoolhouse to jailhouse” theory, which represents a phenomenon in which grade school students, the majority of which are minority youth, are funneled into the criminal justice system via schools through policies and procedures that criminalize student misbehavior. The piece is an in-depth analysis of the arrival, history, and current state of the school-to-prison pipeline in Mississippi, featuring one specific effort to dismantle the phenomenon in the Sunflower County Consolidated School District in the Mississippi Delta. In addition to this analysis, the piece explores …

Snake Mind, Wolf Body, Panther Courage: Jojo Rabbit As A Critique Of Hegemonic Masculinity, Christian W. Lippert

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In 2019, the movie Jojo Rabbit (Waititi, 2019) was released to theaters. Because the film uses comedy and satire to tell a story about Jojo, a young Nazi who has Hitler as an imaginary friend, it received mix reviews. This analysis focuses on how the movie sheds light on the negative influence of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the messages and actions that place men above women or types of masculinity above femininity and other masculinities. Jojo’s desire to be a Nazi is deeply connected to his desire to be man. This analysis examines how hegemonic masculinity a) can …

Removing Barriers To Language Sample Analysis: Computer-Automated Microstructure Scoring (Cams), Carly Fox

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Language sample analysis (LSA) is an important practice for providing a sensitive and accurate measure of a child’s language abilities. Several research-validated progress-monitoring tools are currently available that are designed to measure language quality through narrative samples in school-age children. While these tools provide clinically important information about a child’s language abilities, they can be time-consuming to code, and challenging to code reliably. In recent years there has been a surge in the use of automated essay scoring (AES) systems for the scoring of high-stakes written assessments, but few programs has been designed to automate clinical assessments. Narrative microstructure, an …

In His Name: White Evangelicals, The Republican Party, And Their Support And Endorsement Of Donald Trump – Documentary Podcast, Matthew Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to provide historical context to the rise of White Evangelicals political involvement in the United States and how it evolved to support and endorse Donald Trump for president in the 2016 election. Three major factors led to this: White Christian Nationalism, traditional family values, and racial resentment. The podcast is a story told in three parts, addressing the history of these elements starting before America was even a nation to today. This project seeks to address the past, acknowledge what led to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and reckon with White Evangelicals ought to …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …

Investigating The Role Of Social Capital And Everyday Communication In Campus Community Resilience During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kaleb A. Turner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigated the role of social capital and everyday communication in campus community resilience capacities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study conceptualized the university community as a micro-community that experienced sharp disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same way that traditionally conceptualized communities harness communication to build resilience, this study provides evidence that micro-communities, such as the university campus, have the same potential. Focus groups with students, faculty, and staff, as well as one-on-one semi-structured interviews with students, resulted in 557 pages of single-spaced transcripts that provided rich data to understand this community resilience context. …

A Discourse Analysis Of Student-To-Student Conversations In A Secondary School Physical Science Laboratory Setting, Jennifer Faith Oramous

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative grounded theory study applies Discourse Analysis (DA) to focus on the student-to-student (SS) “productive conversation” occurring within groups engaged in several activities in a physical science laboratory with a goal to identify aspects and patterns of such conversation. In this study, Student-to-Student Productive Talk (SSPT) stated in relation to the accepted definitions of classroom productive talk. SSPT is on-topic discussion between students that meet the requirements of productive conversation such as visible thinking and argumentation. The form of analysis applied in this study was derived from Classroom Discourse Analysis by Cazden (2001), Gee (2014a; 2014b), and Rymes (2016). …

Recovering From Substance Abuse In Arkansas: The Accessibility And Affordability Of Drug Treatment Programs, Whitney King

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is going to examine how people recover from drug addiction and see if there are any similarities due to their socioeconomic statuses at the time of recovery. This research addresses the following questions: How accessible and affordable are drug addiction recovery programs and rehabilitation facilities in Arkansas for mid- to low-income individuals? What are the social costs for people who can’t obtain drug rehabilitation services? The goal of this research is to explore whether there is a lack of affordable recovery programs in the state of Arkansas. This project utilizes survey responses as well as in-depth interviews with …

Digital Marketing And The Culture Industry: The Ethics Of Big Data, Jonathan Michael Bowman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Instead of the steady march of the one percent growth in ecommerce as compared to total retail revenues in the last decade (to comprise about nine percent of the industry at the close of 2019), we have witnessed leaps now to over twenty percent in just the last year. Scott Galloway marks the pandemic as an accelerant not just of digital marketing posting a year of growth for each month of quarantine but as an accelerant of each major GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) firm from market dominance to total dominance (Galloway 2020). Viewing these trends from the standpoint …

Information Mapping Of Religious Conflict Research In Indonesia: Bibliometric Analysis, Rusmulyadi Rusmulyadi, Susanne Dida, Hanny Hafiar, Soleh Soemirat

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Research on religious conflict is mostly carried out by researchers in Indonesia, but it has not been mapped integratively. Several studies on religious conflict have been published and indexed on the Portal Garuda. The Portal Garuda is a national indexer for scientific publications in Indonesia. This study aims to determine a map of the development of religious conflict research in Indonesia. In this study, several scientific articles on the theme of religious conflict were reviewed. This study uses a quantitative approach with the bibliometric method. The results of the study show that the trend of religious conflict research in …

Adderall Experience During The College Years: A Reflection Of First-Hand Experiences, Sarah Ross

Honors Projects in Communication

Illicit Adderall use has long been acknowledged by the media. Despite its acknowledgement, students are still facing the challenges that come with illicit Adderall. The objective of this study is to allow students to express their own thoughts and opinions regarding illicit Adderall use and to broaden the types of experiences that are being reported. Interviews were conducted with seven college-aged students from a small university in Rhode Island. Three females and four males, 100% identifying as white, were asked a series of semi-structured interview questions. Interviews were conducted anonymously and held via Zoom on a private, password-protected computer. Interviews …

How Risk-Related Statistics, As Reported In News And Social Media, Are Linked To The Use Of The Public Transit System, Prashiddhi Pokhrel

Thinking Matters Symposium

Due to the pandemic, people have started relying more on televisions, news, social media, and other news outlets for guidance. Moreover, with the increasing amount of news, data, and information there is also an increase in the amount of misleading statistics. People’s opinions and decisions significantly depend on the data, statistics, and information that they are exposed to, as well as their sources. For this project, we want to look at how information and its sources are affecting the decision made by the general public for the usage of the Portland Transit System. It is very important to know why …

The Impacts Of Social Media Sites Such As Instagram And Facebook On Emerging Adult’S Perceptions Of Self-Esteem And Body Satisfaction, Wynne Cushing, Samantha Shandorf, Courtney Piccirillo, Abby Frazier

Thinking Matters Symposium

This study investigated the impacts of social media use, specifically Facebook and Instagram, on emerging adults’ perceptions of self-esteem and body satisfaction. Limited research exists regarding the influence of demographic variables, such as gender, race, and geographic location, on the relationship between social media use and negative outcome variables. The researchers utilized a cross-sectional survey design with a target population of University of Southern Maine students. Researchers hypothesize that emerging adults who spend more time on Facebook and Instagram are more likely to have lower self-esteem and body satisfaction than emerging adults who spend little to no time on Facebook …

Impact Of Viewing Fatphobic Messages On Facebook In Generation X, Emily Gobi, Anna Biasin, Emily Baronfeld

Thinking Matters Symposium

Social media has been found to directly affect body image dissatisfaction (BID), which is defined as a discrepancy between how a person views their weight, shape and size, and what is indicated by objective measures (Silva et al., 2011). Previous studies on body image and social media have mostly been limited to women and girls (Ginsberg et al., 2015), and little research is available for individuals past early adulthood. The current study surveyed individuals from Generation X, defined as anyone born between 1965 and 1980. In addition, this study recruited participants from all genders, asking participants to self-identify as male, …

Narrative Storytelling In Conjunction With Environmental Journalism, Abbey Edmonson

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the effectiveness of long-form narrative storytelling in relation to environmental journalism. It particularly focuses on effectively communicating the seriousness of climate change on a local level through narrative storytelling. The bulk of the information was gathered through multiple interviews with people experiencing the effects of climate change on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. By using interviews with local people interspersed with scientific data, I hope to be able to show the average reader that climate change is real and it can dangerously affect people on a local level, even in rural states like Mississippi.

Through my research, I …

A Tale Of Two Companies: The Importance Of Public Relations Amidst The Shift Towards Corporate Activism, Olivia Schwab

Honors Theses

By comparing the controversies that stemmed from Papa John’s John Schnatter and CrossFit’s Greg Glassman, some obvious public relations strategies stand out, including but not limited to understanding an audience, adapting to a changing environment, establishing a crisis communications plan, and taking controversial stands on issues close to the audience’s hearts. Most importantly though, if companies preach messages of social change, they must follow up on their stances with corrective action to do their best to help facilitate it in society.

While examining the history of corporate activism, it is clear why and how some corporations become the victims of …

Regulatory Goldilocks: Finding The Just And Right Fit For Content Moderation On Social Platforms, Nina Brown

Texas A&M Law Review

Social media is a valuable tool that has allowed its users to connect and share ideas in unprecedented ways. But this ease of communication has also opened the door for rampant abuse. Indeed, social networks have become breeding grounds for hate speech, misinformation, terrorist activities, and other harmful content. The COVID-19 pandemic, growing civil unrest, and the polarization of American politics have exacerbated the toxicity in recent months and years.

Although social platforms engage in content moderation, the criteria for determining what constitutes harmful content is unclear to both their users and employees tasked with removing it. This lack of …

Medical Populism And Covid-19 Testing, Kristin Hedges, Gideon Lasco

Development Studies Faculty Publications

This paper uses the lens of medical populism to analyze the impact of biocommunicability on COVID-19 testing through a case study approach. The political efficacy of testing is traced through two mini-case studies: the Philippines and the United States. The case studies follow the approach of populism scholars in drawing from various sources that ‘render the populist style visible’ from the tweets and press releases of government officials to media reportage. Using the framework of medical populism, the case studies pay attention to the ways in which coronavirus testing figured in (1) simplification of the pandemic; (2) spectacularization of the …

Whose Expectation? Ideal Beauty And The Cultural Construction Of The American Woman, Ameliea Rose Dulaney

Honors Theses

My research project “Whose Expectation? Ideal Beauty and the Cultural Construction of the American Woman” explores the cultural and political climate of American society over the last four centuries, analyzing how ideal beauty standards have worked in the lives of American women over the years, examining (1) how they have been negotiated by women at different times of cultural and political flux, (2) how, although beauty has long been an integral aspect of feminine identity, it has become even more so with the introduction of new technologies (advertising, tv, makeup, etc.), and (3) how as a result, the definition of …

Controversy, Coverage And Cancel Culture: The Daily Mississippian's Reporting Of The 2018 Ed Meek Controversy, And Related Findings, Mason Thomas Scioneaux

Honors Theses

As this thesis reflects a body of work completed by a journalism student near the conclusion of a journalism education at the University of Mississippi, I approached research and writing in that way. I interviewed three people, for an hour each, and the things I learned in those interviews greatly affected the conclusions I reached with this thesis. My full transcripts from those interviews are located in Appendices A-C. I also did a lot of scouring through articles of The Daily Mississippian from fall 2018 and otherwise; I looked at every single edition of the paper from that semester, both …

Chimes: April 30, 2021, Calvin University

Chimes

Sexual assault exists at Calvin, so do the tools to find healing by Harm Venhuizen and Katherine Benedict

Ask an immunologist: Prof. Shen on five vaccine myths by Alex Raycroft

Chimes sits down with Calvin's new provost: Noah Toly by Juliana Knot

A "Calvin walk" through dating history by Ezra Craker

Professor on weekdays, feminist footballer on weekends by Lauren Vanden Bosch

Women's soccer victorious in spring edition of MIAA tournament by Ellington Smith

Swimming upstream: Calvin women reflect on fields dominated by men by Abigail Ham

A last word on what Calvin was, is and needs to be by …

Connecting Charities With Creatives: Bridging The Gap Between Local Nonprofit Organizations And University Of Mississippi Students, Natalie Pruitt

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the need for marketing resources among North Mississippi nonprofit organizations and apply the findings to develop and launch a website based on primary and secondary research that connects local North Mississippi nonprofit organizations with University of Mississippi graphic design, marketing, bachelor of fine arts and integrated marketing communication (IMC) students seeking experience to complete various marketing and graphic design- related tasks and develop and implement an integrated marketing plan to promote and raise awareness for the website.

Nonprofits face the challenge of allocating funds from donations to create functional and creative communications …

In The Spirit Of St. Peter Claver: Social Justice And Black Catholicism In San Antonio, Philip Lampe Ph.D.

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

The editors want to take the space reserved for the abstract to say that this is the final piece of research that Phil Lampe completed before his passing. We publish it here posthumously in tribute to Phil’s tireless work for social justice, as editor of Verbum Incarnatum, as researcher of social-justice efforts in South Texas and Mexico, and as an educator committed to inspiring students to pursue justice in their lives outside the academy.

Social Justice In The Cigar Factory: The Finck Cigar Strikes, 1933-1935, Roger Barnes

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

No abstract provided.

A Participatory Action Research Study Of Police Interviewing Following Crisis Intervention Team Training, Maria Felix-Ortiz, Catherine Steele, Marisa Deguzman, Georgen Guerrero, Melissa Graham

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

Estimates vary, but a third to one half of individuals shot and killed by police have a mental illness or disability, and many who are taken into custody languish in county jails where no treatment for their illness is available. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model is an increasingly important adjunct to U.S. police training because it de-escalates tense situations, diverts people with mental illness away from jail and into treatment, and can reduce the risk of civilian deaths during a police encounter. As such, it is a strategy for reducing the social injustice of incarceration or deaths of people …