Communication Commons^™

Improving Zimbabwe's Public Policy Environment As A Regional And Global Strategy For Re-Engagement, Nicol Tinashe Tapfumaneyi, Delis Mazambani

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

For almost four decades, Zimbabwe's economy has been on a downward trend. Several economic policies have been adopted in an effort to mend the ailing economy, to no avail. According to the World Bank (2005), for public policies to be effectively implemented, political and economic fundamentals should balance. However, the politics of Zimbabwe continues to negatively impact on economic recovery and integration with regional and international trade networks. The net effect of this public policy imbalance is the ballooning of the national debt, skyrocketing of national inflation and pathetic positioning of the country on the human development index. The current …

Women's Political Representation And Sustainable Development In Nigeria, 1999-2019., Efetobar Stephanie Effevottu

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

All over the world, the invincibility of women in politics act as a limitation to the promotion of gender equality and the accomplishment of the sustainable development goals. This paper interrogates the political representation of women in Nigeria's fourth republic. It is driven by the desire to unravel the challenges faced by Nigerian women in their quest for equitable political space and its inference for sustainable development in Nigeria. The findings of the study reveal that there has been significant improvement in the lives of women in Nigeria since the return of democratic governance in 1999. It also indicates that …

Youth And Paralysed Digital Economy On Sustainable Economic Development: Conceptual Understanding, A Case Study Of Africa., James Kelimanzila

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

The new development of technology and global innovation has changed the world economic view and perspective. This redefine that every country has its own stability and effect on digital economy and technology depending on its investments and readiness of available human resources. Many African country are trying to boost and push up their economic development in order to get in middle economy. However, youth always gets more challenge in adopting and using technology or digital platform hence they found in a paralysed and muted situation. In this competitive era and globalized world, every country needs and want smart people who …

Mobile Moneyand Financial Inclusion In Cameroon, Arfa Nasser Bakary

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

The objective of this article is to analyze the effect of mobile money on financial inclusion in Cameroon. To carry out this work, it was necessary for us to analyze the effect of this adoption on the facilitation of access to financial services for households in Cameroon, and to analyze its effect on the mobilization of savings. Thus, we adopted a hypothetico-deductive approach, and collected data from several sources between 2011 and 2018, including Global Findex, Finscope and COBAC. Stationarity tests followed by series cointegration tests for the analysis of cointegration relationships between variables then led us to choose and …

Corporate At-Tax On Africa: What African States Can Learn From The Oecd's Regime For Combatting Aggressive Tax Practices, Marilyn S. Onukwugha

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Aggressive tax practices are significantly detrimental to developing countries in Africa not just to their economies or the strengths of their legal frameworks, but also to the organizational structures needed for the operation of society and good quality of life in these countries. However, it is possible to reduce and reverse the detrimental effects of aggressive tax practices by employing an effective regime that tackles the issue. This article evaluates whether the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), successfully combats aggressive tax practices carried out by multinational enterprises (MNEs) and how the African Union may learn from the OECD's …

Plastic Waste In Africa, Extending The Problem And Ideas For Solutions, Shawgei Salah Ahmed Ismaeil

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Plastic waste has become a very complicated problem to solve, due to legal, environmental and international complexities that arise when dealing with issues related to compacting the harmful effect on health and environment, in Africa the problem is hard to solve, because there is no effective legislation and laws applied to oblige beneficiaries of production to recycle a fixed percentage of the total production of plastics, to reduce the impacts on marine life and wildlife. This paper draws attention to the alarming figures on the amount of plastic produced and the impact on the environment, in order to raise awareness …

Hurdle Negative Binomial Model For Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries In Namibia, Ndilimeke Shiyuka

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

The study was based on a quantitative research for all road crash injuries recorded from 2011-2016 secondary data, with number of injured persons per crash as the dependent variable. The Hurdle Negative Binomial two-way model looked at crashes with injuries=0 (Ordinary Ratio (OR)), and those with injuries >0 (Relative Ratio (RR)): crash type with vehicle to vehicle (OR=0.5), Cause of crash with driver behaviour (OR=0.1), and Time of crash with peak time (OR=0.3); Months of crashes with holiday month (RR=0.2) Day of crash with Weekend (RR =0.1) Region with Northern regions (RR= 0.3), Type of crash with vehicle by vehicle …

Impact Of Infrastructure On Trade: An Empirical Assessment By The Gravity Model In Ecowas, Kossi Edem Baita

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Increased trade is seen as one of the channels that can boost economic growth in ECOWAS. However, we are witnessing a relative decline in intra-ECOWAS trade. This relative weakness in intra-African trade is said to be due to trade barriers and obstacles, like the quality of infrastructure and transportation costs. In this paper, research is made into understanding the impact of infrastructure quality on trade in ECOWAS countries by referring to the gravity model. Estimates show that bilateral trade increases as the quality of infrastructure improves. Also, the results show that the value of bilateral trade increases with the size …

Education And Peaceful Coexistence Among Urban Refugee Children, Brenda Aleesi

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Education is a salient aspect of the peaceful coexistence of any society that cannot be ignored. This paper examines the role of education in aiding the peaceful coexistence of urban refugees in Uganda. Uganda continues to host refugees fleeing conflict, war and instability from countries in the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa. Refugees are given basic assistance in rural settlements. Urban refugees who choose to live in the urban areas amongst the host community do not receive basic assistance except a few on the urban caseload (with security and health problems). The information is drawn from qualitative …

Combating The Effects Of War Remnants In Africa: A Case Of Landmines In Zimbabwe, Fradreck Jockonia Mujuru

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

The war remnants especially landmines from the Zimbabwe Liberation struggle that ended in 1980 is killing, maiming and haunting the people and animals. With these landmines, the security of the people is at risk in seven major areas: Mukumbura, Musengezi, Mazowe, Sheba forest, Rusitu, Sango and Lusuku. Zimbabwe is said to be heavily contaminated with landmines. Though the demining missions with five different organisations have kick-started their operations, minute progress has been made. Landmines are destroying the lives of people and animals creating societies unsafe for development. Zimbabwe needs to engage in accelerated demining actions. Furthermore, she needs to correct …

Effects Of The Public Procurement And Disposal Act Of 2015 On The Financial Management Of Thes State Corporations In Kenya: A Case Study Of Agriculture And Food Authority, Andayi George Manasse

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

The objectives of the study was to find out the effects of Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, 2015 (PPADA) on financial management in Kenya's State Corporations, a case study of the Agricultural and Food Authority (AFA). The specific objectives were: cost of goods and services procured transparency in the procurement processes, lead-time of procured goods, quality of goods procured affects the financial management of Agricultural and Food Authority. A descriptive study design was adopted for this study. Stratified sampling was employed in the study to pick out the management and other staff at AFA countrywide offices where a total …

Women Socioeconomic Status: The Repercussion Of Illiteracy, Case Study: Charlotte, Sierra Leone, Anthonette Quayee

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Illiteracy has affected women in Sierra Leone, by limiting their abilities to participate in governmental, domestic, and economic activities. As a result of the limited opportunities, women are faced with various challenges that impact their social livelihood. For example, women are deprived from making decisions in their homes because of low educational status. Sierra Leone has an adult literacy rate of 43.21%. The male literacy rate is 51.65% and the female literacy rate is 34.85%, creating a huge gap between both sexes (UNESCO, 2018). The impacts of illiteracy also affect youngsters, as early marriage takes the trend, and literacy programs …

Clash Of Interests? Conflicting Perspectives Of The State And Border Communities On Smuggling In Nigeria, Akhigbe Allwell O.

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Smuggling has been a signature of African borders. The study takes a critical look at the issue of smuggling in the Imeko border community of Nigeria that is situated at the Benin border. It examines the perspectives of the state and the border communities and uses the Onion method of Conflict Analysis to determine the actual needs of both parties and how they could be met. While the government sees it as a crime that robs the state of its much-needed resources, the border communities consider smuggling to be legitimate trade relations with their kinsmen across the border as a …

The Consumption Gaps Between The Poor And The Non-Poor Households In Malawi: A Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Analysis, Endington Wa Kavuli

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

So far, most of the literature for example, Bokosi (2006), Mukherjee and Benson (2003) etc. has focused on determinants of poverty but they have ignored the fact that consumption differences exist between the poor and the non-poor population in the society. This study therefore, is set out to investigate the poor and the non- poor welfare inequalities in Malawi based on fourth Integrated Household Survey. It has been found that socio-economic and demographic factors do influence household consumption in both the poor and the non- poor. In addition, the B-O decomposition has helped in identifying the differences in the per …

Market Efficiency Theory In African Markets, Boubacar Amadou

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

African financial markets accommodate fewer international investors due to several reasons including its weak status in the market efficiency hypothesis. Studies have confirmed this along the years; however, the slow but steady evolution in these markets can also be noticed. This study covers eight (8) African financial markets and tests them under weak form in the market's efficiency forms. This form has been divided into three (3) categories based on the random walk concept (RW3, RW2 and RW1). Results show that only two (2) markets – Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and Uganda Stock Exchange (USE) – were able to meet …

The Expensive Commodity Of Education In Africa Versus Customer Experience, Mboungou Mouyabi Seke

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

Moving into the time of the customer, the landscape of education has changed globally, including its model of leading business. The observation through the crystal of market-exchange in Africa shows students as customers and universities as service providers. For the reason that a business cannot exist without its customers, and higher education institutions are concentrating on the best way to win new business through multiple channels, customer experience arises to create value. It is within this context that this paper looks at higher education as an expensive commodity in Africa versus Customer eXperience. It also raises issues for talk and …

Perceptions On Implementing A Comprehensive Athletic Website And Online Streaming Service For Kentucky High Schools, Steve Chen, Adrienne Hall, Anna K. Gdovka, Eric Street

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Student participation in interscholastic athletics reached record levels in 2019-20 for the third consecutive year in Kentucky (KHSAA, 2020). Sport marketers have strongly advocated social media as a powerful and effective tool to promote sporting events at all levels. However, existing studies rarely focus on the trend for promoting interscholastic sports through social media platforms. This study examined the potential of an interactive website and online streaming service focusing on interscholastic sports may provide to high schools in Kentucky. After evaluating more than 102 high school athletic websites, the authors found schools were in need to improve the current website …

Investigating The User Experience With A 3d Virtual Anatomy Application, Winnyanne Kunkle

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Decreasing hours dedicated to teaching anatomy courses and declining use of human cadavers have spurred the need for innovative solutions in teaching anatomy in medical schools. Advancements in virtual reality (VR), 3D visualizations, computer graphics, and medical graphic images have enabled the development of highly interactive 3D virtual applications. Over recent years, variations of interactive systems on computer-mediated environments have been used as supplementary resource for learners. However, despite the growing sophistication of these resources for learning anatomy, studies show that students predominantly prefer traditional methods of learning and hands-on cadaver-based learning over computer-mediated platforms.

There is limited research on …

Building Assets Toolkit: Developing Positive Benchmarks For Adolescent Girls—Instruction Guide [Arabic], Judith Bruce, Sarah Engebretsen, Kimberly Glazer

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

English Summary:
The Building Assets Toolkit is an approach for developing programs for specific segments of girls that will prepare them to better face the challenges of growing up. It will help program managers understand the needs of the girls in their community, engage stakeholders at different levels and with different viewpoints, and build concrete and meaningful programming for adolescent girls. The toolkit contains all the materials needed to help make a preliminary assessment of the assets a girl should acquire and the age by which she should acquire them. This document contains the Building Assets Toolkit’s List of …

Advertainers And Their Audience: Power Relations And Promotionalism In Hobbykidstv, Sherry Morley

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

YouTube presents itself as an egalitarian platform that promotes creativity and free expression among its creators, and that breaks with legacy media models. Among the mass of YouTube creators are top-earning “family influencers” who produce videos in which parents and their children are portrayed as leisurely playing and merely having fun. Behind the scenes, however, family influencer channels are capitalist, structured, and highly profitable. This thesis offers a case study of one family influencer channel, HobbyKidsTV. Exploring concepts of labour, leisure, agency, and consumer subjectivity, I de-naturalize HobbyKidsTV through a multimodal critical discourse analysis. Surfacing the power relations within HobbyKidsTV, …

Storytelling Techniques, Social Media Strategies, And Tourism Destination Images Of Thailand By Chinese Douyin Content Creators, Xuanrui Xiao

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study explores the storytelling techniques, social media strategies, and tourism destination images of Thailand by ten famous Chinese Douyin content creators. Two qualitative approaches conduct to obtain data. A narrative analysis examines the storytelling techniques of Douyin content creators, and the tourism destination images of Thailand portrayed by them. An in-depth interview is conducted to examine the social media strategies of Chinese Doyin content creators and tourism destination images of Thailand held in their minds. As a result, fifty vlogs are collected and analyzed to obtain 20 attributes under three categories of storytelling techniques and 8 attributes of tourism …

Will My Disclosure Harm The Relationship? Factors That Impact Mother-Daughter Cancer Communication In Taiwan, Wan-Lin Chang

Communication Faculty Publications

Since 1982, cancer has been the leading cause of death in Taiwan. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare (2020), in 2019 more than a quarter (28.6%) of deaths were caused by cancer, an increase of about 5% from 1999. Family communication can help encourage social and physical support, especially for those who face traumatic, life-changing events, such as receiving a cancer diagnosis. However, people may avoid self-disclosing information about their diseases, treatments, and emotions with their families for different reasons. Between May and July 2014, fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted to explore what factors influence breast cancer mothers’ …

Communicating Uncertain Information From Deep Learning Models To Users, Harishankar Vasudevanallur Subramanian

Masters Theses

“The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision support systems is increasing in high-stakes contexts, such as healthcare, defense, and finance. Uncertainty information may help users better leverage AI predictions, especially when combined with domain knowledge. I conducted two human-subject experiments to examine the effects of uncertainty information with AI recommendations. The experimental stimuli are from an existing image recognition deep learning model, one popular approach to AI. In Paper I, I evaluated the effect of the number of AI recommendations and provision of uncertainty information. For a series of images, participants identified the subject and rated their confidence level. Results …

Removing The Mask Of Comedy To Reveal The Person Beneath: A Rhetorical Analysis Of How Three Comedians Engage In, And Go Beyond, The Post-Comedy Turn, Steve Ingham

Wayne State University Dissertations

From court jesters to lounge performers, the ‘Chitlin’ Circuit’ to vaudeville, radio to Netflix, the goal of comedy has been the same: use a comic frame to make the audience laugh. However, some modern comedians have altered that paradigm, including purposefully non-comedic material in their stand-up specials. While other comedians have done this before, they did so as an addendum to the narrative of their special, not as an integral part of that narrative. In this project, I engaged in a rhetorical analysis of three modern comedians, through the lens of humor theory, as they included purposefully non-comedic material, engaging …

The Relationship Between Organizations' Response To Customer Complaints, Customer Trust, And Loyalty, Abimbola Ajibola

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between organizations’ responses to customer complaints and their effects on customer loyalty and trust. Four hypotheses were established for this study to help us gain a greater understanding of the dynamics of the responses to customer complaints and their relationship with trust and loyalty. Five independent variables (apology, timeliness, explanation, compensation, and dialogue/active listening) and two dependent variables (trust and brand loyalty) were used to test the hypotheses. An online survey was conducted through Qualtrics and data were collected from participants who were students at a Midwestern University. Facebook …

The Relationship Between The Stigmatization Of Mental Illness, Communication Apprehension And The Willingness To Communicate, Madeleine Louise Winkler

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This project explores how mental health stigmatization influences communication apprehension and the willingness to communicate about mental illness. A total of 153 people completed an online survey regarding three variables. Perceived stigma and communication apprehension when communicating about their own mental health were found to be positively correlated. Perceived stigma and communication apprehension when communicating about someone else’s mental health was also found to be positively correlated. Communicating about one’s own mental illness lead to higher levels of communication apprehension compared to communicating about someone else’s mental illness. Communication apprehension when talking about one’s own mental health and willingness to …

Uses Unaddressed: How Social Technologies Tacitly Allow Gender-Based Violence, Brooke J. Marston

Honors Theses and Capstones

Growing technological capabilities have enhanced and intensified the potential for surveillance in many areas of life. Particularly, the placement of advanced technology in the hands of everyday people has produced ample opportunities for interpersonal monitoring. This growing capacity to surveil others we know without sophisticated techniques has concerning implications for acts of gender-based violence and intimate partner violence, which often hinge on surveillance, isolation, and control. Often, technology is used to the advantage of abusers in achieving such ends, and the wealth of personal information that is often available online leaves users vulnerable to acts of gender-based violence such as …

Piercing The Veil: Examining Demographic And Political Variables In State Foi Law Administration, A.Jay Wagner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

State and local governments play an important, and growing, role in everyday lives. The exploratory study positions FOI laws as a central mechanism in providing transparency to these more proximate governments. It is premised on a FOI audit, or field experiment, of 1002 requests across 9 U.S. state laws and 334 jurisdictions. The sample represents a broad cross-section of geographic, demographic and political variables, and the study analyzes these variables predictive and correlative value in determining outcomes, timeliness and communication in FOI requests. The results suggest significance in race and political variables in FOI outcomes and processes. The study's strongest …

Testing A Model Of Drivers And Outcomes For Corporate Communications Team Performance, Timothy Penning, Mark Bain

Peer Reviewed Articles

In a previous study involving depth interviews and a survey of Chief Communication Officers (CCOs), the authors identified the key drivers and inhibitors of high performance on corporate communications teams. In this follow-up study, the authors tested a resulting model of four performance drivers and four outcomes of high-performing teams. In addition, the study analyzed the different perspectives of CCOs, their direct reports and their team members. Results indicated that each variable in the model had several dimensions that were rated distinctly. Also, there were significant differences in how CCOs evaluated their organization across many variables compared to those who …

Raj Soin College Of Business Newsletter - January 2021, Raj Soin College Of Business, Wright State University

Raj Soin College of Business Newsletter

A four page newsletter created by the Raj Soin College of Business at Wright State University. This newsletter includes a upcoming events, message from the dean, and more.