Communication Commons^™

Promoting Safe Firearm Storage Through Media-Based Interventions, Abigail Bordelon

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Undergraduate Honors Theses

Given the ongoing phenomenon of unintentional pediatric firearm deaths, this project seeks to examine how the mainstream media reports on these events and how media frames could be altered to better promote public health prevention efforts.

Interpretation Challenges In Healthcare Settings As Experienced By Refugees And Healthcare Providers In The United States, Lydia H. Samoff

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background: Language and interpretation barriers are significant challenges for refugees receiving healthcare in the United States. Both providers and refugee patients associate effective communication with a positive healthcare experience. Therefore, it is important to identify themes in interpretation barriers to promote productive communication between providers and refugee patients.

Purpose: To identify themes in literature surrounding interpretation challenges between refugees and healthcare workers in the United States and compare them to lived experience in a clinic in Northwest Arkansas.

Methods: Several databases were searched, including CINAHL, Medline, HealthSource, and Google Scholar, and articles were chosen with the inclusion criteria being research …

Dekonstruktion Der Afd: Eine Analyse Der Rechtspopulistischen Deutschen Partei Der„Alternative Für Deutschland”, Elizabeth A. Breckenridge, Elizabeth Breckenridge

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ist eine rechtsextreme populistische Partei, die innerhalb eines Jahrzehnts rasch an Macht gewonnen hat, insbesondere in den ostdeutschen Bundesländern, aufgrund ihrer Betonung der Nationalisierung, ihrer populistischen Rhetorik und ihrer Anziehungskraft auf Wähler, die Ängste vor Einwanderung und kulturellem Wandel hegen. Die AfD hat es innerhalb von fünf Jahren geschafft, eine starke Wählerschaft zu mobilisieren, 2017 Sitze im Bundestag zu erringen und gilt nun als wichtigste Oppositionspartei zu den etablierten Parteien. Die AfD ist die erste rechte Partei seit 1945, die aufgrund des Aufstiegs rechtspolitischer Ideologien bedeutende Wahlerfolge erzielen konnte. Aufgrund des reaktionären Pendelschwungs nach dem …

Community Voices, Climate Action Choices: Working Towards A Resilient Monterey County, Lesley A. Solano Alonso

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Vulnerable communities in Monterey County face disproportionate environmental and health impacts due to climate change, yet many residents remain unaware of the tools and resources available to support local action. This capstone project was implemented in partnership with Ecology Action (EA) and the Resilient Central Coast (RCC) campaign to increase awareness and engagement with the RCC platform. Serving diverse communities across Monterey County, the project included bilingual outreach efforts, community tabling, educational presentations, and a climate action survey. Over 650 residents were engaged directly, resulting in 99 new household sign-ups on the RCC website, a major milestone for the agency. …

Bathrooms As Borders: Moms For Liberty And The Policing Of Women’S Spaces, Eva Burklund

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

As debates about transgender identity and inclusion influence discussions and policy across the United States, it is important to understand the rhetoric and manifestations of transphobia and trans exclusion. One organization advocating for the exclusion of transgender individuals is Moms for Liberty which is dedicated to preserving parental rights. On their official X (formerly Twitter) account Moms for Liberty often voices their opposition to the inclusion of transgender women in women’s sports and women’s private spaces, justifying their exclusive stance by denying transgender women’s womanhood. They additionally cast themselves as the authorities on who is a woman and who is …

The Guardian The Month Of May 2025, Wright State Student Body

The Guardian Student Newspaper

News articles from The Guardian for the Month of May 2025. The Guardian is the official student-run newspaper for Wright State University. It has been published regularly since March of 1965.

Digital Activism In Kenya: Moving From The Digital Center To The Digital Periphery Of Long Covid Experience, Emily Mendenhall, Lucy Kamau, Nora Kenworthy, Edna Bosire

Brain and Mind Institute

Digital activism around Long covid has reverberated around the globe, as patients, researchers, and clinicians worked together to understand the chronic condition. However, Long Covid networks, much like other social networks, have hierarchies and barriers that can impede equitable access. In this article, we examine how the global digital center and periphery shape how people with Long covid connect to networks to learn about their illness symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, and experiences. We introduce case narratives of two Kenyan women—one elite Nairobian who was connected to the digital center and another middle class woman who connected with her through a peripheral …

Gender, Politics, And Power: How Women Presidential Candidates Are Framed By News Narratives, Victoria Hernandez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to look at the coverage of the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 during the Democratic National Convention, and analyze the differences in regard to gender, race, and political bias. The examination of these news narratives helps explore a question of whether journalists report with bias when covering politics. The researcher analyzed 11 published pieces from five mainstream media outlets. Findings of the study show that bias is unavoidable even when a journalist strives for objectivity which does not exist in newsrooms across the political spectrum. The findings …

Victims Of Stage And Screen: Parasocial Savior Rhetoric And Coded Social Critique At The Convergence Of Celebrity & Conspiracy Cultures, Amy Whiteside

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a critical rhetorical analysis of what I term parasocial savior conspiracy theories , a unique genre of conspiracy narrative that portrays a public figure as victimized and allows their fans to step into a savior role through their advancement of the conspiracy theory. These narratives, I argue, are both catalyzed by and further insulative to a fan’s parasocial relationship with the public figure in question. Herein, the celebrity acts as a vessel of projection for their fans’ anxieties about control, allowing them to displace their agency panic onto a beloved external party and critique factors that seem …

Cultural Of Authenticity And Commodification: Analyzing The Aesthetic Waves And Collective Culture In The 2010s And 2020s, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

The “authentic self” is curated, aestheticized, and most notably, commodified. Digital algorithms, likes, views, and engagement are more than just digital metrics, they are the management of performance. For millions of other users — including the author herself — social media is the locus of personal expression. Most notably, sites like Tumblr, where users in the 2010s posted hazy images or overly filtered graphics along with melancholic song lyrics that match the vibe of the moment, expression was earnest and idealized. Today, social media in the 2020s, new creators like Hannah Neelaman, better known as Ballerina Farm, dress in pastoral …

The Effects Of Hyper-Communication: A Quantitative Study On Workplace Productivity, David J. Olson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Today's workforce is overwhelmed with information delivered by tools designed to make them more productive. In a milieu of distraction and overload, employees are disadvantaged in processing the tremendous volumes of information they receive. This is called hyper-communication, which is associated with stress, overload, communication misalignment, and, ultimately, distractedness that impairs an employee’s work efficiency. This quantitative study presents research conducted through surveys examining hyper-communication's effects on workplace productivity. A sample of 631 respondents, solicited through social media, participated in this study. The participants came from diverse occupational backgrounds, providing cross-sectional insights into how factors like employees' titles, roles, gender, …

The Impact Of Brand Ownership Structure On Favorability And Authenticity Perception Of Surf Athlete Sponsorships, Tayler K. Baldwin

Journalism

This study investigates whether the ownership form of a surf brand, i.e., public or private, affects consumer authenticity and brand favorability impressions when partnered with surf athletes. Following Aaker's Brand Equity Model and relevant literature on influencer marketing and subcultural branding, the study employs a mixed-methods approach with a structured questionnaire survey (n = 526) alongside qualitative analysis of open-ended responses. Quantitative results indicate minimal variation in mean brand favorability for public compared to private brands, while privately owned brands had more consistent perceptions of authenticity across combinations of athlete partnerships. Qualitative outcomes support the assumption that privately owned brands …

Utility And Democracy In Political Campaign Advertising: Toward A Rule-Utilitarian Ethic For Political Marketing And The Ethics Of Meddling In The Other Party's Primary, Joel Lansing Reed

Journalism Faculty Publications and Presentations

Political advertising ethics has long been dominated by an adherence to the norms of democratic idealism or the highly situational ethics of act utilitarianism. This article proposes an alternative system of political advertising ethics grounded in Brandt's ideal moral code theory, a form of rules-based utilitarianism. To illustrate the relative advantage of rule utilitarianism, the author investigates the ethics of advertising campaigns aimed at intervening in an opposing party's primary. The past decade has seen a dramatic resurgence in Democratic and Republican candidates in the United States meddling in the opposing party's primary through advertising campaigns designed to exploit tensions …

Queered Tradition: Disidentificatory Practices Of Queer-Affirming Religious Space, Amanda R. Peterson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Responding to high rates of religious trauma in the United States, particularly for LGBTQ people, this study investigates the rhetorical moves made in protestant Christian spaces to consider what makes these spaces safe and affirming for queer people. Specifically, I consider the rhetorical impact these churches make through not only their space but also their liturgy and online presence, which informs the embodied experience of the space.

Through autoethnographic research, I look at three local churches—Metropolitan Community Church of Omaha, Urban Abbey, and Elevate Church–the first two queer-affirming and the third conservative. Findings show the various church elements negotiated with …

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story: A Comparative Analysis Of The Representations Of American Serial Killers In News And True Crime Media, Jenelle Walters

Honors Theses

Serial killers are a subject that have fascinated individuals for centuries in both news and entertainment media. Although research has been done on the representations of serial killers in news media, little research has attempted to connect the representations seen in the news media to those seen in true crime entertainment media. Through the use of four case studies, a comparative analysis was done to compare the framing seen in the original news articles, both local and national, to the framing seen in the later true crime films, documentaries, and series. Although the framing originally seen in the news media …

The Complete Message Is The Best Message: The Case For Standardizing Wireless Emergency Alerts, Jeannette Sutton, Micki Olson, Hugh Walpole, Lauren B. Cain, Nicholas Waugh, Michele M. Wood

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

Standardized messaging for alerts and warnings has been made possible through the use of the Warning Lexicon and workflow. The effectiveness of this approach to motivate protective action behaviors, in comparison with the current standard of practice, has not yet been tested. Using an experimental design to test the effectiveness of the Warning Lexicon, we tested three message types for five hazards: blackouts, law enforcement incidents, infectious diseases, heavy snow, and chemical releases, and found that messages created using the Warning Lexicon contents and workflow produced better messaging outcomes than the current standard of practice. Specifically, participants who received the …

Quick Response Codes In Extension Outreach Communications: Insights From A Visual Content Analysis And Educators’ Perceptions, Kobina Danful Fanyinkah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increased smartphone use presents an opportunity to enhance the creative inclusion of Quick Response (QR) codes in extension outreach efforts. Tailoring extension programs to communicate with specific audiences has been identified as essential, highlighting the need for targeted and context-specific strategies. The development of QR code technology has provided a unique approach that allows extension professionals to target clientele with specific extension messages and programs. While extension has a commendable record in educational delivery through traditional forms of outreach, research on how best to employ digital tools with extension audiences is thin at best. Though the rising popularity of QR …

The Cowl - V. 88 N. 20 - May 1, 2025

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol. 88 No. 20 - May 1, 2025. 24 pages.

Exploring The Role Of Influencer Marketing In The Animal Health Industry: A Content Analysis Of Strategies And Impact, Haylee Henry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A review of literature revealed a lack of peer-reviewed research on influencer marketing within the animal health and nutrition industry, specifically within the livestock sector. This study aimed to address this gap by analyzing how animal health and nutrition companies of different sizes utilized influencer marketing and how consumers interacted with content tailored to influencer marketing. A content analysis was conducted. This study collected and analyzed social media influencer posts from eight North American animal health and nutrition companies, three small, three medium, and two large, between January 2023 and December 2024. Influencer content included posts by individuals, partner organizations, …

Punk's Not Dead, You Are: Punk, Shock-Effects, & Self-Reflection, Fernando Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that punk can be anything, but dead. I honor punk as part of a wider avant-garde movement. In that spirit, I lay out a theoretical framework of shock-effects that I eventually employ as a lens for analyzing data. In “reviewing” the literature, I call attention to the mysteries that early scholarship revealed, how present-day scholars have turned these mysteries into practical approaches to living, and the importance of autoethnographic approaches to studying punk. To employ autoethnography, I generated data through personal memories of punk, self-observation and self-reflection of punk in my life, and considered what …

Nature Of Smartphone Use: The Underlying Mechanisms Between Nature Exposure And Urge To Use Social Media, Jia Yi Aw

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The urge to use social media is prevalent and costly in modern society. However, little has been researched on how nature exposure can manage urge to use social media to combat its negative consequences. It was hypothesized that nature exposure through Instagram posts in Study 1 and nature park in Study 2 reduces urge to use social media. The underlying mechanisms were tested in a theory-driven serial mediation model, in which positive emotions, attention restoration and self-regulation served as serial mediators. Study 1 employed Instagram experimental manipulation in a laboratory setting by randomly assigning 206 undergraduates to view Instagram accounts …

Moving The Goalposts: American Sports Coverage In Newspapers And The Construction Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In The Olympics In 1928, 1932, 1936., Jacob Havers

All Theses

This thesis takes an in-depth look at the media coverage of women in the Olympics in 1928, 1932 and 1936. Specifically following the track athletes Kinue Hitomi, Louise Stokes, Tidye Pickett and Mildred “Babe” Didrikson the thesis explores how by being athletic women they had their identities as feminine figures heavily questioned and scrutinized in newspapers at the global level. The harshest of these critics was often the American media, who held strict standards of race, gender and sexuality in the late 1920s-mid 1930s. They sought to uphold these standards at the global scale, and the American media’s interrogation of …

Black Events As Narrated By Black People: Contextualizing America’S Framing Of Progression In News, Social, And Academic Writing, Tyrina Horton

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper is a critical examination of collective and public memories of public events that impact Black lives as constructed in news, social, and academic writing. Using Black mundane life to explore and build localized context and attitudes towards these events, I examine whether the collective memory of an event, as framed by public discourse, accurately portrays how Black communities experienced them. This paper explores what it means for Black people, to experience a disconnect with written accounts of public events that do not properly account for the many layers of Black experience, highlighting where there’s a failure to tell …

Community Media Coalitions: Best Practices To Support Healthy Local News Ecosystems, Stepfanie E. Alfonso

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Local U.S. journalism is in crisis. Communities across the country are suffering from a loss of local outlets, journalists, and a shortage of original coverage that addresses critical information needs. Yet, community media coalitions (CMCs) offer a promising solution. These coalitions bring together media outlets, educational institutions, and civic organizations to collaboratively support local news ecosystems. However, little is known about these coalitions or how to effectively build and operate them from the perspective of their creators.

To address this information gap, a guidebook was created titled A Best Practices Guide for Community Media Coalition Building: How to Wrangle All …

An Educational Leadership Journey In Trustee Effectiveness And Board Governance, Deana Olivares-Lambert

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Purpose and Theoretical Framework: The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences, learning and professional development practices, and effective leadership practices of women of color trustees within California community college governance. Grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s theoretical concepts of Conocimiento and Nepantla, the study focused on how intersectional identities influence the governance leadership practices of women of color trustees. The theoretical framework emphasized transformation through interconnectedness, structural change, and self-reflection in leadership roles.

Methods, Data, and Analysis: Eight California Community College trustees women of color participated in semistructured interviews using qualitative methodology through interpretive phenomenological analysis. Data …

Acceptability And Competency Of Motivational Interviewing (Mi) Training And Mi Spirited Communication In An Undergraduate And Graduate Nursing Program, Grace Koons

Honors Theses

Problem- There is a move towards patient-centered care in nursing and Motivational Interviewing (MI) has been one approach to accomplish positive communication. While the use of MI has been increasing in healthcare settings, undergraduate and graduate nursing programs have been slow to incorporate it into their curricula.

Aims- This study aimed to determine the acceptability and MI competency for the use of MI Spirited Communication (MISC) among undergraduate and graduate nursing students at a university in the Southeast region of the U.S. Methods- The design of this pilot study was a descriptive, quasi-experiment with no control group. The …

Brand Media And Health Perceptions: A Thematic Analysis Of Generational Differences, Julie Irene Diaz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the influence of brand identity and media on shaping evolving perceptions of health across generations. The three generations considered are Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z. The initial hypothesis predicted the popular media and brands that each generation interacts with are most likely to influence their perception. Additionally, the health brands most popular with each generation would influence their overall health perception, based on the identity and values of the brand. A qualitative study was conducted using focus groups to gather data about health perceptions, brand identity, media influence, and holistic health. The findings suggest that individuals …

Digital Revival: The Role Of Social And Streaming Media In The Resurgence Of Appalachian Country Music, Jacob Cody Powers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the role of digital media, specifically social media, and streaming platforms, in the resurgence of Appalachian country music. In recent years, niche music genres have found new life through online platforms, which offer unique avenues for discovery, engagement, and community building. Using a mixed methods approach, this research combines quantitative survey data and qualitative thematic analysis to explore how audiences discover Appalachian country music on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify. A cross-sectional survey was distributed to college students and social media users, collecting responses on participants' digital engagement habits, platform preferences, and motivations for exploring …

Exploring The Influence Of Social Media Communication On Destination Branding: A Study Of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Alshehri

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

Tourists now find social media important in forming their perceptions and decision criteria when traveling. This Research investigates the impact of destination marketing organizations -generated content and tourist-generated content on tourists' inspiration to visit Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the mediating role of destination image dimensions (cognitive, affective, and sensory) and the moderating role of cultural distance. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Hofstede Cultural Dimension Theory; the research analyzed a dataset of 237 responses using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that destination marketing organizations -generated content and tourist-generated content significantly enhance perceived advertising value, which in …

Organizational Care: The Formation And Reproduction Of Social Support Structures In Nonprofit Organizations, Ella Stanley

Communication Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through past literature it has been established that nonprofit employees are prone to experience increased levels of stress and burnout due to the emotionally taxing nature of their jobs. Social support is a communicative transaction between individuals that has been proven to mitigate the negative impacts that both stress and burnout can cause employees to face. Previous studies on social support have focused on healthcare workers and nonprofit volunteers, while this study aims to understand the specific social support structures that are prominent within nonprofit organizations to provide support for employees. This study utilizes structuration theory to explore the structures …