Broadcast and Video Studies Commons^™

Will Beauty Save The Brain? Exploring The Relationship Between Eudaimonic Reels Exposure And Egyptian Gen Z'S Mind And Motivations, Petra Zaky

Theses and Dissertations

Social media entertaining content includes a mixed bag of the meaningful and the trivial. For Generation Z, whose favorite daily entertainment is shallow yet funny short-form videos (reels), there is often an invisible price paid. The loss of ability to watch long meaningful videos, distractedness from self, “Brain Rot”, glamorizing of hedonism are among the maladies left behind the attractive rabbit hole of their daily media diet. This study explores the relationship between exposure to meaningful reels, in contrast to pleasurable reels, and Gen Z’s reflective thinking, “Brain Rot” symptoms, motivation to watch long meaningful videos and life motivations between …

Yellowjackets And White Hoods?!: The Mistreatment Of Bipoc Characters, Suki Shepherd

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

In 2021, a psychological horror television series inspired by Lord of the Flies, reimagined as a high school girls' soccer team, was released. The highly skilled team from Wiskayok High School is on the way to the national championship game when their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. With both a teenage timeline and an adult timeline, the show switches between the girls' desperate survival and descent to madness in the woods and modern times, where the truth of how they made it out starts to be revealed.

The Sensationalizing Of Presidential Assassinations In Mass Media Throughout American History, Lindsay E. Smith

Undergraduate Theses

This project explores how mass media has shaped the public response to presidential assassinations across American history. By examining the deaths of Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963), we can trace how evolving media technologies – such as newspapers, yellow journalism, radio broadcasts, and live television coverage – have sensationalized violence, politicized tragedy, and transformed periods of national mourning into mass spectacles. The thesis analyzes reporting methods, narrative framing, and the news industry to show how each has influenced emotional response, political landscapes, and eventual presidential legacy. Ultimately, we find that …

Res Historica, Volume 5, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette Phd

Res Historica

The 2026 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, Julia Ackerman, Callyn Wright, Logan Davis, and John Hinton. Cover art by Mary Beth Lee.

The Migrant As A Pilgrim: Decolonising Identity And Belonging, Susan Nemec

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper responds to pilgrimage scholar George Greenia’s assertion that meaningful intersections exist between pilgrimage and various forms of displacement, such as migration or involuntary exile due to famine, war, or political unrest. Greenia proposes that vulnerable, displaced individuals might find shelter, both conceptually and emotionally, within the framing of pilgrimage. By extending concepts of pilgrimage, it can be understood as a deliberate and intentional journey, simultaneously emphasising the transformative potential inherent in migratory movement. By adopting a working definition of pilgrimage as ‘any form of travel that is intentional, purposeful, or transformative,’ the paper considers how migrancy, particularly within …

Livestreaming A Doitocracy: Platform-Jumping Participatory Practices In Modular Synthesis Gear Cultures, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Earth Modular Society (EMS) is a cross-platform community dedicated to live hardware modular synthesis, with their primary efforts going into a 24/7 modular “radio station” that livestreams on Twitch and YouTube, and a supporting Discord chat server. Although part of the broader modular synthesis gear culture (a large-scale social formation that coalesces around specific classes of fetishized technical objects), EMS represents a new development in gear cultures as it foregrounds live performance and minimizes the accrual of status via conspicuous consumption. The normative governance structures of platform-specific gear culture communities preclude all but one or a handful of users from …

The Transforming Image | Class 3.2, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

The Transforming Image | Class 1.3, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

The Transforming Image | Wintersession 2026 Syllabus, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Course Materials

This studio course engages the contemporary digital moving (and sounding) image as a medium undergoing rapid development. Advancing the exploratory ethos of early video art, participants will probe new possibilities for experimentation against the contemporary backdrop of ubiquitous access to smartphones and production capabilities as well as the proliferation of tools for digital signal manipulation, media recycling, and image sequencing.

Coursework will center on a variety of hands-on creative exercises that challenge predominant conceptions of the moving image and engage with medium-specific approaches including video installation, desktop performance, generative cinematics, recycling media, realtime audio-visual performance, and notions of digital materiality. …

The Transforming Image | Class 1.2, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

The Transforming Image | Class 1.1, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Course Materials

No abstract provided.

Life In Laughter: Comedy’S Impact On Student Health And Success, Julia Weinstein

Honors Undergraduate Theses

College students face rising rates of anxiety, depression, and stress, highlighting the need for accessible, stigma-free wellness interventions. While comedy is often seen as entertainment, research indicates laughter produces measurable psychological and physiological benefits, including reduced cortisol and increased endorphins. Life in Laughter, a creative-research hybrid project, investigates how live and digital comedy experiences affect college students’ mood, stress, and sense of belonging. Using mixed methods, data were collected through anonymous audience surveys, app-based reflections via JoyScroll, and interviews, supplemented by a mini-documentary. Findings suggest humor functions as both an emotional regulation tool and a means of fostering …

Butterflies & You: Considerations Of Human Relationships With The Natural World, M. E. Colby

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Science communication only accounts for approximately 2% of the entire scientific output of 2017-2022 (Parejo-Cuéllar et. al, 2024). It is an under-researched and under-valued field, especially in an age that has devalued science as a whole. The delicate art of explaining complicated ideas to people who are unfamiliar with scientific jargon is vital to humans’ understanding of the world. Butterflies & You is a documentary film exploring the relationship between humans and the many different butterfly species that call Illinois home. Video-based science communication is important to research and practice because of its impact on environmental advocacy and the growing …

Tonight’S Top Story: Analyzing English And Spanish-Language National And Local Newscasts For Content Differences, Esteban N. Serrano

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Spanish-language media alongside its equivalent English-language counterpart, assumingly operate with reporting facts truthfully. However, no studies have compared the accuracy of equitable reporting between English and Spanish-language news, particularly television newscasts. Limited existing research claims that differences, such as the structure of news stories and their placement in a broadcast, may skew a narrative for those who prefer to absorb Spanish-language news in comparison to those who absorb English-language news. In this study, through use of mixed methods, U.S. market’s English and Spanish broadcast news-affiliated stations are examined to draw conclusions on whether or not there are differences in news …

Movement Lab Lunchtime Presentations: Hunter Whitaker-Morrow | Poster, Hunter Whitaker-Morrow, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Dreaming, Building, And Enduring Black Voices: Black Media In Omaha In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Elodie C. Galeazzi-Kelly

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation examines the purposes and roles of Black media in Omaha during the post–Civil Rights Era. It asks how African Americans and their allies in Omaha developed innovative media forms, institutions, and communication strategies to amplify Black voices, build community, and advocate for Black interests amid the rapidly shifting political and social landscape of the time. The study focuses first on three traditional forms of media (newspapers, radio, and television) and then broadens the definition of media to include key Black cultural institutions. These include a dramatic arts collective, a historical museum and archive, a memorial foundation, and an …

Why Gen Z Is More Anxious Than Ever? Turning To Social Chats For Answers, Yi Luo, Jin-A Choi, Bond Benton

College of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

As social media has evolved into a prominent part of Gen Z’s social interaction, this study attempted to enrich our current understanding of Gen Z’s mental health struggles through their conversations surrounding anxiety on social media. Highlights of the findings included the following. First, the overwhelming presence of fear (83%) illustrates that anxiety is an emotionally draining experience for many Gen Z users. The use of emotionally charged language to publicly share their struggles with anxiety reflect increasing self-awareness and a cultural shift toward normalizing mental health conversations. Second, the open, candid conversations on anxiety indicate that anxiety is experienced …

Transmedialidad E Intertextualidad En El Caso De Five Nights At Freddy's Desde La Semiótica De La Cultura, Daira Pando Tamayo

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

El presente artículo busca establecer, notar y delimitar que la intertextualidad y la transmedialidad juegan un papel de gran importancia al momento de crear narrativas en los videojuegos en la contemporaneidad. Enfatizando la creciente complejidad (y por lo tanto remarcando la diferencia de estructuras narrativas convencionales) que existe en las narrativas de los videojuegos y necesidad de interacción y configuración no lineal dentro de las historias de los mismos.

Hey Barbie! There's A Lot Of Kens On My Screen: A Qualitative Analysis Of Female Gender Inequality In Media Representation And How Society’S Responses To It Have Evolved, Ania Delaney Boutin

Honors College Theses

Since Dr. Jean Kilbourne called attention to the dehumanization of women in magazine ads in her series of lectures-turned-documentaries “Killing Us Softly” vol. 1-4, the treatment of women in media has received attention from researchers and documentarians alike. Kilbourne asked audiences to take the impact of negative depictions of women seriously, encouraging women into careers where they could shape the next generation’s media. Subsequent documentaries assessed Kilbourne’s research and expanded it to include political consequences, minority voices, and various systemic issues.

Using a summative content analysis approach, this research examines the content of six documentaries, spanning 1979 to 2018, to …

Recovering Palestinian Lives: Qudsiyya Khurshid From Mandate Palestine To Postwar Pennsylvania, Andrea L. Stanton

Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

This article works to recover the life story of Qudsiyya Khurshid, a once well-known Mandate Palestinian intellectual and educator, who wrote essays for publication and for broadcasting on the Palestine Broadcasting Service, while working as a principal at girls’ schools in al-Bireh and Jerusalem. One of a number of educated women active in the Mandate public sphere, she disappeared from public consciousness after the Nakba. But in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where she had moved with her husband, a naturalized U.S. citizen, she became a prominent figure in civic work and as a community speaker on Palestinian and Middle Eastern life …

Recasting Gender Roles: A Study Of Indian Television Commercials (2011– 2020), Himika Akram, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

On media, television commercials (TVCs) play a significant role in shaping societal perceptions of gender roles. This study examines gender depictions in Indian TVCs, focusing on key dimensions such as gender ratio in primary characters, voiceovers, settings (home, outdoor, workplace), and product categories. A content analysis of 120 TVCs from Indian brands (2011–2020) was conducted, with coding performed by the researcher. Findings reveal that men were primary characters in 54.6% of the advertisements, while women featured in 45.4%. Male voiceovers dominated at 70.1%, compared to 29.9% for females. Women were portrayed in home settings in 66.7% of TVCs, while men …

Teaching Documentary Filmmaking As Social Advocacy: The Case Of The Yangon Film School, Violet Valdez, Mon Mon Myat

Department of Communication Faculty Publications

This is a descriptive case study of Yangon Film School (Yangon, Myanmar) in a setting of protracted civil conflict that has persisted since 1968. It examined the school’s approach in the teaching of documentary filmmaking and analyzed key aspects of the school’s operations. Findings show that the documentary filmmaking taught in the school was informed by social advocacy. This was fostered through the students’ participation in films commissioned to the school by civil society organizations and the practice of participatory filmmaking. The school stood out in the Myanmar setting for its dual character as a training center and a production …

Ua19/16/5/16 Athletic Media Relations - Volleyball Film/Ideo/Audio File, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Video of WKU volleyball games.

Spatial Audio Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

Listen to Hi Song audio recording.

Zippymania: A Multimedia Record Of The 2024-25 Akron Zips Men's Basketball Team, Drew Bailey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will involve the production, promotion, and distribution of a weekly 30-minute live radio show focusing on the Akron Zips men's basketball team. After the airing of each show, the recorded episode will be published as a podcast. Additionally, a weekly column or sports blog (written by myself) will be published and serve as a companion work or supplement to the radio program.

What Year Is It?, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Surveillance Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Stereoscope Studies, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

Rheology, Kameron Neal, Movement Lab

Personal Work

No abstract provided.

The Romanticization Of Human-Vampire Relationships: How 'Twilight' And 'The Vampire Diaries' May Prime Young Women To Accept Dating Violence, Natalie M. Bowen

Undergraduate Research Posters

The first literary vampire can be traced back to 18th century Germany, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “Die Braut von Korinth,” but the stereotypical features of a vampire are traditionally accredited to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Modern vampires, such as Edward Cullen and Stefan Salvatore of the Twilight and The Vampire Diaries series respectively, have managed to win the hearts of teenage girls all across America with their sex appeal and charismatic nature. According to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, individuals learn new behaviors by modeling and imitating the actions of those around them. This comprehensive literature review investigates the connection …