Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Web-Based Media Literacy To Prevent Tobacco Use Among High School Students, Jane S. Phelps-Tschang, Elizabeth Miller, Kristen R. Rice, Brian A. Primack

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Facilitator-led smoking media literacy (SML) programs have improved media literacy and reduced intention to smoke. However, these programs face limitations including high costs and barriers to standardization. We examined the efficacy of a Web-based media literacy program in improving smoking media literacy skills among adolescents. Sixty-six 9th grade students participated in a Web-based SML tobacco education program based on health behavior theory. Pre- and post-test assessments demonstrated statistically significant changes in the primary outcome of total SML as well as each of the individual SML items. However, there were inconsistent changes in other theory-based outcomes including attitudes and normative beliefs.

Making Do With Media: Teachers, Technology, And Tactics Of Media Use In American Classrooms, 1919–1946, Katie Day Good

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In the last century, teachers have come under pressure to incorporate new media technologies into their lessons. Comparing educational research, press coverage, and teachers' firsthand accounts of mediated instruction between 1919 and 1946, this article highlights a historic discrepancy between anticipated and actual uses of media in classrooms. Drawing on de Certeau's theory of “making do,” the author argues that teachers' efforts to balance high technologies with simpler, more do-it-yourself varieties of media in their lessons constituted critical forms of participation in educational media culture and small acts of resistance against industrial, top-down efforts to streamline, modernize, and technologize their …

The New Curricula: Propelling The Growth Of Media Literacy Education, Tessa Jolls

Journal of Media Literacy Education

As new online and cellular technologies advance, the implications for the traditional textbook model of curricular instruction are profound. The ability to construct, share, collaborate on and publish new instructional materials marks the beginning of a global revolution in curricula development. Research-based media literacy frameworks can be applied to all subjects, and they enable teachers to have confidence that, in employing the frameworks to address academic subjects, themes or projects, students will gain content knowledge. Teaching through media literacy education strategies provides the opportunity to make media literacy central to teaching and learning, since media literacy process skills enable students …

Book Review: The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating Digital Media Citizenship In Urban Communities, Patrick Johnson

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

Media, Culture, And Education: One Teacher’S Journey Through The Mediated Intersections, Crystal L. Beach

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Today’s classrooms often have a plethora of new ways of reading and writing entering the room, but too often these new ways of “doing” are disregarded and checked at the door. For this reason, one educator shares her journey through the mediated intersections of media, culture, and education. In this piece, she explores how literacy transformations are impacting her classroom and her students’ lives, how she tries to make connections for her students, as well as noting what these mediated intersections might mean for the future of education.

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Media Literacy For The 21st Century. A Response To "The Need For Media Education In Democratic Education", Peter Levine

Democracy & Education

We cannot pretend to educate young people for citizenship and political participation without teaching them to understand and use the new media, which are essential means of expressing ideas, forming public opinions, and building institutions and movements. But the challenge of media literacy education is serious. Students need advanced and constantly changing skills to be effective online. They must understand the relationship between the new media and social and political institutions, a topic that is little understood by even the most advanced social theorists. And they must develop motivations to use digital media for civic purposes, when no major institutions …

A Critical Analysis: Infusion Of Social Media And Traditional Media Strategies And Tactics In The Recipe For Success For Local, Main Street Usa Restaurants, Tori Partykevich

Senior Honors Projects

Restaurants can benefit greatly from carefully constructed public relations efforts. A strong plan and a dedicated use of both traditional and new media can help restaurants grow their business. It can be much more difficult for local, mom & pop restaurants to gain the attention that will boost their business than for large corporate chain companies who already have a well-known name. A positive public image of a restaurant is vital to its success and public relations strategies can help this to be achieved.

A solid social media presence, community involvement, local newspaper advertisements, special offers and public events can …

Puppets On A String? How Young Adolescents Explore Gender And Health In Advertising, Deborah L. Begoray, Elizabeth M. Banister, Joan Wharf Higgins, Robin Wilmot

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article presents qualitative research on young adolescents’ abilities in communicating and evaluating health messages in advertising especially how they understand and create gendered identities. A group of grade 6-8 students learned about media techniques and movie making. In groups divided by gender, they created iMovie advertisements for health activities in their school. They represented themselves in these advertisements by creating stick puppets. Observations during lessons, examination of movies and puppets, and interviews with students and their teacher revealed that young adolescents were neither completely manipulated by media nor were they completely in charge of their responses to media’s messages …

A Digital Dud? New Media, Participation, And Voting In The 2004 And 2008 United States Presidential Elections, Jeremy D. Hickman

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This dissertation analyzes the linkages between new media and the possible emergence of the youngest members of the voting population (the “digital native” generation, who have grown up concurrently with the rise of the internet as a means of communication). The main question is whether this digital native generation will have more civic and political participation due to their use of online news sources and social media communication on news media websites and elsewhere on the internet. Regression analyses are used to explain civic and political participation, using American National Election Studies (ANES) from the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. …

Episode 13: Katilyn Herzog, Thomas Kenny Mphil

Communication Students Podcasts

Professor Tom Kenny speaks with Kaitlyn Herzog, communications alumnus. They will discuss communications media and Kaitlyn's work in the post production industry. This final podcast of the fall 2014 semester also includes an excerpt from episode 6 with Mike Mendez.

The Hyperreality Of Daniel Boorstin, Stephanie L. Viens

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Early media theorists can help us to link the past and present of media literacy to pose new questions and gain new knowledge. Historian, author and Librarian on Congress Daniel Boorstin (1914 – 2004) played an important role in increasing public awareness of the constructed nature of media representations. Connections are explored between constructed reality, technological advances, media literacy education, and the current work of media scholar Douglas Rushkoff on presentist society. Daniel Boorstin helped recognize the changing nature of knowledge in an image-saturated environment and influenced a new generation of theorists, scholars and educators who have advanced the …

Teaching About Propaganda: An Examination Of The Historical Roots Of Media Literacy, Renee Hobbs, Sandra Mcgee

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Contemporary propaganda is ubiquitous in our culture today as public relations and marketing efforts have become core dimensions of the contemporary communication system, affecting all forms of personal, social and public expression. To examine the origins of teaching and learning about propaganda, we examine some instructional materials produced in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which popularized an early form of media literacy that promoted critical analysis in responding to propaganda in mass communication, including in radio, film and newspapers. They developed study guides and distributed them widely, popularizing concepts from classical rhetoric and expressing them in …

Effect Of Convergence Culture On Spectatorship, Amanda Marcus

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

Media convergence has changed how we receive and process information. No longer are we passive spectators, but we are part of the media we consume. Because of the explosion of technology since the turn of the century and a new definition of spectatorship, producers of media can no longer control how their messages are received; they have to engage their audience and listen to feedback in order to remain functioning. Fellow peers serve as informants or as a new source of media. This also affects our individual identities, which shapes our cultural identity. Social media enables us to present ourselves …

Japan And The U.S.: Two Free Nations, Two Versions Of Free Press, Eliza Koch

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The media are important in a democracy; they provide a means of communication between the government and its constituents. They also serve as a fourth branch to check the country’s government. Although these two nations have different histories there are many similarities in the media systems. This presentation examines the media and politics in two separate democratic nations, Japan and the United States. Despite their different historical and cultural backgrounds, they have similarities. Both nations have free press, but there are cases when both governmental systems have attempted to censure their media in one form or another. This presentation delves …

Respect, Cho Chang, And Asian Representation: A Critical Analysis Of The White Gaze In Harry Potter, Kaitlin Pham

Communication Studies

Within the Harry Potter series, females who are in charge of their sexuality seem egotistical and provoking; thus, seen as manipulative to their male counterparts, and the readers. That being said, the values that Hermione Granger possess that push her above Cho Chang’s become ultra-defined, preaching to the audiences how Rowling believes the ultimate female should behave and think, and how Chang has no possibility of attaining these qualities. In this paper, I will analyze and discuss J.K. Rowling’s role in perpetuating the White Gaze with her depiction of Cho Chang in her series, and how Chang’s interpretation in the …

Where Does It Hurt? A Cultivation Theory’S Perspective On Domestic Violence, Kendra Grace White

Communication Studies

This study investigated Cultivation Theory and its role in the issue of domestic violence. I hypothesized that people who are exposed to larger quantities of pop culture mediums will have less negative attitudes towards the issue of domestic violence. My study also posed research questions about the relationship between the attitudes towards domestic violence with both basic domestic violence knowledge and personal experience with the issue. I gathered my data through a thirty-question survey and distributed it online, using convenience and snowball samples. My results did not support my hypothesis; however, I did find statistical significance for a negative correlation …

Seeking Information About Climate Change: Effects Of Media Use In An Extended Prism, Shirley S. Ho, Benjamin H. Detenber, Sonny Rosenthal, Edmund W. J. Lee

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study replicates and extends the planned risk information seeking model (PRISM) in the context of impersonal risk by incorporating media use as an antecedent of risk information seeking intention. Results indicate that the model applies equally well to Singaporeans’ climate change information seeking intention as it does in the context of personal health information, suggesting that the model is generalizable across different risk and cultural contexts. Findings suggest that media use is an important source of perceived knowledge and, indirectly, sufficiency threshold, which clarifies the role of actual information seeking in risk perceptions and future information seeking.

How Not To Get Lost In The Shuffle: Producing The Most Effective And Eye-Catching Press Release, Erica Derrico

Journalism

The following study investigates how to produce the most effective and eye-catching press release on a national level for Summit Outdoor Supply (S.O.S). Winter quarter of 2014, my partner and I worked on a local campaign for S.O.S., using traditional text-based press releases to get media coverage. Although we did see some success with the traditional press release, there were often times our releases would get lost in the shuffle of the many releases that media outlets received each day. My goal with this project is to learn how to produce a press release that will get noticed out of …

Manufacturing News: Exploring How Public Relations Content Is Presented As News From An Agenda-Setting Perspective, Katharine R. Gore

Journalism

This study, conducted in San Luis Obispo, California, analyzes and investigates the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists, the role of public relations in news and how often content developed by the public relations industry is later portrayed as news.

Public relations-developed content has a growing presence in news. This is due, in part to the fact that more people work in the public relations industry than do in journalism fields. There is also a symbiotic relationship between the two industries, which is confirmed by existing studies and scholarly texts.

An effort was made by the author to track …

Perfect Timing: The Rise Of Women’S Political Leadership During Cultural Shifts, Christie E. Pearce

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

America has fallen behind in women's leadership, especially in politics. In the approaching era, there will be more viable female political candidates than ever in the past, but will the public be prepared to elect a woman to high office? Studies suggest that mentalities toward female leadership have taken a shift in a positive direction. The idea of what an 'ideal' politician must offer is more feminine in the modern era than ever before. In the age of social media, female politicians have opportunities to reach more constituents through social media in a more effective way than has been offered …

Episode 8: Chris Perkowski, Thomas Kenny Mphil

Communication Students Podcasts

Professor Tom Kenny speaks with Chris Perkowski, current student. Chris is a communications major specializing in media. Chris talks about his home town, family, and communication studies.

Media Portrayal Of Individuals In The Lower Class And Its Effects On Attributions Of Educational Hardships, Krista A. Burke

Communication Studies

This study investigated how media portrayals of individuals in the lower class affect people’s beliefs about educational hardships in lower socioeconomic areas. Specifically, this study looked at the attributions of these hardships to determine if media consumption had an effect on the internality of attributions. It was hypothesized that increased media consumption would be related to an increased tendency toward internal attributions. It was hypothesized that increased media consumption would lead to lower support for policy changes regarding education. A survey was distributed to assess media consumption habits and attitudes toward educational hardships in the lower class. Correlation results yielded …

The Role Of Information And Communication Technology In The Acculturation Of Vietnamese Refugees, Khanh A. Tran

Master's Theses

One of the most significant refugee populations in the United States is the Vietnamese. This group initially fled their native country to escape political oppression at the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975 and continued to flee in a series of separate waves that continued for more than three decades. As a relatively new immigrant group in the U.S., the Vietnamese still face a variety of challenges as they try to reestablish their lives and adapt in a new cultural environment. Acculturation is a complex process that is influenced by a number of factors. Throughout history, U.S. immigration policy …

The Influence Of Technology On Family Dynamics, Alessondra Villegas

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

A powerful tool, that contemporary society uses not only to entertain but also to communicate and educate, there is an ever-present availability to media access. However, there is an ongoing debate over whether or not the power of this influence and its ubiquitous availability yields positive or negative consequences in different aspects of our lives. One area of concern, in particular, is the dynamics of the American family. With the rapid progression of technological advances it is difficult to observe the influence that these devices are having on the ways in which a family interacts. There is research to support …

The Genre Of The Meme, Thomas Monson

Communication Studies Student Works

The development and proliferation of the Internet has led to numerous discoveries in the study of media and communication. Such a recent development in online communication is the rise of the online meme. The traditional meaning of meme has been transformed and has developed a new meaning within the sphere of online communication. The meme as defined by its new meaning has recurred in myriads, which have provided enough reason and data to develop a rhetorical genre for the subject. The first half of this study—the background—will begin with an orientation to the meme, an explanation of generic criticism, and …

The Tweet's The Thing: Exploring The Intersection Of Social Media And Broadway, Hilary Sutton

Masters Theses

In 2009 the little known Broadway musical Next to Normal rose to fame through the aid of an unprecedented Twitter campaign conducted by Situation Interactive, a digital marketing agency. The Next to Normal Twitter account gathered over one million followers throughout a six-week campaign in which the Situation Interactive team joined forces with the book writer and lyricist of Next to Normal to recreate the plot in one hundred and forty-character snippets. By analyzing the data collected the researcher cultivates a collection of best practices for running a successful Twitter marketing campaign for a live experience.

Social Media And The Transformation Of The Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis Of Humanitarian Discourse In Libya 2011 And Bosnia 1994, Ellen Noble

Political Science Honors Projects

Within humanitarian discourse, there is a prevailing narrative: the powerful liberal heroes are saving the helpless, weak victims. However, the beginning of the 21^st century marks the expansion of the digital revolution throughout lesser-developed states. Growing access to the Internet has enabled aid recipients to communicate with the outside world, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to reshape discourses surrounding humanitarianism. Through a comparative discourse analysis of Libyan Tweets, 1994 newspaper reports on Bosnia, and 2011 newspaper reports on Libya, this paper analyzes whether aid recipient discourse can resist the dominant humanitarian narrative and if that resistance can influence dominant …

Book Review: Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise And Reality Of A Citizen-Engaged Press, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Digital technology has changed journalism dramatically. Through a collection of research studies, essays, case studies, and interviews, Public Journalism 2.0 takes a detailed look at evolving public journalism and where audience-generated stories fit into that evolution. The editors divide the book into three sections: the history of civic and citizen journalism, current practices, and future possibilities. They conclude with their views of where professionals fit in to a citizen-engaged press.

Tweets And Votes: A Study Of The 2011 Singapore General Election, Marko M. Skoric, Nathaniel D. Poor, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study focuses on the uses of Twitter during the elections, examining whether the messages posted online are reflective of the climate of public opinion. Using Twitter data obtained during the official campaign period of the 2011 Singapore General Election, we test the predictive power of tweets in forecasting the election results. In line with some previous studies, we find that during the elections the Twitter sphere represents a rich source of data for gauging public opinion and that the frequency of tweets mentioning names of political parties, political candidates and contested constituencies could be used to make predictions about …