Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Online Daters’ Sexually Explicit Media Consumption And Imagined Interactions, Megan A. Vendemia, Kathryn D. Coduto

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Individuals oftentimes turn to interpersonal and mass media content to cope and satisfy their sexual needs in absence of offline interpersonal connection. Online dating platforms enable virtual and physical connections between users. The literature on imagined interactions suggests that people may play out these interpersonal scenarios in their minds; however, it is less clear the role sexually explicit media exposure and sexual mediated interactions may serve in facilitating imagined interactions. We conducted a survey to examine U.S. online daters’ relationship preferences, sexually explicit media consumption practices (pornography and sexting), and imagined interactions with potential mates focusing on three primary functions: …

Krnu: Expansion And Realignment, Kaci Richter

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

Terrestrial radio stations have undergone fundamental changes over the last three decades. The entertainment market has expanded to include more ways for content creators to reach audiences and more platforms for advertisers to promote and sell their goods and services. As listener habits have changed, radio stations have been forced to keep pace, adding owned media platforms like websites, apps and social media accounts to meet listeners where they are. This struggle is not limited to commercial radio properties. Listener habits are forever changed, and noncommercial stations are often under-resourced. 90.3 KRNU is one of those under-resourced noncommercial educational stations …

The Truth(S) Behind “True Crime”: Examining The Role Of Narrative In The Retellings Of The Rafay Family Murders, Samantha L. Richard

FIMS Major Projects and Creative Projects

In April of 1995, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) launched their second ever “Mr. Big” operation: one that involves an intricate interrogation technique designed to elicit a confession from suspected criminals in cases where physical evidence cannot link the accused to the crime. The targets of this operation were suspected murderers Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay. The highly publicized case was discussed extensively through traditional news coverage, as well as in various stories of the true crime genre. Through the use of narrative theory, this paper examines the role of narrative in the retelling of the Rafay family murders. …

Climate Change Frames And Emotional Responses On Reddit, Isabel Iruani Villanueva

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change remains a highly polarized topic in the United States. Research suggests that the divide in climate change beliefs is partly a result of news media’s representation of select aspects of the problem, or framing. Frames influence individuals’ attitudes, emotions, and behaviors towards climate change. Overwhelming representation of certain climate change frames has led to a lack of emotional connection to the issue, resulting in inaction or dismissal. Climate change researchers have investigated the presence and effects of frames on both news media and select social media sites, particularly Twitter. However, little research has investigated the climate change conversation …

The Impact Of Media Algorithms On The Habermassian Public Sphere And Discourse, Kendal Heavner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Media algorithms are increasing in use among popular social networking sites (Geiger, 2009).Algorithms are used to sort a users’ social media feed based on relevance and interest rather than content publish time (Geiger, 2009). Widely accepted and recognized as influential in the media sector, algorithms create a highly personalized experience for the individual viewer. However, some scholars argue the specified curation of media based on a user’s personal preferences leads to a “filter bubble,” an online-based self-fulfilling prophecy in which users’ pre-existing opinions are continually reaffirmed. Because of this, this thesis will examine the intersection of algorithms and media theory. …

Artificial Intuition In Tech Journalism On Ai: Imagining The Human Subject, Jacob Johanssen, Xin Wang

Human-Machine Communication

Artificial intuition (AI acting intuitively) is one trend in artificial intelligence. This article analyzes how it is discussed by technology journalism on the internet. The journalistic narratives that were analyzed claim that intuition can make AI more efficient, autonomous, and human. Some commentators also write that intuitive AI could execute tasks better than humans themselves ever could (e.g., in digital games); therefore, it could ultimately surpass human intuition. Such views do not pay enough attention to biases as well as transparency and explainability of AI. We contrast the journalistic narratives with philosophical understandings of intuition and a psychoanalytic view of …

Becoming Human? Ableism And Control In Detroit: Become Human And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Marco Dehnert, Rebecca B. Leach

Human-Machine Communication

In human-machine communication (HMC), machines are communicative subjects in the creation of meaning. The Computers are Social Actors and constructivist approaches to HMC postulate that humans communicate with machines as if they were people. From this perspective, communication is understood as heavily scripted where humans mindlessly apply human-to-human scripts in HMC. We argue that a critical approach to communication scripts reveals how humans may rely on ableism as a means of sense-making in their relationships with machines. Using the choose-your-own-adventure game Detroit: Become Human as a case study, we demonstrate (a) how ableist communication scripts render machines as both less-than-human …

An Ethnographic Co-Design Approach To Promoting Diversity In The Games Industry, Florence Chee, Larissa Hjorth, Hugh Davies

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Workplace diversity and inclusion are recognised as integral to the internal and public-facing success of organizations. The games industry worldwide has been notably slow to embrace reforms to bring diverse work cultures into practice. Not only does the industry rank very low in the diversity of its corporate profile but a series of high-profile controversies have underscored major problems with attaining and retaining individual staff and achieving overall corporate diversity. In recent years, a number of games media outlets, organizations and game companies have sought to ameliorate internal social and cultural problems by attempting to facilitate cultural change in the …

Effects Of News And Threat Perceptions On Americans’ Covid-19 Precautionary Behaviors, Riva Tukachinsky Forster, Megan A. Vendemia

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Our study examines the relationship between news exposure at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, personal threat beliefs, beliefs about others’ threat perceptions, and participation in precautionary actions. A survey of 377 U.S . adults revealed a significant main effect of news exposure on various precautionary behaviors (e.g., facial mask wear, physical distancing). Personal threat beliefs and beliefs about others’ threat perceptions serve as unique mechanisms mediating the effect of news on specific CDC-recommended and less socially desirable actions. These findings can guide news sources covering health crises in a socially responsible manner.

Coronavirus Chronicles, Diane Guerrazzi

All Assignment Prompts

No abstract provided.

With A Female Vice President In Office, Has Media Gender-Bias Left The Presidential Campaign Trail? The Short Answer Is No, And The Reason Why Is Deep Rooted, Nora Tarte

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

An examination of treatment in the media of female vice presidential candidates—Geraldine Ferraro (1984), Sarah Palin (2008) and Kamala Harris (2020)—surfaces a trend of gender bias perpetuated by subtly sexist language in all three campaigns. While society has made strides in equality in the 36 years between campaigns, the media treatment of Vice President Kamala Harris is not that far removed from the treatment of Geraldine Ferraro. The bias exists both overtly and subtly with obvious sexist language and more subtle forms of sexist language in coverage doled out by top media outlets, but subtle sexism is what often flies …

Us Media’S Coverage Of China’S Handling Of Covid-19: Playing The Role Of The Fourth Branch Of Government Or The Fourth Estate?, Wenshan Jia, Fangzhu Lu

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The present study is an analysis of a sample of reports on China’s handling of COVID-19 by several major US media with a focus on a controversial op-ed by the Wall Street Journal. It is found that instead of covering it objectively as a public health crisis, these media reports tend to adopt the strategy of naming, shaming, blaming, and taming against China. In other words, they seize the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan as an opportunity to serve Trump’s “America First” doctrine by a coordinated attempt to destroy the Chinese dream and arresting China’s ascendency. First, the naming/shaming …

Harold Innis’S Concept Of Bias: Its Intellectual Origins And Misused, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid-20th century, he developed his concept of media bias (also called the bias of communication). It remains Innis’s most cited concept, but it is also significantly misunderstood. For example, since his death in 1952, bias has often been applied in ways that are akin to a form of technological or media determinism. This has been an ongoing problem despite the fact that Innis developed his concept as a means of compelling analysts to reject such mechanistic formulations. Indeed, his goal was to promote more self-reflective …

Conflict Management Video Training For Retail Associates, Tisch Cistrunk-Parmelee

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Retail associates are encountering customer conflict at an ever-increasing rate. Mistreatment by customers includes insults, name-calling, threats, and violence. Job satisfaction for associates is on the decline as a result. This Capstone project proposes retail associates are not trained in managing customer conflict. Forty-six retail associates completed a 22-question survey and watched five embedded video microlessons (lessons between one and three minutes). The video showed retail associates how to recognize, assess, and manage customer conflict through self-awareness and mindful engagement. Through grounded theory and qualitative research methods, this study confirms that retail associates’ job satisfaction can improve with conflict management …

What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID‑19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID‑19 …

Cultivation Theory: Media Effects Toward Consumer Evaluations Of The Criminal Courts, Lindsey Dale Elliott

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

A substantial body of literature connects media effects to consumer perceptions of the criminal justice system. Research on the topic of cultivation theory has highlighted that an increased fear of crime within the general populace, due to an exaggeration of violence and criminal activity in the mass media, has spurred increased support for punitive policing, harsher sentencing, and positive feelings toward capital punishment. However, no research exists to explicate the cultivation of consumer perceptions toward the criminal courts. This study examines the impact of media consumption through television, the internet, and social media on consumer evaluations of the criminal courts. …

2021 International Crisis And Risk Communication Conference Program, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Program to the to the 11th Annual International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference sponsored by the Nicholson School of Communication and Media.

Teaching College Athletes Social Media Appropriateness, Christina Murray

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

It may come as no surprise that Twitter is the most popular social media platform where student athletes, particularly men, post inappropriate content. Male student athletes’ inappropriate tweets have become such a problem for universities, athletic departments, and the NCAA that coaches are forced to place a ban on their players’ social media usage or hire third party monitoring systems. Unfortunately, these reactive responses have not alleviated the problem of athletes differentiating what content is appropriate or inappropriate to tweet on their Twitter accounts. Analysis of the data collected from scholarly journal articles, textbooks, and popular press articles revealed that …

Is Care In The Air?: A Crisis Ethics Case Study Of American Airlines’ Communication During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lily V. Hicks

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research proposes a qualitative case study of American Airlines’ communication during the first month of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Data from the airline’s press releases along with its tweets and a sample of organizational responses to those tweets are offered for proposed analysis using the lenses of Situational Crisis Communication Theory, the Applied Model of Care Considerations, and the body of crisis literature on audience coping and emotions during crises. This in-depth look at a unique communication phenomenon will be a fundamental step in examining how airline communication exhibits ethics or lack thereof and is related to people’s emotions …

The Influence Of Camera Perspective And Viewer Attitudes Towards Police On Perceptions Of Police-Civilian Encounters, Anna-Louise Skidmore

Theses : Honours

Research suggests there may be a Camera Perspective Bias (CPB) effect across different camera footage types which influences viewer perceptions of police use of force encounters. Police body-worn camera (BWC) footage presents a first-person perspective from the officer’s point of view which predominantly captures the civilian. It is suggested that viewing an encounter from this perspective elicits a positive bias towards the officer when compared to CCTV footage. Additionally, research also shows that attitudes towards police influence perceptions of a filmed police-civilian encounters. This research aimed to investigate the effect of different camera evidence types (i.e., CCTV, BWC without audio …

The Integration Of Records, Electronic Communication And Networks In Indonesia, Ike Iswary Lawanda

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: This paper aims to show how managers/users’ communication and negotiations through electronic communication reflect individual and organizational resilience facing the global changes in ICT. The networked record structure, as the centre of the interactions, symbolizes the internal and external communication process in the organization.

Design/methodology/approach: We analysed the integrated network structures of the record from six government offices and three multinational corporations and one international Non-Government Organization in Indonesia as symbolic interactions between individuals and groups who easily cope with ICT innovation and who find the innovation to be challenging. To validate our findings, we interviewed eleven stakeholders, consists …

The Uncanny Swipe Drive: The Return Of A Racist Mode Of Algorithmic Thought On Dating Apps, Gregory Narr

Publications and Research

As algorithmic media amplify longstanding social oppression, they also seek to colonize every last bit of sociality where that oppression could be resisted. Swipe apps constitute prototypical examples of this dynamic. By employing protocols that foster absent-minded engagement, they allow unconscious racial preferences to be expressed without troubling users’ perceptions of themselves as non-racist. These preferences are then measured by recommender systems that treat “attractiveness” as a zero-sum game, allocate affective flows according to the winners and losers of those games, and ultimately amplify the salience of race as a factor of success for finding intimacy. In thus priming users …

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

Technology Criticism And Data Literacy: The Case For An Augmented Understanding Of Media Literacy, Thomas Knaus

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Reviewing the history of media literacy education might help us to identify how creating media as an approach can contribute to fostering knowledge, understanding technical issues, and to establishing a critical attitude towards technology and data. In a society where digital devices and services are omnipresent and decisions are increasingly based on data, critical analysis must penetrate beyond the “outer shell” of machines – their interfaces – through the technology itself, and the data, and algorithms, which make these devices and services function. Because technology and data constitute the basis of all communication and collaboration, media literate individuals …

Gentrification And Local Restaurants: Chinatown District Of Los Angeles In A Digital Age, Sky Xavier, Christopher J. Finlay

Honors Thesis

This paper analyzes the effects of gentrification and the digital age on local restaurants, specifically those in the Chinatown District of Los Angeles, California. To examine the effects of gentrification on Chinatown’s local businesses, I interviewed Daniel Yin of Yang Chow restaurant over Zoom. Yang Chow has three locations, this research centers around their original location in Chinatown. Yin now manages all online communications and was previously an in-person manager. His experience in the Chinatown restaurant business provides insight into this cultural district’s changing business landscape, as his family has owned this restaurant since 1977.

How Does How We Learn Influence What We Learn And From Whom We Learn: The Case Of Igen, Twitter, Bts Army, And Learning With Technology, Yuliya Dmitriyevna Goss

Dissertations and Theses

Digital information is omnipresent, and access is almost unavoidable. Technology advances and comes at us in waves that take over and then tend to linger. iGen is the first generation to be born into this advanced technology and the state of constant “plugged-inness” to the Internet. iGen has not experienced a different, predominantly analog, world, but baby boomers, generation X, and millennials – many of whom now use Internet-connected technology heavily – can attest to how they have changed as it integrated into their lives. Along with many other areas of life, learning has also changed with technological progress. From …

Baby Mama – Baby Daddy Drama An Ethnography Of Communication On Black Co-Parenting Talk On Youtube, Rosalyn Whickum

Master of Arts in Media and Communication Plan II Graduate Projects

As co-parenting research continues to emerge, it is important that we include the experiences of Black families in the literature. This project attempts to explore co-parenting talk among Black mothers and fathers on YouTube through Ethnography of Communication (EOC). This EOC analyzed the genres, topics, purposes, settings, keys, participants, message form and content , and act sequences of 100 YouTube videos. From this analysis, a list of recommendations for optimal co-parenting were presented as well as four co-parenting communication roles; Aggressor, Cooperator, Supervisor, and Shifter. This project concludes with a discussion on some of the key observations made during the …

Playing On The Threshold: Topological Chronotopes And Video Games, Michael Joseph Piero

English Theses & Dissertations

This study argues that the chronotope—literally “timespace”—is a useful, flexible heuristic for understanding how video game timespace is ideology, often encoding hegemonic norms of heteronormativity, misogyny, sovereign power’s control of bare life, and dualistic thinking. Adapting and reforging Mikhail Bakhtin’s “chronotope of the threshold,” I track the topological movements of threshold chronotopes across a series of games and game genres that reveal threshold experiences of play, ontology, and justice. This work of theory takes into account video game mechanics, interfaces, narratives, iconography, and materiality within the context of a player’s experience as a player-reader given to a bodily-rooted play with …

Beauty Is Not Black And White: A Content Analysis Of Black Women’S Body Image In Television Media, Alexis Hubbard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are few bodies of literature that look at Black women’s body image in television media. When Black women were studied most research (Falconer & Neville, 2000; Jhally & Kilbourne, 2010; Smith, 2014; Shearon-Richardson, 2011;) compared them to White ideals. However, this study did a content analysis of Black women in predominantly Black or ethnically diverse television shows using qualitative studies that suggest a Black ideal. The researcher examined lead character(s) body shapes, comments about their body, hair texture and comments about their hair. This research looked at protective factors (aspects Black life that allow for more body satisfaction) like …

Religious Nationalism And The Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals And Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article investigates the response to the coronavirus crisis by Evangelical Christian nationalists in the USA. The article outlines the curious mediaverse of religious nationalism—its post-truth and fake news aspects in particular—links religious nationalism to American exceptionalism, and analyzes conflicts between secular and religious authorities. Drawing upon some lessons from the past, the article addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology, as it has been played out virally in the corporate media. The article shows that the ideological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity prevent its proponents from understanding the virus in an historical and materialist …