Mass Communication Commons^™

Looking Back At The Media's Future: A Mixed Method Analysis Of Race And Gender Bias During The 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary Season, Tim Vance

Dissertations

Political knowledge has been defined as the individual’s ability to recall candidate names, personal characteristics, and qualifications. Furthermore, it is the ability to identify election issues, current campaign developments, and recognize connections between candidates and issue positions (C. Atkin & Heald, 1976). I posit that political knowledge has become much more…and much less.

I have introduced, in this paper, a number of sources for political learning: ads, newspapers, YouTube, and television news. All hold some interest for investigation as political knowledge sources, but methodology cannot be standardized across all sources. As such, the focus of the qualitative part of this …

The (Not So) New Normal: A Queer Critique Of Lgbt Characters And Themes In Primetime Network Television Situational Comedies, Robert Dallas Byrd Jr.

Dissertations

This analysis of primetime situational comedies feature LGBTQ characters argues that through heteronormative and homonormative constructions of sexuality, race, gender, and class, many LGBTQ people are rendered invisible in the mainstream. Through discourse analysis, the study describes how these programs work to normalize gay and lesbian identity, which then resembles the dominant heterosexuality, aiding in the advancement of white, middle class gays, who privatize sexuality and mimic dominant conventions of gender, race, sexuality, and class in the public sphere. This research is important in understanding the American public’s most recent shifts in public opinion on issues of marriage equality and …

Gatekeeping The Social Games In A Post-Broadcasting World: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nbc And User-Generated Olympic Twitter Coverage During The 2012 London Games, Daniel Anthony Sipocz

Dissertations

This study examined the Twitter use of both traditional gatekeepers, such as NBC, and audience members during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The exploratory study examined NBC and audience members as gatekeepers with a particular interest in the audience’s role as a gatekeeper through social media use. NBC used Twitter, a social media platform, in ways that supported traditional gatekeeping models. The network aimed to drive audiences back to the traditional television broadcast while providing the audience with the illusion of having an influence on Olympic coverage. Most significantly, this study argues that the audience became a gatekeeper of Olympic …

Public Relations Models And Dialogic Communication In The Twitterverse: An Analysis Of How Colleges And Universities Are Engaging Their Publics Through Twitter, Jason Antwuan Beverly

Dissertations

Colleges and universities throughout this world are realizing the importance of engaging in and building mutually-beneficial relationships with their key publics through social media. The introduction of the microblogging tool known as Twitter extends the use of social media in higher education, beyond the classroom, and into the realm of public relations where it can be just as effective. Now, colleges and universities are capitalizing off of its potential as a public relations tool. Twitter allows colleges and universities to better connect with their technology-consumed publics trough dialogic and interactive two-way communication. This study examines how 155 colleges and universities …

Ecological Psychology And Media Consumption Among Young Adults: A New Framework, Alice Diana Cade Ferguson

Dissertations

The Pew Research Center (2010, March 1) identified three crucial “new metrics of news” (p. 2) that help to explain the appeal of new, interactive media forms among young adult news consumers. These metrics of Portability, Personalizability and Participation (Pew, 2010) highlight the rapid transformations in technology and user interests that have helped create a new manifestation of what McLuhan called an “age of anxiety” (1967/2001, pp. 8-9) in mass media industries and in mass communication education and scholarship. The purpose of this research is to investigate this very shift in how news is delivered and consumed, with particular attention …

Trayvon Martin And Election 2012 Social Media Messaging: An Analysis Of Framing, Rhetoric, And Media Types In Online Messages By Civil Rights Organizations, Riva Renee Brown

Dissertations

This content analysis study explored framing, rhetoric, and media types used by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Urban League, National Action Network, and ColorOfChange.org in website and social media messages posted during the Trayvon Martin case and Election 2012. It also examined the mainstream print news media coverage these civil rights organizations generated.

On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a 28 year old White and Hispanic male, fatally shot Martin, a 17 year old Black male, in Florida. After authorities did not charge Zimmerman with the teenager’s murder, these organizations drafted petitions and staged rallies …

Don't Call Me That: A Techno-Feminist Critique Of The Term Mommy Blogger, Gina Masullo Chen

Faculty Publications

This article argues that although the act of mommy blogging may be empowering, the term itself reinforces women's hegemonic normative roles as nurturers, thrusting women who blog about their children into a form of digital domesticity in the blogosphere. Drawing on 29 blogs posts women wrote debating the term mommy blogger and 649 comments posted on these blogs, the author uses Judith Butler's concept of performativity to rhetorically analyze the term, using a techno-feminist lens and cyber-ethnographic approach. The author asserts that the use of the term mommy blogger continues the culturally ingrained performance of motherhood women learned since childhood, …

Age, Gender, Race, And Culture In The Er: A Content Analysis Of End-Of-Life Issues In The Television Drama, Katrina Wilson Burtt

Dissertations

Within one of the most popular television dramas on American television, hundreds of depictions of end-of-life (EOL) care and decision-making conveyed impressions of how death and dying occurred in a hospital. This content analysis of EOL incidents that appeared in every episode of the television drama ER indicated that viewers got powerful messages about EOL. The long-playing, popular television drama exaggerated the role of physician within the EOL scenes and minimized the roles of women, racial minorities and ethnic groups. Notably lacking from the EOL content were accurate or positive representations of racial, ethnic or cultural differences in death and …

Religious Leaders In Crisis: An Analysis Of Image Restoration Strategies And Content Variables, Melody Teracita Fisher

Dissertations

The following study employs content analysis to examine the crisis communication responses and audience reception of religious leaders involved in scandal. Benoit’s Image Repair Strategies and the Contingency Theory are used to determine the strategies, stances and contingent variables of mega-church leaders: Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, Eddie Long, Henry Lyons and Jimmy Swaggart; and the Boston Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. News framing theory determined media and audience reception of the religious leaders’ crisis communication responses.

The study concludes that there is little difference in mega-church leaders and the Boston Diocese’s crisis communication responses. Religious leaders’ dominant strategies were …

"If It Ain't Broke, Break It": How Corporate Journalism Killed The "Arkansas Gazette", Donna Lampkin Stephens

Dissertations

Ownership is an increasingly critical issue for newspapers as they face the latest threats to the industry’s survival. Local, engaged, enlightened ownership is preferable to that of a distant corporation, but economic realities have decreed that corporate ownership has become the norm. The Arkansas Gazette was one of the most honored newspapers of twentieth-century American journalism under independent local family ownership, having provided brave leadership during the Little Rock Central Crisis, but its wounds from one of the country’s final fierce newspaper wars — against another local owner, Walter Hussman and his Arkansas Democrat — in the 1980s, combined with …

The Cultural Complex Of Innocence: An Examination Of Media And Social Construction Of Missing White Woman Syndrome, Sarah Land Stein

Dissertations

This study examined the etiology and promulgation of the sociological phenomenon known as missing white woman syndrome. It was hypothesized that missing white woman syndrome may not be entirely attributable to racial disparity as has been claimed in the past. Rather, citing the work of Dr. Carl Jung, the researcher believed that missing white woman syndrome may be partially explained by a concept known as a cultural complex. The cultural complex that was hypothesized for purposes of this study is one related to innocence: That is, as a western society, we have been culturally overexposed to the blonde, Caucasian female …

Planned Parenthood Takes On Live Action: An Analysis Of Media Interplay And Image Restoration Strategies In Strategic Conflict Management, Leslie Lynn Rasmussen

Dissertations

On February 1, 2011 the pro-life organization Live Action released videos that appeared to show Planned Parenthood clinic staff disregarding statutory rape and abortion reporting laws and aiding sex traffickers. The videos posted online quickly garnered over a million views and placed Planned Parenthood at the forefront of national news. The Federal government intervened and threatened to remove funding to the Title X organization. Planned Parenthood launched a campaign to retain funding using social media and controlled online media, and attempted restore its image as a reputable healthcare provider while engaged in conflict with Live Action.

A content analysis was …

The Impact Of Celebrity Endorser Type And Source Credibility On The Advertising Attitudes And Purchase Intentions Of Indian Rural Consumers, Sidharth Muralidharan

Dissertations

India is among the fastest growing economies in the world and has the second largest population out of which 70% are considered rural. The rural consumer has witnessed a lifestyle shift wherein they have become brand conscious, consumption of media content has increased and a rising income has opened up possibilities never experienced before. Understanding the love for cinema, celebrity endorsement has become a popular marketing strategy being employed by advertisers in India. The purpose of this study was to find out which celebrity endorser type (national, regional or non-celebrity) was the most effective on rural consumer’s attitude toward the …

Ideological “Smackdown”: A Textual Analysis Of Class, Race And Gender In Wwe Televised Professional Wrestling, Casey Brandon Hart

Dissertations

The focus of this study is an in-depth intertextual examination of how the WWE in 2010 and by extension contemporary professional wrestling in general represents a microcosm of modern cultural ideology. The study examines three major areas in which this occurs. The first of these areas is that of class values. This section focuses on the establishment and extension middle-American values, defined as those values generally shared by the middle-class of the United States. The second section of this study focuses on how the WWE uses racial commodification in the treatment of people of color. Using concepts of Marxist power …

The Viral Fingerprint: A Content Analysis Of Popular Viral Advertisements, Thomas Grant Broadus Ii

Master's Theses

This paper presents an analysis of 280 online videos that appeared on the Advertising Age weekly chart of the top ten viral videos of the week; the videos appeared on the chart from March 23rd 2009 to March 9th 2011. The videos were analyzed along four areas of observation including the advertiser characteristics, the formatting characteristics of the video, the messaging strategies of each video, and the level of involvement the product would require for a consumer to make a purchase. Through examining the components of each video, a thread of commonality was revealed. Cumulatively, the dominant themes and characteristics …

"Reading" The Apprentice: Commerce, Culture, And The Manufacturing Of Reality, Sharon Simpson Terrell

Dissertations

This study examines the six original seasons of the reality television series The Apprentice as a postmodern, cultural artifact. Grounded in Burke’s (1967) “literature as equipment for living,” and Brummett’s (1984) consideration that televised content constitutes literature, the theory of “televised discourse as equipment for living” provided the guide to examine the series. Hall’s (1980) “reading against the grain” oppositional reading technique was utilized to interrogate both the manifest and latent content. The content of the series may indeed provide the audience with a guide to ideological beliefs of both commerce and culture, thereby creating a manufactured reality for its …

Full Court Press: How Mississippi Newspapers Helped Keep State College Basketball Segregated, 1955-1973, Jason Ashley Peterson

Dissertations

During the civil rights era, Mississippi was cloaked in the hateful embrace of the Closed Society, historian James Silver’s description of the white caste systems that used State’s Rights to enforce segregation and promote the subservient treatment of blacks. Surprisingly, challenges from Mississippi’s college basketball courts brought into question the validity of the Closed Society and its unwritten law, a gentleman’s agreement that prevented college teams in the Magnolia State from playing against integrated foes. Led by Mississippi State University’s (MSU) basketball team, which won four Southeastern Conference championships in a five-year span, the newspapers in Mississippi often debated the …

The Oddity As Commodity: Television And The Modern Day Freak Show, Robin Marie Cecala

Dissertations

A new genre of documentary and reality program has appeared on cable television in recent years. Suddenly, little people, conjoined twins, the morbidly obese, Treeman and Mermaid Girl are the new stars of cable. This latest genre features people with medical conditions once exhibited in the turn of the century freak shows.

The goal of this dissertation is to argue that documentary programming on cable is becoming a modern version of the P.T. Barnum-style freak shows. The analysis uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine representations of race, culture and disability. The dissertation also discusses the history of the …

The Experiences Of Mississippi Weekly Newspaper Editors As They Explore And Consider Producing Internet Editions, Cassandra Denise Johnson

Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the challenges Mississippi weekly newspaper editors faced when deciding to have an online edition and the issues these editors encountered when they adopted a Web newspaper. The study expounded on four areas—the operational changes weekly newspapers have had to make to produce Web editions, the different type of newsroom staff that are needed to create both editions, the content that is going in the online edition, and the financial pressures that editors work through to keep the newspapers profitable. The study was modeled after similar studies from three organizations—the Pew Research Center, the Bivings Group, and …

A History Of The American Film Institute, Deborah Jae Alexander

Dissertations

The American Film Institute (AFI) is a highly politicized, powerful organization. To date, most historical documentation and recording of AFI events and activities has been disseminated to the mass media from within the organization through its own publications or in other historical documentation as incidental history in relation to another topic. This dissertation, written as an overview, is the first comprehensive, independent historical examination of the AFI. The examination begins with an exploration of the development, activities and decline of the American Council on Education‟s original AFI and other film organizations that existed prior to the present day AFI. It …

Journalism Students, Web 2.0 And The Digital Divide, Mary Elizabeth Green

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to find out if students were utilizing Web 2.0 applications. Since the applications in question are often employed by the media industry, the study aspired to find out if students majoring in mass communication and journalism utilized the applications more often than other students. The “digital divide” is a term used to describe the difference in skill levels in using computer technology and the Internet. Some of the variables typically associated with the digital divide include gender, age, ethnicity, lack of a broadband connection and previous experience using the technology. This study looks at …

Source-Message-Receiver In Integrated Marketing Communication: A Study Of U.S. Institutional Advancement, Sharee Leblanc Broussard

Dissertations

Because integrated marketing communication (IMC) research has traditionally been problematic, this study used an existing scale to determine that higher educational institutional advancement (alumni, marketing-communications, development) is an appropriate venue to study the process model. Responses from practitioners representing every department within advancement, every regional accrediting body and each of the baccalaureate to doctoral Carnegie Classification levels indicated the IMC process model is both understood and its tenets practiced by practitioners at all sizes and levels of institution. The study was of interest to the practitioners as more than half of the respondents requested a copy of the results. Additionally, …

Intimate Strangers And Estranged Intimates: An Investigation Of The Impact Of Instant Messaging And Short Message Service On The Size And Strength Of Social Networks In Kuwait, Bashaiar Al-Sanaa

Dissertations

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have revolutionized how people experience spatial proximity, reality, and connectivity. These technologies provide inexpensive access to anything and anyone in the world. They also replicate face-to-face interaction in cyber-space and allow for participation in numerous modes of social exchange.

People use Information and communication technologies to write web logs (blogs), send electronic mail (email), socialize through networking sites (such as Facebook and MySpace), text each other through mobile phone Short Message Service (SMS) and chat via online instant messaging (IM).With all these applications, a debate has ignited that actual physical communication is decreasing in favor …

The Content And Role Of Web Sites In Public Relations Of Religious Congregations, Jerlen Young Nelson

Dissertations

This study presents an analysis of the content of Web sites belonging to local religious congregations. The study included a quantitative content analysis of the Web sites of 120 local congregations, which represented 12 different religious organizations. These religious organizations were all members of the Religious Communicators Council organization. Results of the study emphasized the basic content and functions of the Web sites. Overall, this study found that 43.3% of the Web sites were used for informational purposes only. For example, a few of the most prevalent variables on the Web sites were the general contact information, staff information, e-mail …

"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People": Hip Hop, Public Discourse And Black Politics In The Early 21st Century, Hazel Bell James Cole

Dissertations

Recently, more scholars are examining hip hop as a powerful cultural, communicative force, yet hip hop's political orientation goes unnoticed. This study highlights the politics found in hip hop culture and in rap music since 2000 by exploring hip hop as a social movement. This study utilizes a critical, cultural approach by applying ideological case study and textual analyses methods. Song lyrics, activist efforts and black politics prove the political orientation of hip hop culture, which revealed that rap music in general is limited by capitalistic, hegemonic restraints juxtaposed to rappers serving as the legitimate voice of the marginalized and …

Toward A Free Collegiate Press: An Analysis Of Influences That Can Lead To Censorship At College Newspapers, Shaniece Bell Bickham

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to explore the impact that influences at the individual, organizational and societal levels had on content in college and university student newspapers. Specifically, this research examined the ways that influences at the three levels could lead to censorship of the student press. A quantitative study was conducted through the use of online survey research. Student editors, faculty advisers, and academic affairs administrators of journalism and mass communication programs that are recognized as being accredited by the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC) were surveyed to gather information about the structure …

New Innovations In State Legislatures: An Examination Of The Successes Of Diffusion And The Potential Of Personal Home Pages, Amber Jean Reetz Narro

Dissertations

This dissertation examined state legislators’ dissemination of innovations on their websites by determining the extent to which state legislators’ web sites reflect “best practices” as recommended by Park and Choi (2002) and Jewell (1982). The researcher utilizes content analysis to determine which legislators employ tools of sophistication, as well as relationship-building tools. In addition, the researcher interviewed webmasters across the country to determine the limitations placed on legislators. Finally, the researcher examined legislator and constituency demographics. Using chi-square analysis, the researcher determined if there were relationships between the tools on the websites and the demographics of the legislator and constituency …

A History Of The “Hattiesburg American”, Patt Foster Roberson

Dissertations

This dissertation did not include an Abstract.

This dissertation is a study of the history of the Hattiesburg American , a local newspaper in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is also a study of the development of local newspapers in the United States.