Mass Communication Commons^™

(Re)Constructing Ell And International Student Identities In The Oral Communication Course, Richie Neil Hao

Basic Communication Course Annual

There have been numerous studies (e.g., Dick, 1990; Ferris, 1998; Jung & McCroskey, 2004; Yook, 1995; Yook & Seiler, 1990; Zimmerman, 1995) that discuss the obstacles that English Language Learners (ELL) and international students face in oral communication classrooms. Although these studies provide teaching strategies that can be employed to better serve ELL and international students, they also reinforce stereotypical student identities. By exploring and engaging in critical communication pedagogy (Fassett & Warren, 2007), I problematize some of the foundational studies that construct ELL and international student identities as “at-risk” in oral communication classrooms and offer possibilities by specifically advocating …

Student Evaluations For The Online Public Speaking Course, John J. Miller

Basic Communication Course Annual

Despite criticisms raised about online public speaking classes, the growth of these online courses cannot be denied. This essay attempts to develop student course evaluations aimed at reflecting the unique characteristics of online instruction to assist instructors with improving their online pedagogy. Just as instructors seek to improve classroom instruction, they should likewise seek to improve online instruction through the realization and acceptance that online instruction is not simply course development, but the ongoing interactions between the student and instructor in the context of two significant differences between a traditional classroom and online instruction: (1) student-centered-controlled learning and (2) instructor-student …

Repetition And Possibilities: Foundational Communication Course, Graduate Teaching Assistants, Etc., Chris Mcrae

Basic Communication Course Annual

This essay considers repetition as a site for change and possibility in the foundational communication course. Using performative writing, I consider repetition as simultaneously comfortable and dangerous. As repeated actions become commonplace they can easily go unnoticed, and unchallenged. However, repeated actions can also become recognizable as patterns that can be changed. Repetition is then, a useful and even necessary starting place for the recognition of possibilities and the enactment of change. As a graduate teaching assistant, I find repetition useful for my pedagogy, but I am wary of how power operates through repetition in discursive and material ways. I …

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Basic Communication Course Annual

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Basic Communication Course Annual Vol. 22

Basic Communication Course Annual

Full issue (241 pages, 8.6 MB)

Critical Discourse Analysis Of Advertisements In Malaysian Women's Magazine., Atiqah Zawani Kamaruzzaman

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research analyzed the advertisements in Malaysian women’s magazines by using Fairclough’s framework in the area of Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings of this research will be valuable to those who are actively participates in researching CDA, that may include lecturers as well as the students who are learning Critical Discourse Analysis. Advertisements in CLEO are used as the data. The data is multimodal, however only the written texts are analyzed. As such, the researcher analyzed the linguistic features in advertisements published in Malaysian women’s magazine. The objective of the researcher was to identify how the magazines interpellate (Althusser 1971) …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Construction Of The Ideal Woman's Body Image In Print Advertisements., Pauline Tan Ching Lin

Student Works (2010-2019)

The purpose of this research was to investigate i) what are the words used to describe the non-ideal female body and the ideal female body, ii) what are the qualities and values associated with the ideal female body; iii) How does the social practice and discursive practice influence text production and interpretation. The data for this study consists of 132 print advertisements that featured services offered by slimming centres obtained from The Star and The Sun newspapers. Fairclough’s (1995a) three dimensional framework was adopted to analyze the data for this study because this framework enables the researcher to examine the …

A Study Of Epistemic Modality In A Television Interview., Papiya Chakrabarty

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research explores the use of modals such as will, would and shall which are epistemic in nature in an interview from America’s MTP (Meet the Press) of the present millennium which involves five politicians as speakers. It applies a qualitative approach and is a corpus based lexico-grammatical research which plans to identify the modality and its frequency in only one type of discourse. The research tests aims to test why speakers use epistemic modality and how committed they are towards their views, opinions which become truth propositions when involved in a question and answer session with other participants of …

Commodifying Scarcity: Society, Struggle, And Spectacle In World Of Warcraft, Kevin Moberly

English Faculty Publications

Overrun by monsters and tyrants, and ravaged by fanaticism, excess, and greed, World of Warcraft offers players a chance to struggle metaphorically against that which oppresses them: the excesses of late capitalism as they are represented by the game’s spectacular antagonisms. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, however, players must employ the very thing through which their oppression is manifested. Interpellated into the game as fetishized images, players must construct themselves and function in accordance with the limitations imposed upon them by the race and class of their characters. Players, as such, are incorporated into World of Warcraft’s …

Professionalization And Public Relations: An Ethical Mismatch, Rhonda Breit, Kristin Demetrious

Graduate School of Media and Communications

This paper explores the ethical culture in which contemporary public relations practitioners’ work and how it relates to the professionalisation of the domain. Focusing on the international umbrella public relations institution Global Alliance (GA) and other important industry bodies such as the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) and Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ), we study how the ‘work’ of a public relations practitioner is described, and as a corollary, what professional and ethical standards are promoted. Our analysis draws on theories of professions (Abbott 1988; Anderson and Schudson 2009; Volti 2008) and narrative (Surma 2004, Herman 2009), …

Refugees As People: The Portrayal Of Refugees In American Human Interest Stories, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study combines discourse analysis and narrative analysis (Yin 2007) to examine top US newspapers’ coverage of refugees in American human interest stories. I find that the refugees are presented (a) as prior victims; (b) as in search of the American Dream; and (c) as unable to achieve the American Dream. As human-interest features, the stories provide a largely positive portrayal of individual refugees and their families. However, the human interest stories also depict refugees as current victims of the American economic crisis; deeply frustrated by their inability to achieve the American Dream. Together these discourses represent a narrative of …

Communicating Conservation: Public Relations Practitioners' Communication Efforts To Inform The Public Of The Detriments Of Coastal Erosion And Wetlands Loss, Stephanie Ellene Shaddock

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal erosion is a serious problem that directly affects Louisiana and indirectly affects the entire United States. Between 1990 and 2000, Louisiana lost 24 square miles of land per year, which equals an approximate football field lost every 38 minutes (Barras, Bourgeois, & Handley, 1994). Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 accelerated this land loss by transforming 217 square miles of marsh into open water (United States Geological Survey, 2006). As a leader in seafood, oil, and gas production, and shipping state, Louisiana and the nation have much at stake with continued land loss. To inform Louisiana’s citizens and a …

Staying Objective: The Effect Of Corporate Public Relations On Video Game Journalists, Benjamin Jenkins

LSU Master's Theses

The video game industry makes more than $10 billion a year in the United States alone. It is a young and booming medium. Growing alongside the video game business is the video game media, a niche form of journalism comprised mostly of gaming websites and a few reporters in traditional media. This thesis examines the young gaming news industry through in-depth interviews conducted with six journalists from various news outlets. The research focused on two things: if game journalists followed the same norms and routines as news journalists and if game companies were able to influence what game journalists wrote …

Public Perception And The Oil Industry: An Analysis Of Oil Employees' And Nigerians' Opinions Regarding Exxon Mobil And Shell Oil's Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts, Liana L. Narcisse

LSU Master's Theses

This study looked at oil industry employees’ and Nigerians’ perceptions of Exxon Mobil and Shell Oil as socially responsible corporations and the role the two-step flow model of communication plays in shaping these publics’ impressions of the companies. Measures of participants’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) were developed using Carroll’s 1971 three-dimensional model of CSR and Ketola’s (2008) holistic model of CSR. This study found that for both companies participants had average to less-than-favorable perceptions of the companies’ socially responsible behavior, according to the various categories of CSR. However, employees were more likely to view the companies more favorably …

Evaluating Different Health Communicatioin Theories To Deter College Binge Drinking: A Look At Promising Directions For Future Research, Kristen Meyer Sunde

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

For more than 30 years, college administrators and health communicators have used binge drinking prevention campaigns on university campuses to deter students from this dangerous and life-threatening habit.

Despite the prevalence of such campaigns (Wechsler, Seibring, Liu & Ahl, 2004), binge drinking remains the top public health threat for this population (Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995).

In this study, the researcher conducted an experiment using fear appeals to see if these messages were more effective than social norms messages, which are often used in college binge drinking prevention campaigns (Real & Rimal, 2007), at prompting higher message credibility …

In Search Of State Government: The Lack Of State Legislative Coverage In Local Television News, German Adolfo Alvarez

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines how the institutional characteristics of local television news stations affect the stations’ coverage of state legislative news. Focusing on the state of Louisiana, the researcher conducts in-depth interviews with news workers from the seven media markets in the state. The interviews were focused toward the decision makers in the newsroom in order to examine the process that determines the newscast the audience receives. The interview discussions centered on the news making process. In addition, the interviews focused explicitly on the effect of proximity to the state capitol; coverage of state level news versus community level or national …

Twittering To The Top: A Content Analysis Of Corporate Tweets To Measure Organization-Public Relationships, Haley Edman

LSU Master's Theses

Corporations worldwide are realizing the potential to build relationships with publics using social media. The microblogging site, Twitter, has transformed from a platform in which people merely update the Twitterverse about their daily activities to a communication channel where interpersonal conversations between millions of users thrive. As public relations practitioners, it is important to utilize new media to reach out to publics in order to build mutually beneficial relationships. This study examines how 47 corporations use Twitter as a communication and relationship-building tool and works towards developing guidelines for practitioners on using and evaluating their communication efforts on Twitter. Grounded …

The Act Of Raising Donors: An Assessment Of Fund-Raising Stewardship Practices In Healthcare Institutions, Megan Lee Moses

LSU Master's Theses

The concept of stewardship within fund raising literature stems from the public relations theories of relationship management, which involve maintaining mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its publics. With the current economic crisis, non-profit organizations see the need to focus more time and attention on maintaining and fostering relationships with existing donors, and therefore, the idea of stewardship stands an area of great interest to scholars and fund-raising practitioners alike. This study seeks to evaluate the role and formalization of stewardship in the fund-raising process, the current tactics practitioners use to practice stewardship, and better understand the limitations to …

Do Web Users Care About Banner Ads Anymore? The Effects Of Frequency And Clutter In Web Advertising, Sang Y. Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study investigates the effects of frequency of exposure to banner ads and ad clutter in web pages upon online users’ psychological responses. In a 7 (frequency 1 through 7) x 2 (clutter vs. non-clutter) between-participants factorial experiment, participants (N = 250) were randomly assigned to one of fourteen news websites, each with 20 separate pages of news stories and animated banner ads downloaded from various websites. Results indicated that frequency of exposure is a powerful psychological cue affecting users’memory, attitudes, and behavior. However, contrary to expectation, banner clutter does not lead to negative effects on recall, attitudes, and behavior. …

"Blessed Be The Critics Of Newspapers": Journalistic Criticism Of Journalism 1865-1930, Yasmine Tarek Dabbous

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined journalistic press criticism between 1865 and 1930. It sought to understand how the first modern journalists conceived of their profession in a period of great transitions. As the study revealed, journalists writing about journalism between 1865 and 1930 discussed recurring themes such as commercialization, sensationalism, advertising, and ethics. They expressed ambivalence toward the rise of big business in their field and the consequences it could have on the quality of the work. In the process, journalists also defined journalism as a profession providing a public service or as a business aiming solely for circulation and profit. Definitions …