Social Influence and Political Communication Commons^™

Student Censorship In The Social Work Classrooms, Lisa Kozlowski

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Through the evolution of the field of social work, a divide in its ideologies has emerged and certain political and ideological groups such as the religious and conservatives have become underrepresented. As a result, over the years the liberal philosophies have emerged as the dominant group. This has led to a decrease in diversity within the field. Recognition of biases in the field of social work is difficult. Through a qualitative analysis method, this study was meant to explore if social work students feel they are free to share openly in the classroom, and if they are accepting of all …

Bridges Out Of Poverty As An Anti-Poverty Strategy In Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Katlyn M. Uhler

Capstone Collection

This paper explores the initial results of the Bridges Out of Poverty (“Bridges”) community framework as implemented by the organization Kennett Area Community Service in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The aim of this research is to provide perspective on Bridges Out of Poverty’s contribution to the understanding of poverty in the United States and its potential as an antipoverty intervention. It does so first through an exploration of the historical and current discussion on poverty and anti-poverty interventions in the United States, followed by research on the Bridges model itself and its implementation in Kennett Square. This latter research includes content …

Digital Mindfulness: An Emerging Field Of Inquiry And Practice, Sherri Henderson

Mindfulness Studies Theses

This two-part paper explores digital mindfulness as an emerging field of inquiry and practice into the integration of technology and contemplative practices. The first part surveys the growing research on the effects of technology on health and well-being. Investigating Buddhist teachings leads to a more balanced and aware approach towards integrating mindfulness with the digital world. Digital mindfulness encourages meaningful engagement while online. It also encourages thoughtfulness, awareness and intention. Digital mindfulness also reshapes and encourages conversations in our homes, schools, and proposes digital responsibility and digital citizenship. The second part of the paper proposes a framework for a workshop …

Do Marketing Strategies Impact Condom Sales In Uganda?, Meyhar Mohammed

Master's Theses

What attracts people to buy condoms? HIV/AIDS remain one of the biggest health dangers of the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. A lot of efforts have been pursued in the past two decades to drastically reduce prevalence of HIV and increase awareness about preventive mechanisms. In order to prevent relapse of success achieved so far, it is important to recognize transformation of consumer behavior due to growth in social networks, education and awareness over time. There are a lot of behavioral triggers captured by social marketing interventions in the field of public health. In an attempt to investigate the role …

Who Benefits From Blackness? The White Compulsion For Capital, Akira Milligan

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project will examine the change in representations of blackness and black character in commercially successful hip hop music through music videos directed by Hype Williams from 1995 to 2005. This research will use a womanist approach to address the significant historical influence of storytelling in the black narrative and how the emerging concepts of hypermasculinity and the degradation of the black body have seemingly become the new normal. These concepts largely contribute to the negative stereotypical perceptions of black identity that keeps black bodies marginalized because there is little diversity in the public representations of blackness while there exists …

Mass Shootings And The Media: How Race And Ethnicity Influence Media Coverage, Emily Wheeler

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Topics related to crime and the criminal justice system comprise a majority of topics discussed in the media. This study explores how media coverage of mass shootings varies based on the racial or ethnic identity of the shooter. Topics examined include popular beliefs and misconceptions about the race of mass murderers, the role mass media plays in influencing public perceptions about race and crime related topics, and the alarming rate at which the public recognizes and accepts the media as a reliable source of information when official data sources provide a much different picture. Further analysis of the Columbine High …

News Media Bias And The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Marisa S. Campanella

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Since 2011, turmoil has erupted in Syria causing the displacement of many individuals now seeking refuge. It has impacted other areas of the world, filling the media with stories of daily events surrounding the initial attacks. The increase in media coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis led me to question whether the stories in the news were accurate representations of what was actually happening. I chose to compare two distinct sources of news in a content analysis, Fox News and CNN, to see whether there was a discrepancy in how they reported the same topics. After analyzing seven articles from …

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

Delia Albert [Philippines, Secretary Of Foreign Affairs], Delia Albert

Digital Narratives of Asia

Former Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs and a respected champion on women’s issues, Delia Albert, tells of how she got her big break entering the foreign services, and set a precedent for gender equality. She also presents the Asian style of leadership, ASEAN way of mitigating conflicts, and describes a highly stressful case of saving a Filipino man in Iraq.

Assessing The Reliability And Accuracy Of Advocacy Group Data In Hate Group Research, Mark S. Purington

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

In the 1980s, the term “hate group” began to appear increasingly in American media reports, often referring to the Ku Klux Klan or various neo-Nazi activities. There is no legal definition of the term, as it is not illegal to belong to such organizations, and so the designation of hate groups generally falls to private advocacy groups that claim to track them, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of Montgomery, Alabama. When the media or academic researchers require data on hate groups, they often turn to advocacy groups, usually due to a lack of other sources and because …

Media Constructed Retirement Articles Of Professional Baseball Players, Kevin T. Berge

Sport Management Undergraduate

The career of an athlete may shape the narrative that the media uses when writing articles on that player when they retire. Many people fail to understand how the media constructs articles the way they do on Major League Baseball (MLB) players upon retirement. This research study used a mixed method approach to show how the media covers certain professional MLB players when they retire. The researcher counted how many times chosen variables were mentioned in two different articles of sixteen retired MLB players, and then extracted quotes from those articles. This study found that superstar pitchers and superstar hitters …

An Ideological Criticism Of Todrick Hall's Visual Album Straight Outta Oz, Rachel Moss

SCOM Undergraduate Research Conference

American entertainer Todrick Hall released his visual album Straight Outta Oz in 2016 in order to communicate his views on a wide range of topics from sexuality to family life. Hall used the video to advance challenging ideologies that discuss the harmful effects of the church on LGBTQ+ youth, problems the LGBTQ+ community face, the discrimination faced by black Americans, and pitfalls of the entertainment industry, with the purpose of forming a call to action for society to advocate for equality. By placing these themes into a medium popular at the time of release, Hall created a better chance for …

My Black Is Radical And Sensual: White Privilege And The Policing Of Black Women’S Body On Instagram, Alexis M. Franklin

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project argues that the overarching idea of white supremacy as well as Black pleasure politics disportionately alienates Black women from having the same freedom online as white women. In particular, this project analyzes the public commentary on two parallel sets of Instagram images, one of Beyonce and another of Kim Kardashian, as well as those of white women using the slutwalk hashtag and images of Black women who do not use the hashtag.

Can Public Diplomacy Survive The Internet? Bots, Echo Chambers, And Disinformation, Shawn Powers, Markos Kounalakis

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Report from a meeting held on the topic of disinformation, the Internet, and public diplomacy held at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 2017.

Executive Summary

Scientific progress continues to accelerate, and while we’ve witnessed a revolution in communication technologies in the past ten years, what proceeds in the next ten years may be far more transformative. It may also be extremely disruptive, challenging long held conventions behind public diplomacy (PD) programs and strategies. In order to think carefully about PD in this ever and rapidly changing communications space, the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD) convened a group of …

Journalism In The Digital Age: The Adaptation Of Facebook Live In News Organizations, Brittany Stephanis

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Given the prevalence of technology and the ability to go live on mobile phones, journalists and news organizations alike are learning why Facebook Live is such an important tool. As part of my research, I found online articles explaining the impact Facebook Live has had on the journalism industry and interviewed three different experts on the subject. In doing so, I was able to demonstrate the perspectives of someone from network news, a print and online publication, as well as a well-versed academic. My short documentary covers the rise of “fake news” and citizen journalism on the social media platform. …

A Content Analysis Of The 2014 Immigration Crisis Media Coverage: An Intergroup Threat Theory Approach On The Age Of Immigrants, Carolee Lantigua

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The purpose of this research is to understand, through the intergroup threat theory, how the national and local press perceive unaccompanied minors through their media coverage. Using the 2014 immigration crisis, during which an exodus of unaccompanied minors crossed into the United States beginning in 2013, this paper investigates two central ideas: first, how does media coverage of young unaccompanied immigrants differ from the media coverage of non-minor immigrants? Second, how does spatial proximity to the American-Mexican border affect the tone of the media coverage young unaccompanied immigrants receive? I sampled two national newspapers and two local newspapers to interpret, …

Getting Somewhere: People V. Turner (2016) And The Efficacy Of Survivor Narratives, Gheorghe L. Williams

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

An examination of the narrative and rhetorical techniques employed in survivor narratives, and how these have been necessitated by legal biases and unjust social and cultural practices.

Language Attitudes And The Learning Environment: The Effects Of Regional Dialect On Perceptions Of Teacher Credibility, Marissa C. Mcgillis

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate how differences in regional dialect affect students’ perceptions of teacher credibility. In a broader sense, the research aimed to improve teacher-student interactions by identifying communication barriers created through cultural differences. 109 students at the University of Southern Mississippi who identified as natives to the American South participated in the study. 52 of the participants listened to a lecture given by a Standard American English speaker, and the other 57 participants listened to the same lecture delivered in American Southern English. Both groups completed a survey with twelve seven-point semantic differential scales, measuring …

Analyzing The Effects Of Preprimary Broadcast Media On Presidential Nominations From 1980-2016, Jarred Ralston Cuellar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to discover if broadcast media released during the preprimary period has an effect on the Presidential nomination process, and if so in what way? Several OLS regression models, based on Randall Adkins and Andrew Dowdle’s Presidential nomination forecasting models, were created as an attempt to not only find a statistically significant effect between broadcast media and aggregate vote percentage, but also in an effort to create more effective forecasts. I have drawn my sample from every open nomination race dating back to 1980, and used both cable and network broadcasting sources. I have covered not only the …

The Intersection Of Culture And Activism In The Filipino Community In Soma, Ericka J. Martynovych

Master's Theses

My research analyzes the intersection between culture and activism, through oral histories with participants and organizers of SoMa Pilipinas, the Filipino cultural heritage district in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. I analyzed the impact of the establishment of the Filipino cultural heritage district on the Filipino community in the South of Market neighborhood. I examined what motivates members of this community to be politically active by organizing and attending protests and rallies, speaking at Planning Commission hearings at City Hall, attending planning meetings for SoMa Pilipinas, building relationships across organizations and fields, and providing resources for community …

Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek

All NMU Master's Theses

The Internet has given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the arena for sharing official information. Information can be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. This study examined the ease of locating county governmental information, such as contact information for public officials and financial reports, and surveyed elected county officials for purposes of identifying how information is …

The Effects Of Greek Life On Political Participation And Interaction Involvement, Philip Lamborn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Institutions of higher education are constantly trying to learn more about their own student population. Whether this means a student’s academic performance, social life, personality traits, or political involvement it is important to study the lives of university students so as to better understand and serve that population. Specifically, studying the relationship between communication and political participation among college students is important for those working in higher education, researching voting behaviors, and for the general public. Students in Greek Letter Societies (GLS), also known as fraternities/sororities or social clubs, are a perfect population to study the effects of communication on …

Global Catastrophe In Motion Pictures As Meaning And Message: The Functions Of Apocalyptic Cinema In American Film, Wynn Gerald Hamonic

Journal of Religion & Film

The steady rise in production of American apocalyptic films and the genre's enduring popularity over the last seven decades can be explained by the functions the film genre serves. Through an analysis of a broad range of apocalyptic films along with the application of several theoretical and critical approaches to the study of film, the author describes seven functions commonly found in American apocalyptic cinema expressed both in terms of its meaning (the underlying purpose of the film) and its message (the ideas the filmmakers want to convey to the audience). Apocalyptic cinema helps the viewer make sense of the …

Investigating Preferences For Patriarchal Values Among Muslim University Students In Southern Thailand, Mahsoom Sateemae, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Suhaimee Sateemae

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Recent research on Muslim populations has offered interesting but limited insights about values preferences. This mixed-methods study examines the prevalence of support for patriarchy among a sample of religious Muslim university students in Southern Thailand using items from the World Values Survey. It also investigates the durability of these preferences by examining correlations between support or opposition to patriarchal values with preferences towards courtship practices, and elements that influence respondents’ views on gender roles, particularly related to the contemporary socioeconomic and political situation facing the Muslim minority of Southern Thailand.

A Longitudinal And Experimental Study Of The Impact Of Knowledge On The Bases Of Institutional Trust, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Christopher D. Kimbrough, Ellie Shockley, Tess M. S. Neal, Mitchel Herian, Joseph A. Hamm, Brian H. Bornstein, Alan Tomkins

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

This study examined a knowledge-centered theory of institutional trust development. In the context of trust in water regulatory institutions, the moderating impact of knowledge was tested to determine if there were longitudinal changes in the bases of institutional trust as a function of increases in knowledge about a target institution. We hypothesized that as people learn about an institution with which they were previously unfamiliar, they begin to form more nuanced perceptions, distinguishing the new institution from other institutions and relying less upon their generalized trust to estimate their trust in that institution. Prior to having specific, differential information about …

Transmitiendo La Identidad: Revalorización Sociopolítica Del Kichwa Por Los Medios De Comunicación \ Transmitting Identity: Sociopolitical Revaluation Of The Kichwa By The Media, Abi Mcdougal

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este Proyecto de Estudio Independiente considera cómo los medios de comunicación kichwas están involucrados en la conciencia sociopolítica indígena. Establece una historia de la opresión lingüística hacia los kichwa; provee un marco conceptual de los espacios de uso sociolingüísticos en la diglosia; e introduce el tema de los medios de comunicación kichwas, localizados en Otavalo y los pueblos de Imbabura cercanos. Presenta la información primaria sobre los medios de comunicación, obtenida a través de entrevistas, diálogos informales, observación enfocada y participante, y una encuesta pública en Otavalo. Considera el radio, lo audiovisual, y publicaciones escritas, a través de unas organizaciones …

Dinamika Trust Pada Pemasaran Online Di Media Sosial, Lingga Detia Ananda

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana dinamika trust yang terjadi pada komunikasi tidak tatap muka, melalui media sosial dalam konteks pemasaran online. Dinamika trust tersebut diidentifikasi melalui tipe trust pada model yang dicetuskan oleh Lewicki dan Bunker. Analisis dalam penelitian ini menggunakan teori mengenai trust yang terkait dengan perilaku konsumen. Paradigma pada penelitian ini adalah post-positivisme melalui pendekatan kualitatif dengan strategi studi kasus. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan wawancara mendalam kepada informan dan observasi. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa dalam penelitian ini tipe trust yang terbentuk adalah knowledge-based trust, dimana trust yang terbentuk berasal dari informasi dan pengalaman terdahulu untuk memprediksi perilaku orang …

Etika Media Di Era “Post-Truth”, Kharisma Dhimas Syuhada

JURNAL KOMUNIKASI INDONESIA

No abstract provided.

Churchill’S Argument Against Democracy: The Average Voter. Information Levels And News Sources Among Americans, Kyle Priest

Political Science Theses and Capstones

A democracy needs an informed public. However, I investigate low levels of political awareness among Americans. I focus on whether people understand issues incorrectly or are simply disengaged and inattentive. There is an important difference between them. Those who are uninformed simply do not know, which would make it easier to turn them into informed citizens. All that would be needed is for them to access the right information. For those who are misinformed, however, it is a tougher task. They believe that their answer is right, and even though they are in fact wrong, they are more willing to …

“Illegal” Migration Is Speech, Daniel I. Morales

Indiana Law Journal

Noncitizens must comply with immigration laws just because citizens say so. The citizenry takes for granted its monopoly on immigration control, but the legitimacy of this arrangement has been called into question by cutting-edge political theorists. One prominent theorist argues, for example, that basic democratic principles require that noncitizens living outside the United States have a say in the formation of immigration law since they must obey it. This Article provides a legal response to these political theory developments, assimilating them, along with the facts on the ground, into an account of “illegal” migration as First Amendment speech.

If noncitizens’ …