Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons^™

Dialogic Communication Ethics As A Hopeful Response To Artificial Intelligence, Kristen Haldeman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within the past five years, a new technology has dominated modern culture: artificial intelligence. With a multiplicity of ways to respond to this new environment, this dissertation situates a response to artificial intelligence by combining the media ecology and communication ethics perspectives. Media ecology explores historical roots and biases of technology to learn about their influence of humanity. A dialogic communication ethics seeks to find an opening for hope to emerge. Hope, grounded in the works of Jacques Ellul and the Christian tradition, offers a new rhetorical perspective by shifting focus away from technology and to our neighbor.

Phenomenological Analysis Of Trust In Science For The Design Of Ai-Based Health And Social Policies, Kochav Koren

All Duquesne Faculty Scholarship

The promises of artificial intelligence (AI) as a solution to challenges facing health systems increasingly link technological innovation with improvements in efficiency and access. However, the legitimacy of AI-supported health policies depends not only on scientific competence but also on public trust in scientific institutions. Using data from the international Trust in Science Project (71,922 respondents across 68 countries), this study analyses multidimensional trust and communication ecologies to reconstruct relational configurations of trust, termed ‘Figures of Relevance’. Findings reveal that whilst scientific competence is widely recognised, perceptions of institutional openness vary markedly, shaping heterogeneity in trust. The study identifies four …

The African American Pulpit And The Reconstruction Of Narrative Ground In The Black Community, Nathaniel Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how the African American pulpit serves as a living wellspring for rebuilding stories, memory, and identity, a task made urgent by centuries of erasure, from the trauma of the Middle Passage to the ongoing reverberations of that violence. My central claim is that African American preaching, when viewed through the insight-rich frameworks of Gadamer, Burke, and Frankl, becomes not just a form of speech, but a lifeline. It helps reclaim "narrative ground": the deep roots of meaning, belonging, and shared purpose that nourish a wounded people and allow genuine flourishing.

The journey unfolds across six movements. Chapter …

Rhetoric Of Soft Power And Public Diplomacy A Case Study Of Saudi Arabia, Sihmy Algamedi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Soft power is the capacity to exert influence over the actions of others in order to accomplish one's goals. It refers to the ability to influence others without seeking any tangible benefits. Soft power emanates from a country's cultural, political beliefs, and foreign policies. Soft power refers to the capacity to achieve desired outcomes using methods that involve shaping the agenda, employing persuasion, and generating positive appeal (Alkatheeri, and Khan 26). In order for this endeavor to achieve success, the concept of legitimacy plays a pivotal role in the effectiveness of soft power. Public diplomacy is a component of foreign …

Understanding The Misunderstandings: Using Deliberative Democracy And Communication Ethics To Overcome Societal Polarization In Post-Truth America, Jessica Neu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work contributes to communication scholarship by advancing the discussion of deliberative democracy to include communication ethics and popular culture artifacts to use as case studies in an exploration of how to engage in a type of dialogic civility that acknowledges identity politics without allowing it to be a barrier to progress in a post-truth society. As such, this work provides a sense of how to engage in conversation that recognizes and hears the Other in a way that makes all stakeholders uncomfortable. From this discomfort comes growth, as individuals do not necessarily need to completely alter their ideologies, morals, …

Neil Postman's Loving Resistance Fighter: A Philosophy Of Communication In The Age Of Technopoly, Ryan Mccullough

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project walks the work of Neil Postman (1931-2003) into the philosophy of communication. Traditional conceptions of Neil Postman’s body of work position his ideas within the traditions of media ecology, general semantics, or, more broadly, as a form of media studies and criticism. In addition, others label Postman’s work, especially in Technopoly (1992), as pessimistic, deterministic, and/or imbibed with Luddite tendencies. This project articulates a different view and contends that Postman’s scholarship, in particular his articulation of the loving resistance fighter in the final chapter of Technopoly, is committed to resisting the nefarious forces embedded in both technology …

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Civil Religion And The Second Amendment, Shivaun Corry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The American approach to legal hermeneutics emerged from the covenant theology of the Puritans. American civil religion understands the Constitution to be based in natural laws: a secularized conception of God-given rights. To change the text would collapse the epistemological framework of the nation. When a nation sees its constitution as a sacred text, then the answer to contemporary problems cannot be to change that text; rather, it must be to return to the text with an even more fundamentalist hermeneutic. Both gun rights advocate Charlton Heston, and gun control advocate Barak Obama, argued their cases using a fundamentalist hermeneutic, …

Mapping Meaning At The Crossroads Of Crisis: Narratives Of Renewal In The Midst Of The Opioid Epidemic, Preston Carmack

Graduate Student Research Symposium

This study explores the role of meaning in a crisis situation by using Viktor Frankl’s tripod of meaning and Matthew Seeger and Timothy Sellnow’s narratives of renewal. Drawing from focus groups conducted in a large mid-Atlantic city where community members are embedded in the middle of the opioid crisis, the findings suggest that resiliency in the face of crisis can be encouraged to take root through a mapping of meaning that highlights gratitude and responsibility.

St. Ignatius' Quill Pen: Exploring The Orality-Literacy Difficulty In The Spiritual Exercises, Hongchao Qian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Informed by the work of Walter Ong, in the first prelude of the First Week in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola used an emblematical image, the “prison-cage”, to provide phenomenological accounts for the exercitants to examine the existential situation within. This dissertation explores into the difficulty of being rhetorical in mediating on the existential situation emblematically. I try to understand the orality-literacy dynamic within the Exercises through the theoretical framework of semiotic phenomenology. The Ignatian emblematics can be understood as phenomenological descriptions that asked the exercitants to provide the parts of moral-phenomenological reductions and phenomenological interpretations within …

Pierre Hadot's Holistic Philosophy Of Communication, Jonathan Crist

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pierre Hadot’s holistic philosophy of communication attends to the health of the self and community through practice of spiritual exercises for the transformation of one’s entire being, working at the nexus of mind, body, soul, and cosmos. The task is ever-incomplete, works in an understanding of “human being as essentially an exposure that lacks a closed identity” and “keep[s] sight of the opening, wound, or lack that remains at the heart of any community and all communication” (Butchart 136). This is responsive to the present moment experiencing disjointed experience of time and space, increased anxiety, underdeveloped capacity for attention, and …

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To what extent and in what ways does modernity reveal itself through the bureaucratic? This project aims at an interpretive understanding of bureaucratic modernity. The rationalization of society and action in the (late) modern world requires that an increasing number of human activities and domains be explained in allegedly neutral, ‘rational’ terms and without reference to morally substantive ends. Ultimately, this entails a form of epistemic reductionism that elevates instrumental rationality to the exclusion of practical reason and probabilistic ways of knowing. Bureaucratic modernity signifies a decrease in choices that can be legitimized in public on some basis other …

The Ethics Of Occultic Communication: An Invocation Of Joshua Gunn And Sissela Bok, James Thomas Begley Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Occultic rhetoric, according to Joshua Gunn, is a genre of discourse concerned with the study and practice of secret communications. The strategic sharing of secret messages involves a host of methods and conventions designed for the selective disclosure of hidden knowledge, thus controlling the boundaries of (and accessibility to power between) insider and outsider groups. Occultic rhetoric has its uses in everyday encounters, but the abuse of such manipulative strategies, especially by those in the academy and other positions of power and trust, calls for an ethical response. This dissertation submits occultic rhetoric to moral investigation by incorporating the works …

When Humanity Meets Technology: Contemplating Neil Postman's Critique Of Advertising, Yingwen Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to contemplate Postman’s critique of advertising and offer insights to understand Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in today’s mediated environment. As an essential component of IMC, the history of advertising demonstrates and documents that the medium of communication has an extensive influence on IMC practices. The concern about how communication media affect human perception, understanding, and behavior, resides within the central claim of the study of media ecology. Thus, this project investigates IMC through the lens of Postman’s media ecology perspectives, and argues that Postman’s prescient ideas provide both hope and constructive insights. Moreover, Postman’s thermostatic perspective, rooted …

Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, Saudi Arabian culture has been deeply rooted in tradition, religious customs, family-oriented structures, and gender derived expectations for men and women alike. Saudi Arabian culture emphasizes a patriarchal family structure where men financially provide for their family whereas women are expected to manage internal household duties such as raising children, upholding household affairs, and working within a limited scope of employment. The concept of Saudi Arabian women integrating into the public workforce has been a source of contention and debate for the last several hundred years. Due to recent changes in political and economic events, a royal decree issued …

Paving The Way For Merleau-Ponty’S Eye And Mind In Organizational Communication Studies, Johan Bodaski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The body is a sense-based medium that creates and interprets organizations. Bodies create organization. An aesthetic theory of organizational communication reveals the significance of the body to the organization. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of aesthetics offers a theory of aesthetic organizational communication that is yet to be developed. Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic essay on painting, Eye and Mind, describes the body as the medium through which painters turn the world into painting. His philosophy of painting builds bridges between aesthetics, the body, and organizational communication.

In chapter one, four theories of organizational communication are described: communication constitutes organization (CCO), text/interpreter, ventriloquism, and …