Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Community Engaged Digital Initiatives: Building Academic Library Services And Infrastructure With Faculty And Community Collaborators, Shannon Lucky, Craig Harkema

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Community collaborations have become key drivers for the development of our library’s digital initiatives (DI) program. While collaborative partnerships can complicate the process of getting DI work completed, they can also positively contribute to decision making around digitization projects, metadata use, user interface (UI) design, and infrastructure development. This presentation outlines possibilities for iteratively developing digital infrastructure and service offerings to support community engaged research and discusses key issues to consider when developing such a program. We will describe how we have adapted DI systems to support a range of projects from photography collections to oral histories, to locally created …

Lindenwood Digest, April 24, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

Where Trying To Conceive Becomes A Community Effort: A Digital Ethnography Of Online Infertility Forums, Megan Burns

Sociology Honors Papers

Online forums for women using in vitro fertilization (IVF), or similar assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), provide a useful setting to further evaluate and understand women’s expectations of motherhood, the relationship infertile women have with physicians and biomedicine, and their interactions on the forums. Some critics of ARTs consider them a tool of oppression in a pronatalist state. The pressure and desire to become a biological mother leads the women with access to these technologies to use them regardless. Through digital ethnographic research on four online ART forums, this research examines the intersection of altruism and self-interest in the ways forum-users …

Exploring Screen Time Habits And The Life Empowerment Divide At An Hbcu, Kim Smith, Tobin Walton, Alvin Keyes

Faculty Publications

College students at a historically black university used their social media accounts to recruit 1,232 of their peers to take an online survey that explored digital screen time and social media habits at this HBCU. The study revealed that 51% devoted daily screen time to academic empowerment, 31% devoted it to leisure, and 11% devoted it to life empowerment. Sixty-six percent said they spent too much screen time on leisure and not enough on life empowerment, i.e., using resources in the digital world to improve their lives. The paper explored the divide, its implications, and how to narrow it.

Lindenwood Digest, April 20, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

Dismantling The Question Of "How Much Screen Time Should My Kid Have?", Kayt E. Frisch

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"It feels like there is so much at stake when it comes to our kids and media usage, especially since most of the related headlines are negative."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­parenting wisely regarding technology from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/dismantling-the-question-of-how-much-screen-time-should-my-kid-have/

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Lindenwood Digest, April 17, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

The Reification Of Hegemonic Masculinity Via Heteronormativity, Sexual Objectification, And Masculine Performances In Tau Kappa Epsilon Recruitment Videos, Viki Tomanov

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Fraternity members constitute a large percentage of men who hold highly influential jobs in politics, large corporations, and the like. Since fraternities are limited to men-only, it is important to examine how masculinity is both rhetorically constructed and subsequently performed. Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE), the fraternity with the largest amount of chapters nationwide, is the focus of my analysis. Its popularity among college campuses signifies that its recruitment is successful and that, regardless of initiation into the fraternity, many men (and women) view TKE as an example of masculinity. In my analysis, I examine TKE recruitment videos from various universities …

Lindenwood Digest, April 13, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

Broadcasting The Search For Understanding: The Essay's Relationship With The Podcast, Miriam Bay Sweeney

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this creative thesis project, I explore the relationship between the modern essay and the podcast. I do so by producing the first three episodes of my own essayistic podcast, called Peer-Refined Health. In this foundational exploration, I consider the value of the podcast as a new medium of communication for the essay. I begin this project report with a background on both the podcast and the essay as well as a discussion of my project development. The transcripts of three episodes of Peer-Refined Health follow. Finally, I analyze the relationship between the essay and the podcast and suggest additional …

Lindenwood Digest, April 10, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

Social Media Choices And Uses: Comparing Turkish And American Young-Adults' Social Media Activism, Barbara R. Burke, Ayşe Fulya Şen

Communication, Media, and Rhetoric Publications

Advocates of new media—especially social networks, blogs, and photo/content sharing sites—argue that these tools create transformative impacts on society. Recently, around the world younger activists in popular democracy movements, uprisings, and protests, feeling disengaged by traditional forms of political discourse, have debated their positions on new media, and have used digital media to communicate, organize, and coordinate protest activities. While some media scholars suggest this is an indication that young people are active in creating a public sphere constructed by social media, there is still little real-world evidence that the technological potentials are widely realized. To address this gap, this …

Lindenwood Digest, April 6, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

What’S Next In Communications? Panel Discussion, Wendy S. Perez, Jessica Green, Rachel Schaefer

Media Literacy: How the Era of Fake News Affects Public Service

Moderator: Staci M. Zavattaro, Ph.D

Panel Participants:

• Tom Hope, Assistant VP for Communications and Marketing, UCF
• Jamie Floer, Public Relations/Outreach Specialist, Orange County Utilities Dept
• Brian Schulte, Marketing Manager, Edyth Bush Institute for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership

Abstract:

As society has evolved, so have preferred communications, people today prefer to send a text message versus making a call or talking in person. Everywhere we go technology has a great impact on today’s society. These technological advances have affected everything we do, including how we read, interpret, and disseminate information. More than ever, media literacy has become an important part of …

Lindenwood Digest, April 3, 2018, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been an employee newsletter since 2009.

Division I Female Student Athletes’ Self-Image Perceptions And The Association With Photo Centric Social Media Platforms, Logan Paul

Honors Projects in Applied Psychology

The purpose of this study is to describe self-image (body image) perceptions of female, Division I student athletes and discover how photo centric social media platforms and the frequency of their use may shape these perceptions. Body image is a complex phenomenon influenced by many factors including peers, parents, coaches, and social constructs. In the general population, data has shown that media messages play a powerful role in shaping perceived self-image and body satisfaction. Body image may not match the actual body and the athlete may strive more often to achieve a body ideal. It is hypothesized that female athletes …

Chasing Success: A Cultivated Reality, Anastasia Bevillard

Honors Projects in Communication

George Gerbner’s cultivation theory claims that people who consume heavy amounts of media are more likely to be influenced by those messages to believe the media reality as opposed to actual reality. Using cultivation theory as the basis for study, I performed a cultivation analysis examining the intersection of mass media and perceptions of success among college-aged young adults living in the United States. The analysis focused on three main points: (1) How mass media perceives and subsequently demonstrates success. (2) The impact of mass media on young adults living in America. (3) What reality of success is cultivated by …

Too Many Cooks: Redesigning The English Program Website, Joshua Horton, Alex Battitori, Tyler Breedlove, Morgan Ebbs, Courtney Schlund, Chanda Williams, Celia Patterson

Paper Presentations

The purpose of this project was to produce new content for the English Program webpages for Dr. Patterson’s course, ENGL 875 Seminar: Writing for the Web. Throughout all stages of this project, we consulted Janice Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words. The first stage of the project was to identify the webpages’ target audiences; this was achieved through the creation of personas that reflected the demographics of users. Through these personas, we developed a series of tasks for a preliminary usability test. Subsequently, we conducted the preliminary test on the existing English Program webpages using test subjects that reflected …

Butte’S Online Service Community, Charity Lovshin

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The problem that needs to be solved is that there is not one direct and/or instantaneously link/connection to service opportunities in Butte, Montana. The Coalition of Southwest Montana Continuum of Care is a group located in Butte that was formed the later part of 2017 to try and end homelessness in Butte. This online service community will be a catalyst in connecting the coalition, and other service groups, to the Butte community. Jesse James Garrett, in his book The Elements of User Experience, explains the process of how to build a successful online community. Tharon W. Howard, in his book …