Communication Commons^™

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 …

Framing Jewell: A Discourse Analysis Of Newspaper Coverage In The Aftermath Of The Atlanta Olympics Bombing And Discussion Of Legal And Ethical Standards For Such Practices, Anne L. Songy

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines the newspaper coverage of Richard Jewell during the weeks after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. Jewell, a security guard working in the Olympic Park on July 27, 1996, was initially hailed as a hero due to his discovery of a bomb minutes before the explosion. After Jewell’s name was leaked to the press as an FBI person of interest in the case, many reporters began to frame Jewell in a negative light and, in some instances, even implied his guilt. Through a discourse analysis of news stories published between the date of the bombing and the date …

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 …

The Blame Is In The Frame: Inter-Reality Comparisons Of Crime Reports And Local News Crime Coverage On The Internet, Dana Marie Tumblin

LSU Master's Theses

Research of crime news suggests that Blacks are over represented as criminals when compared to crime reports; study of race and crime judgments reveals that viewers with heavy amounts of television news viewing associate Blacks with crime more often than viewers who watch lower amounts of television news. Further complicating the perception of Blacks is their lack of diversified coverage in the news. Most coverage of Blacks frames them as liabilities to their communities, while offering few positive depictions to counter the Black criminality frame. The Internet may aid in exacerbating stereotypes of Blacks by allowing users to selectively expose …

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 …

A New Focus For A University: Designing A Web Site To Feature Community Service, Andrea Louise Clesi

LSU Master's Theses

This research used focus groups and usability testing to determine how a major land-grant university should design a Web site that would feature the community service work of faculty and staff, students and alumni, also referred to as stakeholders. University public relations professionals planned to launch an interactive Web site as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2010, but had concerns that the Web site would not attract stakeholders. The research sought to answer the following questions based on uses and gratifications and impression management theories: What uses and gratifications, if any, do social networking sites provide stakeholders? Does …

The Role Of Race In Television News Coverage Of Shortcomings In U.S. Secondary Education, Jasmine Elise Haynes

LSU Master's Theses

Scholars and news media alike acknowledge that one of the main problems in education today is the minority achievement gaps in national testing. Although many education scholars have compiled several in-depth reasons as to why minorities, particularly African-American students, seem to generally lag behind their white counterparts, television news fails to give it’s audiences a comprehensive view of why minority achievement gaps are so prevalent in United States secondary public education. The purpose of this study was to examine where news consumers perceive television news places blame for problems in public education with regards to race. Studying how people perceive …

"Everybody Goes Down": Metaphors, Stories, And Simulations In Conversations, L. David Ritchie

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent work has shown that many problematic aspects of metaphor use and comprehension can be resolved through an account that includes both relevance and perceptual simulation. It has also been shown that metaphors often imply stories, and that stories are often metaphorical. Previous research on narratives has focused primarily on stories that appear either in formal literature or in structured interviews; this essay focuses on stories that occur as an integral part of conversation. It extends recent work on metaphor comprehension to show how use and comprehension of stories in natural, informal conversations can be usefully analyzed in terms of …

Press Independence In Newspaper Coverage Of The 2009 Health Care Debate, Matthew Holt Barnidge

LSU Master's Theses

This study examines press independence from the government in the 2009 national health care debate. Through a content analysis examining source expressions, or the words journalists attribute to various people in the news, the study captures the essence of the discourse represented in the news about the debate. This paper also outlines a distinction between various types of autonomy, and offers a new conceptualization of independence. Procedural autonomy, which is autonomy in journalistic norms and routines, does not necessarily result in content autonomy, which is autonomy of viewpoints expressed in the news. In other words, if non-governmental sources say substantially …

Hiv /Aids In 2010: A Case Study Of Four Australian Publications, Peder Qvale

Theses : Honours

This is the first research project on press coverage of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in Australia for 11 years. The study contains a content analysis of four Australian publications between January 1st and March 31st, 2010. In addition, the health editors at The Australian and The West Australian were interviewed to establish what considerations are made when deciding to publish an article dealing with HIV/AIDS. The latest report from UNAIDS estimated that globally, over 33 million people were living with HIV, and two million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2008. HIV infection rates …

Exploring Wearin And Wearout In Web Advertising: The Role Of Repetition And Brand Familiarity, Sang Y. Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

One of the most researched variables in advertising is repetition. Due to its theoretical and practical importance, repetition has received substantial attention from researchers. However, on the web, there has been little empirical evidence as to how repetition affects advertising effectiveness. This research reports an experiment that examined the effects of repetition and brand familiarity in the web advertising environment. The participants were exposed to 1 of 12 experimental conditions via the web. The results showed that while repetition had weak main effects across the dependent variables, it interacted with brand familiarity on attitudes and purchase intention. Polynomial trend analyses …

Alternative Weekly And City Magazine Under One Roof: Contemporary Media, Inc.'S “Memphis Flyer” And “Memphis” Magazine, Cory Taylor Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the media of alternative weekly publications through a case study of the Memphis Flyer and its relationship with sister publication Memphis magazine, both under the umbrella of Contemporary Media, Inc. History of the publications, targeted demographics and business models will be taken into account to answer proposed research questions. The publications prominence in local media as well as their relationship to the traditional city paper, The Commercial Appeal, is recognized, along with the company's plans for adaptation to new trends in online journalism.

An Africentric Reading Protocol: The Speculative Fiction Of Octavia Butler And Tananarive Due, Tonja Lawrence

Wayne State University Dissertations

This examination of Africentric speculative fiction (ASF) applies an Africentric reading protocol to selected works of Octavia E. Butler and Tananarive Due. Butler's Parable Series and Due's African Immortals Series are examined using seven elements of Africentric narrative specific to cultural speculative fiction. Finally, I discuss the implications of using an Africentric reading protocol as an example of cultural analysis that can be adapted to the textual analysis of culturally specific works of fiction.

Argument Construction, Argument Evaluation, And Decision-Making: A Content Analysis Of Argumentation And Debate Textbooks, Neil Stuart Butt

Wayne State University Dissertations

Critical thinking abilities, especially the advanced critical thinking abilities required for decision-making, are important to both individuals and democratic policy making processes. Previous studies have indicated that argumentation and debate instruction can improve critical thinking abilities, but there are reasons to believe that current approaches are not as effective at developing decision-making ability as they could be, in part because they focus too heavily on argument construction, rather than argument evaluation and decision-making. In order to test which approaches to teaching argumentation and debate best encourage decision-making abilities, researchers need to know which elements are included in current argumentation and …

Media Effects: Cultural Appropriation And Attitudes Towards Cosmetic Surgery, Darlene Shauntanese Lee

Wayne State University Dissertations

The current study investigates media's influence on Caucasian women to culturally appropriate the physical features generally ascribed to African American women through non-surgical and or surgical cosmetic procedures and vice versa. Participants were 26 African American women and 54 Caucasian women who had previously undergone either non-surgical or surgical cosmetic procedures. Results indicate that African American women were more likely to culturally appropriate than Caucasian women. For African American women high media exposure to cosmetic surgery media messages played a significant role in the cultural appropriation process. Results also indicated that Caucasian women culturally appropriate at the same level, whether …

Effect Of Goal-Setting And Self-Generated Feedback On Student Speechmaking, Luke Lefebvre

Wayne State University Dissertations

This investigation examined how goal setting strategies and self-generated feedback from video affects student grade improvement on subsequent speaking occasions. Students (N =140) across ten course sections were conveniently assigned to experimental conditions manipulating video use and goal setting strategies. Significant and meaningful main effects of anticipatory goal setting combined with self-generated feedback from video were obtained when compared to unstructured video replay, only goal setting, and self-reactive goal setting with self-generated feedback from video. Implications for these findings are examined along with the potential of video as an instructional technological tool for student learning in the introductory course.

Distributed Cinema: Interactive, Networked Spectatorship In The Age Of Digital Media, Erik Wayne Marshall

Wayne State University Dissertations

Digital media has changed much of how people watch, consume and interact with digital media. The loss of indexicality, or the potential infidelity between an image and its source, contributes to a distrust of images. The ubiquity of interactive media changes aesthetics of images, as viewers begin to expect interactivity. Networked media changes not only the ways in which viewers access media, but also how they communicate with each other about this media. The Tulse Luper Suitcases encapsulates all of these phenomena.

Online News Media Use And Political Tolerance, Jessi Mccabe

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between online news media use, selectivity in media content, and political tolerance. Tolerance develops as result of exposure to a diversity of ideas and perspectives, which the media provide. Online news use encourages and requires users to selectively expose and navigate through information based on personal choice. Online news permits individuals to choose information based on personal opinion and preference in ways traditional forms of mainstream media do not allow. Therefore, it was expected that online news use and selectivity in media content would negatively relate to tolerance.

A total of 305 participants were surveyed …

Assessing The Impact Of Social Media On The Celebrity Industry: A Public Relations Perspective, Jessica O'Sullivan

Theses

There has been an increased interest from academics, public relations professionals and industry professionals in the importance of social media in the role of public relations. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the effect social media has on the celebrity industry, from a public relations perspective.

A qualitative research design was chosen, and the primary methods used to gather the data were semi-structured interviews with online communication professionals from the public relations industry and an online music producer who uses various forms of social media to distribute and promote his music. All interviewees were chosen due to …