The Cost Of Her Journalism: Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence Against Women Journalists In The Former Soviet Union Countries, Kamila Eshalieva

All Theses

Although offline gender-based violence has been studied for decades, technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) remains a prevalent yet underrecognized phenomenon. Journalism is a field in which this form of violence is especially persistent, and women journalists face disproportionate targeting. From cyberbullying and harassment to doxxing and disinformation, TFGBV comes in a myriad of forms, each leaving lasting scars on reporters who already face elevated professional risks. The post-Soviet region is particularly concerning, given its history of repressive regimes and hostile environments for journalism. While technology has expanded the ways for new forms of violence to emerge, these incidents are often not …

Portrayals Of Miscarriage In Film And Television: A Qualitative Analysis, Geovana Leonetti Saraiva

All Theses

Entertainment media may serve as a primary source through which individuals learn about miscarriage; however, little research has examined how miscarriage is portrayed in film and television. This study addresses this gap by conducting a textual analysis of five films and five television shows using a constructivist grounded theory approach. Guided by the model of stigma communication (MSC), communication privacy management theory (CPM), and social support frameworks, the analysis explores how miscarriage is represented in entertainment media.

Findings indicate that the analyzed content frequently includes stigma-related cues—such as marks, labels, responsibility, and peril—that may contribute to the formation and reinforcement …

Beyond The Interface: Human Perceptions Of Generative-Ai Chatbots As Conversational Partners, Browning W.E. Blair

All Theses

Generative AI (gen-AI) chatbots are becoming embedded in everyday communicative life, yet it remains unclear whether users perceive these systems as socially reciprocative conversational partners. Therefore, this study examines how young adults understand and interact with gen-AI chatbots, focusing on perceptions of conversational partnership, anthropomorphism, politeness, discomfort, and technical understanding. Guided by the CASA framework, Media Equation Theory, and the uncanny valley hypothesis, this study employed four semi-structured, online focus groups with 15 undergraduate students and recent college graduates in the United States. Findings indicate that participants did not broadly perceive gen-AI chatbots as conversational partners in the interpersonal sense. …

Moodify: A Mood-Based Music Recommendation System, Meghana Kagitha

Theses and Dissertations

Music has long been recognised as a powerful tool for emotional regulation, yet existing music streaming platforms often fail to align song recommendations with a user's current emotional state. Moodify is a mood-based music recommendation system designed to bridge this gap by delivering personalised playlists that reflect how a user feels in real time.

This project presents the design, development, and evaluation of Moodify, a mobile application that leverages the Circumplex Model of Emotion to capture user mood through an intuitive two-dimensional valence-arousal interface. Rather than relying on text input or manual search, users plot their emotional state directly onto …

Good Life Automobility: Cultural/Rhetorical Resistance And Persistence Of Us Car Hegemony, Trinity O. Thompson

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project takes the car as a historical signifier of a rhetorical racialization process that enables a hypermobile white, masculine, neoliberal identity that pervades conceptions of mobility in the West. I locate these overlapping social formations under a cultural logic of good life automobility (GLA) that positions cars, a quintessential form of private property, as a motivator for a contemporary “good life” citizenship identity that cultivates neoliberal subjectivities of free movement and market consumption in contempt of socialized and racialized public transit futures. The introduction chapter elaborates on the boundaries of GLA while also contextualizing the two analysis chapters through …

Dignity And The Free Press, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As American institutions wither and die, those who believe in their importance must reflect and rebuild. One institution worthy of sustained attention is the free press. Divorced from government by design, the press can benefit from efforts to reinvigorate and reinvent it in ways that institutions more directly under the federal government’s thumb cannot. To best undertake these efforts, we need a richer understanding of why a free press is vital. Articulating the values that underlie the need for this institution is necessary not only to build the most robust free press, but also to best exercise our freedoms as …

Religiously Online: A Digital Media Communication Audit Of A Midwestern Church According To The Frameworks Of Uses And Gratifications Theory And Affordances Framework, Jada N. Ortiz

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the digital media practices of a faith-based organization through how leadership communicates with internal congregation members. By applying the theoretical framework of uses and gratifications theory and affordances framework, a communication audit was conducted of a Midwestern Protestant church to uncover any gaps between congregational members' uses for digital media and how the church leadership was gratifying those needs through their digital media practices. Accordingly, this study investigated (1) what digital media content needs congregants expect their church to fulfill, (2) what the church is currently doing to gratify congregants' digital media content needs and (3) church …

Creating A "Good Person": Netiquette And Instagram, Melissa S. Danai-Nolder

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This project aimed to ask the question, “How does digital etiquette, or netiquette, lead to socialization of self-presentation on Instagram?” I interviewed 15 students classified as "Generation Z" who attend a northeastern university and have an Instagram account. This was done using a convenience sample of participants who were asked to participate in the interview. Done by the convenience of the individuals who were at the location at the time. The results indicate a disconnect between wanting to be seen as a “good person” and the means used to paint this image. Netiquette plays a role in crafting self-presentation, as …

The Use And Implications Of Visual Production Choices: Evidence From Presidential Debates And Political Interview, Emma Lorraine Rasmussen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Live television production has long been a powerful tool for broadcasting media to curate what an audience sees and understands about aired material. Production techniques used by broadcasting companies have the power to influence how audiences perceive and interpret political candidates. In Study One, the two 2024 presidential debates were analyzed for a variety of different trends including: who was on screen, the different camera shots used, and camera movement. Video formats of the 2024 CNN and ABC debates were coded using Observer XT, a content analysis software and were examined for the frequency and duration of each behavior. Patterns …

Does The Medium Make A Difference? A Quantitative Study Of Traditional Versus Social Media, Erin Elaine Bailey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

People are changing why they use social media, what used to be a way to unwind and stay in touch with old friends is now being used for something much different. This study looks into how young adults (ages 18–25) perceive and retain information from social media compared to traditional media. As social media increasingly functions as both an entertainment and news source, the distinction between it and traditional journalism continues to diminish. Using a quota sample of 300 participants, data were collected through a Qualtrics survey measuring media engagement, usage, perceived credibility, and knowledge retention. Participants were exposed to …

Voices Of A New Era: A Discursive Psychology Study Of Influencer-Follower Discourse On Tiktok, Andrea Guerrero Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study researched and investigated the discourse of five mega fashion influencers on TikTok, as well as the discourse of 15 followers engaging with fashion influencer content on the same platform. The theory used to guide this study was discursive psychology theory, which provided the groundwork for understanding how both influencers and followers position their identities, justify their actions and decisions, and construct their reality. The primary aim of this research is to deepen understanding of how influencer discourse shapes follower discourse, identifying recurring patterns, contradictions, and the ways in which tensions are negotiated. The findings reveal a range …

Centering Latinx Perspectives And Cultural Identification In Music Listening: Examining Musical Consumption Behaviors And Choices Among Latinx Adults, Javier Alejandro Silerio

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Music is a critical cultural activity and resource for people all over the world, often used for communication, recreation, identity formation, social bonding, and many other aspects of our daily lives. Moreover, this has been reported across many cultures and is not unique to a single group. Despite this, there is currently limited information and research around Latinx American music consumption and this population's overall relationship with music. Because of this, the purpose of this study is to examine music consumption behaviors among Latinx Americans, as well as possible relationships between their Latinx cultural identification and said music consumption behaviors. …

Social Media Engagement In Division Iii Athletics: An Analysis Of Lynchburg University’S Social Media Strategies Compared To Other Division Iii Programs, Virginia Zalinski

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This thesis project will examine how the University of Lynchburg Athletic Department has built and expanded its athletic brand through social media marketing. The University of Lynchburg's sports social media has a stronger online presence with a higher following and engagement count compared to other DIII athletic programs in Virginia. This brings up the question: What specific social media strategies does the University of Lynchburg use to generate higher engagement, and how can other DIII programs adapt these tactics to strengthen their own digital presence? To better understand how the University of Lynchburg's social media is more effective, this thesis …

Fellowship Of Christian Athletes (Fca) Social Expansion: An Analysis Of The Fca Brand Architecture, Victoria G. Williamson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has seen much growth over the past seven decades, after being created in a small town in Oklahoma in 1954 with only 15 members to now having 2,000+ staff and reaching 100+ countries (FCA Timeline, 2024). How did such a small organization with such a specific niche, become the well-known non-profit global ministry it is today? This thesis will discover how the Fellowship of Christian Athletes grew its brand worldwide pre and post-digital media through its marketing and communications methods. For this thesis, research will be done on FCA’s methods for reaching its target audience …

Manufactured Silence And Directed Opinion: An Analytical Study Of Mechanisms Shaping International Public Opinion Toward The War On Gaza (2023–2024) Through The Spiral Of Silence Theory And The Selective Belief System Model (Sbs), Ibrahim Akka, Mujahid Jihad Faraj, Doha Mazid, Yahya Mashaqi

This study aims to provide a critical and in-depth analysis of Western media coverage of the Gaza War (2023–2024) through a comparative content analysis of three major international news channels: BBC, CNN, and Fox News, across three consecutive time phases. The research is grounded in a dual theoretical framework that combines Noelle-Neumann’s Spiral of Silence theory (1974) and the Selective Belief System (SBS) model (Lord et al., 1979), employing a mixed quantitative–qualitative methodology applied to a sample of 240 televised news items covering the period from October 2023 to May 2024.

The findings reveal a clear dominance of …

Towards Dementia-Inclusive Digital Text-Based Health Information: A Multi-Method Investigation Of Cognitive And Affective Accessibility, Margi Engineer

All Dissertations

This dissertation examines the accessibility, readability, emotional tone, and trustworthiness of digital, text‑based dementia information and investigates how older adults with and without dementia cognitively and affectively engage with such content. It further explores the potential of generative AI to improve dementia information delivery through the development of a domain‑specific retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) large language model (LLM) chatbot designed to deliver accessible, stigma‑free information. The dissertation comprises four studies using complementary quantitative and qualitative methods. Study I conducts a large‑scale content analysis of 300 medical articles, 35 websites, and 50 blogs, applying readability metrics, LIWC‑based linguistic and sentiment analysis, and …

Examination Of The Association Among Family Communication Patterns, Attitudes Toward Sex, And Sexual Communication Self-Efficacy, Brooklynn Edelmayer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the role that family communication plays in the development of sexual attitudes and sexual communication self-efficacy. Essentially, each family has a unique communication environment, which consists of how open communication is, the variety of topics a family might discuss, and expectations of conformity that parents have for their children. Attitudes toward sex can be conservative–reflecting traditional views toward sex–or progressive–reflecting tolerance and flexibility toward various sexual lifestyles. Sexual communication self-efficacy is the degree to which an individual feels comfortable communicating about sex with a sexual partner. Participants in …

"Am I A Man Or A Muppet": A Rhetorical Analysis Of Generative Ai’S Representation Of Gender, Jessica Boaz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how generative artificial intelligence constructs and performs gender roles through a rhetorical analysis of the fully AI-generated podcast Fairytale Forensics. Drawing on theories of constitutive rhetoric, stereotyping, and McLuhan’s approach to the medium, this thesis investigates how AI-generated hosts interpret classic fairy tales while simultaneously reproducing and negotiating gender norms through the lens of prosopopoeia, metonymy and synecdoche. These performances rely on normative gender stereotypes that align with broader societal expectations, thereby potentially reinforcing existing cultural assumptions about masculinity and femininity. Ultimately, it demonstrates that AI-generated discourse does not merely reflect human biases but actively participates in …

The New Wild West: A Case Study Analysis Of The Communication Methods Surrounding Ai Infrastructure In West Texas, Thomas Sorensen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past several years, artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. It has enabled numerous innovations across all sectors, and its usage continues to grow daily. This increase in demand for AI products has led to the development of AI data centers nationwide. Fueled by competition between the public and private sectors, many projects are underway. This study focuses on one such project in West Texas: the Stargate Data Center. This project is being constructed near Abilene, Texas, and has had an instrumental impact on the daily lives of its citizens. This research project seeks to answer the …

Log Off To Level Up: The Effect Of Social Media Hiatus On Goal Pursuit, Nekysha L. Y. Jalil, Yong Han Tan, Andree Hartanto, Eddie M. W. Tong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Concerns are growing that social media, with its constant notifications and attention-grabbing content, may distract individuals and hinder progress toward important goals. Despite its pervasive presence in our lives, the impact of social media on goal achievement has not been thoroughly studied. This within-subject experimental study aims to investigate the effects of social media hiatus (SMH), a short abstinence from social media usage, on goal pursuit processes. Participants (N= 107) completed daily diaries over three consecutive days of SMH and three days of regular social media use. SMH was manipulated by blocking participants’ access to multiple social media platforms. The …