Communication Doctoral Work
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/32490
2024-03-29T07:28:58ZUsing Conditional and Unconditional Process Approaches to Determine the Effectiveness and Comprehensiveness of Instructional Risk and Crisis Communication Messages
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/33610
Using Conditional and Unconditional Process Approaches to Determine the Effectiveness and Comprehensiveness of Instructional Risk and Crisis Communication Messages
Beauchamp, Kimberly
Many individuals willingly or unknowingly consume food products that have been implicated in recall announcements. Exposure to potentially contaminated food products puts people at risk for contracting foodborne disease. Given the serious health complications associated with foodborne disease, a new message-design approach was needed that compels and empowers at-risk individuals to take appropriate life-saving actions when food-related, public health crises become imminent. The IDEA protocol was put forth to improve how we instruct and motivate at-risk audiences to self-protect against foodborne disease during food contamination events (T. Sellnow & D. Sellnow, 2013).
IDEA-modeled messages, relative to alternative messages, are predicted to address audience diversity and produce more accurate receiver perceptions, which in turn translate into more appropriate behavioral intentions. The IDEA model has not yet been adequately or appropriately tested, despite arguments to the contrary. This study advanced the IDEA model by presenting: (1) a rigorous tool that more appropriately tested hypotheses, (2) a visually-friendly conceptual diagram for depicting a path-analytic framework, (3) important guidelines that scholars should employ to examine the IDEA model’s utility, and (4) justification for theoretical grounding in Witte’s (1992a) extended parallel process model (EPPM) in addition to D. Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle model.
Rather than relying on tests based on analysis of variance to test theory, the present message-testing study employed a regression-based approach that more appropriately tested the IDEA model hypotheses. My conditional process model efficiently integrated moderators and mediators into a single path-analytic framework. My unconditional process model excluded the two moderating factors and their interactions from the statistical framework. Both statistical models included six parallel mediating mechanisms and two behavioral intention measures.
The results of this message-testing experiment demonstrated how regression-based approaches that incorporate moderation, mediation, moderated-mediation, and moderated-moderated mediation should be employed to test the IDEA protocol. I found that an IDEA message was not consistently superior to an alternative message. My results suggest that an IDEA-modeled message should be thoughtfully designed to prevent inappropriate outcomes among target audiences. Improved message-design approaches should be explored for motivating and empowering at-risk individuals to self-protect against foodborne disease during contamination events.
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z“You Are an Experience!”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Characters in Children's Animated Series
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/33387
“You Are an Experience!”: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Characters in Children's Animated Series
Vogt, Olivia
Western society has slowly evolved to accept the identities of LGBTQ+ people. With strides forward in laws and public opinion, queer people are overall more accepted now than they have been in previous decades. However, there remains a social resistance to accepting transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people. While queer sexualities are more widely embraced, queer genders are not. Public debate surrounding the rights of TGNC people provide evidence to the prejudice, as cisgender people discuss whether transgender people should be allowed to participate in sports or hold any position of recognition in the social sphere. This discrimination can be seen reflected and perpetuated by popular culture. Television in particular serves as both a mirror and teacher of social norms (Herek, 1990; Luther & Legg Jr., 2010), including the consensus around queer identities. As such, this study approaches popular television from a critical discourse analysis framework in order to understand the power dynamics that exist within television communication. Specifically, I focus on the affordances and audience considerations of children’s cartoons, which are often the first media socialization that children encounter. Because of this, children are apt to learn social norms from whichever cartoons they consume. When children watch television programs containing positive depictions of queer people, they can learn to understand and respect the existence of queer people, and possibly even understand their own gender and romantic identities more thoroughly. Likewise, children who watch television featuring TGNC people can learn more specifically what it means to exist outside of arbitrarily mandated binaries of sex and gender. My analysis considered a sample of episodes from 20 children’s cartoons which featured TGNC characters. In the subsequent discussion, I concluded that the series analyzed often represented five major themes: TGNC people as exceptional at all costs, the backgrounded roles of TGNC people, TGNC characters favoring masculinity as a default, the rebellions of TGNC characters, and utopian series contexts which included TGNC characters. I end by presenting implications and recommendations of the study.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZVoting Technology, Democracy, and Propaganda: Ontological Considerations for the 2020 Presidential Election
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/33324
Voting Technology, Democracy, and Propaganda: Ontological Considerations for the 2020 Presidential Election
Gustafson, Erik
The 2020 United States Presidential election was considered one of the most tumultuous political contests in the 21st century. During an international pandemic, travel restrictions and social distancing requirements created uncertainty about whether to vote in person or via absentee-mail-in ballot. The present study sought to investigate how voters experience different technologies in the 2020 United States Presidential election. Selected concepts in media ecology supplemented Fox and Alldred’s (2013) framework for new materialist inquiry to explore the technical material characteristics of voting technology and the discursive elements of voter fraud propaganda. By tracing the history of voting technologies and voter fraud propaganda, the analysis argued that the vast array of technologies and experiences of voting in the 2020 election rendered the idea of an archetypal or monolithic voting method insufficient. Therefore, the present study suggests an ontological revision for the ways we conceptualize the relationship between voters, voting technologies, and democracy writ large.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZJournalists' Framing of Terrorist Attacks and Audience Reaction: A Longitudinal Case Study of The Boston Globe
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/32742
Journalists' Framing of Terrorist Attacks and Audience Reaction: A Longitudinal Case Study of The Boston Globe
Mou-Danha, Seseer Prudence
This study aimed to elaborate on the presentation of news about the Boston Marathon bombing on The Boston Globe’s Facebook page and people’s reaction to it. A social crisis such as this invites people’s attention to online news sources for seeking details. Reports presented by journalists can encourage, elicit fear, strengthen communities, and/or foster cooperation. As much as journalists try to be objective in their reporting, the ways in which they frame a story can influence audiences’ responses. The primary objective of this study was to understand how news frames align with audience response.
The analyses of news posts and audience comments were guided by theoretical frameworks of Framing and the Six-Segment Strategy Wheel. Content and interpretive analyses were performed to identify and explain the primary themes in The Boston Globe’s news texts and images, and the responses of their audience. Data related to the Marathon bombing were collected from The Boston Globe’s Facebook posts and comments, dated April 15, 2013–April 30, 2014. The study employed a constructionist approach, arguing that reality is created through interactions on social platforms. Content analysis was done by applying traditional news frames: economic, human interest, responsibility, morality, and conflict, as well as Taylor’s SSSW. Interpretive analysis was carried by interpreting the findings through a societal context.
This study demonstrated that framing a terrorist attack through a criminal justice model as opposed to a war-based model had milder implications for punitive action. In addition, journalist’s identification of a suspect as a terrorist did not seem to mitigate the justice view of the case. More importantly, social identification of the suspects played a salient whole in perceptions of guilt and penalty.
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z