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open access

Exploring the Narrative and Family Identity Constructions of Adult Children with Visible Disabilities

Description: Using communicated narrative sense-making model and discourse-dependence, the present study examined the retrospective narratives parents told their adult children with visible disabilities in order for them to make sense of their disabilities in their families and to build personal identity. Eleven participants ages 18 to 30 with visible disabilities participated in the study and told retrospective narratives while also relying on internal boundary management strategies to communicate in the f… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Lyssy, Kendal
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Guåhan: A (De)Colonial Borderland

Description: Answering the call to decenter whiteness and coloniality within communication studies (#RhetoricSoWhite), this project attempts to reclaim space for indigenous knowledge and to serve decolonial struggles. Written as a project of love for my fellow indigenous scholars and peoples, I expand upon Tiara Na'puti's conceptualization of "Indigeneity as Analytic" and chart how indigenous Pacific Island decolonial resistance operates through a paradigm of decolonial futurity. By recognizing Guåhan (Guam… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Torre, Joaquin Vincent, Jr.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

"It's like the only safe place on earth for kids like me!": Youth Queer World Making at Camp Half-Blood

Description: Queer youth enactments of agency, resistance, and worldmaking have been under researched in rhetorical studies. Investigating how queer world making for youth takes place at a space entitled Camp Half-Blood, a live action role playing (LARP) fantasy camp for ages 8-18, this study contends that queer youth at Camp Half-Blood utilize Burke's equipment for living, disidentifications, queer relationality, and queer hope as embodiments that create queer lifeworlds and mobilize queer campers toward q… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Stueve, Madison Nicole
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

No Escape from Modality: Impact of Video vs. Text on Perceived Credibility and Engagement with Misinformation

Description: Misinformation remains pervasive in digital platforms, shaping how individuals receive news online. Prior work suggests that credibility perceptions of misinformation can differ based on the modality of the misinformation message. Informed by the MAIN model, this quantitative study conducted two separate 2 (Modality: video or text) x 2 (Social endorsement cues: high vs. low) between-subject experiments to assess the influence of message modality and social endorsement cues on misinformation cre… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Tran, Jacinta T
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Influence of Police Training on Law Enforcement Officers Occupational Identity in an Evolving Police Culture

Description: The disproportionate number of police-involved shootings reflect the underlying conditions of traditionally conservative, racist policing. Recent updates and communication refinements to police training methodologies could improve training processes, which in turn, may improve societal perceptions of police in the United States. Law enforcement officers in the United States have become the focus of public policy outcry and generalized distrust, further complicating the dangers of contemporary… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Fajardo, Ruth Noemi
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Desire Lines: Dérive in Heterotopias

Description: This study provides an examination and application of heterotopic dérive, a concept that combines spatial theories originated by Foucault and psychogeographical methods advocated by the Situationists, as enacted within theatrical performance spaces. The first chapter reviews theories related to space, place, and heterotopias, as well as the psychogeographical methods of the Situationists, particularly the dérive. The literature review is augmented with accounts of my experiences of serendipit… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Snider, Jesse Rhea
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

This is Your Brain on Football: Making Sense of Parents' Decision to Allow Their Child to Play Tackle Football

Description: Parents make decisions on behalf of their children on a daily basis. Some parents in the United States face the unique decision of whether or not to allow football participation for their child at a very young age. Using sensemaking theory, I examined how parents assessed the risks involved in making the decision to allow their child to play tackle football. I interviewed 24 participants in the form of 12 parental couples who had children playing middle school football and coded their response… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Boneau, Rebecca Dunnan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Maximal Proposition, Environmental Melodrama, and the Rhetoric of Local Movements: A Study of The Anti-Fracking Movement in Denton, Texas

Description: The environmental problems associated with the boom in hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," such as anthropogenic earthquakes and groundwater contamination, have motivated some citizens living in affected areas such as Denton, Texas to form movements with the goal of imposing greater regulation on the industry. As responses to an environmental threat that is localized and yet mobile, these anti-fracking movements must construct rhetorical appeals with complicated relationships to place. In this … more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Hensley, Colton Dwayne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Power of the Servant Teacher

Description: An instructor's power in the classroom is constructed and sustained through communication. The aim here is to examine how a teacher's power can be negotiated through a lens of servant leadership in hopes of furthering modes in which communication scholars can train future teachers to utilize their power in the classroom. I hypothesize that a teacher utilizing a servant leadership framework employs more pro-social behavioral alteration techniques (BATs). Participants were asked to answer an onli… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Brandon, Joshua R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Tracing the Evolution of Collaborative Virtual Research Environments: A Critical Events-Based Perspective

Description: A significant number of scientific projects pursuing large scale, complex investigations involve dispersed research teams, which conduct a large part or their work virtually. Virtual Research Environments (VREs), cyberinfrastructure that facilitates coordinated activities amongst dispersed scientists, thus provide a rich context to study organizational evolution. Due to the constantly evolving nature of technologies, it is important to understand how teams of scientists, system developers, and … more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Trudeau, Ashley B
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

From Brecht to Butler: an Analysis of Dirty Grrrls

Description: “From Brecht to Butler: An Analysis of Dirty Grrrls” is a production centered thesis focusing on the image of the mudflap girl. The study examines the graduate production Dirty Grrrls as a form of praxis intersecting the mudflap girl, the theory of gender performativity, and Brechtian methodology. As a common yet unexplored symbol of hypersexual visual culture in U.S. American society, the mudflap girl acts as a relevant subject matter for both the performance and written portion of the study. … more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Lugo, Joanna
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Shall We Play a Game?: The Performative Interactivity of Video Games

Description: This study examines the ways that videogames and live performance are informed by play theory. Utilizing performance studies methodologies, specifically personal narrative and autoperformance, the project explores the embodied ways that gamers know and understand videogames. A staged performance, “Shall We Play a Game?,” was crafted using Brechtian theatre techniques and Conquergood’s three A’s of performance, and served as the basis for the examination. This project seeks to dispel popular mi… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Beck, Michael J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Homeless Abjection and the Uncanny “Place” of the National Imagination

Description: This project examines the effects of the homeless body and the threat of homelessness on constructing a national imaginary that relies on the trope of locatability for recognition as a citizen-subject. The thesis argues that homelessness, the oft-figured specter of public space, functions as bodies that are “pushed out” as citizen-subjects due to their inability maintain both discursive and material location. I argue that figures of “home” rely on the ever-present threat of dislocation to maint… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Sloss, Eric J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Connecting the Circuit: Analyzing Jurors' Cognitive Gaps and Damage Awards in Patent Infringement Trials

Description: Patent litigation is notorious for the technicality of evidence and the rhetoric of experts. Citizens selected to serve on the jury have no specialized training and have rarely been exposed to the technology or the patent process. This study provides insight into the field of jury decision-making in complex patent cases by analyzing the cognitive gaps and the tactics used by jurors to minimize them. Additionally, the study examines the justifications for the damage awards jurors provide. Th… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Drescher, L. Hailey
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

This Isn't About Me: Communication Privacy Management Theory and Public Confession

Description: Individuals at the DFW Church publicly confess intensely personal information, such as drug and alcohol addiction, spousal and child abuse, stripping, and sexual abuse. Using communication privacy management theory (CPM), I examined the way individuals at the DFW Church manage their private information, how they make disclosure decisions, and how they manage boundaries around their private information. I interviewed 13 individuals who participated in public confession, and coded their respons… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Brittain, Kära Ann Caskey
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

"Where Do We Go From Here?" Teaching a Generation of Nclb Students in College Classrooms

Description: Since the passing of No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, the United States' secondary education system has undergone significant changes. In this study, I discuss the ways in which the law has encouraged the normalization of standardized testing and aim to answer two primary research questions. RQ1: What do college students and their instructors identify as the key challenges that arise as students educated under NCLB begin college coursework, and how does each group address these challenges? RQ… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Lovoll, Andrea K.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Staying Connected: Technology Use in Grandparent-grandchild Relationships

Description: Despite the distance that often separates grandparents from their young adult grandchildren, the abundance of new technologies provides numerous means of connection for the grandparent-grandchild (GP-GC) dyad. The purpose of this study was to understand how grandparents use technology, namely text messaging and Facebook, in relationships with their young adult grandchildren. Specifically, the aim was to understand grandparents' purposes for using these technologies with their grandchildren, the… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Novak, Hannah R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Myth of Emmetropia: Perception in Rhetorical Studies

Description: This thesis sets up the problem of sight in a visual society, with the aim to answer how the visual makes itself known. The conversation starts on visuality, and where there are gaps in understanding. The first of two case studies examines the absence of sight, or blindness, both literal and figurative. Through a study of blind photographers and their work, this chapter examines the nature of perception, and how biological blindness may influence and inform our understanding of figurative blind… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Kaszynski, Elizabeth
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Who Knows Their Bedroom Secrets? Communication Privacy Management in Couples Who Swing

Description: Swinging is a lifestyle choice where members of a couple seek out other couples or sometimes singles, with whom to engage in sexual activity. Swinging is a lifestyle associated with the 1960s and 1970s, but Americans still engage in swinging activities today. Because of stigmas associated with this practice, swinging couples often keep their lifestyle concealed from family and friends. These couples have a unique lifestyle that requires strong communication and boundary management styles. Scho… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Sova, Melodee Lynn
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Adoptive Parenthood: an Exploratory Study of the Influence of Pre-adoption Communication Satisfaction on Post-adoption Family Adjustment and Coping

Description: There are over a million adopted children in the United States, which makes up over 2% of the population. in spite of the fact that the majority of children are adopted into loving and caring homes, early life trauma puts them at higher risk for developing behavioral and emotional problems than non-adopted children. Due to these issues, many adoptive parents encounter post-adoption stress. This stress is often linked to minimal education regarding short- and long-term challenges associated w… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Seebeck, Lara N.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Relationships Among Whistle-blowing, Retaliation, and Identity: a Narrative Analysis

Description: Existing whistle-blower research has found that retaliation affects the whistle-blowing process. However, there is little literature focusing on the personal and emotional effects that retaliation can have on the whistle-blower’s life. Furthermore, while whistle-blowing has been studied in various organizational contexts, both public and private, virtually no research exists on whistle-blowing in the context of the public school system. This study examines the effects of the whistle-blowing… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Gravley, Dianne Yvonne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Teaching Past the Test: a Pedagogy of Critical Pragmatism

Description: Existent scholarship in communication studies has failed to adequately address the particular pedagogical context of current public secondary education within the United States. While communication studies has produced a great deal of scholarship centered within the framework of critical pedagogy, these efforts fail to offer public high school teachers in the U.S. a tenable alternative to standardized constructs of educational communication. This thesis addresses the need for a workable, critic… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Jordan, Jason
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Beyond Suzie Wong? An Analysis of Sandra Oh’s Portrayal in Grey’s Anatomy

Description: In my study, I examine if and how Sandra Oh’s portrayal of Dr. Cristina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy, a primetime network drama, reifies or resists U.S. mediated stereotypes of Asian American females. I situate my intercultural study in an interpretive paradigm because I am want to explore how the evolving characteristics of existing the Asian American female mediated stereotype as they influence Asian American female identity. Additionally, I trace the historical development of Asian and Asian Ameri… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Jones, Norma
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Booty Calls, Rage, and Racialized/sexualized Subjects: Tmz's Coverage of Rihanna and Chris Brown

Description: Internet-based celebrity gossip blog site, TMZ, is a growing cultural force. Employing critical rhetorical analytics, the author examines the TMZ coverage of Chris Brown's assault on his then-girlfriend, Rihanna. This project explicates TMZ's enthymematic invocation of dominant cultural ideologies surrounding race, sex, and domestic violence. Chapter 1 demonstrates the theoretical importance of both celebrities and gossip blogs, signaling the ideological importance of each. Chapter 2 critiques … more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Sabino, Lauren
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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