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open access

An Analysis of Gay/Lesbian Instructor Identity in the Classroom

Description: In this project I explore the connection between cultural and personal identity in the college classroom. Respondent interviews were conducted using open-ended questions, which began with a broad picture of the role the instructor played in the classroom and then focused more specifically on the issue of sexual orientation and the choices to disclose or not disclose orientation in the classroom. Thematic analysis was used to examine the interviews, upon the completion of the interviews being … more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Giovanini, Heather
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

More connections, less connection: An examination of the effects of computer-mediated communication on relationships.

Description: The impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on relational behavior is a topic of increasing interest to communication scholars (McQuillen, 2003; Tidwell & Walther, 2002). One of the most interesting issues that CMC raises concerns the impact of CMC on relational maintenance and development. Using dialectical theory, social exchange theory, social information processing theory, and the hyperpersonal perspective as theoretical frameworks, this study used quantitative and qualitative analy… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: McGlynn, Joseph
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The twain have met: Self-disclosure in the formation and development of intercultural friendships in the case of Taiwanese versus native English speakers.

Description: Grounded in a social penetration perspective, this exploratory study aspires to examine the impact of self-disclosure on intercultural friendship development between Taiwanese and native English speakers by a section of the following populations: (a) Taiwanese sojourning in the US, (b) native English speakers sojourning in Taiwan, and (c) Taiwanese in Taiwan. This research employed a triangulation of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to answer the proposed research questions and h… more
Date: August 2006
Creator: Chen, Yea Wen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Pedagogical Approach and Instructional Format: An Exploration of the Introductory Communication Course

Description: The goal of this study was to analyze the impact of instructional format and pedagogical approach on students' learning and motivation within the introductory communication course. Three hundred eighty-five students participated in this study within one of four contexts: face-to-face instruction with service-learning, face-to-face instruction without service-learning, blended instruction with service-learning, and blended instruction without service-learning. A series of MANOVAs was utilized fo… more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Tucker, Kristan Ann
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Nontraditional name changes for men: Attitudes of men and women.

Description: Recently, some men have taken their wives' last names upon marriage rather than following tradition. The goal of this study was to examine the attitudes that men and women have toward these nontraditional men. Ideological hegemony and social identity theory comprised the framework for examining participants' beliefs. A survey first elicited participants' extant sexist beliefs about men and the characteristics of a nontraditional man compared to a traditional man. An open-ended question further … more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Millspaugh, Jennifer Diane
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

You don't know me but can I be your friend? Accepting strangers as friends in Facebook.

Description: Users in social networking sites, such as Facebook, are increasingly receiving friend requests from strangers and accepting strangers as friends. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the Big Five personality traits and strangers' gender in affecting Facebook users' decisions to accept the stranger's friend request by adopting a 2 (gender of the stranger: male vs. female) x 5 (stranger's personality: Neuroticism vs. Extraversion vs. Openness vs. Conscientiousness vs. Agreeable… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Leow, Serena
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Learner-to-Learner: Refocusing the Lens of Educational Immediacy

Description: As the current body of instructional communication research focuses primarily on the relationship between teacher and learner, three studies investigating the relationship between learners were completed in order to better understand how student motivation and learning are influenced by learner-to-learner immediacy behaviors within the college classroom environment. Study I resulted in an extensive list of both positive and negative verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors commonly used by lear… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Keller, Christine Ida
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Family Sex Talk: Analyzing the Influence of Family Communication Patterns on Parent and Late Adolescent's Sex Conversations

Description: Family communication has the potential to affect a variety of youth behavioral outcomes including adolescent sexual risk behavior. Within chapter 1, I present past literature on adolescent sexual risk behaviors, family communication patterns, and the gaps associated with those areas. In chapter 2, I review previous literature on adolescent sexual risk behavior, parent-child communication and family communication patterns. In chapter 3, I present the method which includes a description of the pa… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Allen, Evette L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

From "Living Hell" to "New Normal": Illuminating Self-Identity, Stigma Negotiation, and Mutual Support among Female Former Sex Workers

Description: Women in the sex industry struggle with emotional turmoil, drug and alcohol addiction, poverty, and spiritual disillusionment. Their lived experiences as stigmatized individuals engender feelings of powerlessness, which inhibits their attempts to leave the sex industry. This study illuminates how personal narratives develop throughout the process of shedding stigmatized identities and how mutual support functions as a tool in life transformation. Social identity theory and feminist standpoin… more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Mayer, Jennifer L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

In good communication and in bad: A study of premarital counseling and communication skills in newlywed couples.

Description: This study examined the effects of premarital counseling on newlywed communication. It was predicted that individuals who had participated in premarital counseling would have lower levels of demand/withdrawal communication and higher levels of spousal support. The effects of the format of the counseling were also examined. Individuals who had been married less than two years completed a survey measuring their marital satisfaction, levels of demand/withdraw, and perceived spousal support. Socia… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Norvell, Karen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

What's Real Anymore: A Comparison of World of Warcraft, SecondLife and Online Experiences

Description: The proliferation of the Internet and online-based social interactions has become an increasingly popular topic with communication scholars. The goal of this study was to explore how massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) players make sense of and negotiate their online social interactions. This study (N = 292) examined how players of SecondLife and World of Warcraft evaluated their online relationships compared to their offline relationships and investigated how different lev… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Tran, Chris
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Diversity Revealed: Photovoice Methodology as a Means for Understanding How Teens Construct Diversity

Description: Through the partnership of standpoint theory and photovoice method, the present study looked at how teenagers, attending a multicultural education camp, define diversity, as well as what the participants considered to be the benefits and limitations of diversity. Standpoint theory gives the theoretical perspective to understand the marginalized voice of teenagers, while photovoice provides the tools to better capture and understand their marginalized voice. This study was situated in a profess… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Rodriguez, Stuti Mehta
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Grounds-Based and Grounds-Free Voluntarily Child Free Couples: Privacy Management and Reactions of Social Network Members

Description: Voluntarily child free (VCF) individuals face stigmatization in a pronatalist society that labels those who do not want children as deviant. Because of this stigmatization, VCF couples face privacy issues as they choose to reveal or conceal their family planning decision and face a variety of reactions from social network members. Therefore, communication privacy management and communication accommodation theory was use to examine this phenomenon. Prior research found two different types of VCF… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Regehr, Kelly A.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Style and Satisfaction: An Examination of the Relationship Between Instructor Communicator Style and Instructor Job Satisfaction

Description: The study sample was composed of 110 teaching faculty at Vernon College, a multi-campus northwest Texas community college in Wichita Falls, TX. Participants completed two surveys: the Socio-communicative Orientation Scale (SCO) and the Teacher Satisfaction Scale (SAT). Demographic information was collected as well for generalizability purposes. As measured by the SCO, communicator style is a multi-dimensional concept including aspects of assertiveness and responsiveness communication behaviors;… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Kirk, Don DeWayne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Exploring Factors That Lead to Perceived Instructional Immediacy in Online Learning Environments

Description: Instructional communication research clearly indicates that instructor immediacy contributes significantly to effective instruction. However, the majority of immediacy studies have been conducted in traditional (face-to-face) classroom environments. More recently, instructional communication research has focused on assessing the impact of immediacy in online classroom environments. Again, immediacy appears to significantly contribute to effective instruction. The challenge is that most recent i… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Spiker, Chance W.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Organizational Rhetoric in the Academy: Junior Faculty Perceptions and Roles

Description: The purpose of this project was to examine the perceptions of junior faculty members as they relate to roles and expectations related to the tenure process. The study utilized a mixed methods approach to gain a multifaceted perspective of this complex process. I employed a quantitative and qualitative survey to explore junior faculty perceptions regarding roles related to promotion and tenure policies. In addition, I conducted fantasy theme analysis (FTA) to explore the organizational rhetoric … more
Date: December 2008
Creator: Gordon, Cynthia K.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Beyond Rocking the Vote: An Analysis of Rhetoric Designed to Motivate Young Voters

Description: Attempts to solve the continued problem of low youth voter turnout in the U.S. have included get out the vote drives, voter registration campaigns, and public service announcements targeting 18- to 25-year-old voters. Pay Attention and Vote added to this effort to motivate young voters in its 2006 campaign. This thesis analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by the Pay Attention and Vote campaign advertisements, measures their effectiveness, and adds to the limited body of knowledge describ… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Brewer, Angela
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"It's never been this bad...ever": An analysis of K-12 teachers' standpoints related to parent-teacher communication.

Description: With the rise of "helicopter" parents within primary and secondary education, school officials nationwide have started to address how to manage parental involvement in the educational system, specifically with regard to parent-teacher communication. Beginning in the 1980s, school administrators actively implemented programs targeting increased parental involvement in K-12 public schools, though the use of contact and relationship building strategies, in order to substantiate school-teacher-pare… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Thomas-Seltzer, Ashley
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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
Partner: UNT Libraries
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