▼ This study examines women’s performance of gender, ethnicity, and race in a “How-to & Style” YouTube community. Studying visual communities like YouTube helps us understand culturally constituted discourses as well as meaning-making practices of everyday life. Today, users actively participate and create content online, such as blogs and YouTube videos. Through textual and visual analysis, I examine a specific community of women who participate in the Beauty tips section under “How-to & Style” category on YouTube. I look at these women’s YouTube profiles, videos, and comments from their subscribers in order to reveal a deeper sense of what meaning users derive through creating videos on YouTube. I ask the following question: How do women in the YouTube Beauty community perform their identity (gender, ethnicity, and race) and ‘difference’ in their videos? In order to textually and visually analyze YouTube, I look at YouTube videos produced by a community of ordinary women. After analyzing the videos and the dialogues, three themes have emerged in this project: a sense of belonging and connectedness, identity performance at the interface, and globalized fashion cultures. Underrepresented women go to YouTube to relate to others who are like them, which gives them a sense of belonging and connects them to millions of others who are craving the same connection. Through video blogs, these women perform their gender, race, and ethnicity. Finally, through creating fashion and makeup tutorials according to their different facial features and differences, I see the formation of a globalized fashion culture. Advisors/Committee Members: Gajjala, Radhika.

▼ Numerous studies have demonstrated the value of learning communities on campus to higher education because students who participate in them are more likely to be engaged in their field of interest, more likely to attend workshops, and more likely to develop relationships with faculty who become mentors. Similarly, anecdotal evidence suggests that working for a student newspaper can have a lasting value for students' personal and professional development. But while learning communities usually involve students in a common major like theater or an interest like service learning, involvement in the student newspaper on many campuses has no connection to a particular major or department. This is true at Bowling Green State University, where students of any major may begin at The BG News whenever they want and quit whenever they want. In keeping with national accrediting expectations, the BGSU Department of Journalism and Public Relations has eleven learning outcomes for its majors, many of which are furthered when students work at The BG News. This thesis explores how a learning community connected both with The BG News and the journalism department might benefit students, meet the needs of the changing student newspaper landscape and assist the department in preparing majors for professional media careers. A review of the literature provided a list of the academic and social outcomes that scholars have identified as the result of student participation in learning communities. Those results were then matched against the particular journalism objectives to determine whether there was any correlation. The analysis suggests there might be a benefit for both department and students. First, students in a learning community are surrounded by peers with similar interests and faculty who can help at almost any time. Secondly, when students live or meet on a regular basis, they become more engaged. Finally, a community creates a closeness and passion that mimics the newsroom teamwork, which can reinforce the BGSU journalism objectives. These findings suggest a learning community tied to the paper and the department would be advantageous because it would further departmental goals and enhance the very aspects of teamwork that build better journalists. Advisors/Committee Members: Cassara, Catherine.

▼ In this study, I examine the performances of masculinities on a YouTube transgendered collaborative channel. By investigating how female to male transgendered users produce themselves in a visual online environment, I explore the gaps created between the body, the interface, and being embodied in an online space. These gaps present critical spaces for communication scholars to investigate what effect the communicative properties of Internet technologies have on gender, and more specifically on masculinity. Now, with the affordability and accessibility of hardware, software, and other media production and dissemination tools, the nature of cyberspace has changed. Users are now becoming content producers through self and other re-presentation and re-production and are visually present and digitally embodied. I ask: How do such content producers become digitally embodied? Can digital embodiment contain properties that are transferable to offline lives? Does YouTube, a cyberspace very much rooted in visual representation offer a space and a means of experience for a group of people who’s bodies and performances of gender are constantly in flux. Or, do the visual aspects of YouTube merely reinforce hegemonic notions of gender—specifically masculinity? The major objective of my work is to explore digital environments, such as YouTube, as one of the technologically constituted layers of contemporary life in order to interpret the meaning making practices and to identify the political implications of living online. I am specifically interested in the role the body plays at the intersection of the interface and an online community. In order to analyze critically YouTube, and the role that the body plays, I look at YouTube videos produced by a transgendered community. Here I focus on the production and performances of masculinity. Advisors/Committee Members: Dixon, Lynda.

▼ The purpose of this study was threefold. The first goal was to investigate the evolution of business models within the video game industry with a specific focus on the console segment within the United States and including Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony as the three largest console manufacturers. The second goal was to examine the connections between these business models and practices of planned obsolescence. The third goal was to determine the connections between the business models in use and any associated externalities. Externalities of particular interest included effects related to violence, gender, race, military connections, and the environment. Political economy served as both theory and method. Results showed that past business models have heavily relied on a cycle of production and consumption that contributes to a culture of overconsumption and regularly produces and reproduces both positive and negative externalities that are not accounted for as a cost of doing business despite the effects borne by society. Advisors/Committee Members: Boyd-Barrett, Oliver.

▼ Although a substantial body of research has explored the effects of exposure to idealized images in traditional media on one's body image, there is relatively little systematic investigation of the body ideal on social network sites (SNSs). In an attempt to further body image research, this study sought to explore the effects of exposure to Facebook body ideal profile pictures and body ideal comments on users' body image. In addition, the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) was used to explore Facebook users' adherence to a body ideal norm, as well as the role of group identification in this process. The SIDE model has been widely used to investigate group communication in CMC contexts, yet had not been used in SNS research prior to this study. To address this issue, a pre-test post-test 2 x 2 X 2 between-group web-based experimental design was used on a mock Facebook status page. The design was comprised of body ideal profile pictures (body ideal vs. no body), body ideal comments (pro-ideal vs. anti-ideal), and group identification (high vs. low). A total of 501 participants completed the web-based experiment and passed all manipulation checks. Participants viewed pictures and comments on the Facebook status page and were able to leave their own comment before moving on to the post-test instrument. Results demonstrated no significant main effects for either profile pictures or comments on participants' body image. However, those with low predispositional body satisfaction displayed significantly lower body satisfaction after viewing body ideal images than those with relatively higher predispositional body satisfaction. In addition, participants' comments were overwhelmingly in line with the body ideal norm. But, in support of the SIDE model, the group norm did significantly affect participants' behavior. Those exposed to anti-ideal comments were almost three times more likely to make anti-ideal comments than those exposed to pro-ideal comments. In contrast to recent SIDE model research, group identification played no role in either participants' adherence to the norm or in the relationship between exposure to body ideal pictures and comments on participants' body image. It was speculated that the CMC context of SNSs may have played a role in the lack of significant effects of group identification. Altogether, the findings from this study demonstrated the importance of continued body image research in SNSs as well as the applicability of the SIDE model in this newer CMC context. In addition, the findings illuminated potential of further research on body image that is guided by the SIDE model. Finally, the successful implantation of a novel web-based experimental design shows promise for similar research in future communication inquiries. Advisors/Committee Members: Park, Sung-Yeon.

▼ This research identifies the basic social processes for women in the military. Using grounded theory and feminist standpoint theories, I interviewed 39 active-duty and veteran service women. Feminist standpoint theories argue that within an institution, people who are the minority, oppressed, or disenfranchised will have a greater understanding of the institution than those who are privileged by it. Based on this understanding of feminist standpoint theories, this research argues that female service members will have a more expansive and diverse understanding of gender and military culture than male service members. I encouraged women to tell the story of their military experiences and used analysis of narrative to identify the core categories of joining, learning, progressing, enduring, and ending. For women service members, the core variable of negotiating gendered expectations occurred throughout the basic social processes and primarily involved life choices, abilities, and sexual agency. This research serves as a forum for the lived experience of women in the military; through these articulations a set of particular standpoints regarding gender, war, and military culture emerge. Additionally, these data offer useful approaches to operating within male-dominated institutions and provide productive strategies for avoiding and challenging discrimination, harassment, and assault. Advisors/Committee Members: Faulkner, Sandra L.

▼ The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate from a rhetorical perspective how contemporary sports both reflect and influence a preferred definition of democracy that has been narrowly conflated with consumption in the cultural imaginary. I argue that the relationship between fans and sports has become mediated by rituals of consumption in order to affirm a particular identity, similar to the ways that citizenship in America has become defined by one’s ability to consume under conditions of neoliberal capitalism. In this study, I examine how new sports stadiums are architecturally designed to attract upper income fans through the mobilization of spectacle and surveillance-based strategies such as Fan Code of Conducts. I also investigate the “sports gaming culture” that addresses advertising in sports video games and fantasy sports participation that both reinforce the burgeoning commercialism of sports while normalizing capitalism’s worldview. I also explore the area of licensed merchandise which is often used to seduce fans into consuming the sports brand by speaking the terms of consumer capitalism often naturalized in fan’s expectations in their engagement with sports. Finally, I address potential strategies of resistance that rely on a reassessment of the value of sports in American culture, predicated upon restoring citizens’ faith in public institutions that would simultaneously reclaim control of the sporting landscape from commercial entities exploiting them for profit. Advisors/Committee Members: Butterworth, Michael.

▼ Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is a controversial and important social issue, yet it is not well understood by the US public. This is problematic, for previous research shows public opinion for legalizing PAS has grown more approving in recent decades. News salience and positive portrayals of the issue in news coverage have also increased. Despite increased positive opinion and news discussion, however, few members of the public have a full understanding of PAS. The basic purpose of this study was to examine how PAS is presented in news coverage and understood by members of the public. Specifically, the study examined people’s opinions of PAS to discover if their personal characteristics and/or characteristics of PAS news coverage predicted those opinions. As such, the study examined agenda-setting and framing as they occur in (a) the news media, (b) the public, and (c) external sources. To achieve these objectives, the study was divided into two method phases. The first method phase was a content analysis of 43 press releases, 198 newspaper stories, and 38 news Web site and Weblog postings from June 2005 to June 2009 to determine their level of salience and frames for PAS. PAS was not especially salient in news coverage and press releases during the time of study, although there were peaks in time when the issue did become salient. Further, the media types studied here (press releases, newspapers, and news Web sites and Weblogs) each used the legal frame most often to describe PAS and there was no significant difference in the overall frames the media types used to discuss the issue. The second method phase was a survey of 452 faculty and staff members at Bowling Green State University (a response rate of 17.01%) regarding their salience, frames, and opinions for PAS. Respondents overall had a slightly positive opinion of PAS, and these opinions could be explained by respondents’ marital status (non-married respondents had more negative opinions than married respondents), race (non-White respondents had more negative opinions than White respondents), support for abortion (increased support for abortion predicted more positive opinions of PAS), health status (better health predicted more negative opinions of PAS), personal salience for PAS (increased salience predicted more positive opinions of PAS), personal interest in PAS as a news item (increase interest predicted more positive opinions of PAS), and personal frame for PAS (respondents who used a personal autonomy frame had more positive opinions than respondents who used any other personal frame). Further, respondents did not consider PAS to be especially personally salient, and overwhelmingly used a personal autonomy frame when considering the issue. This study is among very few in communication research to have examined, at once, agenda-setting and framing as they occur in the media, the public, and external sources. The results contradict previous research that has found media agenda-setting and media framing predict people’s opinions of social issues. Respondents’ opinions of PAS were predicted by their personal salience and personal frames, but not by the salience and frames utilized by the news sources they use to find information about PAS. In the case of a highly controversial, highly personal issue like PAS, it is possible people are less affected by the news media than they would be with more established social issues. It is also possible that low news attention to PAS minimizes the effects that could occur from exposure to news content. This study suggests that news media effects are contingent on audience members’ own personal qualities and experiences, and on the attention given to specific issues by the news media. Advisors/Committee Members: Melkote, Srinivas.

▼ Scholars have long considered myth to be the driving force of rhetorical constitution. While myth has and remains a key logic that aids rhetoric in the formation of audiences, Roland Barthes argues that myth is a tool best served to produce right-leaning political discourse. As such, the shared logic of myth has encouraged the constitution of audiences that are positioned to act in ways that lead to predetermined judgments of politics and society that reinforce current power structures. Yet, Barthes argues that, despite myth’s dominance in discourse, another logic must exist that is better suited for left-leaning political purposes. Looking at the related paratexts from Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the entire Stewart/Colbert universe, I argue this universe utilizes such an alternative logic to produce left-leaning constitutive rhetoric. This logic of ironic appropriation serves to hail an audience into being, position that audience toward action, and uses that action to make judgments about the world in which the audience lives. Using the three principles of ironic appropriation—irony, intertextuality, and interactivity—the Stewart/Colbert universe produces texts that encourage individuals to come together into an audience that questions the normalization of incommensurability in discourse and, instead, seeks to find ways to build bridges and increase political activity. Far from producing a cynical audience, the Stewart/Colbert universe uses ironic appropriation to help the audience see democracy as an interactive experience that truly serve the needs of the people when the people are willing to work together. Advisors/Committee Members: Butterworth, Michael.

▼ The study explored the influence of the strength of intrinsic religiousness and the strength of social identification with religion on intercultural communication apprehension, and the preference for various face concerns and conflict management styles. Specifically, the study looked at how the strength of intrinsic religiousness, the strength of social identification with religion, and the interaction between the strength of intrinsic religiousness and the strength of social identification with religion influenced stress levels during cultural adaptation and how stress levels in turn influenced intercultural communication apprehension, and the preference for face concerns and conflict management styles. Further, the study also tested the indirect effect of the strength of intrinsic religiousness, the strength of social identification with religion, and the interaction between the strength of intrinsic religiousness and the strength of social identification with religion on intercultural communication apprehension, and the preference for face concerns and conflict management styles by assessing the mediating impact of stress. The major focus of research in the area of intercultural communication has been to explore how religion, along with national origin and race, forms a cultural variable influencing intercultural communication and the adaptation process (e.g. Gordon, 1964; Hargreaves and Majoub, 1997; Y. Y. Kim, 1988). The study, while acknowledging that religion can have ethnic connotations associated with it, emphasizes the need to explore the implications of religion as an entity by itself. The increasing importance of religion as a factor influencing the course of events at the individual, national, and international level necessitates the adoption of such an approach. Two hundred and ninety respondents, consisting primarily of international students, study abroad students, and exchange students, were surveyed for the study. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and multiple regressions. The results of the study revealed that the strength of social identification with religion positively influenced stress levels, in the form of anxiety and depression, and stress levels positively influenced the level of intercultural communication apprehension; and stress, in the form of anxiety, indicated a greater preference for self-face concern as opposed to mutual-face concern. In addition, the study also found that the greater the stress level, the greater was the preference for the avoiding conflict style as opposed to the integrating conflict style. The test of mediation revealed that stress levels mediated the relationship between the strength of social identification with religion and the level of intercultural communication apprehension and the strength of social identification with religion and the preference for the avoiding conflict style. The main implication of the study is that the strength of social identification with religion is more influential in predicting communicative behaviors in the intercultural context in comparison to the intrinsic aspect of religiousness. In addition, the results of the study also imply that stress reduction is essential for engaging in effective intercultural communicative behaviors. Advisors/Committee Members: Croucher, Stephen.

▼ Advertisers’ use of hybrid messages and branded entertainment continues to increase in response to technologies such as the digital video recorder (DVR) and the TiVo which allow audiences to zip past commercial messages. The purpose of this study is to examine how exposure to one type of hybrid message—brand placement—may impact consumers’ identity formation. Three research questions and two hypotheses were proposed in order to gain a better understanding about the role that brand placement in television programming may play in identity formation among 18-25 year-olds, a population known as Emerging Adults. This particular population was selected because during these formative years, emerging adults are shedding their adolescent identities and beginning to develop new ones as they become contributing members of adult society. The undergraduate student population at a small, Eastern college received a survey containing Russell, Norman, and Heckler’s (2004) Connectedness Scale in order to find individuals who were most likely to be affected by incidents of brand placement in television programs. Those who scored highest on the Connectedness Scale and who indicated they would be willing to participate in follow-up interviews provided the majority of the data analyzed for this project. In order to obtain a contrasting view, those who were least likely to be affected by incidents of brand placement (participants who scored lowest on the Connectedness Scale) were also recruited for follow-up interviews. The analysis of survey results and interview transcripts indicates that those who are highly connected to a particular television show can have their identity influenced by instances of brand placement. Purchasing objects associated with their favorite shows, incorporating fashion and personal style brands into their wardrobes, and using products that are placed within the shows, enable emerging adults enact and shape their emerging identities. Advisors/Committee Members: Rentner, Terry.

▼ Army spouses, both male and female, experience life stressors unparalleled in other populations. This thematic analysis of qualitative data from the 2004 US Army Research Institute’s Survey of Army Families V uncovered ten main themes while exploring how Army spouses communicate and constitute social support. Through grounded theory framework, suggestions are made for supporting this understudied population (96% of whom are female) from the 1,823 open-ended responses received. Ten themes radiate out from the heart of the research question, how do Army spouses communicate and constitute social support? These are: the level of support perceived (or lacking), the types of support perceived (and lacking), support providers, information, knowledge, Family Readiness (Support) Groups, consistency, attitude toward the military lifestyle, media and the internet, and issues with the military itself. This study discusses those ten themes and then focuses on five additional findings. As the first of those findings, utilizing a pentad of social support aspects (emotional, informational, instrumental, belonging, and nurturing social support) allowed for a legitimate assessment of the construct of social support; all five aspects applied in this study are necessary and sufficient. Also, future focus group research of this population ought to contain consistency, hypocrisy, rank, and FRG reform to be thorough. Additionally, extrapolation of findings to other populations might be acceptable, given certain considerations uncovered in this research. Communication scholars can and should apply their knowledge to assist army spouses in a myriad of ways discussed in the study in detail. Perhaps most importantly, social support of the army spouse could and should be increased by using a cultural lens which considers the Military Culture and the Military Dependent Culture as distinct and interrelated entities. Advisors/Committee Members: Cassara, Catherine.

▼ This dissertation carries out a multi-level analysis of how media reports establish durable narratives of war in both journalism and scholarship, illustrating a multi-dimensional process of the weaponization of media. It draws on a case study of NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, examining both news coverage and scholarly accounts, and with reference to relevant historical, institutional, economic and political contexts. The author conducts a grounded theory analysis of 1058 news articles appearing in the Associated Press, New York Times, and The Times (of London) surrounding the pivotal events of NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo. The ways in which these selected media represent the events and the relationship between their dominant narrative themes and the contexts in which the events occurred, is further examined, comparatively, by means of grounded theory analysis of how 4 major scholarly treatises craft an understanding of NATO intervention in Kosovo. Based on these analyses, this research argues that (a) media content foregrounds (and in various ways privileges) the frames, sources and narratives that correspond with the interests of NATO that drive military intervention and (b) these media narratives exercise a lingering influence on long-term conceptualizations of conflict and have the capacity to shape the contours of cultural memory for years to come. Emerging from this inquiry – which situates the interrelationships between media, power and military conflict within the context of political and economic environment – is the theory of a weaponization of media that moves beyond the scope of existing propaganda theories (and, in the context of propaganda, agenda-setting and framing theories) that explains to what end propaganda works and the ways in which the media system capacitates and enhances processes of propaganda. Advisors/Committee Members: Boyd-Barrett, Oliver.

▼ The effect of religious media is a controversial topic of debates among religious media practitioners, theologians, and ministers in religious communities because they differently understood the roles of religious media on audience members' religious practice. Based on the uses and gratification perspective, this dissertation investigated how audience members' motivation to deepen their faith via religious media affects their religious knowledge, religious attitude, and religious behavioral intention. This study examined (a) how religious media affect religious audience members, (b) how the effect differs in a various demographic and religious audience groups, such as education, income, the duration of audience members' religious experience, their activeness in practicing their faith, and their motivation to deepen their faith, and (c) how the employment of the central vs. peripheral information processing strategies influences the outcomes of religious media use. This study proposed that the relationship between the faith motivation and the outcomes of religious drama exposure will be mediated by the employment of the information processing strategy in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). A three-phase pre-test and post-test field experiment was conducted to trace the changes in participants' religious knowledge, religious attitudes, and religious behavioral intention. Participants watched one hour-long manipulated rational or emotional religious drama in their parishes. In data analysis, participants were divided into novice Catholics and experienced Catholics, passive Catholics and active Catholics, and Catholics with low faith motivation and those with high faith motivation to test the premises of the uses and gratification and the ELM. The results show that religious drama is an effective format in religious programming in audience members' religious knowledge increase, their religious attitude reinforcement, and their religious behavioral intention changes. Some demographic variables, such as education and household income, affect the outcome variables. The three faith related variables, (a) the duration of practicing faith, (b) audience members' activeness in practicing faith, and (c) their motivation to deepen their faith via religious media, interact with one another and directly affect audience members' religious knowledge, attitude, and behavioral intention. Therefore, the moderating model explains the effects of religious drama exposure better than the mediating model. Theoretical and practical implication of this research is discussed. Advisors/Committee Members: Ha, Louisa.