Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Music History

This dissertation examines the social contexts for music livestreams, in order to lay the groundwork for future studies of both livestreaming as a whole and individual case studies. No frameworks currently exist for analyzing music livestreams. Although the technologies of livestreaming have been evolving over the past few decades, there have been no organized or successful attempts to standardize the ways we understand and study this fast-growing medium for music performance. Chapter 1 provides basic definitions of livestreaming, and then emphasizes the framework of liveness, arguing that although livestreaming technologies developed relatively recently, the practice of transmitting and receiving live music has been developing since the late-nineteenth century. I examine livestreaming as a continuation of broadcast media wrapped up with conceptions of liveness that have been constantly transforming over the long twentieth century. Chapter 2 connects livestreaming with the social media platforms that have emerged in the past two decades. I also position livestreaming within discussions and anxieties surrounding attention and distraction in the context of digital media. In Chapter 3 the discussion of attention extends into the realm of joint attention, and the ways livestreaming engages our attentive capacities in groups to facilitate specific modalities of participation—observational, reactive, and generative. Finally, the conclusion pulls these frameworks together to demonstrate their use in an analysis of music livestreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the patterns of behavior and audience engagement, conceptions of liveness during the pandemic, and the effects of these factors on the social aspects of live music.

Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor); Francesca Brittan (Committee Member); Georgia Cowart (Committee Member); Vera Tobin (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Music; Performing Arts; Psychology; Recreation; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Mass Communication (Communication)

This dissertation explores the effects of smartphone use on individuals' perceptions of privacy, presence, and publicity. It tests hypothesized relationships based on media effects theorizing by Marshall McLuhan, Joshua Meyrowitz, and Dana Cuff. The study's findings were generated from two surveys conducted in 2015 and 2020. Findings highlight the relationship of smartphone use with privacy concerns, perceptions of smartphone distraction, and the use of smartphones to create media content for public consumption. In general, participants were shown to express high levels of privacy concern with respect to their smartphone use, but despite this concern they often engaged in activities that would seem to jeopardize the safety of their personal information. Some evidence was found for the connectivity made possible by smartphones being associated with higher levels of perceived distraction, but these results were inconsistent between the 2015 and 2020 samples. A key takeaway was the central role smartphones play for communication and content consumption among study participants. Smartphones were shown to be the primary vehicle for most participants' content consumption and particularly social media. The potential for the big data industry to capitalize on the volume and frequency of smartphone use is a topic highlighted in the discussion of results. Ultimately, the dissertation develops a theoretical framework for understanding iv smartphone users as participants in an information echo chamber that functions to shape and reinforce their identities as consumers and public figures.

Committee: Lawrence Wood (Committee Chair); Greg Newton (Committee Member); Roger Aden (Committee Member); Gaurav Sinha (Committee Member) Subjects: Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006, Political Science

In the aftermath of Argentina's December 2001 financial meltdown, the political class was widely blamed for the crisis that transformed this once predominantly middle-class country into a poor one. However, when new presidential elections were held in April 2003, establishment candidates generally placed higher relative to non-establishment candidates. To account for this puzzling election outcome, I examine the role that Argentine centrist print media may have played through their coverage of establishment and non-establishment candidates. The research design involves content analysis of front-page news articles from large, centrist newspapers, Clarin and La Nacion, over an eleven-month period. To analyze the data, I rely on count data and multi-linear graphs as well as correlation coefficients and tests of significance. Testing two hypotheses, namely media attention and framing, I find that establishment candidates received more media attention, and perhaps more name recognition, than did non-establishment candidates. I also find that centrist print media framed candidate strengths and weaknesses in particular ways. Establishment candidates were portrayed as having competency and electability as their strengths and integrity as their weakness. In contrast, their non-establishment rivals were presented as having integrity as their strength and competency and electability as their weaknesses. This study shows that both the extensiveness and the slant in coverage may have advantaged establishment candidates over non-establishment candidates in terms of their ultimate standing in the polls. A discussion of pre-election and post-election survey results validate these findings by showing that media depictions of candidate competency and integrity were reasons named for candidate support. The value-added of this study is that it examines a macro level outcome in an original and systematic way by focusing on candidate information that voters may have relied on when making (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Anthony Mughan (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science, General

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Music Composition

The Inconsistent Continuities is a single movement chamber piece with fixed media. The Inconsistent Continuities was composed for Hypercube Ensemble, whose performing forces include saxophone, electric guitar, percussion, and piano. An additional fixed media component is being controlled over time by one of the performers. The piece's theme is inspired by my personalized perception of living and coping with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). The Inconsistent Continuities aims to sonically portray my personalized experiences living and coping with ADHD. Each ensemble member, plus the fixed media, personifies one or multiples of the three main ADHD traits: fixation; distraction; and inattentiveness. The single-movement piece comprises three sections. The first section establishes the four ensemble members as a theoretical “brain” attempting to formulate a musical melodic gesture or “idea.” This idea loops, signifying the characteristics of fixation. An external distraction from the fixed media then attempts to distract the ensemble from their original melodic thought. The musical content introduced by the fixed media is distant and obtrusive compared to the fixated thought from earlier. The remaining role (inattentiveness) is introduced during this section and attempts to bypass the first thought and the distraction. This section represents the mind being overly stimulated and the traits of ADHD that are more prevalent and controlling. The second section begins as a collective dialogue between all three characteristics that eventually reaches critical mass, followed by an abrupt breath inhale by the ensemble. This represents the mind being overwhelmed during social situations and everyday life while desperately seeking a moment of clarity. The final section unites each member, but the melodic idea of the piece changes, representing the mind solving the task or completing its thought through the tangential ADHD thought process.

Committee: Elainie Lillios Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Mikel Kuehn Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, American Culture Studies

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are utilized by Indian feminists to facilitate feminist teaching and learning. Additionally, it grapples with the constraints and negotiations surrounding such digital feminist efforts, including the politics of visibility and labor. This project is particularly interested in understanding the modes and labor of feminist (activist) content creation, the role of such content creation as digital public pedagogical resources to learn about feminist histories and contemporary discourse, and the politics of performing activism online. I use critical feminist and intersectional approaches in my textual analysis of feminist content creation as pedagogy and to examine the complexities of performing resistance online, and critical autoethnography to weave in my experiences of embodying feminist spaces on social media as a learner.

Committee: Radhika Gajjala PhD (Committee Chair); Francisco Cabanillas PhD (Other); Sandra Faulkner PhD (Committee Member); Timothy Messer-Kruse PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Communication; Gender Studies; Pedagogy; South Asian Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Communication

This study examined how screen media use, attention, and behavioral control processes are related at a variety of timescales. A model framework was proposed suggesting dynamic and reciprocal influences between media uses and attention over repeated uses, inspired primarily by the three-network model of attention, the strength model of self-control, and research on media habits. Findings from a cross-sectional survey (N = 313) suggest that habitual media use, indicative of greater behavioral automaticity, may change executive attention processes over time. These changes are not fixed, though the specific mechanisms to effectively alter attention still require greater elucidation. Participants who engaged in a 28-day period of behavior tracking (N = 38) reduced their habitual media use and showed attention improvements, despite evidence that limiting media use was more difficult than participants recognized. Participants' daily behavior and internal states were recorded throughout the 28-day study period and the dynamic relationships between attention states and media use throughout daily life were modeled as dynamic linear equations. Attention states were less sensitive to participants engaging in controlled behavior than previous theorizing suggested, though participants with greater attentional control experienced attention depletion from habitual media use, whereas those with less control experienced attention restoration. Variation in attention states was, in turn, predictive of the likelihood in engaging with media use in a more or less controlled fashion.

Committee: Zheng Wang (Advisor); Brad Bushman (Committee Member); Michael Slater (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication