Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

More Than Reading: Narrative, Medial Frames, and Digital Media in the Contemporary Novel explores the narrative effects of medial experimentation in contemporary American and British novels. This project argues that the production and reception of many recent novels are influenced by a range of forms and practices common in digital media, and that these influences have a profound impact on contemporary storytelling techniques. Through analyses of novels by Kate Atkinson, Salvador Plascencia, Steve Tomasula, and Mark Z. Danielewski, I consider how (sometimes subtle) shifts in authors' use of media is changing the way that the novel form operates, reflecting audiences' familiarity with new media even as the novel remains a vital literary form in the twenty-first century. In order to study these issues, I introduce the new analytical category of the medial frame, a particular type of social frame used to identify and describe the conventionalized rules and expectations that readers apply to specific uses of media. Medial frames, developed from a diverse set of linguistic and phenomenological approaches, are defined as social contexts that pair technological materials with the wealth of conventions that govern how those materials are used as part of communicative acts. Medial frames can be employed as interpretive tools to analyze how a text's use of medial technologies (e.g., printed text, images and color, page layout, paratextual materials) prompts audiences to apply certain reception practices over others. I show how medial frames are particularly suited to examining the complex medial environment of twenty-first-century storytelling, in which creators often use a diversity of technologies to communicate with audiences. The print novels of this era ask readers to adopt surprising medial frames, such that persuasive interpretations of these texts are only available to those who are prepared (whether implicitly or self-consciously) to adopt and adapt digital and (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, English

This thesis argues for studying social media as a cultural and contextual practice, caught up in networks of actors that constitute and construct a given context and that influence compositions before, during, and after creation. Ultimately, the author proposes a heuristic that helps researchers break down or revise measures to better accommodate the ways in which social media is being used; recognize social media as influenced by actors that both constitute and construct a cultural context; acknowledge expanded notions of kairos and rhetorical success; and engage ethically and reciprocally with community partners. Such an approach allows researchers, teachers, and practitioners to not only better accommodate the affordances and constraints of individual research sites, but also to better understand social media practices so that we can better navigate complex contexts and create content that accommodates the differing needs of various situations and audiences, teaching our students to do the same.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation examined media rhetoric in the Los Angeles Times about 51 murdered marginalized women in the “Southside Slayer” serial killer cases. The “Southside Slayer” was five different Black men who did not fit the profile of a serial killer and were able to continue murdering women from 1983 to 2007. The victims and/or killers were all associated at one point with the “Southside Slayer” moniker and/or task force, even though some of the killers were later given different nicknames in the press. The goal of this study was to identify harmful narratives against marginalized women victims, and how they were perpetuated through the Los Angeles Times. Through qualitative archival research and a feminist social constructionist lens, language and word/phrase choices in 126 articles from the Los Angeles Times dating from 1985 to 2020 were examined for the use of synecdoche, derogatory language, and negatively connotative language when referring to the fifty-one women. In addition, use of the victims' names, use of the killers' names, and use of killer-friendly language were examined. Using critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, harmful narratives and dehumanization of the women were perpetuated through the underuse of victims' names combined with overused combinations of synecdoche, derogatory, and/or negatively connotative words/phrases. Digital media of today was also examined, and perpetuation or disruption of the harmful narratives and dehumanization varied.

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

In 2020, people across the world began to live nearly all their lives online thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allowed people in quarantine and isolation to safely interact no matter where in the world they were. For some, however, this way of online existence had been happening for years. Fans of all sorts of media texts and media objects had flocked to digital realms for years as a way of finding others who felt the same way they did. Some fans choose to use their social media platform of choice to put forward a digital fan identity that fore fronted their role as a fan rather than any aspect of their offline identity. This work looks at the ways that specific social media platforms can impact the ways that fan communities form and how these communities can have impact on the sociopolitical views that users are exposed to. Using the sociopolitical touchstone of the Black Lives Matter movement in May and June 2020, this project utilizes a mixed-methods analysis of digital conversations across Twitter, TikTok,and Instagram. In comparing the three platforms it becomes clear that the unique affordances of each platform combine with unique dynamics of each fan group to privilege the voices and beliefs of socially acceptable fans. It also becomes clear that the distinctive affordances of each platform have the ability to shape offline interactions and sociopolitical ideals in different ways. We can see here just a glimpse into how the online can shape the offline in ways that have growing implications for our understanding of the social and political world.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, American Culture Studies

This dissertation analyzes how far-right digitally networked German and American Islamophobic communities on Twitter frame, discuss, and imagine Arab and Muslim communities as supposedly destabilizing the Western-nation state as a racially homogenous national cultural community. Employing a feminist grounded theory methodology this dissertation involves scraping the comparative hashtags #Islamization and #Islamisierung, visualizing digitally networked Islamophobic communities, identifying user-types, analyzing discursive themes, and tracking information transmission to examine the way in which Islamophobic digital discourse is not merely Transatlantic but increasingly transnationalized among American, German, Indian, and Nigerian digital networks. In charting the contours of these Islamophobic digitally networked communities and the content of their conversations, this dissertation tracks the way in which German and American far-right Twitter users increasingly articulate a series of paranoid linkages between Muslim, Jewish, and Black communities alongside political progressives, multi-lateral institutions, and national governments as united in seeking to destabilize an imagined white or ethnic German, Christian, hetero-patriarchal nation-state and the broader cultural imaginary of the West. This dissertation contributes to contemporary studies of far-right digitally networked communities and finds that even as far-right German and American Islamophobic networked communities are mired within racially exclusionary nationalist rhetoric they are increasingly linked to the growth of transnational and multi-racial far-right networks that span the Global North and South.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Art History (Fine Arts)

This research follows the development of two image-based internet memes, the Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man meme and the Tradwife meme, to interrogate how the spread and reproduction of image-based internet memes on social media platforms affects the images' retention of meaning. In order to apply a combined historical, semiological, and media-centric approach, this thesis follows the historical evolution of each meme alongside two theories: Bradley Wiggins' genre development of memes and Jean Baudrillard's simulacra. The historical account for each meme begins with the primary image and follows its transformation into an image-based internet meme according to the genre development of memes, demonstrating its initial role as spreadable media, to emergent meme, and finally, to full-fledged internet meme. Alongside that development, the process is compared to the developmental steps of Baudrillard's simulacra to utilize Baudrillard's theory to understand how images separate from their original meanings in mass reproduction. Image-based internet memes are connected to Baudrillard's simulacra because they both feature a dissociation of meanings and mass reproduction on media platforms. However, there is a distinction between the kind of media which Baudrillard references in his theory of simulacra and the kind of media internet memes developed on. Due to the mirrored processes of internet meme development and simulacra development, but the distinction between the type of medias, I argue that image-based internet memes form a new kind of simulacra.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Organizational Behavior

The improvement of digital technology and human drive to connect and communicate have made social media an ever-present part of social life and, increasingly, organizational life. By reshaping the ways people interact, organize, take collective action, create and learn, social media both challenges our current understanding of individual and organizational phenomena and lends importance to the exploration of how these phenomena occur through digital-mediation. Despite this, few studies have explored the role of social media in processes of organization creation and emergent identity formation. Of research conducted on social media, more generally, Twitter and Facebook have attracted the most attention, with few studies conducted within the context of Instagram, a visually-rich social networking platform with over a billion users. Responding to increasing calls for the study of social media's implications for organization studies and for more-specific study of the Instagram platform, this dissertation addresses the role that Instagram plays in affording new ways of organizing, the generative nature of user interactions, and responses to social media visual content in collective identity construction. To accomplish these goals, I have elected to organize my dissertation into three papers. An introductory chapter and literature review set the stage for this work, providing both the theoretical framework for this research and justification of its import to organization studies. The first paper employs qualitative content analysis to understand how users of the social networking platform Instagram enact communication affordances in practice and draws on the social and collective concept of entrepreneuring to explain their implications for organization creation. The second paper draws on narrative thematic and visual analysis to examine how user engagement within the visually-rich context of Instagram fosters the development of collective identity, revealing the important (open full item for complete abstract)

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

Despite high adoption rates of new communication technologies in Kenya, the role of emerging technologies in the Kenyan child trafficking market and the influence of online anti-child trafficking activists in combating child trafficking remain under-researched. In this study, I have used digital ethnographic approaches that included virtual interviews, online participant observation, and social media analytics to realize five main findings. First, emerging media technology has been used by criminals to traffic children, whereas it also provides opportunities to online activists to combat child trafficking. Second, there are different types of online claims-makers actively advocating against child trafficking. Third, the claims-makers framed the exploitation and risky situations that victims of child trafficking go through as sexual exploitation, organ harvesting, infant trafficking, child marriage, organized begging, terrorism, organized crime, and child labor. Fourth, the claims-makers used the 5P framework to diagnose and offer a prognosis of the child trafficking situation. Finally, the claims-makers were able to influence diverse sentiments among their target audience. This study has practical and theoretical recommendations for researching and designing social and behavior change interventions against child trafficking and other social challenges.

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism (Communication)

The German relation to Israel is marked by its historic circumstances, namely the Shoah and the antisemitism which made it possible, but also cooperation between the two countries nowadays. Previous research on the portrayal of Israel in German print media, in particular during times of escalation in the Arab-Israeli conflict, have found a bias against Israel. This study provides an analysis of the media image of Israel in German online news media during a low-escalation period in the Arab-Israeli conflict, accounting for the changes in the media landscape due to digitalization and providing a comparison to traditional media. A sample by five German news outlets – Bild.de, n-tv.de, Spiegel.de, t-online.de and Zeit.de – during a 2019 low escalation-phase was analyzed using a structural objectivity content analysis. A focus was put on the overall evaluation as well as the topics and actors who can be found in the reporting. The findings show an overall balanced depiction with some outliers, in contrast to the portrayal of Israel during periods with high conflict.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Media and Communication

In 2006, American activist Tarana Burke started the me too movement that helped survivors of sexual assault by telling them that there were other survivors too, and they were not alone. In 2017, Alyssa Milano used the same phrase as a hashtag and called for women to share their experiences of harassment using #metoo, or just use the hashtag to show they have been through something similar. This movement eventually brought about the conviction of former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. However, echoes of this movement reached far and wide, beyond the United States of America. Survivors of assault started using social media to call out what they had been through. This study examines the voice of women on the digital media platforms and how their calling out of sexual harassers on these platforms negotiates with the discourse of shame and guilt surrounding sexual assault. Shame is a prominent emotion associated with sexual assault that finds its space within the larger narrative of silencing women. Survivors often do not report assault for fear of being shamed. In news media, shame is reinforced by way of stock images that show a woman hiding her face or crying for help that accompany stories of sexual assault. Shame could force survivors to keep their trauma to themselves for years, resulting in other psychological issues. Social media intervenes in this. This study looks at three cases in India between 2017 and 2019 where survivors used social media to speak up about how they had been sexually harassed and/or assaulted. Using textual and discourse analysis, the study found that as opposed to portraying survivors in a pitiful light, social media gives the agency to the survivor to decide how they want to be seen. They are able to bypass passive narratives through first-person reporting. This subversion of shame does not necessarily affect the consequences that the accused will face but it focuses on the survivor's needs. The results of this research sugg (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Media and Communication

Social media is an increasingly important space for community formation and interactions. Coinciding with the rise of social media has been an increasing interest in leftist ideologies once outside the mainstream. This analysis seeks to understand the social media siteReddit.com's enabling and constraining features on the community /r/socialism. Using the communicative theory of identity and Marxist media theory not only to look at Reddit and/r/socialism's relationship, but five key functions of a media: capital-economic, media sales and media market function, commodity circulation, domination, and the audience. Employing a mixed-methods approach enabled various data to be analyzed and relationally understood. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine user's salient topics and their uses for the community. Survey methods were deployed to the community to gather demographic data on the/r/socialism community and user opinions on the group's relationship with Reddit. Finally, secondary documents were analyzed to provide greater context to the other findings. Findings from the content analysis of salient subjects showed a preference for contemporary capitalist critique, socialist quotations, and class issues. However, topics impacting women and other minority groups were light to nonexistent. Analysis of platform uses found the top three uses to be a general discussion, information-seeking, and information-giving. The user survey was plagued by low participation and participants who were under the age of consent. As such, data from a community-administered survey filled in the gaps. Secondary document analysis shed light on many features of Reddit, particularly how the social media's systems are designed to elicit data and authenticity. Reddit'sprimary focus was on creating a space suitable for advertising with minimum corporate input. To attract users, Reddit sells the premise of community and interactions. For businesses, Reddit serves as an ad platform that ca (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2019, Leadership and Change

More than a decade after the emergence of social and digital media, professional communicators increasingly use these channels to interact with a wide array of stakeholders. Simultaneously, public relations (PR) and communications leaders seek to understand whether their efforts to communicate and engage with stakeholders through these channels are effective in establishing and building relationships, as well as to measure “effectiveness” in the new technology-driven communications landscape. With this study, I addressed a gap in the academic research with regard to understanding the effectiveness of social and digital media as a communications tool by assessing employees' perceptions of their organization with respect to five communication concepts, both in general and based specifically on the company's social media communications. I assessed the relationship between the employee stakeholder and the organization from two viewpoints: first, from the viewpoint of the employees with whom the organization is communicating, and second, from the viewpoint of the communications professionals who post social and digital media messages on behalf of the organization. The results showed that an intervention to educate employees about the organization's social and digital media communications did not result in employees' increased positive perceptions of the organization as a whole or of the organization's sites with regard to each of the five communications concepts. The increase in employees' positive perceptions of the organization's social and digital media sites, which reflected the communication concept “promoting communal relationships,” was significant at p < .10; also, increases for three individual statements that were part of the communications concepts were sufficient for statistical significance. The intervention did result in statistically significant increases in employee use of social and digital media to engage with the organization and in usage of specifical (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Contemporary Music

The saxophone is relatively young compared to other instruments of the band and orchestra. Because the instrument is less constricted by traditional repertoire, composers looking to push the boundaries of concert music eagerly write for the saxophone, and saxophonists willingly experiment with new combinations of performance media. An exponential increase of works written for saxophone and multimedia has occurred since the 1960s. This increase in multimedia works for saxophone has paralleled a digital media revolution, manifested through advancements in recording, interactive media, and communication technologies. This document examines the synthesis of saxophone performance and the digital media revolution, elaborating upon existing repertoire for saxophone and digital media in a non-comprehensive manner, with emphasis placed upon electroacoustic works for saxophone and video. Possibilities for multimedia performance are rapidly expanding within the saxophone's repertoire. A poignant example, Matthew Burtner's meta-saxophone project combines motion tracking, accelerometers, and other technologies with the physical saxophone, creating a cyborg instrument. In this situation, Burtner is an auteur, acting simultaneously as the composer, performer, technologist, and sometimes visual artist, all while using the saxophone as the crux of expression. Other composers and artists take a collaborative approach while using saxophone and digital media. These combinations of saxophone and digital media create a new and exciting medium in concert performance. Yet, the combination of live performance and digital medium lacks scholarly analysis. While existing research provides valuable analysis from a performer's perspective, further examination of the interactions between mediums can reveal new potential and meaning. The introduction of elements of media theory and analysis to saxophone repertoire, using specific repertoire as micro-case-studies, will widen the artistic underst (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Communication Studies (Communication)

People with disabilities have long been under-represented and misrepresented in mainstream media, and have sought strategies to contest discourses of difference that frame disability as a pitiable tragedy, a burden, or a source of inspiration used to make non-disabled people feel better about their own lives. With the advent of the internet and the increasingly participatory character of the media landscape, people with disabilities are now more able to generate and circulate a counter-narrative--one which draws on the social model of disability to highlight the ways in which stigmatizing and oppressive responses to different bodies create and perpetuate marginalization. However, the disability community is far from monolithic. In addition, the line between "chronic illness" and "disability" remains blurry. Thus, as individuals engage in self-advocacy and collective/connective action by publicizing their stories, they draw from varied discourses of difference that preserve or resist medicalization. Similarly, advocates organize to pursue potentially conflicting goals. The resulting tensions of representation and organization are particularly apparent in the case of The Mighty, a for-profit media company that publishes stories submitted by people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and mental health conditions. This site has become an increasingly popular resource for some members of the disability community. At the same time, it has also become a site of contention and has received criticism from disability activists who protested its publishing practices via the hashtag initiative, #crippingthemighty. For this dissertation project, The Mighty served as a context to explore how public performances of self-advocacy in digital spaces link to connective/collective action. Taking a constructivist approach to grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), I analyzed interviews with Mighty staff members (14 participants), Mighty contributors (29 participants), and #crippingt (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Speech-Language Pathology (Health Sciences and Professions)

Adaptive sport and recreational programs provide rich opportunities for communication and participation while also providing enjoyable and meaningful experiences for people with significant physical and communication disabilities. Programs rely on the skills, support, and dedication from community-based volunteers. Active recreation typically occurs in natural outdoor settings which can provide ideal contexts for capturing photos and videos that may be shared with others. The research project employed a distance training called the CAPTURE & Share program. The program provided instruction to volunteers about how to support people with disabilities to effectively collect and share digital artifacts (e.g., photos, videos) during an adaptive sport activity (i.e., kayaking). The first objective was to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the distance training program for the volunteers. The second objective was to gather the perspectives of volunteers, participants with complex communication needs (CCN), and their caregivers before and after implementation of the CAPTURE & Share program. The project was divided into two studies: (a) implementation of the distance training program; and (b) use and application of the program during a series of recreational activities. An experimental single-subject research design with multiple baselines was used to investigate the training program in study 1 and Participatory Action Research (PAR) provided a framework for the application phase in study 2. During a series of three kayaking lessons, the volunteers implemented their plans and had an opportunity to engage in feedback sessions to share ideas, reflect, and revise their plans. Caregivers and participants with CCN provided their perspectives before and after lessons to better understand their activity patterns relative to capturing and sharing digital media. Results indicated that all volunteers were successful in learning the program as they effectively demonstrated thei (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Science of Media Arts and Studies (BSC), Ohio University, 2017, Media Arts and Studies

MOLOCH is a game about internal struggles between passive content consent and critical views in systems where digging deeper can lead to darker truths. A top-down 3D game with simple directional movement puzzles, MOLOCH places us behind a desk as a shift manager in a dystopian company. Throughout the game, the player will be confronted with the binary of efficiency vs morality. The game encourages us to increasingly hurry our managed workers, but is the company's goal and corporate approval worth the amoral work we force? Are we ok with the system's tactics aimed at keeping us complacent? MOLOCH takes inspiration from Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis and from the German Expressionism art movement at-large. Increasing anxiety over the networked world's discordant relationships between humanity and the physical world and the rise of social inauthenticity and near endemic individual alienation highlight the intentions of MOLOCH (Klaas, 2016). Adapting a rich history of prior art is critical to the tonal and thematic success of MOLOCH. David Freeman, designer and writer, states that one of the keys to creating a rich world is through adding history (Freeman, 2003). Adding backstory to MOLOCH through ancillary materials, and injecting the sentiments of Metropolis facilitates a rich history. The precise adaptation necessary for analytical success spans visual and audial assets as well; without proper signifiers the tone of the game will be lost due to a lack of thematic cohesion. This aspect will be accomplished through continual examination and inspiration of prior art.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2017, English-Composition

Students entering our freshman composition classrooms use digital writing every day, whether on social media, blogging, or various other digital areas. Students also have fast access to news, media, and other information. These two interactions, writing and reading, in today's digital realm are often drenched in social propaganda and debates. In Ira Shor's sub-section titled “Academic Problem-Posing: Media Studies and a Critical Literature Class” within his work Empowering Education, he writes that students “are starved for meaningful contexts, for intellectual and emotional pleasure in the life of the mind, and for holistic learning that feeds their understanding. Schooling teaches many students that education is a pointless ritual wrapped in meaningless words” (83). Shor's words still ring true today, especially in classrooms where student's 21st century interactions with technology are disused for traditional composition classrooms with lectures and no digital components from the social media world in which they actively participate. When students are unable to address propaganda and digital identities in the classroom when they see it their everyday lives, how do they learn to critically analyze these messages? With Critical pedagogy's teachings and digital culture commodities, teachers can help prepare students for decoding and deconstructing digital propaganda with the hopes of fostering participation and push-back through social media. By using critical pedagogy's core teachings and digital instruction, teachers can create a classroom where students can recognize and debunk propaganda used in online media while also introducing them to the ways that digital mediums can aid in resistance. Helping students to decode online media while understanding its power can foster student's critical thinking in a digital world. The primary goal of this thesis is to research and discover the importance of rhetoric and propaganda in writing on social media and how the dissec (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, American Culture Studies

This dissertation analyzes how African immigrants from nations south of the Sahara become affective citizens of a universal Africa through the consumption of Nigerian cinema, known as Nollywood, in digital spaces. Employing a phenomenological approach to examine lived experience, this study explores: 1) how American media aids African pre-migrants in constructing the United States as a paradise rooted in the American Dream; 2) immigrants' responses when the `imagined paradise' does not match their American realities; 3) the ways Nigerian films articulate a distinctly African cultural experience that enables immigrants from various nations to identify with the stories reflected on screen; and, 4) how viewing Nollywood films in social media platforms creates a digital sub-diaspora that enables a reconnection with African culture when life in the United States causes intellectual and emotional dissonance. Using voices of members from the African immigrant communities currently living in the United States and analysis of their online media consumption, this study ultimately argues that the Nigerian film industry, a transnational cinema with consumers across the African diaspora, continuously creates a fantastical affective world that offers immigrants tools to connect with their African cultural values. Nollywood films culturally appose traditional values with both the delights and dilemmas of globalization to reveal a recognizable and relatable fictional realm for many Africans dealing with the vestiges of colonial rule. With hyper-dramatic plots that glorify and critique life on the continent, Nollywood becomes a means to an end for African immigrants residing in the often unfamiliar culture of the United States. Surfing YouTube for Nollywood films or logging into subscription based platforms like IrokoTV and Amazon Prime, which carries Nollywood titles thanks to partnerships with IrokoTV, can foil the incongruity between the paradise America is supposed to b (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, English

“Developing a Digital Paideia: Composing Identities and Engaging Rhetorical in the Digital Age” studies the complex multidimensional rhetorics and composing practices that are ongoing within online spaces, especially social media sites. From these sites, I derive insights to develop pedagogical approaches and suggestions that value everyday engagements with technology and mundane multimodal composing as significant and rhetorical. Technology users—from smart phone users to digital composers—have become deeply engaged with multiple technologies. This pervasive engagement has led many scholars and educators (for instance, Mark Bauerlein, Nicholas Carr, and Sherry Turkle) to decry the detrimental effects of technology upon intellectualism. This project offers a counterpoint to this argument, highlighting the complex rhetorical and composing work college students, many who are millennials, do in their everyday lives, while also proposing pedagogical approaches for instructors of rhetoric, composition, and digital media studies to incorporate these everyday literacy practices into their classrooms. I develop a digital rhetorical paideia, or course of study, using rhetorical identity and ethos as an access point for asking larger questions about rhetoric, composition, and digital media studies. To develop this paideia, I analyze rhetorical behaviors and multimodal composing practices across social media sites, engaging with issues related to individual identity on social-networking sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest in chapter one), shared identity and collective ethos within online communities and affinity groups (focusing on LiveJournal and Tumblr in the second chapter), and the collapsing boundaries among public, private, online, and offline experiences and communications (examining Reddit.com in chapter three). Alongside these analyses, this dissertation also features student work and voices in the form of curated student exhibits, which illustrate (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Comparative Studies

"The Future of American Memory" focuses on media preservation in the United States since the 1930s. It works at the intersection of American studies, critical race studies, visual culture, and media archaeology to trace the historical emergence of the desire to preserve media permanently across three key moments in American history. Part I addresses the 1930s, when scientists carried out the first systematic studies on the causes of deterioration in paper and microfilm records. By the end of the decade, American corporations used knowledge from these studies to build the first two time capsules that aimed to preserve a permanent record of civilization's achievements. Part II addresses the 1950s, when Cold War paranoia about nuclear attacks led government agencies, banks, insurance companies, and other corporations to invest in secure, bombproof, underground storage for their records. Part III addresses the contemporary moment, from the mid-1990s to the present. My case study is the Bettmann Archive of historical photographs, preserved at the Corbis Film Preservation Facility in a securitized, refrigerated vault located 220 feet underground. Corbis, an image licensing company owned solely by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, refrigerates and digitizes the photographs in the Bettmann Archive in order to preserve them for 10,000 to 15,000 years. In my Epilogue, I discuss geographer/artist Trevor Paglen's project, The Last Pictures. Paglen micro-etched 100 images onto a silicon disc, then launched it into outer space on the communications satellite Echostar XVI, where it will orbit the earth, he claims, for several billion years. I conclude that a "preservation complex" has emerged in American culture since the 1930s. This complex is both institutional--a proliferating network of securitized, temperature-controlled spaces for preserving media--and psychic--the anxieties of corporate and state scientists, librarians, and archivists have to some degree become the anxieties of (open full item for complete abstract)