Much research about advertisements for menstrual products reveals the ways in which such advertising perpetuates shame and reinforces unrealistic ideals of femininity and womanhood. This study aims to examine the content of Instagram posts by four different menstrual product brands in hopes of understanding how these functions may or may not be carried out by social media posts by these brands as well. Building on the body of research about menstrual shame and advertising, I specifically ask: How do the Instagram pages for four menstrual product brands dissuade individuality; how do they prescribe femininity; and how do these functions differ across brands? From a liberal feminist perspective, the examined media exhibits some signs of progress—such as better racial representation—but overall maintains the status quo as to who should be using which products, what womanhood means, and what menstruation entails. These findings indicate that within menstrual product advertising, harmful gender, ability, race, class, and wealth stereotypes continue. Further research of a broader scope is needed to investigate changes on a larger scale, such as within advertising on other platforms and by more brands.

The Khalsa is a militant sect of the Sikh religion officially created by Guru Gobind on Baisakhi Day in 1699. Sikhism, as a religion and culture, existed within the overarching structure of lndian society during the reign of the Muslim Mughal Empire. Over the course of its history, Sikhism sought to evolve and adapt to internal and external pressures, and the creation of the Khalsa was a momentous and transformational step in that evolutionary process. Using Kenneth Burke's guilt-redemption cycle as a model, this study analyses the events that created the Khalsa. The study found that historical and social pressures provided the rhetorical exigence for the creation of the Khalsa. Guru Gobind isolated and used the guilt of the Sikhs people, the guilt of being passive observers in the face of external pressures, the guilt of living in caste-organized society, the guilt of living in a bureaucratic system wherein the priests had seized power and control, and the guilt of living without external markers of the faith. These sources of guilt were brought to the forefront by Guru Gobind, and resolved through the symbolic sacrifice of five men, after which Guru Gobind created the Khalsa as an answer. Through the Khalsa, its symbols and rituals, the Sikhs were provided with a way to escape the flaws and guilt of the old order. The creation of the Khalsa was an important milestone in the evolution of the Sikh culture and religion. Through this study, the processes and methods of this identity transformation were isolated. Guru Gobind activated social and collective levels of identity through the medium of performance in order to transform his audience of Sikhs into the Khalsa.

It may come as no surprise that Twitter is the most popular social media platform where student athletes, particularly men, post inappropriate content. Male student athletes’ inappropriate tweets have become such a problem for universities, athletic departments, and the NCAA that coaches are forced to place a ban on their players’ social media usage or hire third party monitoring systems. Unfortunately, these reactive responses have not alleviated the problem of athletes differentiating what content is appropriate or inappropriate to tweet on their Twitter accounts. Analysis of the data collected from scholarly journal articles, textbooks, and popular press articles revealed that social media education would be the most effective prevention method to lessen student athletes’ inappropriate tweets. This project uses Dr. Mark Robinson’s approach to Personal Player Development in constructing its two resources—multimedia workshops and an interactive Canvas site. The purpose of this project is for student athletes to be more aware of their social media content by knowing how to post appropriate tweet messages on their personal Twitter accounts in order to enable athletes, especially men, to comprehend why certain tweet messages are classified as inappropriate and, therefore, should never be made public. This project is significant because it proposes a preventative method based on increased social media awareness, as opposed to typical reactionary measures.

Video games and academia have a long history with one another. Academic researchers have continued to debate the extent to which video games can materialize real world effects. In this thesis, I employ procedural rhetoric and feminist scholarship to analyze the rhetorical power of God of War. I focus on the game’s immersive procedures and the performances of masculinity from Kratos, Atreus, and Baldur. These three characters all perform different masculinities, and their interactions with one another inform the game’s portrayal of masculinity and fatherhood. By engaging in violence and depicting nuanced performances of masculinity, God of War positions the player to recognize harmful hegemonic masculine norms and their effects on men and their relationships. This is rhetorically significant, as God of War’s interrogation of hegemonic masculinity encourages players to interrogate hegemonic masculine norms in the material world.

The present study qualitatively investigated law enforcement officers’ opinions on creating more positive relationships with community members and how news media can play a role in deteriorating community attitudes and perceptions of law enforcement officers. A total of six participants were selected to participate in a forty-five-minute interview. Participants were asked questions regarding positive and negative factors in their relationship with their communities, local and national law enforcement portrayals in news media, reforms needed within law enforcement, beliefs toward community policing, and factors that lead to success in their relationships with citizens. This study discovered that building trust, implementing community policing with ample resources, focusing on the value of educating citizens, and implementing various police reforms could lead to building more positive relationships with community members. Concerning media portrayals, the study demonstrated that the most important factors are transparency with news media and the public, implementing multiple forms of social media to stay connected with the public, and news media companies reporting both positive and negative law enforcement stories could lead to creating a more positive public image for law enforcement officers and their agencies.

The present study investigates the effects of on-screen messages on viewer perceptions of source credibility and issue valence. Previous research has found that elites utilize framing in order to alter viewer perceptions and change public opinion. An experiment was conducted, which examined whether on-screen messages displayed during a presidential-news conference had any effect on the viewers' perception of sound credibility and issue valence. The results of the study indicate that on-screen messages have no effect on individuals' perceptions of source credibility and issue valence. The study also found that an individual's· political ideology plays a major role in influencing perceptions of source credibility and issue valence.

Do you remember the first time you used an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM)? Or a pay-at-the-pump gas station? Or an airline e-ticket kiosk? How did you know what to do? Although you never received any formal instruction in how to interact with the self-service technology, you were likely able to accomplish your task (e.g., withdrawing or depositing money) as successfully as an experienced user. However, not so long ago, to accomplish that same task, you needed the direct mediation of a service professional who had been trained how to use the required complex technology. What has changed? In short, the technology is now able to compensate for the average consumer's lack of experience with the transactional system. The technology itself bridges the performance gap, allowing a novice to accomplish the same task as an experienced professional. This shift to a self-service paradigm is completely changing the dynamics of the consumer relationship with the capitalist enterprise, resulting in what is rapidly becoming the default consumer interface of the postmodern era. The recognition that the entire performance support apparatus now revolves around the end user/consumer rather than the employee represents a tectonic shift in the workforce training industry. What emerges is a homogenized consumer culture enabled by self-service technologies--a kiosk culture. No longer is the ability to interact with complex technology confined to a privileged workforce minority who has access to expensive and time-consuming training. The growth of the kiosk culture is being driven equally by business financial pressures, consumer demand for more efficient transactions, and the improved sophistication of compensatory technology that allows a novice to perform a task with the same competence as an expert. "The Kiosk Culture" examines all aspects of self-service technology and its ascendancy. Beyond the milieu of business, the kiosk culture is also infiltrating all corners of society, including medicine, athletics, and the arts, forcing us to re-examine our definitions of knowledge, skills, performance, and even humanity. The current ubiquity of self-service technology has already impacted our society and will continue to do so as we ride the rising tide of the kiosk culture.

This Master Thesis aims to discuss the language mix-up in the Philippines. Originally, the people speak different dialects because of the lack of interaction due to geographical isolation. The Spaniards brought Spanish to them, which became the official language of the government until the Americans came and made English the medium of instruction in the school. The trouble lies in the fact that English-speaking-and-loving Filipinos want English only, Spanish-speaking-and-loving Filipinos want Spanish only, Tagalog-speaking-and-loving Filipinos want Tagalog only while non-Tagalog-speaking Filipinos are either indifferent or prefer their respective dialects. This is the uncomfortable mess created by the principles of democracy and should be solved through democracy also by Filipino citizens who can sacrifice regional interest and personal preference for the sake of national unity and honor. The three languages can co-exist harmoniously together in the Philippines if the people can be tolerant, just as the various dialects too can live as long as they are needed and used.

During its violent spread across the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) amassed both a local and international following in large part due to its usage of emergent media distribution. Beginning in 2014, ISIS’s Ministry of Media published an English-language magazine, Dabiq, disseminating its issues through online platforms. Dabiq and its successor Rumiyah both serve as propagandistic recruitment material for ISIS’s international community as well as broadcasting the message of the jihadist movement to ISIS’s enemies. This study analyzed ISIS’s publications using a qualitative content analysis in order to identify jihadist recruitment strategies through the perspectives of agenda-setting theory, the diffusion of innovations, symbolic convergence theory, and speech codes theory. These communication theories characterize the roles that civilizational conflict, population demographics, narrative themes, and emergent media play in the diffusion of the jihadist movement. This study samples the textual content and imagery of issues of Dabiq and Rumiyah, using thematic analysis to procedurally code the data by recognizing shared characteristics and concepts. The fundamental goal of this study is to gain a greater understanding of the way ISIS, its members, and the jihadist movement communicate their intentions, with the hope of preventing further recruitment and radicalization. The two following research questions drive this study: (1) What themes are present in the ISIS publications of Dabiq and Rumiyah? (2) How do the themes of these publications vary over time?

The inequality of women in the workforce has been an ongoing issue. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920. Since then, women have continued to fight for their equality in its entirety. Specifically, in the 21st-century women continue to fight for equality in the work place. Studies have shown that the amount of women in the workplace has exponentially increased. In fact, “they caught up with men in the rates of higher-education graduation, they increased their training and representation in formerly male-dominated professional fields and they entered many previously male dominated occupations” (Vokić, 2017). However the increase of representation doesn’t necessarily positively correlate with the treatment of women in the workforce. In many countries the most prominent journalists remain male. The purpose of this paper is to detect if Spanish-language journalism is male dominated in regard to the kinds of stories male and female reporters are assigned. Through the observation of which gender gets assigned hard/soft news stories we will examine if this pattern continues in Spanish-language broadcast journalism. We will determine if stereotypes and gender roles are being reinforced in the media through the assignment of stories to reporters.