Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Seong-Hun Yun / Despite its increasing use and potential benefits for college education, podcasts have been little studied in the literature of the use and gratifications theory. To explore podcasts use among college students, this study investigated their motivations to use and their use behavior/attitude with respect to the medium. Based on a survey sample of 636 college students at a Midwestern university, this study found that students may have six motivations for podcasts: 1) Voyeurism/Social interaction/Companionship, 2) Entertainment/Relaxation/Arousal, 3) Education/Information, 4) Pastime/Escape, 5) Habit, and 6) Convenience. Of the six identified motivations, Education/Information clearly showed that podcasts have become widely used among students as an appealing medium for their school work. Moreover, as similar as the cellular phone study, this study identified a Fashion motivation for podcasts use. Lastly, this study found and discussed noticeable differences and similarities between podcasts and television regarding users' motivations, the interrelationships among motivations, and the predictive relationships between motivations and use behavior/attitude.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / William Adams / Fort Riley, KS, has several command information (CI) products – a Post newspaper, a weekly television news show, Channel 2, and two Web sites. This uses and gratifications study aims to expand on a 2002 Fort Riley study to better understand the CI media sought by soldiers and civilian employees and their level of satisfaction with those products. A total of 158 Fort Riley soldiers and civilian employees were surveyed. Results supported previous CI studies, which indicated the Post newspaper and Web site are the most utilized and valued CI products. Results also showed slight changes in CI product usage from the 2002 study.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Soontae An / African American women account for almost two thirds of all women living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. These epidemiological data highlight a critical need to develop intervention campaigns that communicate risk reduction strategies to this population. Using the framework of the Information-Motivation-Behavioral skills (IMB) model, the current study recruited African American women to view one of four brochures in which two experimental treatments were crossed: African American/individual prevention; Caucasian/individual prevention; African American/community prevention and Caucasian/community prevention. Attitude toward the message, risk perception, self-efficacy and community responsibility were measured through a survey questionnaire. Results showed that participants who viewed brochures featuring African American women displayed more favorable attitudes, increased self-efficacy, increased community responsibility and increased perceived risk for other African American women. The limitations of this study and implications for future research and development of HIV/AIDS prevention strategies are discussed.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Todd F. Simon / Cultivating relationships with millennial donors -- individuals born between 1982 through 1995 -- has become a topic of interest for researchers, organizations and fundraisers. Kansas State University had begun creating a “giving-back culture” among current students through a student-led campaign, in the hope of augmenting alumni donations to the university in the future. This study explored current students’ motives to give back to their university, determined the factors influencing their decision-making process, and discerned the effects of a student-giving campaign on postgraduates’ giving behavior. Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations model helped explain the influence of communication channels and opinion leaders on the decision-making process of millennial donors, both alumni and current students. This study found that millennials are motivated to donate based on several campaign factors, such as the mission, how the money is be used, the receiving of a gift for their donation, and pride in the institution. Friends and close colleagues have a positive influence on millennials’ donation decisions. Millennials also were found to have a preference for the traditional medium of newspaper, along with a high degree of influence for campaign events with face-to-face communication. The lack of apparent effect for students’ self-reported preferences for social media seems to indicate that either diffusion is not at work for this campaign, or that the diffusion process has yet to accelerate for giving back. These findings support previous research on alumni-donor motivations as well as build a foundation for future studies on millennial-donor motivations.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Curtis Matthews / Integrated marketing communications strategies are being utilized more and more by practitioners who wish to reach their audiences in different ways at different times. However, the omnipresence that results from these multi-channel campaigns presents a new challenge for marketers, as their message and channel sequences may or may not be experienced in the order intended. Past literature has shown that both message order and channel sequence do matter. However, existing literature has not examined intended message sequences where the first channel “teases” the more comprehensive information available in the second channel. Therefore, the aim of this study was to bridge some of the gaps in past research by exploring message content order effects and channel sequence effects across intentional sequences for both high- and low-involvement product categories through the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model. A 2 (message content order: tease-to-answer versus answer-to-tease) by 2 (medium sequence: print-to-online versus online-to-print) by 2 (product involvement: high- versus low-involvement) mixed factorial experimental design was conducted to explore how message content order, channel sequence, and product involvement level affected evaluations of brand and message, as well as perceived behavioral intent. The findings indicated that message content order had significant influence over brand and message evaluation, with the tease-to-answer order producing the highest evaluations of brand and message. The findings also indicated that the online-to-print sequence was only effective for increasing behavioral intent under high-involvement conditions. Implications for marketing practitioners and future research are discussed.

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies, Theatre, and Dance / Charles J. Griffin / Modern disasters have shown a disturbing tendency to disrupt normal community life by severing the connection between social services and the populace. Emergency managers realize that responding to disasters presents many unique communication challenges, both on the technical level and the symbolic level. Communities have begun to organize themselves to prepare for and respond to disasters in the event that emergency response agencies confront such challenges. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program was established to train and deploy citizens to supplement the efforts of first responders. The CERT program's website provides information about the program, how to form a CERT and other training and administrative information. A close textual reading of the CERT website enables the rhetorical critic to identify the use of fantasy themes that construct a vision that defines CERT as a rhetorical community. Upon identifying the rhetorical vision at work, a comparison can be made to the features that define a social movement. Applying social movement theory to citizen initiatives opens the possibility for improving community response and the study of communication issues in disaster response.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Joye C. Gordon / The goal of this graduate-level report is to establish a research-based communications plan for the Centralia High School Alumni Association (CHSAA) in order to build permanence in relationships between alumni members and the school, as well as, to secure the financial future of the organization. The project will follow a standard public relations RACE (research, action, communication, and evaluation) model. Background research summarizing current trends in the economy, fundraising, donor motivations and solicitation tactics; CHSAA and the environment that surrounds the organization, the school, and businesses in the communities; intervening publics and primary research is analyzed. As a result of the background analysis, four key publics and corresponding strategies and tactics to reach those publics are identified. A campaign budget is proposed; a two-year time period is shown for implementation of created tactics; and finally, evaluation criteria are listed to provide CHSAA with mechanisms for measuring progress toward the end goal of CHSAA being a permanent fixture for Centralia Schools, its alumni members and surrounding communities.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Joye C. Gordon / This experimental research adopts a typology of frames by Levin, Gaeth, and Schneider (1998) and seeks to a) determine what combination of attribute and goal frames produces the strongest effect on vaccination behavior; b) ascertain to what extent personal relevance of vaccination moderates this framing effect; and c) explore how individual pre-existing characteristics, such as recent vaccination history, vaccine risk perception, vaccine dread, and general attitude toward vaccination influence the persuasive power of framed messages. The study, designed as field experiment 2 (+/- attribute frame) x 2 (+/- goal frame) x 2(involvement), recruited 476 adult female participants that were exposed online to four experimental framing manipulations and a control condition. The main effect is consistent with the typology of frames — the combination of the positive attribute and the negative goal frame was the only condition that was significantly more persuasive than the control condition. Participants who had children or were pregnant, for whom vaccination was more relevant and meaningful, have not reacted to message framing differently. However, general pre-existing attitudes towards vaccines, perception of vaccine safety, perception of vaccine efficacy, vaccine dread, and vicarious experience with vaccine side effects, appear to be associated with antecedents of vaccination behavior. Overall, this study has focused on ecological validity,aiming at the applicability of framing theory in the context of health communication.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / This study argues that after World War I, corporate executives continued a strategy of perception management (PM) to control Americans’ choices in the commercial sphere and to shape the economic and cultural landscape of the 1920s. The state used PM on an unprecedented scale in 1917 and 1918 to promote a model of loyal American behavior (as part its effort to manage the mobilized U.S. society), but the use of PM did not end after the Armistice. While many historians have seen wartime propaganda measures as the result of special fears and circumstances tied to a sense of pervasive national emergency, they fail to explain the continuation of comparable methods into the period of peace supposedly characterized by a return to "normalcy." Whereas most historical studies sharply delineate between political propaganda and commercial advertising, this study stresses leaders' continuous use of PM to promote their notions of what constituted typical, normal, even loyal American behavior in times of both war and peace. While not a contemporary term in the early twentieth century, PM offers an appropriate conceptual framework to analyze a deliberate strategy at that time. This study defines it as actions used to convey or deny selected information to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, resulting in behaviors and actions favorable to the originators’ objectives. During WWI, policymakers and bureaucrats concealed the state's effort to control people's behavior with claims of defending liberty and democracy. After the war, corporate executives used PM to manufacture consumer demand and encourage Americans to think of themselves foremost as consumers. A cross section of political, economic, and cultural history, Perception Management in the United States from the Great War to the Great Crash offers an original perspective that emphasizes the consistency between the wartime and postwar eras by highlighting leaders' ongoing use of perception management to control Americans' behavior.

Master of Science / School of Journalism and Mass Communications / Nancy Muturi / This study was an examination of the determinants of disordered eating development among female collegiate distance runners. More specifically, the study examined the impact of thinness-emphasizing and thinness-promoting messages disseminated by mass media and running-specific media, and how those messages affected disordered eating among a sample of female collegiate distance runners. It also examines current female collegiate distance runners’ attitudes toward disordered eating, subjective norms from referent individuals close to female collegiate distance runners regarding disordered eating, and female collegiate distance runners’ perceived behavioral control regarding disordered eating—which was divided into various internal and external control factors either inhibiting or facilitating disordered eating among them. The study was qualitative in nature and assumed a multi-method approach. It included an online, anonymous, self-administered questionnaire among 166 current NCAA Division I female distance runners; four small, confidential focus groups with current NCAA Division I female distance runners from four different teams; and 16 in-depth interviews with professional distance runners, dietitians, coaches, physicians, and sports psychologists. The study sought to answer four research questions—each based on an element of the study’s guiding theory, the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Overall, the study found media messages, attitudes, subjective norms, and various internal and external control factors all facilitated disordered eating among NCAA Division I female distance runners. Based upon these findings, the study offers recommendations for practitioners in the field of health communication, coaches, academic institutions with cross country and track teams, and female collegiate distance runners.