<p> The current study included a content analysis of PG-13 movie trailers to evaluate the content of risk behavior, related consequences and gender variables. The sample consisted of trailers representing the top ten blockbuster films from each year between 2008 and 2012. The sample was selected to represent the most popular films because they reach the largest audience. The risk behavior variables included violence, tobacco use, alcohol, sexual conduct and body modification. They were chosen based on risk behaviors cited by the CDC and previous research. </p><p> The purpose of the study was to investigate an antecedent of Social Cognitive Theory. The results indicate higher levels of risk behaviors in comparison to their related consequences. Male characters were found to be more likely to engage in risk behaviors than women, with the exception of sexual conduct.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0438. Adviser: Scott Althaus. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-185) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> This study reports the findings of a systematic visual content analysis of 356 randomly sampled images published about the Iraq War in <i>Time, Newsweek,</i> and <i>U.S. News and World Report</i> from 2003-2009. In comparison to a 1995 Gulf War study, published images in all three newsmagazines continued to be U.S.-centric, with the highest content frequencies reflected in the categories U.S. troops on combat patrol, Iraqi civilians, and U.S. political leaders respectively. These content categories do not resemble the results of the Gulf War study in which armaments garnered the largest share of the images with 23%. </p><p> This study concludes that embedding photojournalists, in addition to media economics, governance, and the media-organizational culture, restricted an accurate representation of the Iraq War and its consequences. Embedding allowed more access to both troops and civilians than the journalistic pool system of the Gulf War, which stationed the majority of journalists in Saudi Arabia and allowed only a few journalists into Iraq with the understanding they would share information. However, the perceived opportunity by journalists to more thoroughly cover the war through the policy of embedding was not realized to the extent they had hoped for. The embed protocols acted more as an indirect form of censorship.</p>

<p> This study examines class and gender representations in Nollywood films through textual analysis of a sample of films retrieved from the website of the largest Nollywood streaming service, irokoTV. The study investigates patterns in class and gender representations in terms of similarities in portrayals, instances of stereotypes, and value assumptions in terms of who has power by answering the following questions: (1) What class stereotypes are portrayed in Nollywood films? (2) What gender stereotypes are portrayed in Nollywood films? (3) What hegemonic ideas of power are portrayed in Nollywood films as a result of class and gender representations? The study uses an exposure approach to select a sample of convenience of the top 5 films most attended to by the audience on iROKOtv and relies on close reading and a distancing technique called the "commutation test" to discuss the meaning of class and gender representations in the films. Findings indicate that even when they appear to subvert dominant ideologies, the films still reinforce long established societal norms about the importance of wealth and female gender stereotypes such as submissiveness in domestic households. The tales are often aspirational but the films lack grand ideological narratives to make them relevant to social transformation. These findings support Stuart Hall's Theory of Ideology which allows for a subversive agenda in media texts while retaining the flexibility needed to critique connections between dominant ideologies and social practices and structures.</p>

<p> Utilizing ethnographic methods, this work examines how attendees of computer gaming events held by the Gaming@IU club form a community which uses technology to bring people together rather than isolate them and analyzes the ways attendees perform a unique forms of Whiteness and "nerd masculinity." Known as LAN parties, these computer gaming events are social functions where approximately 200 participants collocate their computers and play videogames with and against each other for up to twenty-four hours straight. Drawing years of fieldwork, this work uses participant observation and in depth interviews to examine how this group uses the computer gaming events to create a third place away from work and school where friendships can be created and maintained. </p><p> Based on this data, I examine the ways in which the statements of the LAN party attendees draw on a discourse of racial colorblindness to avoid dealing with the overwhelming Whiteness of these events which is not reflective of the racial and ethnic diversity of the area. I show how an avoidance of discussion of Whiteness and a general inability to articulate their thoughts about race prevents the attendees from interrogating the role the LAN party's organization may play in the racial makeup of attendees. </p><p> Focusing on issues of sexual harassment within gaming, I also look at the ways in which the games played and the social norms of the LAN party encourage the performance of hegemonic masculinity while playing the videogames but allow the attendees to inhabit a more complicit form of masculinity which is not overtly sexist. I argue that by embracing non-normative masculinity outside the games but discouraging it within the games, the LAN party participants are professing openness and acceptance but are failing to live up to that ideal.</p>

<p> This dissertation seeks to create a vision for virtuality culture through a theoretical expansion of Walter Ong's literacy and orality culture model. It investigates the ubiquitous and multimodal nature of the virtuality cultural phenomenon that is mediated by contemporary technology and not explained by pre-existing cultural conventions. Through examining the theoretical underpinnings of orality and literacy culture, the dissertation explores the cultural shift that is just beginning to restructure human consciousness through the ways that society is connecting, exploring and communicating. Further, this dissertation examines the contrasts between virtuality culture features and those related to traditional literacy and orality types, including the gap between the theory of secondary orality and virtuality culture. This dissertation also proposes three ways that contemporary technology creates human presence related to virtuality culture. Finally, this dissertation describes the broad implications for the evolution of virtuality culture in areas such as education, technology, literacy, philosophy, politics, linguistics, ethics, history, the arts and cultural studies.</p>