This thesis sought to investigate affordances and outcomes of targeted fast-food advertising inKuwaiti Facebook. Affordances as used here implies properties of Facebook advertising, which show Facebook users actions they can take. This study contributes to understanding of how Facebook advertising may impact dietary choices of Kuwaitis Facebook users, from fast foods advertised on Facebook timelines. Facebook is a popular social site used by a high number of consumer groups, and advertisers. Increasingly advertisers are using Facebook as a tool of outreach, that they intend to use to convert potential consumers into buyers. Facebook advertising is increasingly placing products conspicuously to potential users heightening probabilities of contributing to some degree of targeted users. Facebook advertising applies algorithms that cluster and send suitable ads to users of the platform. The advertising messages reach out to targets, deliver message of product offerings, and increase chances of playing important decision-making roles of users. The underlying technique used by Facebook advertising algorithms is priming. While social media is a social networking site where people interact, algorithms infused in Facebook increase presence relevant products to several Facebook users. / Media Studies & Production

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At age 23 I began acknowledging and healing from my experiences with sexual trauma. Although my trauma occurred from ages twelve to eighteen, my doubt and preconceived notions about what abuse was kept me from believing that I deserved help. Due to an incessant belief that abuse looked one particular way, I found ways to minimize and frame my experiences as "not abuse". Fueled by encouragement from my therapist and my interest in Communication research, I began to wonder how others who experience shame and doubt surrounding sexual abuse frame their experiences. To better understand, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of a Reddit community created for and by those who've experienced sexual trauma. Using social constructionism and framing as a lens, I focused on posts within the r/sexualassault community with the flair "Was This Sexual Assault". Alongside the analysis, I offer my experiences as an abused child and healing adult as a form of autoethnography. The aim of this study is to listen to others' stories, identify how the framing of experiences can lead to doubt, and dispel the myth that only certain experiences "count'' or are "worthy" of being heard. Ending this process of deciding whether you deserve help would allow people to seek assistance earlier. Further it may help reduce the shame and self-blame surrounding many experiences of sexual trauma - including my own. Through my analysis, I identified several themes which led the poster to doubt their experience, including framing their abusers as "not how a perpetrator should act", framing their reactions during and after the assault as "not how a victim should react", and internalizing how others (family, the perpetrator, etc) frame their story.

Despite the potential for positive impacts resulting from a diverse workforce, fire departments across the country have struggled with the recruitment and hiring of minorities for decades, with women accounting for only 4.7% of its workforce (NFPA, 2020). Due in part to the limited diversity, the fire service tends to perpetuate the stereotypes of masculinity. There are three identified issues that are leading to the lack of female applicants in public safety positions, including the lack of diversity and inclusivity in Public Safety Organizations (PSOs), the absence of women in the role as firefighters, and the absence of recruitment strategies that have proven to be effective in attracting and motivating women to apply. This study determines if the communication being used to recruit women is perceived as effective and how information can be messaged to increase the number of female applicants in PSOs. This examination can be accomplished through the application of the IDEA Model (Sellnow & Sellnow, 2019) to explore what strategies impacting Internalization, Explanation, Distribution and Action are perceived by women prompting the action of seeking employment in PSOs.

This study identifies how intercultural interaction takes place in online communication courses within higher education. Radically politicized efforts to remove discussion around identity and difference from education and increased enrollment in online courses has raised a concern regarding the degree to which diversity, equity, and inclusion goals are being met in college classrooms generally and online sections specifically. This study identified how current pedagogical content, structure, and delivery of online communication courses may impact intercultural interaction and interaction. Findings indicate a need to address the design of online communication courses to better meet the desired intercultural interaction of the students that enroll in them. This research expands how Critical Race Theory can be used to understand how the design of online communication courses may contribute to bias. This study identifies opportunities for Critical Communication Pedagogy as a means to improve intercultural interaction around issues of identity and difference by enhancing social presence and a positive communication climate and community in online courses.

Through a case study analysis of repeated crises that impacted the same organization in Brazil, this dissertation aimed to solve an applied problem: the potential for unresolved or amplified risk for organizations and their stakeholders facing repeated crises due to incomplete post-crisis learning. This research expands and clarifies the understanding of organizational learning, particularly in the Discourse of Renewal theory, by exploring the potential for organizations to ascertain vital lessons for a crisis but fail to communicatively constitute them as central features of a renewed organization. The study investigated an organization's failure to avoid repeating a crisis within a relatively short period of time. Interviews were conducted with organization and community members to identify and assess the perceptions of those who experienced the crisis and observed the company's response first-hand. In short, interviews with organization and community members provided a means for understanding how these individuals perceived and interpreted the organization's communication. The study contributes to knowledge through the further clarification of the learning parameter demanded by the Discourse of Renewal theory. It identifies potential pitfalls in the learning process and clarifies possible thresholds that must be met for implementing the lessons learned from crises. The Systemic Learning Model for Renewal is proposed to serve as a guideline for organizations seeking to renew after a crisis.

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