Understanding the communication concepts behind promoting a brand name is essential to the successful adoption of that innovation. This research links diffusion of innovations theory, branding, and public relations by exploring the name change of a higher education institution. Extensive work has been done in the areas of branding and diffusion of innovations theory. However, this study links the two. The adoption of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette new name by its alumni was studied by analyzing the public relations campaign post-name change and by gathering background information on previous diffusion of innovations research and the importance of brand names to products, specifically higher education institutions. This background information set up a framework for testing diffusion of innovations theory with a marketing innovation. A survey was administered to a random sample of UL Lafayette out-of-state alumni to determine their opinions of the new university name, the rate of adoption of the new name, and the modes of communication utilized in the diffusion process. The approval rating of the new name by out-of-state alumni was split, with almost half of the respondents using the new name in everyday speech and a little more than half using it in everyday writing. In addition, while the public relations campaign did reach some out-of-state alumni, most learned of the new name through word-of-mouth and most were influenced to use the new name by other persons rather than by the university or university publications. The researcher also learned that the out-of-state alumni that approved and adopted the new name are also valuable supporters of the university through recruitment and funding. However, those who did not approve and adopt the new name now feel disconnected from their alma mater and do not choose to support it.

There is a need to examine the long term rhetorical strategies of military spokesmen within a democratic state characterized by civilian hegemony. This study uses Kenneth Burke's discussion of cluster analysis to discover the various recurring themes from Chairman to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This form of analysis enabled the researcher to document periodic variances or shifts in emphasis among the four Chairmen whose speeches will be examined. The investigation involved two speeches representative of each of these four distinct periods of the discourse of Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one given to a civilian audience and one given to an audience of military veterans. The snapshots revealed a consistent constraint of talking in the limited space as a subordinate who represents the national security policy decisions of the President. This constraint, seen within each of the four snapshots, indicates a consistent underlying motive to the discourse of each Chairman. Since most organizations go through periodic shifts in their public image, cluster analysis could provide insights into the decline and resurgence of organizations that replace key leaders either on a planned rotation similar to the cycle for the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or due to retirements or even terminations. It may be worthwhile to apply the same method of study to a more loosely structured organization or one in which a leader is given more license to build the authority of his or her office. In many economic, religious and political institutions the leader is not bound to higher authority in a firm statutory manner as he or she is in the military.

Using a survey of Louisianas State Legislature, this study examined the role media have in developing state legislators policy agendas by exploring the function of news media in the public policy process. The study also tested whether there was a correlation between media use, years of legislative service, and education level. This thesis was also able to establish a correlation between media use and gender, with results suggesting that female state legislators rely on newspapers more than their male counterparts. The results suggest that legislators do seek out issues in newspapers that affect the communities and constituents they serve and that newspapers do prompt their taking legislative action. As much as they use media, however, legislators do not have a particularly high regard for it. Legislators responded that newspapers favor one side in their reporting of the news and were split evenly when asked whether they felt newspapers were accurate in their reporting. Regardless of these perceptions, legislators continue to use newspapers to generate their legislative agendas.

This study examined the portrayal of women in television commercials and documented the stereotypes associated with women in todays television commercials. Content analysis was chosen as a method of inquiry for this study. Two hundred and twenty six advertisements were recorded from the three chosen networks, ABC, CBS and NBC. No local advertisements or public service announcements were included in the sample. Each advertisement was initially coded for the central figure, whether the central figure was a male or a female. In addition, each central figure in the advertisement was coded for the following categories: 1) age; 2) product use; 3) occupation; 4) voiceover; 5) product representative; 6) stance; and 7) product types. Analysis was performed to determine the extent to which female characters portrayed in these advertisements were subject to stereotypical portrayals. The analysis of the data gathered reveals that portrayals of women in television advertisements in many ways conform to most advertisings stereotypical portrayals of women (as documented by previous researcher). However, the study provides evidence that the stereotypes associated with women is lessening. The study provides evidence of the emergence of a new trend in some cases toward portraying women and men as equals.

Aimed at core problems of contemporary moral rhetoric - pluralistic argument, incommensurable disagreement on ordering terms, and a theoretical move away from essence to relativism - this study is an attempt to restore rhetoric as an art capable of investigating and positing terms of order and being. This restoration relies upon viewing rhetoric as a practice of epistemic mediation between the experiential and language-based knowledge of the local, and the perfected knowledge of the Absolute. I propose characteristically Socratic notions of contingency and ignorance as the bases for this mediated approach. As a recognition of what is unknown and uncertain in relation to the Absolute, contingency and ignorance promote rhetoric as genuine dialogue, an other-recognizing, inclusive, and open-ended practice carried out in the local but aimed at the Perfect. Genuine dialogue allows agents to relationally enact virtue, collapsing virtue and rhetoric together as a craft or techne. The study is structured as an argument against immanent notions of contingency (in historical and political utopianism and progressivism), and a-discursive notions of ignorance, which are demonstrated to violate basic values of dialogue. Concluding remarks focus on the praxis of contingent, ignorant dialogue as enacted in actual policy settings, as well as focusing on future directions and applications.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether a region's economy has an impact on regional coverage of China's WTO entry. It is predicted that regional newspapers vary in reporting this issue because of variation in the regional economic structure. The findings of the study support this prediction. A content analysis of 282 news articles in the U.S. regional newspapers finds that the regional economy can be a predictor of regional newspaper's coverage. For North Carolina, Illinois and California, significant differences exist in the regional coverage of China's WTO accession in terms of reference to key economic issue, reference to regional economic gain/loss and coverage tone. This study extends the community structure approach by including the regional economic variable. This regional economy approach will add to our understanding of the traditional theoretical perspectives in the framing of international news.

Gossip occurs in the organization and individuals exposed to these gossip messages must decide how to interpret the gossip. This dissertation explains the definitions and research for gossip, message direction, sex differences, message interpretation, politicalism, and believability. Applying symbolic interactionism and social exchange theory, seven relationships between variables are proposed. The seven hypotheses are tested via a web-based questionnaire that manipulated the message direction and sex of the gossiper and gossip receiver. Two hundred seventy-six full time employees completed instruments measuring gossip believability, purpose, and politicalism. Data were subjected to a MANCOVA, and correlation statistics. Results supported three of the seven hypotheses. Specifically, message direction and sex of the receiver influenced gossip interpretation. Data confirmed a predicted negative relationship between believability and politicalism. Interpretations of results, limitations, implications, and directions for future research are included.

In this study, I document and analyze how I applied Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques in introductory Public Speaking and Interpersonal Communication (IPC) courses. In the first chapter, Boal's democratic praxis is discussed in terms of critical performance pedagogy and Brecht's social aesthetics. I identify the qualitative social scientific method of data collection and analysis I used and base the significance of the study in my testing of TO in non-performance educational contexts and in the integrated communication studies curricula that resulted. In Chapter Two, I summarize Boal's career as an interactive theatre practitioner. My review includes synopses of his practices and the books he wrote. In Chapter Three, I document and discuss the two Boal based assignments I developed for the Public Speaking course. In the first, Boal's newspaper theatre exercises and Gregory Ulmer's "mystory" method are applied to a self-introductory speech assignment. In the second, Boal's "cop in the head" exercises and Joker System are adapted to a group project titled The Persuasive Speech Forum. In Chapter Four, I document and analyze my application of TO to three IPC course assignments. In the first, Boal's concept of Image Theatre informs an assignment in which students show their understanding of IPC concepts of selfhood in a shadow box they create and present. Boal's Invisible Theatre practices are used to test nonverbal norms in the second assignment. In the third, a fusion of Boal's Forum Theatre and Joker System techniques are used by students to investigate interpersonal conflicts and management strategies. In Chapter Five, I summarize the study and my findings, applying myself to the merits, drawbacks and possibilities of the assignments I developed. Lastly, I discuss the role and function of the educator as a Joker figure. The Appendices offer course handouts and representative examples of the students' work which I draw on throughout the study to discuss and evaluate the merits and limitations of the assignments.

This study employs a Burkeian cluster-agon analysis approach to analyze the rhetoric of four members of the Jesus Seminar; namely, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong as well as that of two of the Jesus Seminars critics; Luke Timothy Johnson and N. Thomas Wright. Specifically, this study sought to discern the orientations or perspectives held by each of the examined rhetors in an effort to locate common ground or similar foundations within two seemingly disparate points of view. In doing so, this study creates a third perspective, or corrective, based on the orthopraxis approach of liberation theology that may be appropriated to dissolve other seemingly intractable rhetorical conflicts that threaten to shut down dialogue in conflicts.

This study examines the current status of online news sites in terms of their level of convergence, and how they are affected by different organizational factors such as organizational influence, cross media partnerships and circulation size. A content analysis of the top 100 circulated newspaper dailies in the United States was conducted to provide understanding as to the current status of these online newspaper sites. A number of categories were examined including newspaper circulation size, updatedness, cross media partnership/ ownership, and level of convergence. Results showed that the majority of the Internet newspaper sites examined shared a media partnership on their site. It also showed that a significant amount of these newspaper Web sites had a high level of convergence, and that those with cross media partnerships had a higher level of convergence than those that did not have any partnerships. The study advances our knowledge on how these online newspaper sites have utilized technology in information delivery, as well as what types of partnerships they share and if they utilized their media partners' information. Future studies may further examine the different types of partnerships involved, whether they were strictly parent owned partners or simply affiliated partnerships. Also, time will only allow technology to advance even further, allowing further studies to examine the level of convergence on newspaper Web sites in the future, and possibly whether cross media partnerships still show a higher level of convergence over individually owned newspaper organizations.