Scholars examining gender bias in elections have found that voters stereotypical expectations of women and men candidates affect their vote choice. This dissertation examines gender stereotypes from the perspective of campaigns. Specifically, I examine how ad, candidate and election variables interact with gender stereotypes to determine the use of emotions in political ads. My analysis contains ad data for the 2008 Senate, House and gubernatorial races gathered from the Wisconsin Advertising Project, combined with original content analysis of 1,170,728 ad airings (3,424 unique ads). The results indicate that campaigns use of fear, anger, enthusiasm and hope appeals depends to a great extent on gender stereotypes, and that this relationship is conditional on other factors such as the gender of the opponent, the level of the office, and the competitiveness of the election.

<p> Sexual assault has been identified as an epidemic within the United States military, with estimates of as many as 80% of female service members facing sexual assault or sexual harassment while on active military duty (Turchick &amp; Wilson, 2010). This study examined the sexual assault epidemic as a cultural phenomenon and surveyed 94 male, active duty members of the United States Army. The participants were recruited via network sampling, and their age, time in service, level of socialization, and expectation of combat were measured. A total of four research questions were examined. Multiple correlation analyses identified positive relationships between hypermasculine ideologies and expectation of combat, hypermasculine ideologies and group socialization, and hypermasculine ideologies and task socialization. Negative relationships were identified between hypermasculine ideologies and age, as well as between hypermasculine ideologies and time in service. Data suggests that military Basic Training is an important aspect in the development of hypermasculine ideologies within the United States Army.</p>

The press was outraged when reports in 1973 exposed the CIAs use of American journalists as undercover informants during the Cold War. The CIA-journalists link represented for the press a shocking break in the traditional line between journalists and government. A study of journalist Carl W. Ackermans experiences in the First World War suggests, however, that the CIA-journalists link has historical precedents in the practices of twentieth-century reporters. Ackerman, who later became the first dean of Columbia Journalism School, sent confidential reports to the State Department while reporting overseas for magazines and newspapers. He forged close relationships with a number of American and foreign government officials, offering them his cooperation and service. This thesis details Ackermans cooperation with government during the Great War and is the first step to an understanding of the systematic, close relationship between numerous progressive journalists and the Wilson Administration.

This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I examine the movement of rhetorical actors, the situation, the audiences, and discourses created and sustained through rhetorical practices. These include looking into contemporary controversies, the history and storytelling that helps to convey identity, a new aesthetic experience created by the medium, and specifically their sophistic character and rhetoric helping them speak on issues of social justice and change. To understand these texts, I examine each of them in light of their rhetorical situation and the convergence of a multitude of kairotic factors. I use the situation as a hinge to examine how the movement, through its rhetorical practices and characters have changed the foodscape and the foodways of the communities in which they are active.

This ethnographic research study documented the use and effects of an electronic medical records system (EMR) by healthcare providers working in a community hospital-based emergency room. Using data collected from participant observation, in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and hospital documents, the research findings suggest EMRs impinge providers agency, alter emergency room systems, affect communication patterns among providers, and exacerbate structurational divergence (SD) conditions. Findings suggest that providers attempts to regain lost agency tips the SD-nexus into an SD-cycle, characterized by negative communication spirals between providers. The discussion chapter examines the impact of EMRs on emergency room structures, system reproduction, providers workflow and communication patterns, patients experiences, and unintended consequences, and it expounds implications of the study with regard to what lessons learned from this analysis suggests might be best practices for hospitals and emergency rooms adopting EMRs.

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No description available.

This study examined the associations among family environmental factors, psychosocial characteristics, such as social anxiety, social desirability and social skill, and relational factors with HIV communication, number of past sexual partners, and current condom usage. Seventy-two college aged dating couples completed a sexual communication interaction task in a laboratory and then completed self-report measures of family environment, psychosocial characteristics, and past and current sexual behavior. Results indicated that family environment factors were a major predictor of situational social skill for women, but not men. Additionally, participants who indicated higher levels of HIV communication were also more likely to engage in HIV risk behaviors. Individuals whose partners reported more HIV communication were more likely to engage in HIV risk behaviors. A bias effect was also demonstrated for reports of social skill during the sexual communication interaction task, such that individuals who reported their own social skill to be high, also reported high social skill for their partners.

Social support has been conceptualized as coping assistance (Thoits, 1986) and facilitated reappraisal (Burleson & Goldsmith, 1998). The present investigation sought to explore this conceptualization using a facework-based approach (Goldsmith, 1994a). Specifically, the Communication Model of Facework (Lim & Bowers, 1991) and Burleson's (1985) hierarchical model of comforting sensitivity were used to create the Face Interaction Support Coding Scheme (FISCS). The Communication Model of Facework is built on the premise that individuals want to be accepted for who they are (fellowship face), to be respected for their abilities and accomplishments (competence face), and to be allowed the freedom to make decisions for themselves (autonomy face). The hierarchical model of comforting sensitivity assumes that comforting messages that are more person-centered, rather than position-centered, are often more effective at meeting the needs of distressed persons. The FISCS is intended to assess how person-centered individuals are in meeting their partner's needs for fellowship, competence and autonomy. In addition to examining facework, this study also included an assessment of conversational involvement. Seventy couples participated in an interaction where they discussed a recent stressful event being experienced by one of the partners. Participants completed measures of pre-interaction appraisals of stressfulness and controllability, post-interaction appraisals, communication satisfaction, provider helpfulness, and interaction typicality. Results were analyzed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kashy & Kenny, 2000). Results of the analyses revealed that an increased use of fellowship face was related to pre- and post-interaction appraisals of problem stressfulness, as well as perceptions of communication satisfaction, provider helpfulness, and the typicality of the interaction. The partner's use of competence face was related to increased perceptions of provider helpfulness, while one's own use of autonomy face was related to perceiving the problem as less stressful following the interaction. Regarding conversational involvement, involvement and pleasantness exhibited opposite partner effects with controllability: increased partner involvement was related to perceiving the problem as more controllable after the interaction, while increased partner pleasantness was related to appraising the problem as more uncontrollable. Finally, partner involvement was also related to increased communication satisfaction and greater perceptions of interaction typicality.

An intuitive notion regarding the communication of liking is that it is consistently associated with positive relational outcomes. An alternative possibility is that when expressions of liking comprise a negative violation of expectancies, they produce outcomes that are actually more negative than those produced by the absence of such expressions. The current experiment tests this prediction with respect to evaluative and behavioral responses to nonverbal expressions of liking. Ninety-six adults were paired with same-sex strangers and induced to expect the strangers either to like or dislike them and to desire that the strangers either like or dislike them. The strangers, who were trained confederates, enacted nonverbal behaviors associated either with liking or disliking during a short experimental interaction with participants. Participants' evaluations of confederates were most favorable when confederates' behaviors matched participants' desires, whether the desire was to be liked or disliked. Behaviorally, participants matched desired behavior from confederates and reacted with complementarity to undesired behavior. These results suggest the counterintuitive notion that expressions of liking are not consistently associated with positive relational outcomes, but that factors such as receivers' desires and expectations largely determine what outcomes will be produced. The results also raise important issues for how expectations are conceptually and operationally defined.