<p> During the 2016 presidential election season, Senator Ted Cruz&rsquo;s use of social media to promote his campaign and build up a grassroots following was masterful. This case study explores Cruz&rsquo;s digital outreach efforts in the shadow of GOP rival Donald Trump&rsquo;s commanding use of traditional earned media. This case study views the Cruz campaign&rsquo;s digital outreach strategy through the lens of the Agenda Setting theory of communication, which seeks to explain the mass media&rsquo;s ability to influence what the important issues are to the public, and through the reverse agenda setting effect, meaning if the airtime is unavailable through traditional means, the opportunity to create their own media space is open to anyone that needs it, and their own agenda will be established for the digital audience.</p>

Communication is essential to business. A major component of communication is nonverbal communication. This form of communication has existed and been capitalized upon much longer than verbal communication. Nevertheless, the majority of people do not receive any formalized training on the subject. The objective of this report is to outline the importance of nonverbal communication by providing the reader with a practical introduction to the topic and define how it is applicable to business. / text

Managers spend seventy-five to eighty percent of their time communicating interpersonally. Ironically, communication skills are often listed as a major weakness of today's managers. The decision-making component of the managerial task requires the abilities to gather and analyze necessary information, consult with and involve the expertise of peers and subordinates in the decision-making process, and implement the final decisions through the aid of those effected by them. Communication, therefore, is the prerequisite for sound decisions and effective management. A strong and effective organizational communication system allows the "receiver" to express his needs and thoughts to the "sender." Renis Likert, echoed by numerous writers, considered communication a central key force in the decisional participation process. The hypothesis of this study was that the more effective the system of organizational communication is, the more involved the managers in middle- and lower-levels of the hierarchy will get. Communication effectiveness was measured through four components: Upward communication, downward communication, content of communication, and the sources of information. The impact of these components on the degree of decisional participation among the middle- and lower-level managers in Saudi Arabian governmental agencies was measured and analyzed. A multiple regression analysis was performed to assess this causal relationship between the four components of organizational communication and managers' decisional participation in strategic as well as operational decisions. The results indicated no significant relationship among the variables. Except for upward communication, the other three components of the organizational communication system did not seem to have a direct significant effect on the managers' reported participation in Saudi Arabia. The exploratory research suggested several implications for future research.

<p> This study examines the portrayal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA) based on the Twitter feeds of Democratic and Republican leaders. This innovative thesis provides a clear depiction of how divisive and unprecedented political cyberwarfare has unfolded within the realm of computer-mediated communications. This study also uses an original approach in its capability of identifying the political combatants of a divisive topic. This is also the first content analysis of its kind by bringing data analysis to the concepts of Entman and Kuypers, focusing on problem/solution and cause/effect rhetoric that confirms framing as a powerful political weapon. This research combines all of the above concepts and applies them to one of the most popular and current social media sites as a basis of analysis. This research also proves the value of politicians&rsquo; personal Twitter accounts when studying the general framing strategies of the respective parties.</p>

<p> Many advertising, marketing, and communication professionals look for ways to increase consumers&rsquo; engagements with their brands. In doing so many have begun to use social networking sites, such as Pinterest. Consumers can engage with brands through participation in these sites. Through this brand engagement, businesses can hope for positive customer satisfaction towards their specific brand, which can lead to the development of brand attachments. The purpose of this study was to show the association between brand engagement and the elements of uses and gratifications theory, specifically through the use of the virtual brand community of Pinterest. Statistical tests were conducted to determine the relationship between individual and multiple elements of the uses and gratifications theory and brand engagement.</p>

<p> In recent years, concerns over video game addiction have increased. Both individual factors (such as impulsivity and reward sensitivity) and content features in video games (such as reward and punishment features) play a role in the development of video game addiction. In the current study, a content analysis coding procedure is developed in order to categorize the reinforcement schedules of three existing commercial video games from three different genres. Our findings indicate that the reward features in the game <i>The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot</i> resembles a partial reinforcement schedule while the reward features in the games <i>Team Fortress 2</i> and <i> Destination Sol</i> resemble a continuous reinforcement schedule. This key finding demonstrates that the reward content features in commercial video games can be classified along a theoretically meaningful dimensions put forth by Operant Conditioning Theory. Furthermore, in this study we pilot tested several outcome measures related to video game addiction that will be crucial to our conceptualization of video game addiction in the future including a measure of playing time, game enjoyment, trait impulsivity, a measure of behavioral impulsivity, and the game addiction scale. We found that the video game with a partial reinforcement schedule was significantly more enjoyable than the video games with a continuous reinforcement schedule. </p>

Thesis (MTech (Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / The youth faces unique challenges due to constant movement within the global economic and technological contexts. A digitally oversaturated world with constant access to globalised, mass information makes it challenging for communication designers to reach this audience on important matters. The South African context further complicates matters as youth unemployment is at an all-time high, a lack of quality schooling continues to feed poverty and inequality, exposure to gangs, violence, trauma and sexual abuse contribute to antisocial behaviour and drug and alcohol abuse increase risky sexual behaviour. It is therefore important to connect with the youth on these matters. The need to explore the mechanisms and content which will successfully connect with a South African youth audience was identified. In response to this, this study explored what the youth considers to be meaningful communication. The main objective of this research was to explore what types of visual communication have meaning for the youth to enable communication designers to connect with the South African youth market. The study used case study methodology and data was collected qualitatively through a questionnaire and participatory methods, including two co-design workshops (with 20 participants, aged 20-27) and a small group discussion (with 5 participants). The study featured a co-design approach, which focused on collaborative meaning-making through the visualisation of communication pieces. The study identified several interconnected themes which relate to a bigger category of association. Three major categories of understanding were identified: perception (how the youth see their world); engagement (how the youth experience their world); and relevance (how the youth relate to their world). These themes provide visual communication designers with valuable insights relating to the youth audience.

<p>Twitch.tv is a new phenomenon in the world of gaming and online entertainment. Advertising professionals could use Twitch.tv as a new outlet to advertise brands to their audiences. To further understand brand recall of advertisements on Twitch.tv, this thesis examined different variables such as game experience, ad placement, and ad familiarity. The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) relates to effects on viewer recall of brands in advertisements seen on Twitch.tv, as it is ultimately a new form a television and this model can help understand how its messages are processed (Lang, 2000). A 2x2 factorial design was used to determine interactions between brand familiarity and advertisement placement as well as their effects on brand recall. Game experience was used as a covariate to determine if this variable further made a difference in brand recall of advertisements on Twitch.tv.

<p> The study investigated the existence of some generic and non-generic media frames in the campaign speeches of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton using content analysis. The comparison of the two political actors in their usage of frames in their campaign speeches revealed that Donald Trump exploited economic consequence, conflict, morality, attribution of responsibility, and negative campaign frames more than Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton did not socially exclude any minority group within and outside the United States of America. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are equal in their utilization of the human interest frame, positive campaign, and mixed campaign. If campaign speeches were moderators of candidates&rsquo; electoral victory, negative campaign is, therefore, a facilitating factor in affecting voters' behavior considering the success of Trump in the polls. Nevertheless, the commonness of mixed campaign to both the political candidates indicates that a discrete use of any of the generic frames by political actors and communicators may not be a certainty for changing voters&rsquo; behavior. Instead, scholars and professionals should treat frames as discretional communication tools applicable and dependent on the context of a social environment in which many factors exist and determine the choice of frames in communicating between the speech actors and the audiences.</p><p>

Communication scholars, psychologists, teachers and social scientists recognize the importance of empathy to effective communication; however, its essential nature remains a mystery. The nonverbal and subjective aspects of empathic perception make it difficult to study with traditional Western scientific tools. Existing studies of empathic process concentrate primarily on the early or the latter stages. The central steps are seldom addressed. A method is needed for following empathic perception to its core processes and exploring the principles that govern its nature. Systems science offers a viable alternative method of studying empathy through analysis of models, emphasizing principles of interaction and process.