From Scott Baios endorsement of Donald Trump to Sarah Silvermans endorsement of Bernie Sanders and subsequent rejection of the Bernie or Bust crowd at the DNC, celebrities have habitually inserted themselves into the political sphere, however, there has been little empirical research on celebrity endorsements of political candidates. Rooted in branding theory, this study seeks to understand the effectiveness of celebrity political endorsements by utilizing advertising effectiveness models. The primary model, derived from work done by Amos, Holmes, and Strutton (2008), translates source factors of a celebrity product endorser to those of a celebrity candidate endorser, such as credibility, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. While in traditional advertising research, effectiveness is measured by outcomes such as brand attitude, and intention for product purchase, this study defines effectiveness in terms of attitudes toward the candidate, endorsement believability, recognition, and willingness to engage in electoral and online civic behaviors. After providing demographic information and information about digital media use and partisanship, participants were provided with a social media post, allegedly from a famous actor, endorsing a fictitious candidate and were asked to rate the actor on 21 attributes of a good endorser (source factors) and answer questions relating to their identification with the celebrity, perceptions of the celebrity-candidate fit, and their perceptions of the candidates viability in the election. They were subsequently asked to evaluate the candidate, the endorsements believability, recognize information from the endorsement, and indicate how likely they were to perform nine civic behaviors for the candidate. The data suggest that the endorser effectiveness model used by advertising researchers is useful for understanding the source factors and other considerations upon which celebrity political endorsement effectiveness is predicated. The study found that source factors vary in effectiveness between attitude, cognitive, and behavioral measures, leading to the conclusion that celebrity endorsers with different characteristics may be useful to political campaigns depending upon desired voter outcomes, particularly with regard to time during a campaign cycle.

<i>Walden</i> queers its readers. While many have investigated Thoreaus queerness, there has been little notice of <i>Walden</i>s queerness. This project begins with a situational analysis that identifies the melancholic antecedents of <i>Walden</i> in Thoreaus life and his choices that led to the illumination of his melancholia. Thoreau had already been experimenting with what Branka Arsić identified as literalization. Nevertheless, a period of crisis, detailed by Robert Milder, made him aware of what Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok have referred to as the melancholics blind skill of demetaphorization. I suggest that Thoreau exploited this skill to produce <i>Walden</i>s unique ability to feed on and, as Henry Abelove and Henry Golemba have suggested, awaken its readers desires. I combine a close reading of <i>Walden</i> with selective study of the texts reception. <i>Walden</i> delivers on Thoreaus theory of friendship from his first book, <i>A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers</i>. <i>Walden</i>s friendship with its reader is the agency that accomplishes what Henry Golemba and Lawrence Buell have noted as a blurring of the boundary between reader and text. To investigate this friendship and <i>Walden</i>s accommodations of faux friendship, I construct a Burkean perspective by incongruity using research in the nature-writing and rhetoric disciplines that intersect with Thoreauvian studies. This incongruity is analyzed using not only Burkes theories of literary form and literature as equipment for living, but also Deleuzes process philosophy and Deleuze and Guattaris analyses of the war machine and their spatial analysis. This project complexifies Erin Rands research on polemics, using Deleuzes multiplicity not only to explain why polemics are unpredictable, but also to address what Sarah Hallenbeck has referred to as the crisis of agency. I suggest an expansion of José Esteban Muñozs research. The question of how one actually transitions from melancholia to disidentification cannot be adequately answered with terms like Stuart Halls oppositional reading or Deleuze and Guattaris de/reterritorialization. I also suggest that queer utopian thinking and poststructuralism are more compatible than previously argued. This dissertation is itself a polemic, straining the possibilities of friendship in the service of queerness.

While small and large technological miracles have undoubtedly made our lives easier, they have potentially also made a significant part of our daily social routine obsolete. People live in the same space but rarely spend quality time together, interacting and bonding. One of the solutions to diminishing family relationships may lie in the technology itselfvideo games. Previous research having shown the sociability of video games, and in this study, we examined their potential in creating closer family relationships, especially among different generations. Participants (n = 183), mainly grandparents and grandchildren, were asked to play video games together over a period of six weeks. Participants completed a modified version of the self-other overlap, self-disclosure, and relationship closeness inventories before and after the treatment and responded to a series of open-ended questions post-treatment. Results indicate a significant increase in the inclusion of other in the self, as well as an increase in breadth and depth of self-disclosure for both younger and older adults. A comparison group (n = 88), comprising also mostly grandparents and grandchildren, was tasked with having conversations either face-to-face or in a mediated setting. The comparison group completed the same questionnaires, with results indicating a significantly smaller increase in the inclusion of other in the self and depth of self-disclosure, while breadth of self-disclosure experienced the same increase as in the gaming group. The findings suggest that video games can provide a platform for family communication, resulting in the rejuvenation and maintenance of intergenerational relationships. Gathering around a novel shared activity, both younger and older adults found new ways of connecting to their family members, whether through more frequent conversations, broader selection of topics, shared subjects, or pure entertainment.

In the digitally networked society, social media easily expose individuals to information related to conflicting social issues and allow them to distribute their ideas by creating and sharing content. Accordingly, people have opportunities to be engaged in contentious issues through social media and participate in offline activities. The purpose of this study was to propose an integrative model of activism to understand how individuals in the networked society are engaged in social media and offline activism on contentious issues. In doing so, this study presents an integrative model of activism incorporating the Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS), hostile media perception, affective injustice, and social media efficacy. An online survey of 649 respondents examined how the integrative model of activism predict social media activism and offline activism on three issues of gun ownership, immigration, and police use of power. Significant results were found. First, this study showed a positive relationship between perceptual variables and situational motivation for each of the three issues. Second, situational motivation was a positive predictor for social media activism and offline activism. Third, affective injustice was positively associated with social media activism and offline activism. Fourth, social media efficacy was a significant and positive predictor for activism in the social media. Fifth, there was a strong relationship between social media activism and offline activism. Finally, structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that the indirect effect (situational motivation ¨ social media activism ¨ offline activism) is stronger than the direct effect (situational motivation ¨ offline activism), meaning that social media activism is a positive and critical mediator that increases offline activism. The results of this study provide insights for public relations practitioners that the integrative model of activism contributes to theory building in activism research by extending STOPS in the context of social media. In addition, this study conceptualized communicative action of people in the social media as social media activism to better understand the collective action of people on contentious issues in the social media environment. This study also emphasized the practical utility of the model for issues management.

William Francis Mannix was a colossal hoaxer, journalist, criminal, and literary forger. He most famously fabricated Memoirs of Li Hung Chang (1913); sent sensational dispatches from Cuba during the Spanish American War that were published in the New York Times, Philadelphia Press, and other reputable papers; and is suspected of forging love letters written by Abraham Lincoln, published by the Atlantic Monthly in 1929. Mannix is representative of a type of journalist at the turn of the nineteenth century. At that time elements of the press were striving for professional respectability and embracing ethical standards. Historians have held these publications up as standing apart from the sensational press. In fact, even the best publications were tied in with journalists like Mannix. This thesis attempts to consolidate the threads of Mannixs life, putting his career into the larger journalism context it illuminates.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a $871.6 million industry. Well over $700 million of this annual income is generated from the media, giving collegiate athletics a national platform. This brings both opportunities and downfalls to amateur athletes who play NCAA sports and the journalists who report on their sporting events. Conflict often arises on the playing field and can continue off the field. With high profile athletic events aired nation-wide, comments are bound to be made about the athletes involved in the game. Some comments may even rise to the level of defamation. Through an in-depth examination of published court cases, this thesis explored whether a court would classify a student-athlete as a public official, public figure, or private person in a defamation suit. The thesis also examined whether the student-athlete would have to prove actual malice or negligence to win a defamation claim filed against a member of the news media or a social media user. Although few cases addressed the plaintiff status of a collegiate student-athlete or the level of fault required for a collegiate student-athlete to prove in a defamation claim, this thesis found that collegiate student-athletes would not be considered public officials. Rather, the thesis found that courts have found coaches and athletes to be either limited-purpose public figures or private persons, depending upon their level of access to media, their engagement with media regarding matters of public controversy, and their involvement in controversies. If courts consider collegiate student-athletes to be limited-purpose public figures in defamation suits regarding matters of public concern, the student-athletes may have to prove actual malice to win a defamation claim. If courts consider collegiate student-athletes to be private persons in defamation suits not related to matters of public concern, the student-athletes may have to prove negligence to win a defamation claim.

Les réseaux de capteurs sont des réseaux composés de petits objets communicants à faibles ressources (capacité de calcul, mémoire, batterie). Chaque capteur recueille des informations sur son environnement qu’il envoie, par radio, à une entité responsable du traitement de ces données en utilisant les autres capteurs comme relais. Lors d’un tel déploiement, un nombre important de capteurs sont déployés pour s’assurer de la couverture de la zone à surveiller. Ceci implique que chaque capteur maintienne, pour chacun des capteurs avoisinants, des informations dont le maintien est coûteux en terme de communication et de mémoire. L’objectif de cette thèse est de réduire le nombre de ces capteurs avoisinants tout en préservant les fonctionnalités du réseau. L’ensemble des capteurs avoisinants est défini par la portée de communication radio. Le contrôle de topologie vise à réduire l’ensemble des voisins logiques d’un nœud, tandis que le contrôle de portée vise à sélectionner la meilleure portée pour atteindre ces voisins tout en réduisant l’ensemble physique des voisins d’un nœud. Ces travaux se proposent d’étudier, d’un point de vue théorique, les performances obtenues par le contrôle de topologie et le contrôle de puissance. Nous étudions des algorithmes définis dans le cadre de l’utilisation d’un modèle de couche physique idéale, et les adaptons à une utilisation avec un modèle de couche physique réaliste. D’un point de vue pratique, nous avons développé une pile de communication, Goliath, intégrant le contrôle de topologie. Lors de son utilisation, les capteurs utilisent une puissance de transmission inférieure à la puissance maximale sans impacter les performances du réseau. / Wireless Sensor Networks are networks of small communicating devices with constrainted resources. They are usually deployed in risky or difficult to access areas. Each sensor gathers information about its environment and send it to a dedicated entity using other sensors as relays. A large number of sensors may be deployed to ensure the coverage of given area. This large number implies that each sensor has to maintain, for each neighboring sensor, information about its activity for instance. Maintaining this information is memory consuming and implies a huge communication overhead. The aim of this thesis is to reduce the number of neighboring sensor while keeping network services up. The set of neighboring nodes is defined by the communication range. Topology control aims at logically reducing the number of neighboring sensors while power control aims at physically reducing this number. In this work, we theoretically study the bounds that can be obtained by using topology and power control. We study algorithms defined with a ideal physical layer model and show how to adapt them to be used with a realistic physical layer. On a practical side, we developped a communication stack, Goliath, that includes topology and power control. We evaluate the performances of Goliath with and without topology control and power adjustment. When Goliath uses power adjustment, sensors use a transmission power smaller than the maximum power without any impact of the performances of the network.

The objective of this study is to determine if the types of unanticipated questions asked during an interview affect deception detection accuracy rates. Both spatial (environment, surroundings, placement) and temporal (time, sequence of events) question types were used. Participant interviews (n= 30) were videotaped and later viewed by a separate group of participants (n=30). The observer group was comprised of both deception detection experts (n=15) and nonexperts (n=15). Observers made veracity judgments based on only the information provided during the interviews. Of the thirty interviews conducted, eight were selected for viewing by expert and nonexpert groups. Experts obtained 65% mean accuracy (Mdn=62.5%, mode= 75%). Nonexperts obtained 60.8% mean accuracy (Mdn=62.5%, mode= 50%). The total deception-detection accuracy for both groups combined was 62.9%, which is above meta-analysis levels. These data suggests that improved accuracy is possible when individuals are asked unanticipated questions that are spatial and temporal.

In times of stress, humans secrete a type of sweat (apocrine sweat) that they do not secrete at any other time. This sweat has been previously shown to influence others who are exposed to it. The current project seeks to explore how apocrine sweat influences the people who are exposed to it. Using the framework of Emotional Contagion Theory, two studies were conducted to assess the effects of stress-induced apocrine sweat on human perceptions and interactions. Study 1 saw participants exposed to either thermoregulatory sweat or apocrine sweat before watching a short, fear-inducing video. Participants then reported their levels of psychological fear, physical fear, and how afraid they thought others would be in response to the video. Results indicate that exposure to apocrine sweat increases the level of fear reported, and that this effect is stronger for women than it is for men. The effect is consistent regardless of how susceptible one is to other forms of emotional contagion. Study 2 saw a romantic couple exposed to either thermoregulatory sweat or apocrine sweat before engaging in a conflict discussion. Participants then reported on their levels of anger and their partners levels of anger as compared to their typical discussion about the topic. Results indicate that exposure to apocrine sweat is associated with a reduction in the couples levels of anger. This effect was equally strong for men and women, and was not influenced by susceptibility to other forms of emotional contagion. Overall, results indicate that apocrine sweat has discernable effects on human perceptions and interactions.

<p> Reporting of international conflict has implications for understanding, political action, and policy formation. This means media coverage can influence the outcomes of conflict. This study investigated reporting of the Arab Spring conflicts by U.S. television networks (<i>ABC, CBS,</i> and <i> NBC</i>). The study examined the time frame between the onset of the uprising and February 29, 2012 when dictators were unseated in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Agenda-setting and media framing theory were used to analyze transcripts (<i>N</i> = 316) for dominant issues, sources used, frames and, social media. Results of the study corroborate existing research regarding conflict reporting. Coverage was mostly episodic and dominated by violence, however, attention was paid to the role of social media in overthrowing regimes, violent acts of regime brutality, and democracy. Core causes of the uprising received only marginal coverage. Ordinary domestic citizens were used most frequently as sources. Other findings applicable to U.S. media coverage are presented.</p>