This study examines the portrayal of media within print advertisements found in Harper's Magazine between 1931 and 2000. This study evaluated a number of categories to provide understanding of the role of media within society, specifically the portrayal of gender and media use, how media are used in society and the perceived class within the advertisements featuring media products. The study also looked at the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, which states that a socioeconomic elite group are the first people within a society to adopt new ideas or technologies. A content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of Harper's Magazine produced the following results. The portrayal of women has not dramatically changed during the past seventy years and advertisements within Harper's Magazine still reflect negative images of women, such as, women as submissive, women as frivolous and women as decorative objects. Many gender stereotypes were evident throughout the study as more advertisements reflected women as wives and mothers than as career women. The exploration of the representation of media within advertising revealed that media were most often represented in a number of ways. The most common included, media use as relaxation, media bringing families together, media as tools of education and media as instruments in career development. The analysis of perceived class within advertisements revealed that some media, especially electronic media such as radio and television, are more often found in an upper class setting. The study advances our understanding of the Diffusion of Innovation theory by providing information about the portrayal of communication technologies within advertising. Future studies may further examine the role of this theory by evaluating how advertising contributes to the Diffusion of Innovation theory by positioning media to certain target audiences.

This study examines the newspaper coverage of Richard Jewell during the weeks after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. Jewell, a security guard working in the Olympic Park on July 27, 1996, was initially hailed as a hero due to his discovery of a bomb minutes before the explosion. After Jewells name was leaked to the press as an FBI person of interest in the case, many reporters began to frame Jewell in a negative light and, in some instances, even implied his guilt. Through a discourse analysis of news stories published between the date of the bombing and the date Jewell was officially removed as a suspect (three months), four distinct framing clusters are identified in this study: The Reluctant Hero, He is Guilty, United We Stand, and Media Self-Coverage. Discursive tactics used to support these themes are identified as word choice, source choice and use of unnecessary information. The roles of myths, symbols, storytelling, and society in frame-making provide the foundation for an in-depth discussion about the broader meanings and implications of the news frames found in the coverage of the bombing. This study finds that frames are prevalent in media coverage and play an essential role in society, but they are sometimes misused by the press in such a way that harms individuals. A subsequent legal discussion underscores the courts dogged protection of First Amendment rights in these situations and the dilemmas that develop when a private individual is ruled to be a public figure in the defamation lawsuit. An additional examination of news media ethics offers possible reasons journalists resort to the types of discursive tactics found in the Jewell coverage; specifically, this study finds explanations that pertain to the journalist, the newsroom, industry guidelines, and the collective mindset of the profession.

I dagens företag är information och kommunikation något grundläggande för att nå framgång. En organisation i förändring har stort behov av kommunikation, eftersom den tillkännager, förklarar och förbereder personal för förändringen. Det finns en mängd olika kommunikationssätt som kan användas för att kommunicera förändringar, därför vill vi veta vilka sätt som används i tjänsteorienterade organisationer idag och om det skett någon utveckling sedan tidigare forskning gjorts. Slutsatser: I Unionen används videokonferenser, forum och internetgrupprum i större utsträckning än vad teorierna beskriver. Utöver dessa används intranät, möten, e-mail och telefon, samt även brev och fax. Intranätet är av stor betydelse för organisationen, det används varje dag. Information om förändringen har kommunicerats med flera olika kommunikationssätt, samt skriftligt, muntligt och visuellt.

This study focuses on how viewers relationships with their favorite media characters can impact their outlook on their own lives. Through the examination of parasocial relationships (PSRs), attractiveness, and the traits of materialism and envy, this study looks at the consequences of such traits on ones life satisfaction. Overall, the theoretical model presented argues to make the connection from ones PSR to his or her life satisfaction. Using a sample of undergraduate students, participants were asked to complete a survey that examined individuals' relationships with their favorite fictional media character through the study of various characteristics, habits, and media uses. The results support that the stronger ones PSR and attractiveness to his or her favorite character the stronger ones traits of envy and materialism tend to be. Also, the stronger ones traits of materialism and envy the lower the individuals life satisfaction. However, the over arching link from PSR to life satisfaction was not made, leaving room for further rationales and research within the area of PSR research.

The primary goal of this study was to determine if there was a link between religious similarity and the use of maintenance strategies in marriage relationships through the lens of the investment model. Data from 109 heterosexual married individuals was collected. Through a series of multiple linear regression analyses, results revealed that religious similarity has little effect on maintenance behavior in marriage relationships. The main way religious similarity does impact maintenance behavior is in the participants perception of their spouses maintenance behavior. Specifically, experiential similarity was found to predict perceptions of spousal openness and assurances and composite similarity was found to predict perceptions of spousal openness. Results also indicate that both composite religiosity and composite similarity impacts relational satisfaction and investments in marriage. These results suggest that being religious and religiously similar offers some advantages for married individuals.

The purpose of this study was to construct a training program for parents of 4th and 5th grade children on how to initiate and maintain conversations about safe-sex and sex-related topics by using Beebe, Mottet, and Roachs (2013) Needs-Centered Training Model. The main topics arising from the needs assessment include experiencing puberty, healthy friendships, and peer pressure/media influence. The need for better communication surrounding sex can be seen from rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States remaining higher than those of other developed countries (Martinez, Copen, & Abma, 2011) as well as adolescents accounting for only a quarter of the sexually active population, but half of the population acquiring new STDs (Martinez, Copen, & Abma, 2011). Although this study does not address pregnancy and STD prevention, it encourages parents to initiate open conversation with their children about sex-related topics and to maintain this conversation so future topics (such as those concerning participating in sex) are more comfortable for both parent and child. Providing parents with information on important and age-appropriate topics for their children, as well as how to best initiate and maintain open and honest communication, can better equip parents to feel prepared for conversations with children that encourage them to act responsibly when it comes to sex-related situations in the future.

The three studies in this dissertation were posed with the common goal of revealing possible explanations for variations in the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence across regional cultures of the United States. Study 1 posed and tested two hypotheses related to the distribution of male-perpetrated intimate partner homicide across regions of the United States. The South and West, two regions characterized in full (the South) or in part (the West) by honor cultures, emerged as the regions with the highest rates of argument- and conflict- related, male-on-female intimate partner homicides in single victim/single offender incidents. Explanations provided at the individual level for cross-regional variation in the experience of severe intimate partner violence were explored in Studies 2 and 3, which had two goals. One, to determine whether the common pattern of mutual IPV in violent couples holds within the male-dominated, characteristically more violent honor cultures of the United States. Second, to determine if certain honor-based norms and values, which have been previously linked to male violence in honor cultures (Vandello, Cohen, and Ransom, 2008), can also help explain the higher rates of IPV perpetrated by women in honor cultures. Two hypotheses related to differences between honor and nonhonor cultures in severity of violence attributed to certain reasons or circumstances failed to receive support in Study 3, as well as the more general hypothesis predicting males in honor cultures will perpetrate more severe forms of IPV than males from nonhonor cultures. Results testing the final hypothesis revealed that an interaction effect between self-reported honor culture identification and subjective honor/nonhonor designation is a significant predictor of the severity of IPV victimization experienced by females. Additional findings from this analysis revealed that as severity of perpetrated tactics increased, the severity of tactics experienced as a victim also increased significantly; this finding is consistent with previous research on the mutual nature of IPV in violent couples. A number of future directions for interpersonal and intercultural research are suggested.

The primary purpose of this study was to test the assertion that Sensemaking Theory is an appropriate lens to understand church crisis by highlighting the role of communication as a central aspect of the sensemaking process. In addition, through the application of Sensemaking Theory, the secondary goal was to assist congregations as they try to avoid the negative consequences of church splits. The analysis utilized in the current study was specifically selected to develop a history of participant interpretation within a church in order to determine how members made sense of the crisis. To that end, this study followed the procedures of Miles and Huberman (1984) as modified by Dutton and Dukerich, which were set firmly within the primary Sensemaking Theory components of enaction, selection and retention (Weick, 1995). The 11 themes that were drawn from theory were the basis for research questions as well as for the four-step method of collecting, describing and analyzing the data. The extent to which the themes were applicable was the determining factor or test to determine whether Sensemaking Theory is an appropriate theoretical lens for understanding crisis within a church context. The primary research objective was accomplished by demonstrating how communication within the Unity Baptist Church (UBC) congregation spoke the crisis into existence (Weick, 1995). Rich description of conversations in which UBC members made sense of the crisis exemplified how communication is the essence of sense because sensemaking is an issue of language, talk and communication (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005, p. 409). The research questions underlined the communicative properties of sensemaking because concepts such as enaction, commitments, capacity, expectation, emotion, selection, retention, identity and sensegiving were all formulated, mediated and confirmed through communication. Throughout the crisis-cycle, communication within the UBC membership exhibited a clear procession through the pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis stages. Therefore, results indicated that Sensemaking Theory is an appropriate lens from which to study church crisis. Finally, the secondary objective was approximated because the study provided a context for prevention discussion. Both organizational and church leadership were offered recommendations concerning the potential avoidance or mediation of crisis.

The study of sport fandom is undertaken in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to communication, psychology, sociology, economics, marketing and business. These investigations are significant because of the ubiquitous presence of sport fandom in world culture and its interdisciplinary adaptability in academia. To date however, there has not been a consistent conceptual or operational definition of sport fandom and related factors such as spectatorship, involvement and identification. Consequently, this lack of cohesiveness has serious ramifications, including lack of comparability in results and an inability to generate consistent evidence of the validity and reliability of the various self-report measures developed and utilized. This investigation aims to contribute to the stability of the sport communication field by applying previously refined scales (Keaton & Gearhart, 2013) and contributing to their validity portfolios through comparison with a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological measures of team fandom. This endeavor will have multiple effects, namely the development of more consistent and empirically supported operational constructs of sport fandom, recognition of sport fandoms antecedents and effects, and further understanding the role of communication in this process. In service of these goals, current sport literature is reviewed, followed by an overview of theoretical foundations. Afterwards, theoretical connections between these constructs are posited. Next, the methods, procedures and manipulation checks are detailed, followed by methods triangulation and hypothesis assessment. Finally, relevant theoretical considerations are discussed.

The impact of the media on adolescent girls has received greater theoretical, legal and societal focus over the last few decades. Several studies link the development of womens gendered identities, healthy sexual activity and self-efficacy to how the media portray women. Restrictive or unrealistic themes of womanhood or femininity in the media can impact a young girls social construction of identity and provide limited examples of what it means to be a woman in todays society. This study qualitatively examines femininity in contemporary media by analyzingvia textual analysis and focus groupshow popular female characters embody, portray and promote different conceptualizations of femininity. Do these characters portray more traditional styles of femininity? Or do they embrace the gains of Third Wave feminism and promote more contemporary versions of femininity? Results suggest a shift toward contemporary femininity, but also reveal lingering stereotypes in a characters emotional and cultural behaviors.