1 score (viii, 57 p.) / Enmity was conceived in collaboration with choreographer Liana Conyers and was premiered on May 17, 2011 in Dougherty Dance Theater at the University of Oregon, School of Music and Dance. This piece was born out of my strong belief in art as collaboration. The initial idea for this project began with my prior interest in music as it pertains to dance and the dynamic relationship between the two art forms. Having composed several works for dance, I explore the specific relationships between music and movement and how they combine to engage the viewer. The narrative of Enmity shares a social commentary that is relevant and personal to my experience as an artist. Enmity was consciously composed with the intent of movement being part of the compositional process. There is a strong influence and connection between sound and movement; often, composers are subconsciously thinking about music as it relates to movement, conceptually or physically. / Committee in charge: David Crumb, Chairperson; Robert Kyr, Member; Christian Cherry, Member

abstract: The current study investigated how multimedia pacing (learner-control versus system-paced) and presentation styles (visual-only versus audio/visual) impact learning physics concept material, mental effort, and self-efficacy. This 2X2 factorial study randomly assigned participants into one of four conditions that manipulated presentation style (visual-only versus audio/visual) and pacing of the content (system-paced versus learning-controlled). Participant's learning was measured by recording their retention of information and ability to transfer information. Measures of perceived difficulty (mental effort) and perceived ability (self-efficacy) were also obtained. No significant effects were observed in this study which doesn’t support the existence of either the modality or reverse modality effect at least in these noisier online learning environments. In addition, the hypothesis that their effects could be an artifact of experimental design could not be proven as the learner control condition did not yield any significant results. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2018

abstract: The utilization of multimedia videos has increasingly become more popular, especially in the field of education. In order to facilitate learning it is important to create a natural interaction between the learner and the on-screen material. This study focused on improving the facilitation of the information within a multimedia learning video by focusing on the gender and quality of computer-synthesized voices. Using a randomized pretest - posttest design the study looked at how the gender of the narrator affected a person's ability to learn and implement a new task. Narration was performed by a male and female, classic and modern synthesized voices to determine if there were gender effects across both generations of voices. The participants’ learned knowledge was assessed through a multiple-choice assessment and a word to image matching transfer assessment. Results showed no significant results. Future studies should consider a more reliable knowledge assessment and utilize and larger sample size. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

No description available.

This thesis uses the commonly cited concepts surrounding globalization and hybridization to explore the ways in which parasocial interactions and relationships develop between American fans and K-pop groups. A qualitative content analysis of WeVerse, V Live, and YouTube comments has been conducted to get in-depth knowledge of the ways that fans interact with their idols. From various postings on these sites, 50 English-language comments were sampled from each. These public posts showed the varying intensity of fan interactions with idols over social media. Reactions were most present in video livestreams and official K-pop account posts relating to promotional activities and idol birthdays. Many posts show a collection of fan infatuation and longing for some real-world relationship, be it friendly or more intimate. From this, it can be concluded that parasocial relationships are better developed through interactions over social media sites, which has only become a viable option in the last decade. Furthermore, globalization and hybridization are catalysts for new cultural phenomenon like K-pop to emerge in the American mainstream. While globalization has been pushed forward by the expansion of the internet, hybridization has solidified its place as a joining of cultures from different countries. In the area of K-pop, this is seen by the combination of English being mixed in with Korean lyrics to create a catchy chorus or the use of instrumentation reminiscent of American pop and hip-hop and rap. / Media Studies & Production

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Philosophy

Mathematics education researchers have rarely focused on the effects of popular culture on young people’s perceptions of mathematics. Such research is needed to determine what messages students may be receiving; and furthermore, how students may be relating to these messages and if there are any differences by age, ability, ethnicity, or gender. These questions are critically important to the field – its research contributes to the better understanding of how young people are influenced by depictions of mathematics in popular culture. Research questions were explored relating to popular culture, media, and mathematics investigating whether secondary school students receive messages about mathematics from popular culture, the content of those messages, and how young people relate to those messages. An instrument was designed and developed to elicit students’ responses to videos about mathematics and other popular culture artifacts. Of particular interest was determining if perceptions of mathematics in popular culture differ by gender, race, and other demographic factors. There appear to be common messages depicted about mathematics in popular culture; for example, “Asian students are good at math,” “math is hard,” “math is irrelevant to the real world,” “boys are smarter than girls at math,” as well as others. Overall, young people thought popular culture “only shows nerds being good at mathematics” and that “cool kids are not often shown mathematically capable.” Girls and boys showed differences of the domains “math is hard” and “math is fun.” Young people from different ethnic groups had varying perceptions of “other subjects are valued more than mathematics” and “it is cool to be smart in math,” but had similar perceptions of “math is not a skill one is born with.” There is substantial work in this area in the humanities, but not in mathematics, and it is anticipated that researchers and practitioners alike will welcome the results of this research.

abstract: The Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-11 raised important questions about how social-movement actors use new communication technologies, such as social media, for communication and organizing during episodes of contentious politics. This dissertation examines how organizers of and participants in Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution used communication technologies such as Facebook, blogs, news websites, email, television, radio, newspapers, telephones, and interpersonal communication. The dissertation approaches the topic through the communication paradigm of framing, which the author uses to tie together theories of social movements, neo-patrimonialism, and revolution. The author traveled to Tunisia and conducted 44 interviews with organizers and participants about their uses of communication media, the frames they constructed and deployed, their framing strategies, their organizing activities, and their experiences of the revolution. The most common frames were those of the regime’s corruption, economic issues, and the security forces’ brutality. Interviewees deployed a hybrid network of media to disseminate these frames; Facebook represented a single node in the network, though many interviewees used it more than any other node. To explain the framing process and the resonance of the frames deployed by revolutionaries, the dissertation creates the concept of the alternative narrative, which describes how revolutionaries used a hybrid network to successfully construct an alternative to the narrative constructed by the regime. The dissertation also creates the concept of authoritarian weakening, to explain how citizens can potentially weaken neo-patrimonial regimes under conditions concerning corruption, poverty, and the introduction of civil society and of new communication technologies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Journalism and Mass Communication 2018

For hundreds of years, countries have engaged in diplomatic relations in order to advance their national interests. Most people think of diplomacy in the traditional sense, which is characterized by government bodies or officials communicating with each other. Since the last century, however, there has been increased emphasis on the practice of public diplomacy, which involves governments communicating with foreign citizens in order to alter their attitudes. The United States still uses traditional means of diplomacy, as well as twentieth-century tools of public diplomacy, such as the use of radio broadcasts, specifically by means of the Voice of America, but recent events such as the Arab Spring suggest that embracing new forms of media is an effective means of conducting public diplomacy. This thesis shows how the United States government has used new media in public diplomacy, and how it currently uses social media to advance its soft power, which according to Joseph S. Nye, Jr., is "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments" and "arises from a country's culture, political ideals and policies."¹ The social media to be examined consist primarily of social networking sites, weblogs, and social videos. The effectiveness of new media throughout history will be compared to the new media of today, demonstrating how social media is among the most important component of contemporary discussions on US public diplomacy. / ¹Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), x.