<p> This paper examines national Internet control from a policy regime perspective. The mechanisms through which governments attempt to control the Internet may be developed and implemented by different institutions and agencies, or fall outside of a formal regulatory structure entirely. As such, the totality of the institutions and practices of national Internet control is better conceptualized not as a regulatory regime, but as a control regime. After a survey of the critical policy and control dimensions, a six-part typology of control regimes is proposed. The purpose of this study and typology is exploratory. With comparative research about Internet control regimes at a relatively early stage, this paper aims to enable the formation of concepts and hypotheses about the interrelationship, or co-presence, of key distinguishing variables in different Internet control regimes.</p>

<p> The author evaluated employee involvement in decision making at an organization where employee turnover is high and employee morale is low. The goal was to persuade senior management to implement ISO 10018:2012, Quality Management &ndash; Guidelines on People Involvement and Competence. A voluntary survey was utilized to obtain information from employees throughout the organization. Results from data analysis supported the need for implementation of ISO 10018:2012. The author learned that, while some employee involvement was already in place, the organization would benefit from employee involvement programs. The author recommended that the organization continue to improve collaborative communication, employee involvement in decision making, and leadership. </p><p> The author contributed to employee involvement in decision-making literature by addressing 1) what employee involvement, empowering, and engagement are for employees in a large organization, 2) how the level of employee involvement can be assessed, and 3) employee involvement benefits for employees and the organization.</p>

<p> In the United States public discourse, climate change is often framed as a polarized and intractable issue. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore deliberation about climate action, and to evaluate whether effective responses to climate change can be facilitated through new structures and processes that enable and encourage dialogue on the subject of how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Working with sustainability leaders at the University of Montana and in the community of Missoula, Montana, the author convened three public deliberations, in which a variety of solutions to climate change were discussed. Three questions guided this study: 1) what motivated individuals to engage in deliberation about climate action; 2) how did individual engagement vary and affect the quality of the deliberation; and 3) how effective were the deliberations in building a sense of individual agency and generating collaborative action strategies to address climate change. Based on a rigorous statistical analysis of survey responses combined with qualitative data, this action research study offers a holistic exploration of the three deliberative events convened. The deliberative processes generated collaborative action strategies and increased participants' sense of agency to take action on climate change; the findings also revealed differences in the ways individuals engaged and affected the quality of the overall group deliberation. This dissertation contributes to the literature on collaborative responses and collective action on climate change, broadens understanding of deliberative processes, and provides new insight into opportunities for leading deliberation about climate action.</p>

<p> Several decades of research document a growing communication gap between older adults and younger generations, with retirees limiting the information they share with younger generations. This limitation is often due to older adults' low self-efficacy and technology as a communication distraction, a trend which has resulted in the loss of intellectual capital for younger generations. The purpose of the study was to understand and increase knowledge transfer between retirees and unrelated younger people in a rural Canadian community. Communication theory of identity and social cognitive theory provided the research frameworks. The research questions examined what knowledge retirees could pass down, retirees' reasons for sharing knowledge, and the community's influence on generational communication. A qualitative case study incorporated several data sources including in-depth semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups (<i>N</i> = 40), and an analysis of existing literature. Transcribed recordings and field note analysis using open coding and peer debrief review resulted in 5 emergent themes. Key findings indicated participants felt they had little or nothing to share despite a variety of life experiences, found communication success with nontechnology-based catalysts, and felt the community has closed social circles. Transferring identity during retirement was difficult for many participants, a finding which supported the resulting project: a retiree social transition workshop. These findings suggest that those approaching retirement may benefit from identity transition support from employment to retirement, resulting in increased well-being in retirement, increased self-efficacy and motivations, and improved knowledge transfer to younger generations.</p>

<p> This dissertation describes the emergence and expansion of U.S. government motion picture work over the first four decades of the twentieth century. It situates the early history of federal filmmaking within the long progressive drive to reshape representative government into a more active proponent of the welfare of its citizenry and argues that despite reigning critiques to the contrary, institutional sponsorship actually gave social meaning and efficacy to this mode of social documentary. Indeed, I argue that U.S. government film production can be understood as a kind of social activism that was simultaneously propelled and limited by the contours of the federal bureaucracy. Envisioning government film work as &ldquo;bureaucratic activism&rdquo;&mdash;with all the power as well as the inefficiencies, entrenched rigidities, red tape, politics and establishment loyalties implied by the term &ldquo;bureaucratic&rdquo;&mdash;is useful here. It helps capture the contradictory nature of a pragmatic enterprise that actively and optimistically sought social change from within the confines of the status quo. </p><p> Federal films are examined in this history as spaces of complex negotiation&mdash; as points of contact between the structure(s) of the American democratic state and the imaginings of progressive bureaucrats about both their relationship to that state and its relationship to its citizens. Relying largely on original research in little-mined federal collections, I argue that the interpretations of social problems and solutions attempted in and by these film texts represent more than attempts to bolster institutional authority and reinforce the status quo (though, of course, they were such attempts). These aims were mediated by a will&mdash;evident both within the film texts and in the extemporaneous correspondence of their administrators and producers&mdash;to explain or justify such authority claims by literally and figuratively visualizing them as not arbitrary but rather in the interest of nurturing or protecting the common good. Federal films, seen in this way, don&rsquo;t automatically obviate social change but instead represent attempts to relate social change to the ideal of democratic government. Viewed in the context of the specific change initiatives they were produced to aid, federal films were reflections of and on democratic governance itself.</p>

<p> The goal of this study was to determine how the Acadiana cultural region (St. Martin, St. Landry, Acadia, Vermillion, Lafayette and Iberia parishes) used social media in crisis response strategies. The researcher used a purposive sample and qualitative long interviews to gather data from six public relations practitioners in Acadiana. Practitioners were selected from the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce website in the section labeled "Advertising &amp; Media" (http://business.lafchamber.org/list/ql/advertising-media-1). Results proved the hypotheses that practitioners used Twitter for the dissemination of information and Facebook was perceived to have the most interaction among all social media sites in the study. In addition, the results determined how practitioners used social media in the following categories and themes: usability, service and frequency.</p>

<p> Assured by the City and County of Denver (CCD) to be a compassionate initiative, the Unauthorized Camping Ordinance (UCO) enacted in May 2012 has resulted in a form of social action that contradicts the notion of compassion. For example, in opposition to its presentation as an measure intended to benefit homeless persons, violation can result in citation, fines, arrest, and incarceration. Using critical discourse analysis, the rhetoric of place, legal and political history, communication studies, and stigma theory, my study examines aspects of the UCO's and CCD's contradictory disregard of Denver's unhoused residents, suggesting that the ordinance imposes disadvantages that exceed the advantages promised by the CCD. Taken at face value, the UCO stipulates that violators must be referred to services. In actuality, rather than connecting homeless people with these services, the outworking of the ordinance has resulted the routinized utterance of the phrase "move along" by Denver police officers. In stark contrast to compassion, "move along" signals to Denver's unhoused residents that they are unwelcome in Denver. Moreover, the ordinance and officials of the CCD incorrectly imply that there is sufficient and adequate shelter space for Denver's unhoused residents to inhabit. This conveys to the public that resolving the issue of homelessness in Denver rests upon whether homeless persons unquestioningly comply with the ordinance and inhabit shelters. On top of this, evidence suggests that some homeless persons reasonably decide against inhabiting such shelters. In spite of their decision, the CCD continues to enforce an ordinance that, by and large, excludes and obscures homeless persons from public view, all the while calling the measure an act of "compassion." The end result is the disaffiliation, displacement, and dehumanization of Denver's homeless persons, encouraging their social exclusion and potentially justifying hate crimes against them. The contradictory disregard of the UCO and the CCD alike significantly limits and deteriorates the political and physical places allotted to homeless people, diminishing connections to the social power and capital they need to cultivate and maintain stable living. </p>

<p>The media&rsquo;s ability to frame a news story, or to slant it in a particular direction and thereby shape public perceptions, is a powerful tool with implications for material effects in society. In this thesis, a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of the words and photographic images used in the framing of <i>Life</i> magazine&rsquo;s September 14, 1953 article, &ldquo;The Lonely Men of Short Creek,&rdquo; is combined with contextualization of the story within the historical, sociological, and regional settings that may have affected its ideological content. This provides insights into <i> Life</i>&rsquo;s editorial perspectives and potential audience response. &ldquo;The Lonely Men of Short Creek&rdquo; is an account that some writers have suggested contributed to a laissez-faire attitude towards the polygamist community of Short Creek, Arizona, in which a failure to enforce state laws allowed child sexual abuse to continue unhindered there for the next half century. This analysis of <i>Life</i>&rsquo;s account demonstrates its overall sympathetic framing of Short Creek in 1953, particularly of male community members, and the construction of a narrative with significant absences and misrepresentations that obscured or concealed darker themes. <i> Life</i>&rsquo;s construct has in certain aspects been replicated today in what some consider to be the &ldquo;definitive&rdquo; account of the story, which repeats a persistent tale of religious persecution, compromised constitutional rights, and an overbearing state&rsquo;s &ldquo;kidnap&rdquo; of the children of an apparently innocent and harmless rural polygamist community. Such a narrative has deflected attention from an alternative frame&mdash;that of a community charged with multiple crimes, including the statutory rape of children manipulated by adults within a religious ideology that demanded plural &ldquo;wives.&rdquo; This thesis contends that in 1953, these children were overlooked, or ignored in a fog of often taken-for-granted US national ideologies and editorial perspectives relating to religious freedom and the &ldquo;sacred&rdquo; nature of the family in the post-Korean War and Cold War era. Such findings raise questions about the ethics of partisan framing of news stories in which alleged victims are implicated, acceptable limits of religious and family rights, and the often un-interrogated national ideologies sometimes used to justify harmful or criminal behaviors. </p>

<p> Digital cultural resource information systems affect the stewardship of archaeological, cultural, and historic resources throughout the country. These information systems, however, are maintained and updated throughout many different agencies, such as State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) and the National Park Service (NPS), United States Forest Service (USFS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This thesis applies ethnographic methods, including interviews and social network analysis, to explore the communication and collaboration efforts within SHPOs, between SHPOs, and among SHPOs and multiple federal agencies. The research topic originated from an information system assessment conducted during an internship at the History Colorado Center, Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation in Denver, Colorado. Throughout the research, I noticed trends in collaboration that emerged from interviews with SHPO participants. As a result, I developed a research design to further examine these concerns, highlighting the major issues in current collaboration and communication systems. This analysis serves as an organizational study of the SHPO and contributes to the larger conversation about cultural resource information system needs throughout America. Through creating a space for and facilitating communication between SHPOs &#8195; and between the SHPO and federal agencies, organizations and cultural resource stakeholders can build positive relationships that will benefit the overall protection, preservation, and stewardship of historic, archaeological, and cultural resources in America. </p>

<p> Photography is increasingly used as conversation in social media. Photography has been used as evidence of activity, for influence and identity, and for persuasive rhetoric. Current demand for understanding social photography is due to its modern inclusion as a standard communication process for creating and affirming community. Mobile technology and increased data rates through available bandwidth have resulted in the answer and response interaction cycle now happening with photographs. Facebook users share over 300 million photographs a day (Facebook, 2013) which indicates a mass of communication occurring between individuals, small groups, communities, and the public that does not have the same level of communication understanding as written and spoken language. A second level of inquiry concerns the lower levels of understanding concerning small groups and communities. The majority of communication studies concern individuals, the public mass, and Western hierarchical organizations. This research leverages tools from iconic photojournalism in order to analyze ease of use and applicability for future social photography studies. Hariman and Lucaites (2007) five primary tools of aesthetic familiarity, civic performance, semiotic transcripts, emotional scenarios, and contradictions and crises are evaluated through the data sample photography shared by the Burning Man community. The data set concerns photographs and their associated responses shared through Twitter as a social media tool intended for open, public access. The intent of this study concerns the ability to leverage the process for past, present, and future sharing of photography in order to analyze and apply ways to build community. This analysis reveals the minimal use of sharing a photograph as an emotive invitation to join with the community's performance enables a high success of visualizing community. This study investigates analysis and application tools for visualizing community through social photography. </p>