UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Queer Ecology of Monstrosity: Troubling the Human/Nature Binary(2023) Thomas, Alex Jazz; Steele, Catherine K; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As a form of visual communication, monsters in popular culture represent and reinforce the changing thoughts and emotions cultures have toward the human/nature binary. This binary, historically supporting discrimination based on race, gender and sexuality, and the environment’s abuse, is often supported through monstrous representations of the Other, but this is a limited view of a monster’s potential. I argue that contemporary hybrid monsters that blend humans and nature together in one queer, boundary-defying body represent U.S. society’s changing relationship with nature while giving the audience a new form of connecting or identifying with the environment and Othered body that critiques the popular ideology of both being something to fear or use. In this study, I advance a monstrous splice of queer theory and ecocriticism that probes the plasticity and queerness of humans and the environment allowing for new narratives, forms of life, and discourses about naturalization and the environment. Through queer ecological theory and methodology, I examine visual and contextual media to study the monster’s potential to embody nature, people, and their conjoined discrimination. The plasmaticness and subversive culture of animation and comics let the monstrous thrive in their display of the plasticity of humans and the environment. I structure my analysis into three case studies focusing on the potential of monsters to critique evolutionary ideology, human exceptionalism, and ecological interaction in light of queer theory’s critique of what is ‘natural.’ Radford Sechrist’s television series Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts and K.I. Zachopoulos and Vincenzo Balzano’s graphic novel Run Wild oppose human exceptionalism by visually plasticizing humanity and giving animals culture and agency in a way that rejects anthropocentric thinking. The monsters of Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s independent film, Wolfwalkers and Morvan and Nesmo’s ecological detective novel Bramble critique the cultural separation of urban and green spaces that has excused racial and sexual violence by displaying humanity’s innate connection to nature. Finally, Marguerite Bennett’s erotic graphic novel Insexts and select episodes from Tim Miller’s Love, Death, & Robots challenge evolutionary ideology. In this last case, characters retain their femininity and humanity in their monstrous transformations, rejecting evolutionary and societal inferiority and ultimately showing they can still retain parts of themselves and be powerful and deadly. Taken together, these texts span genres, writing/drawing styles, intended age groups, and environmental messages. They provide a wide range of monster representations and give audiences new ways to view and understand the issues surrounding what we see as ‘human’ or ‘natural’, balancing empowerment, subversivism, and condemnation.Item MIKHAIL LESIN’S ROLE IN SHAPING THE RUSSIAN MEDIA LANDSCAPE(2023) Rostova, Nataliya; Yaros, Ronald; Dolbilov, Mikhail; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis is one of the first academic attempts to evaluate the career path of Mikhail Lesin (1958-2015), former Minister for Press, Tele- and Radio Broadcasting, and Mass Communications, shortly – Press Minister (1999-2004), Presidential adviser on media (2004- 2009), and one of the founders of Video International, a pioneer in Russia’s nascent advertising market. Lesin used his powerful post to enable the State to wrestle control of the national TV channels – NTV and ORT – from two prominent media tycoons, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. The thesis includes four case studies that illustrate Mikhail Lesin methods of influence, as well as 14 qualitative interviews with prominent leaders in journalism. The thesis describes how members of the political elite can influence and create media systems in countries where governing institutions are absent or weak. The interviewees for this thesis provide us with valuable insight into Russian media after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how crucial the media's role is to the political culture.Item Atmospheric Media: Computation and the Environmental Imagination(2022) Moro, Jeffrey; Kirschenbaum, Matthew G; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Atmospheric media are techniques and technologies for the rationalization of air. They take many forms, from the meteorological media of weather maps and satellites, to the infrastructural media of ventilation and climate control, to the embodied media of the breath. This dissertation explores these atmospheric media as fundamental conduits for the cultural work of managing the air, and in turn, for managing climatological catastrophe. Through readings of diverse media objects, from electronic literature and science fiction to 3D printers to air conditioning in data centers, “Atmospheric Media: Computation and the Environmental Imagination” argues that scientists, artists, and laypeople alike have come to imagine the air as a computer, one that they might program as a way out of environmental crisis. Braiding interdisciplinary insights from environmental media studies, literary studies, and the digital humanities, this dissertation explores how computation smooths over atmospheric difference with the standardization of data, and in doing so, further imperils our shared skies.Item "We band of brothers"? A social-identity-based study of military public affairs professional identity, organizational socialization, and collaboration(2019) Bermejo, Julio Javier; Liu, Brooke F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Today, military public relations, or military public affairs (Levenshus, 2013), is drawing attention for the lessons it might have to offer to organizations more broadly. Yet, military public affairs has been neglected within the public relations scholarly field (Toledano, 2010). In the present study, I applied the “social identity approach” (Hornsey, 2008, pp. 204-205) as my conceptual framework to explore the development of military public affairs professional identity through socialization of public affairs managers in joint entry-level military public affairs training. Along with professional identity and organizational socialization, I explored the development and practice of collaboration as a public affairs competency. To complete the study, I conducted semi-structured interviews (27 initial interviews, three follow-up interviews) with 27 students, practitioners (i.e., former students), instructors, and administrators of the U.S. Defense Department’s entry-level Public Affairs Qualification Course. Findings supported the scholarly understanding that public relations practice is a boundary spanning function, with internal boundary spanning an important aspect of the public affairs manager’s work (Neill, 2014). Findings helped to extend understanding of organizational socialization by suggesting that the public affairs manager, as a nonprototypical member of the organization, must be accepted by the commanding officer and other leaders, often representing combat arms fields, to achieve inclusion in the organization (Wenzel, Mummendey, & Waldzus, 2007). Findings further helped to broaden understanding of public relations collaboration by drawing attention to vital collaboration partners that have been obscured through their agglomeration in the concept of the “dominant coalition” (Grunig, 2006, p. 160). Findings suggested the new insight that public affairs managers are socialized for proactivity, an unexpected outcome given the priorities of military organizations as “high-reliability organizations” (Myers, 2005, p. 345). Additionally, findings suggested that ambiguity attends the public affairs function and that this ambiguity can constrain public affairs, but also create opportunities for collaboration, especially under conditions of contextual uncertainty (L. A. Grunig, 1992; Rast, Gaffney, Hogg, & Crisp, 2012). Findings additionally suggested that collaboration opportunities may increase for public affairs when those efforts are more visible to the organization and are seen to benefit it (Platow & van Knippenberg, 2001).Item NELSON MANDELA’S 1990 VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: RHETORIC(S) OF THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT(2019) Obike, Nma Winnie; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the United States of America was a victory tour for Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement in America given the significant role that everyday Americans played to secure his release from prison. In this dissertation, I ask how Mandela’s 1990 visit underscored the historic, visual, and ideographic rhetoric of the anti-apartheid social movement in America. To find answers, I examine Mandela’s rhetoric as expressed in the black power salute, his address to Congress, and solidarity with regional anti-apartheid groups. The anti-apartheid movement in America mirrored the civil rights movement with its myriad protest strategies. Under the umbrella of the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM), boycotts, sanctions, and divestment strategies were implemented at the national and state level to end apartheid. FSAM members hosted Mandela’s 1990 visit during which he used the tools of rhetoric to reach directly to the American people to seek solidarity and support for continued sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. Mandela’s display of the visual gesture of the black power salute contributed to a cultural change in the denotative meaning of the gesture. Once the symbol of radical nationalist black politics, the black power salute became a symbol of black pan-African unity and solidarity.Item Living With Death: Black American Trauma in the Age of the Spectacular(2018) Young, Kalima Y; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)On September 15, 1955, Jet, a national Black magazine, printed the image of Emmitt Till’s battered, disfigured corpse on its cover. Images such as Emmitt Till’s corpse are visual testimonies of Black pain, wounding and death. This imagery has been used for racial control and subjugation since the era of lynching photography in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Black pain, wounding and death imagery has also been used for Black liberation purposes, such as the photos and film of Black citizens in Birmingham being attacked by police dogs and sprayed with high-pressure fire hoses. These images helped spur anti-segregation and the voting rights activism in the Black American civil rights movement of the mid 20th century. Contemporary videos capturing U.S. police officers killing Black Americans have forced many to acknowledge the disproportionate numbers of Black Americans targeted by state violence. These videos have sparked recent civil rights protests in cities across the nation, including Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland, and have galvanized online social movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, which illuminates Black women’s experiences of police violence. Living With Death: Black American Trauma in the Age of the Spectacular asks: What does it mean to be Black and to be the subject, witness and consumer of Black pain, wounding and death imagery? What impact do these images have on Black collective identity formation and Black cultural production? Using embodied image schema analysis, discussion group data, in-depth interviews, textual analysis, and auto-ethnography, this project examines viral videos of Black pain, wounding, and death and Black Cultural Workers’ (BCW) responses to these visual texts. An afro-futurist examination, this project grapples with the concept of Black life in response to the anti-blackness that has structured the world (Wilderson 2010) since the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, framing Black life as existing in/and out of time. By unpacking the role of spectacle, surveillance, and consumption on Black Americans’ witnessing practices, identity, and cultural production, Living With Death: Black American Trauma in the Age of the Spectacular illustrates the ways Black people navigate anti-Blackness to live fully and vibrantly under the specter of death.Item Overexposed: How a Media Market's Total Volume of Political Information Affects the Persuasive Power of Campaign Ads(2018) Turitto, Candace; Hanmer, Michael; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The popularity of televised political advertising has continued expanding over recent years, and now frequently attracts candidates for lower-level offices such as the House of Representatives, and even State Senate or Representative. Among its effects, this is leading to targeted voters being increasingly inundated with political solicitations in the weeks before an election. Political science has been creative, but limited, in overcoming many of the challenges presented in the field of media effects as it has endeavored to understand the basic effects generated by political media campaigns. One dearth of knowledge is a proper understanding of how varying levels of surrounding political volume might impact voter behavior and candidate evaluations. To that end, this research aims to uncover evidence of wider media market effects on the persuasive power of campaign ads. By merging voter opinion surveys with observed campaign media activity leading up to the 2014 midterms, and fielding a first-of-its-kind laboratory experiment which manipulates the amount of political information viewed, I find evidence that increasing volume and diversity of the surrounding political information in a media market significantly reduces the persuasive power of political ads. As campaigns spend more money on television advertising, these results suggest the need for a serious shift in how campaigns target and speak to voters in crowded market environments, expanding their view of relevant competition from the activity of their electoral opponent to all political actors in the greater media market. Moreover, these results suggest that some congressional candidates may need to “own” large majorities of their media market’s total political advertising to have any hope of counteracting these overexposure effects. This research also has major implications for how academics study campaign media effects, suggesting that results from isolated examinations of individual candidates or contests may be distorting our predictions of expected persuasive lift on broadcast television.Item What Could Have Been: The Mediated Life and Afterlife of Len Bias(2018) Hudson, Justin; Moeller, Susan; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation considers the role of sports journalists, politicians, activists, and other mythmakers in constructing the posthumous legacy of Len Bias, a black college basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose two days after being selected second overall by the Boston Celtics in the 1986 National Basketball Association Draft. Guided by previous research on myth, collective memory, and the intersection of sports media and race, I analysis Bias as a cultural text that reveals both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views of black masculinity, crime, drugs, and sports. Journalists lauded Bias during his career at the University of Maryland for being an exemplary scholar-athlete, and the antithesis of the wayward black athlete and black drug-dealer that increasingly appeared in the media during the mid-1980s. After his death, however, journalists, university presidents, sports administrators, and politicians used Bias’ death, erroneously linked to crack cocaine, to call for anti-drug reforms in American sport aimed at black athletes and tougher legislative measures to combat the threat of crack, a cheap form of powder cocaine that originated in poor, black inner-city communities. During this anti-crack frenzy, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which established harsh penalties for drug offenders found with crack cocaine. After the initial frenzy dissipated, Bias’ death still shaped discussions about the criminal justice system and sports. Bias was blamed for the decline of the Boston Celtics and Maryland basketball program. Professional sports leagues and college teams changed the way they screened potential draftees and monitored current players. Reporters, columnists, and politicians also frequently invoked Bias as a cautionary tale, a symbol of the dangers of drug use and poor decision-making. The creators of these dominant narratives justified the increased surveillance of black athletes and young black men in general, signaling an ongoing crisis of black men in America. On the other hand, activists, sports journalists, and fans of Bias have used counter-narratives to both signal the damage done to black men due to the politicization of Bias’ death and to reposition Bias as a sports hero.Item Mind the gap: Connecting news and information to build an anti-rape and sexual assault agenda in India(2017) Guha, Pallavi; Chadha, Kalyani; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation will examine the use of news media and social media platforms by feminist activists in building an anti-rape and sexual assault agenda in India. Feminist campaigns need to resonate and interact with the mainstream media and social media simultaneously to reach broader audiences, including policymakers, in India. For a successful feminist campaign to take off in a digitally emerging country like India, an interdependence of social media conversations and news media discussions is necessary. The study focuses on the theoretical framework of agenda building, digital feminist activism, and hybridization of the media system. The study will also introduce the still-emerging concept of interdependent agenda building to analyze the relationship between news media and social media. This concept proposes the idea of an interplay of information between traditional mass media and social media, by focusing not just on one media platform, but on multiple platforms simultaneously in this connected world. The methodology of the study includes in-depth interviews with thirty-five feminist activists and thirty journalists; thematic analysis of 550 newspaper reports of three rapes and murders from 2005-2016; and social media analysis of three Facebook feminist pages to understand and analyze the impact of social media on news media coverage of rape and the combined influence of media platforms on anti-rape feminist activism. The introduction of social media platforms in newsroom influence coverage of rape and sexual assault on women, and assess the reasons behind selective media and public outrage against rape and sexual assault. In this dissertation, I also focus on the intersectional identity of feminist activists and how they align their offline anti-rape activism and inequalities of caste, gender, class, digital access and literacy. As a recommendation of this study, I created a beta version of an app, which will support anti-rape feminist activism and rape coverage by bridging the information and coverage gap of rape and sexual assault.Item Political blogs and the changing discourse of public persuasive communication: A textual analysis of pre-primary coverages of 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections(2016) Pattanayak, Saswat; McAdams, Katherine C; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the weeks leading to the primary of 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, the blogosphere was filled with new kinds of informal ramblings and profanities rarely witnessed in public discourses. The present study undertook content (textual) analysis of blogs and traditional news articles to examine a few research questions: If there were any noticeable shifts in languages and discourse of traditional news that seem to reflect the blogosphere; if the comparisons between blogs and traditional news indicate shifts in journalistic norms; the characteristics of intersecting relationship between traditional journalism and blogs; the possible impacts of blogs on journalistic standards of objectivity; and in the final analysis, in what ways does the influence of the blogosphere appears to be reflected in the headlines and language of non-blog journalism texts, whether overt or more implicit. The study analyzes 300 news items and indicates that blogs and traditional media have an influence on one another in unanticipated ways. In conclusion, it encourages continuous explication of changing norms in news coming from, and influencing, alternative media. The study also proposes the “Blogosphere Model” following critical analysis of the mass media historiography.
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