Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men: Official Narratives and American Meaning-Making in World War II(2021) Kirchner, Christine; Woods, Colleen; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During World War II, the U.S. government attempted to shape how Americans made sense of the war and control how they understood its meaning. Despite the government’s comprehensive efforts and major accomplishments like changing American geographic identity and reinterpreting enduring cultural artifacts, they could not comprehensively define the war. Audiences, then as now, brought their own perspectives to media and propaganda, interpreting governmental messages and narratives in their own ways and according to their preexisting opinions and worldviews. Ultimately, the government could not control or anticipate how their messages were received. And in fact, a great deal of World War II propaganda continues to circulate today in new ways that its creators probably never anticipated, accruing new meanings as changes in context and culture offer new interpretive possibilities.Item Transversal Media: Power, Peril, and Potential in the Ever-Expanding 3D Multiverse(2021) Bauer, DB; Lothian, Alexis; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transversal media move. They move with ease across a variety of interfaces, communities of practice, and applications. With highly compatible file formats, they move across a multitude of 3D-friendly devices, like virtual reality, holograms, and augmented reality projections, and now with the 3D printer, can enter the physical world, more often than not, as plastic. Transversal technologies, like 3D scanning and computer-aided design (CAD), grant an unprecedented control and access, in both magnitude and kind, to the spatial, material, and physical world. Because of this, media illustrate the biopolitical complexity and nuance of the term capture—long used in media praxis—whose meaning can imply both a desire to do justice to a subject, often by means of representational accuracy, and also a desire to do violence to by means of seizing, possessing, or trapping. In turn, this project explores the many affective, epistemological, and aesthetic contours of meaning and impact when transversal media are read through the lens of capture. Organized by five major keywords—making, transversal, play, capture, and preservation—this project illustrates the far-reaching impact of this particular media type that does particular things in this particular moment. Specifically, this project coins the term, transversal media, to discuss this unique media ontology and concretize it through hands-on creative practice and the work of artists, designers, scholars, and activists by centering the methodological richness of hands-on making, creativity, and play. It also addresses the connections between technical affordance and theory, culture, and ethics, as media scholars have modeled with other emerging media formats of the past, like McLuhan on television, Deleuze on film, and Sontag on photography. This approach reveals how various interface affordances and applied practices converse with, and with varying implications, the people, places, and things they mediate. Overall, this project addresses how cultural ideologies are reflected in the design, practice, and rhetoric of 3D transversal media, and how this media genre pushes notions of materiality, embodiment, and power into new realms of thinking, doing, and being.Item WHO AM I?: MEDIA INFLUENCE ON THE GENDER CONSTRUCTION OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS(2018) Lawrence, Angela S; Valli, Linda R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While gender construction and identity occur across many years of childhood and early adulthood, it is in the adolescent stage when children ask the question, “Who am I?” In this study, I examine the ways media, as well as parents and peers, influence adolescent gender construction. Because of my interest in environments that seek to minimize media exposure, I situated the study in an alternative school setting. My main research question asked, “In what ways do students perform gender in a school environment that shapes interactions with media in particular ways?” To ensure that the investigation considered multiple perspectives, I examined students’ use of media at home and at school; how parental values regarding their children’s media use related to gender performance, values, and ideals; and, lastly, how gender performance at the school compared to what we know about gender performance in traditional environments. Previous research has examined messages students receive about expectations for gender performance in typical, media-saturated environments, but there is little on gender performance in alternative educational settings, a gap this study seeks to fill. Moreover, this study aims to advance the understanding of gender performance in a setting which encourages minimal exposure to media, defined for the purposes of this study as television, videos, movies, computers, gaming systems, radio, CDs, books, newspapers, and magazines. I employed an embedded case study method to examine gender performance as the overarching case, situating the media habits of six student participants as well as parent and staff perspectives as the sub-cases. Data collection included interviews, document collection, anecdotal notes, and classroom observations. Findings from the research demonstrate that when students are less attuned to the societal norms and stereotypes as expressed in mainstream media, they are more apt to express their individuality and perform gender in confident, unapologetic ways that felt comfortable and natural to them. I also present findings and implications from the study with regard to the ways student participants utilize media for socialization and skill-building purposes and the ways parents and students navigate differing opinions on appropriate and inappropriate media content.Item Subjacent Culture, Orthogonal Community: An Ethnographic Analysis of an On-Line Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Community(2013) Ali, Asim; Caughey, John L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the community of fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer whose members frequented the online linear posting board known as The Bronze. Buffy originally aired from 1997 until 2003, but the community that formed at the official Buffy fan site in 1997 continues on in real life and on line, having survived the end of Buffy and the closure of all three of its official posting boards. This study uses an interdisciplinary combination of textual analysis and ethnographic techniques (interviews, participant observation, autoethnography, cyberethnography) to ascertain the importance, relevance, and meaning of The Bronze community to its members, known as Bronzers. I argue that the nature of the linear posting board allowed Bronzers to form a unique and long-lived community by using The Bronze in creative and imaginative ways. In particular, language--to some degree appropriated from Buffy--was used by Bronzers to write a better world for themselves on line. Hence, the community is built on (and maintained by) language that is used in an unusually postmodern manner. As a group, Bronzers tend to be highly educated, literary, and artistic. To Bronzers, much of Buffy's appeal was its emotional realism and imaginative depth. Unusually for television, these elements were combined with strong female leading roles, a cast of bookish and somewhat countercultural characters, and a foregrounding of emotionality and interpersonal relationships. Bronzers were drawn to these aspects of Buffy--which formed its "gothic aesthetic"--and in turn created their own somewhat countercultural community, one that came to reflect their own close ties and emotional attachments. I argue that The Bronze community exists subjacent to mainstream cultural formations, and orthogonal to real life communities. Using this framework, a number of implications emerge for computer-mediated communication in general, including an explanation for the prevalence of hostility in online communication. Furthermore, when situated in its broader context, The Bronze can be seen as a meager palliative to the damaging effects of contemporary post-industrial capitalism, one that nonetheless illumines the brightly stultifying commonplaces that lead people to seek shelter in dimly-lit imagined spaces.Item Worlds Trodden and Untrodden: Political Disillusionment, Literary Displacement, and the Conflicted Publicity of British Romanticism(2013) Byrne, Joseph E.; Fraistat, Neil; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study focuses on four first-generation British Romantic writers and their misadventures in the highly-politicized public sphere of the 1790s, which was riven by class conflict and media war. I argue that as a result of their negative experiences with publicity, these writers--William Wordsworth, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Blake--recoiled from the pressures of public engagement and developed in reaction a depoliticized aesthetic program aligned with various forms of privacy. However, a "spectral" form of publicity haunts the subsequent works of these writers, which troubles and complicates the traditional identification of Romanticism with privacy. All were forced, in different ways, to negotiate the discursive space between privacy and publicity, and this effort inflected their ideas concerning literature. Thus, in sociological terms, British Romantic literature emerged not from the private sphere but rather from the inchoate space between privacy and publicity. My understanding of both privacy and publicity is informed by Jürgen Habermas's well-known model of the British public sphere in the eighteenth century. However, I broaden the discussion to include other models of publicity, such as those elaborated by feminist and Marxist critics. In my discussion of class conflict in late-eighteenth-century Britain, I make use of the tools of class analysis, hegemony theory, and ideology critique, as used by new historicist literary critics. To explain media war in the 1790s, I utilize the media theory of Raymond Williams, particularly his conception of media as "material social practice." All the writers in this study were profoundly engaged in the class conflict, media war, and politicized publicity of the British 1790s. They were similar in that they were negatively impacted by these phenomena, but different in their responses, depending on their discrete experiences and concerns. The various results were new conceptions of sensibility and the Gothic, new attitudes towards solitude and obscurity, all eventually incorporated into a new kind of literature now called "Romantic."Item A History of the International Labor Communications Association(2012) Bates, Matthew Clark; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: A HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION Matthew C. Bates, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Linda Steiner Philip Merrill College of Journalism Keywords: labor, unions, press, media, journalism, International Labor Press Association, ILCA, ILPA, AFL-CIO, social movements This dissertation examines post-World War II debates within U.S. unions over the role and character of the labor press. I use archival sources and interviews to construct a history of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA). The AFL-CIO created the ILCA (originally, the International Labor Press Association) in 1956 to strengthen communications with union members and the public. Representing hundreds of publications, the ILCA remains the only national organization of journalists working on behalf of U.S. unions. The debates over the role and character of union media are put in the context of social movement and organization theory. Like most modern social movements, organized labor exists as both a set of bureaucratic institutions and as diffuse agglomerations of individuals struggling against dominant social actors. Policies and practices that prioritize the needs of union organizations and leaders (i.e. tendencies towards "business unionism") frequently conflict with the needs and impulses of rank-and-file workers ("social movement unionism"). The debates I examine--a campaign in the 1960s to win AFL-CIO support for community-based labor newspapers; divisions among union editors and leaders in the 1980s and 1990s over the use of electronic technologies for national public relations instead of local campaigns; a dispute in the late 1990s over editorial freedom for union journalists--express the underlying tensions between business and social-movement unionism. Movements use internal media to create member identities, define opponents, frame issues, and set goals. Debates over the content of movement media and who those media should mobilize are debates over the nature of the movement itself. U.S. unions are shrinking in size and influence. I conclude that union media will be indispensable in any successful effort to spark a new workers' movement. Given the constraints imposed by union leaders on the labor press, however, I conclude that the chances of igniting a new movement will be greatly enhanced if union journalists collaborate outside the current union structures. Digital media and networks of progressive media activists offer unprecedented opportunities for union journalists to communicate with vast numbers of wage earners rapidly, and at relatively low cost.Item MEDIA FRAMING OF TERRORISM: VIEWS OF "FRONT LINES" NATIONAL SECURITY PRESTIGE PRESS(2010) Epkins, Heather Davis; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research investigates a critical tier in the global flow of information about terrorism. This qualitative study employs 35 in-depth interviews with national security journalists in the Washington, D.C. prestige press (Stempel, 1961) to explore their perceptions surrounding the collection, interpretation and dissemination process of terrorism news content. This study includes a review of the recent rhetorical shift from the Bush Adminstration "War on Terrorism" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" attempted by the Obama Administration. Rarely studied, but extremely influential, these particular "front line" reporters offer substantial insider knowledge on evolving trends in the news media production process on terrorism and national security. Their unique geographical position allowing for daily interaction among American governmental leadership, combined with their responsibility to cover what could be argued as one of the most influential topics of our time - terrorism - offers readers an inside view of the daily constraints, strategies and perceptions of this elite group. Data analysis adhered to grounded theory methods. Findings include evidence of new and evolving journalist routines with implications for public policy and the evolving integrity of journalist practices. Moreover, extending the published literature in the mass communication theory and national security realms, this research offers value by analyzing and describing the news production processes and perceptions - for the first time - of the D.C. national security prestige press. Reported results should also offer practitioners new insight into best practices and an opportunity for information users to better understand and evaluate what they are receiving.Item Re-mediating identities in the imagined homeland: Taiwanese migrants in China(2010) Huang, Shu-Ling; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes the identity formation and transformation of Taiwanese migrants to China in light of globalization. Combining migrant studies and media studies, it explores how the identities of Taiwanese migrants are shaped and reshaped through the ongoing interactions of mediated communication and lived experience in the place of adoption. Against the linear model of assimilation, three discourses on transnationalism argue for the pluralization and deterritorialization of identities among contemporary migrants, including continuous home-country loyalty, diasporic hybrid identities, and cosmopolitan consciousness. However, this case study also encounters historical particularities, such as the opposition of Taiwanese and Chinese identities in Taiwan, Taiwanese migration to their imagined homeland, and China' authoritarian media system. While attending to these issues, I analyze the migration patterns of Taiwanese migrants, their use of the media in China, and the relations between mediation and identity. Primarily based on in-depth interviews with 68 Taiwanese migrants conducted in 2008, I found that Taiwanese migrants' spatial and upward mobility upon migration contributes to their class distinction and outsider mentality in China. Moreover, despite different settlement plans, migrants tend to see their migration as sojourning. Mental isolation from Chinese society, along with distrust of the Chinese news media, makes migrants heavily dependent on Taiwanese news media for information. They also utilize such communication tools as SMS and the Internet to forge and maintain Taiwanese-only social networks and interpersonal communications. As for entertainment media, migrants prefer foreign and Taiwanese media products to Chinese ones. Much of their transnational communication is sustained through the use of illegal means, such as satellite TV and pirated videos. Everyday experiences--lived or mediated, local or transnational--enable migrants to renegotiate their own similarities with and differences from the Chinese. A kind of Taiwanese consciousness based on pride develops among migrants. Nevertheless, as far as national identity is concerned, Taiwanese migrants remain divided, although they have also become less nationalistic and more realistic.Item Reality for Whom? Deconstructing INK and the Contested "Tattooed Body"(2008) Chaudry, Amie Annette; Schultz, Jessica J; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The extent to which tattoo culture has been pervasively corporatized within the mainstream over the past decade indicates a critical juncture in the history of Western tattooing, one that signals the transition of the tattoo from a signifier of stigma to one of status, and a turn from the tattoo community of the past to a tattoo industry. I argue that a seemingly accurate body of knowledge called “tattooed reality” is disseminated through this industry and must be analyzed because it conveys a particularly problematic way of knowing, organizing, producing, and representing tattooed bodies. Using data from a media analysis of Miami Ink and L.A. Ink to inform interviews with local tattoo artists, I highlight how the tattooed body has become a contested space as “tattooed reality” discourse fragments and divorces tattooing from its disreputable past, and reappropriates it as an aesthetic cultural commodity of the middle-class.Item Television News and the State in Lebanon(2008-04-23) Melki, Jad; Moeller, Susan D; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the relationship between television news and the state in Lebanon. It utilizes and reworks New Institutionalism theory by adding aspects of Mitchell's state effect and other concepts devised from Carey and Foucault. The study starts with a macro-level analysis outlining the major cultural, economic and political factors that influenced the evolution of television news in that country. It then moves to a mezzo-level analysis of the institutional arrangements, routines and practices that dominated the news production process. Finally, it zooms in to a micro-level analysis of the final product of Lebanese broadcast news, focusing on the newscast, its rundown and scripts and the smaller elements that make up the television news story. The study concludes that the highly fragmented Lebanese society generated a similarly fragmented and deeply divided political/economic elite, which used its resources and access to the news media to solidify its status and, by doing so, recreated and confirmed the politicosectarian divide in this country. In this vicious cycle, the institutionalized and instrumentalized television news played the role of mediator between the elites and their fragmented constituents, and simultaneously bolstered the political and economic power of the former while keeping the latter tightly held in their grip. The hard work and values of the individual journalist were systematically channeled through this powerful institutional mechanism and redirected to serve the top of the hierarchy. The journalist's background and beliefs were irrelevant to this process. Finally, the study advanced a theory on television news grounded in the empirical evidence and focusing on modern news media as the redistribution and reorganization of communication.