College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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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 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 Flooded with Information from Social Media: Effects of Disaster Information Source and Visuals on Viewers' Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Responses(2016) Fraustino, Julia Daisy; Liu, Brooke F.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While a variety of crisis types loom as real risks for organizations and communities, and the media landscape continues to evolve, research is needed to help explain and predict how people respond to various kinds of crisis and disaster information. For example, despite the rising prevalence of digital and mobile media centered on still and moving visuals, and stark increases in Americans’ use of visual-based platforms for seeking and sharing disaster information, relatively little is known about how the presence or absence of disaster visuals online might prompt or deter resilience-related feelings, thoughts, and/or behaviors. Yet, with such insights, governmental and other organizational entities as well as communities themselves may best help individuals and communities prepare for, cope with, and recover from adverse events. Thus, this work uses the theoretical lens of the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) coupled with the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (LC4MP) to explore effects of disaster information source and visuals on viewers’ resilience-related responses to an extreme flooding scenario. Results from two experiments are reported. First a preliminary 2 (disaster information source: organization/US National Weather Service vs. news media/USA Today) x 2 (disaster visuals: no visual podcast vs. moving visual video) factorial between-subjects online experiment with a convenience sample of university students probes effects of crisis source and visuals on a variety of cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. A second between-subjects online experiment manipulating still and moving visual pace in online videos (no visual vs. still, slow-pace visual vs. still, medium-pace visual vs. still, fast-pace visual vs. moving, slow-pace visual vs. moving, medium-pace visual vs. moving, fast-pace visual) with a convenience sample recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) similarly probes a variety of potentially resilience-related cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. The role of biological sex as a quasi-experimental variable is also investigated in both studies. Various implications for community resilience and recommendations for risk and disaster communicators are explored. Implications for theory building and future research are also examined. Resulting modifications of the SMCC model (i.e., removing “message strategy” and adding the new category of “message content elements” under organizational considerations) are proposed.Item BROWNGIRL NARRATIVES: EXPLORING COMING OF AGE IN THE GOLDEN ERA OF HIP HOP (1986-1996)(2012) Chae Reddy, Melissa Kim; Williams-Forson, Psyche; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)&ldquoBrowngirl Narratives&rdquo seeks to gain a clearer understanding of what we can learn from textual evidence about experiences of browngirls coming of age during the post-civil rights Golden Age of Hip Hop (1986-1996) by examining contemporary literature, film, social media and music produced by and about these black women. It is an inquiry into the ways in which browngirls coming of age in the United States negotiated the dominant scripts existing in their lives to craft their own stories. The aim is to utilize an interdisciplinary, black female-centered framework to fully problematize phenomena such as self-creation, empowerment, and sexual exploration in the lives of black women coming of age during 1986-1996. This study is an examination of black female bidungsromane&mdash black female cultural texts illustrating the coming of age/development processes. Additionally, it is an investigation into what we can learn about the ongoing individuation processes for post-civil rights browngirls by engaging various texts. This project shows pieces of their narrative by examining hidden scripts amongst Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide| when the rainbow is enuf; Tyler Perry's feature film adaptation, For Colored Girls and the dialogue which surfaced as a result; the life, work and politics of artist Erykah Badu, and; social media texts such as blogs. The selected narrative texts can be unpacked and analyzed using the bildungsroman as a lens to view concepts of self-discovery--&ldquotracing the development of complex and multidimensional&rdquo browngirls, exploring &ldquowho she is and how she became that way.&rdquo What do these stories reveal about the journey toward a self-defined identity for browngirls marginalized by race, gender, class and sexuality coming of age in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s? What can the cultural texts tell us about how their experiences growing up during this particular period shape their sense of love relationships, family, community, and the self? The research discloses important overlooked narratives&mdash &ldquomeaningful and endearing stories about their experiences that are not solely focused on heterosexual romance&rdquo&mdashalong with hidden transcripts or subtexts that reveal important phenomena for this particular group of women regarding identity construction, black female representation and sexuality.Item WHERE DOES NEWS ABOUT PRESCRIPTION DRUGS COME FROM?: EXPLORING HOW ORGANIZATIONS BUILT AND FRAMED THE NATIONAL NEWS MEDIA AGENDA FOR HORMONE THERAPY FROM 1995 TO 2011(2013) Weissman, Paula L.; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT This longitudinal study explored how health and medical organizations used public relations techniques to influence news content about postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) from 1995 to 2011. A theoretical framework that combined agenda building, information subsidies, and framing guided the study (Zoch & Molleda, 2006). Quantitative content analyses were conducted on 675 press releases about HT distributed through PR Newswire and EurekAlert!, and 429 news stories about HT in the Associated Press Newswire (AP), The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Supplemental qualitative content analyses of organizational websites, annual reports, and scientific publications explored financial relationships and potential collaborations between ten organizations that emerged as the most successful agenda builders. Six types of health and medical organizations produced press releases about HT: pharmaceutical companies, academic/medical institutions, nonprofit health advocacy organizations, medical/scientific journal publishers, U.S. government agencies, and other for-profit organizations. A positive, statistically significant relationship was found between the quantity of press releases and news stories over time (r = .55, p<.001). Findings also supported the transference of specific objects, such as brand-name HT products, and attributes, such as risks and benefits, from the public relations to the news media agenda. Academic/medical institutions and nonprofit health advocacy organizations were significantly more likely than pharmaceutical companies to identify non-FDA approved, "off-label" benefits. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of leading HT brands Premarin and Prempro, financially subsidized most of the top-ten, agenda-building organizations, including four academic/medical institutions and two non-profit health advocacy organizations that were frequently cited in news stories. Additionally, a substantial degree of synergy was found between these organizations in terms of how they framed menopause and HT over the study period. This study supported and extended the theoretical framework used by offering insights into how organizations may collaborate through funding arrangements and third-party communication techniques to influence news content in a health and medical context. The findings also contributed a new and important dimension to scholarship on pharmaceutical promotion of prescription drugs, which has neglected the role of public relations and focused almost exclusively on more overt, paid-promotional efforts like direct-to-consumer advertising.Item The Social Coast Guard: An Ethnographic Examination of the Intersection of Risk Communication, Social Media, and Government Public Relations(2012) Levenshus, Abbey Blake; Liu, Brooke F.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The contemporary communication context includes heightened risk, increasing the need for dialogic or relational risk communication with key stakeholders. Scholars have identified social media's potential to improve dialogic communication, yet governments may face challenges when using social media, particularly in a risk communication context. This study explored social media use in "the complex communication context of risk communication" (Sellnow et al., 2009, p. 53) within the under-studied U.S. public sector and applied a complexity and relational theoretical framework to explore the intersection of government public relations, risk communication, and social media. Questions focused on how government communicators in high-risk environments perceived the public sector context influences their risk communication and social media communication; how they viewed social media's role in risk communication; the extent to which they engaged in social-mediated relational risk communication; and, how they planned and executed social media communication. An ethnographic case study of the U.S. Coast Guard's social media program was conducted, including analysis of 205.25 participant observation hours at the headquarters social media office, 10 interviews, and 49 documents. Findings suggest that organizations with risk-related missions or responsibilities may have a "risk communication mindset" that spurs and constrains social media communication and integrates social-mediated risk communication into ongoing public affairs. Intersecting, overlapping influences within public sector contexts also influenced social media strategies and tactics. Data suggest a continuum exists between organizations participating in and hosting social media engagement. Findings suggest moving toward a multivocal conversational relational communication model that encompasses the distributed public relations model (Kelleher, 2009). The dissertation adds depth to the human conversational voice construct (e.g., Bruning, et al., 2004; Kelleher, 2009; Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007) and online relational maintenance strategies by offering a behind-the-scenes understanding of why and how government organizations can be engaging and conversational hosts via social media by inviting audiences to engage without organizations having to maintain conversations. The study offers practical recommendations such as reducing blog content to increase efforts using more engaging platforms like Facebook; increasing use of visually-rich and engaging content; cultivating internal relationships to improve personnel compliance and participation; and, improving strategic integration and evaluation.