Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Communication; Women's studies'

This communications study looks at gender-based self-reflexive theoretically guided practice, “praxis,” to explore the way in which a women's community media organization, femLINKpacific, pursues its goals of enhancing women's participation in governance structures and resiliency to extreme weather conditions. This study contributes to the nascent literature on mobile device and radio interaction by exploring the way in which women in rural Fiji utilize mobile devices to interact with femTALK, the community radio station of femLINKpacific. The study is based on the theoretical frameworks of inclusive innovation, post-development theory, and participatory communications theory in the context of gender-based ICT4D. Two main platforms, Mobile Suitcase Radio (MSR), a portable radio platform, and Women’s Weather Watch (WWW), a mobile-phone based weather reporting network, and an additional non-mediated communication venue of monthly women’s gatherings were explored through a 3-phase study, utilizing interviews and focus groups, with radio station staff and women leader’s networks.

Main findings included the role of WWW to transmit information for preparedness for Tropical Cyclone Winston, and indigenous food practices shared through the various platforms, as well as the role of MSR, when used in conjunction with the issues shared at the monthly consultations, to bring greater awareness to the women’s “voice.” This study extends to understanding the role of mutually supportive, systematic processes to enhance women's participation in governance structures, including the role and effectiveness of inter-ethnic groups in addressing community issues, and capacity building through incremental acclimatizing activities.

The New Journalism Movement chronicled a decade of social turbulence in America by breaking the rules of traditional journalism and embracing narrative elements in the writing and publication of literary nonfiction. The magazine publishing industry was controlled by men, and the history of this transitional time in journalism has been chronicled by men, neglecting to recognize the significant contributions of women working in their midst. This study shines a light on the historical narrative that defines our understanding of the significance and key contributors to the New Journalism Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

To better understand the way social change was defined by the writing of New Journalists, a more inclusive history of those who contributed is essential. This study provides a narrative analysis of representative magazine writing by Joan Didion, Gail Sheehy, and Gloria Steinem to recognize their contributions and to illustrate how gender influenced the style, content and perspective of the New Journalism Movement.

Despite decades of advocacy, women still struggle to gain access to public spaces, in particular to spaces of power such as formal governance and decision-making processes, economic sites, and media institutions. Globalization has enabled the emergence of transnational feminist organizing in response to these exclusions, yet scholars have largely not attended to the spaces within which transnational feminist organizing takes place and the implications of those spaces. These spaces matter as they have the potential to both disrupt and reproduce existing power relations and exclusions. This study identified digital space as a site of transnational feminist organizing and explored how digital ‘safe’ counter-spaces are communicatively constructed and their potentials and limitations for organizing across difference. As an engaged feminist project, this study also had an action goal of creating safer and more inclusive counter-spaces for women to gain a voice and organize collectively. Specifically, this project aimed to contribute to the transformation of such spaces to further enable women’s mobilizing and organizing for social change. In this study, I adopted a critical transnational feminist lens and drew on scholarship in the areas of transnational feminist organizing, space, and tension. In line with this study’s engaged feminist approach, I conducted what I termed a digital feminist participatory action research (D+FPAR) project involving a collaborative partnership with the digitally based transnational feminist network, World Pulse. Data collection involved multiple qualitative and participatory online methods.

Findings from this study illuminated the ways digital counter-space is discursively and materially constructed as ‘safe’ and ‘inclusive’, how these constructions produce contradictions, and how both community and staff members respond to these contradictions. First, the digital space was communicatively constituted as safe and inclusive through particular material-discursive practices, through members’ talk and interaction enabled by the affordances of the digital space, and through interrelations with overlapping digital and physical spaces. Second, contradictions were produced when these material-discursive practices took on different meanings or made difference visible for members based on their identities, locations, or experiences, leaving members feeling simultaneously safe/unsafe and included/excluded. Third, community and staff members enacted a variety of strategies in response to these contradictions that limited and/or enhanced the potentials for organizing across difference and contributed to the ongoing construction of the digital space.

This study advances scholarship on space, transnational feminist organizing, and tension. In defining and interrogating digital space, this project contributes to theorizing the communicative construction of space, how it interrelates and is embedded with the material, and the ways digital spaces (re)produce and challenge power relations. More specifically, this project contributes to understandings of how materiality intra-acts with discourse in the construction of space to shape possibilities for organizing and produce contradictions, revealing the ways ‘safe’ counter-spaces are in a constant state of becoming (un)safe. Methodologically, this project contributes to scholarship by introducing D+FPAR, providing tools for collaborative analysis, and expanding reflexive praxis. Additionally, this study also provides practical strategies, co-constructed with participants, for individuals and organizations seeking to design ‘safe’ digital spaces for voice, participation, and collective action.

This dissertation explores the role of critical service-learning from the perspective of urban community members. Specifically, it examines the counternarratives produced by Black women community gardeners who engage in academic service-learning with postsecondary faculty. The study focuses on this particular group because of the women's deep involvement with grassroots organizing that reflects their sense of self and other community members, as well as their personal and political relationships to Detroit, Michigan. Given the city's economic disparities rooted in racial segregation, structural violence and gender oppression, Detroit is a site of critical learning within a postindustrial/postcolonial context. This intersectionalist approach to service-learning is likened to bell hooks's concept of homeplace, a site of resistance created by Black women for the purposes of conducting anti-oppression work. Integrating community member interviews and the author's autoethnographic account to dialogically co-construct meaning, the study employs the womanist epistemological tenet of multivocality through connections to place, community, and activist praxis. Presenting Black female cultural expressions and life stories illustrated in the data, the study identifies holistic community-campus partnerships as those that emphasize environmental insight, cultural representation, reflexive relationships, and collective action. The dissertation has strong implications in service-learning research and practice, advancing an ethos of responsibility that provides a space for unheard voices to speak and for relationships among community members and academics to reflect a model based on solidarity as opposed to traditional paradigms centered on charity.

Formative research cite nearly 20% of women and 6% of men will experience attempted or completed sexual assault while enrolled in college (Ali, 2011; Koss, 1988/1989; Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2007). Largely, narratives of college sexual violence are hidden, as reports to college administrators and law enforcement agencies are low and stigma surrounding such crimes often place fault upon survivors (Carrington Wooten & Mitchell, 2016; Fisher, Diagle, & Cullen, 2010). However, stories of college sexual violence have become trending topics via social media outlets (Gringberg, 2014; Kingkade, 2013; Rennison & Addington, 2014). This research study investigates the use of social media by sexual violence survivors. Through rhetorical analysis, public tweets associated with #CarryThatWeight, #IStandWithJackie, and #SurvivingCostMe are analyzed. Data reveal that Millennial college students, referred to as digital natives, use social media to raise awareness and promote hashtivism, shorthand for “online activism” (Blay, 2016; Burkhalter, n.d.; Dookhoo, 2015). However, while seeking to challenge rape culture, these narratives are also open to public speculation and criticism, by lay persons, media outlets, and internet trolls (Phillips, 2015). Hashtivism through computer-mediated communication (CMC) allows survivors to forge communities, provide support, and share strategies as to how to file federal formal complaints while also navigating public shaming, online harassment, and doxxing (Blay, 2016; Boux & Daum, 2015; Boyd, 2008; Dookhoo, 2015; Java, Song, Finin, Tseng, 2009; Parkin, 2016; Ziering & Dick, 2015; Walther, 2011).

Although the number of women participating in organized sport has drastically increased since the passage of Title IX, sport media has not necessarily reflected this change. As well as being underrepresented in sport media, women athletes are also portrayed in gender biased ways. When examining photographic media, many studies investigate Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue; however, the present study argues that using this magazine is methodologically flawed. Therefore, I explore an emergent source—ESPN the Magazine ’s Body Issue—in order to determine how women are represented in this magazine. Using Goffman’s (1974) framing theory and (1979) Gender Advertisements, as well as Schipper’s (2007) extension of hegemonic femininity, I utilized content analytic methods to analyze all editions of the annual Body Issue from 2009–2014. In total, I studied 143 athletes represented in 146 images, as well as the captions which accompanied these images. Results uncovered that, although women are more highly represented than men in the Body Issue, they are still presented using hegemonically feminine frames. While the Body Issue does occasionally present women in ways which challenge the hegemonic gender structure, these instances are few. Contributions of this study to the body of literature regarding sport media strengthen the suggestion that sport media plays a role in both producing and reproducing the hegemonic gender structure.

Native American women's leadership, information communication technologies (ICTs), work-life balance (WLB) and human capacity building (HCB) are grounded in social justice issues due to their long history of overall cultural decimation, inequitable access to technology, monetary resources, and social power (agency), and influence. Currently, there is a lack of research regarding Native American women leaders' use of ICTs for WLB and HCB. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to explore ways in which ICTs can enrich Native American women's leadership aptitude, work-life balance, and overall capabilities. Grounded in Giele's (2008) life course research and President Obama's (U.S. White House, 2011) recently signed, "The Executive Order (13592) on Improving American Indian and Alaska Native Educational Opportunities and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities". This order reasserts his cradle to career (Galbraith, 2012) commitment to all Native Americans and Alaskan Indians, this study seeks to answer the following research questions: How are Native American women leaders utilizing ICTs for WLB and capacity building. To answer these questions, narrative life-story framework (Giele 2008; Weber, 2010) based interviews were be conducted and coded for the following themes: Identity, adaptive style, and ICT use. The researcher's intent is to help bridge the existing literature gap and potentially inform culturally ICT use for Native American and global Indigenous women's WLB and capacity-building to empower their efforts for preserving and revitalizing their culture.

Keywords: Native American, global, Indigenous, women, leaders, information communication technology, education technologies, learning technologies, ICTs, work-life balance, WLB, capacity building, cultural preservation and revitalization

This thesis sought to narrow some of the knowledge gaps in political communication and advertising. By examining the content of local newspapers about U.S. Senate candidates, this research determined female candidates receive just as much, if not more, newspaper coverage than male candidates. There were few endorsements given to candidates, especially from national and state office holders. Additionally, this thesis found that many of the newspaper articles were focused on non-issues. Previous studies on women in politics suggested female candidates often face more media hurdles than their male counterparts, specifically receiving less print media coverage. In contrast, this thesis found that women may no longer face the same barriers as they once did.

Research has shown that the effects of maternal stress, alcohol use, and depression can have lasting effects on offspring. These effects can lead to negative outcomes with her daughter, specifically depression and substance use. These compounding issues can then lead to communication issues between the mother/daughter pair. This secondary data analysis study of a longitudinal community dyadic sample of 811 mothers and daughter pairs sought to determine the impact of these negative maternal effects on daughter depression, alcohol use, communication between the pair, and later risky sexual behavior. Using regression analysis with mediation, results indicated that a relationship exists between mother alcohol use and daughter risky sexual behavior only when daughter alcohol use was present. High communication with the mother lead to a decrease in daughter depression. Mother depression predicted daughter depression whereas mother alcohol use predicted daughter alcohol use and daughter depression. While a negative outcome, risky sexual behavior can be seen as a coping strategy for daughters? experiencing a difficult environment and this coping mechanism may bring them temporary feelings of love and importance.