Croissants, Pizza, Hot Pot, Sushi, Peking-duck! No one can live without food. It satisfies our daily cravings and gives us the energy to finish daily tasks. However, can you imagine this life essential has become a status and wealth symbol? However, it is how things go. With the proliferation of...
Across North Carolina, refugees have found a new place to call home. Halfway into the 2022 federal government’s fiscal year, more than a thousand people with legal refugee status have joined the state’s residents. But those with legal refugee status are not all who have taken refuge in the state,...
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the cord-cutting movement in the U.S., resulting in a significant decline in the number of pay TV households. In July 2022, streaming services surpassed cable television in terms of TV viewing share in the U.S., marking a significant milestone. Despite the impressive growth of streaming...
Historical newspapers are a valuable tool for modern genealogists. With the digitization of newspapers, more family researchers are using them in their practice than ever before. This thesis examines how active North Carolina genealogists access, authenticate, evaluate, interpret, and contextualize historical newspaper records produced from 1877 to 1918. Notably, this...
The American South, in many ways, is a microcosm of the complex racial, political and social histories of the United States and the ways in which this country draws boundaries and construct identities and definitions of belonging. Through oral histories and archival research, this project examines the intersection of cultural...
In the age of social media, there continues to be a rapid exchange of information. Beneficial to our ever evolving society, this fast paced exchange of information has many downfalls — mainly misinformation and disinformation. As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted every aspect of life, the information surrounding the pandemic spread...
Public History is a modern idea crafted to merge both professional and public interests in the dissemination of history. Its primary aim is to link different subjects to the practice of historical study, allowing the departments to flourish together within the public sphere. In many ways, it is the act...
In the world of extreme media consumption and a plethora of messages being directed at every internet user, new media literacy is arguably an important skill for any consumer to possess. This honors thesis seeks to examine the relationship between new media literacy and students’ critical consumption of health and...
All hype or actually helping? This study explored the joint sustainability efforts between outdoor and luxury brands and proved these collaborations do both. The current sustainability efforts do not effectively mitigate the devastating environmental impacts of the fashion industry, but they act as a catalyst for greater change. If these...
Cancel culture is a growing phenomenon that has been debated on all social media platforms since as early as 2015. It has divided groups on ideals about politicians, celebrities, and has even been seen by some as an infringement on free speech. In this thesis, I analyze the causes of...
Popular media have historically represented Black queer people, specifically women, in ways that are problematic and/or incomplete. When Black queer people are excluded from the creative process, these media may perpetuate stereotypes and misrepresentations. Black queer women and transgender folks’ use of zines, however, bridge that gap by putting Black...
This thesis explored proper public relations practices in the pharmaceutical industry when specifically faced with a failed merger & acquisition, instances of significant, abrupt price hikes, and situations involving drug contamination.
Social media is known for its ability to spread information and raise awareness quickly, with online action often resulting in real-world changes. However, few have studied how effective social media can be when regarding the legal system, particularly when related to how social media can impact the overturning of wrongful...
For millennia, cannabis has been an integral part of the human experience. The plant has been used by diverse communities around the world for various purposes. Though the use of marijuana has a colorful and interesting global history, its place within the culture and context of the United States is...
This thesis explores cancel culture on YouTube by conducting a case study on five popular Youtube creators that have been canceled and recovered their platforms. Conclusions in this study are drawn from considering the quantitative data provided by the number of views, likes and dislikes on multiple videos spanning pre-cancellation...
This study looks at CDC's social media and crisis messaging strategy during March and April of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is a case study that looks at the different messaging strategies used for different crisis messaging phases, analyzes the way in which CDC handled the changing of...
This honors thesis will first look to how media serve to educate adolescents on social issues, then it transitions to Young Adult Literature (YAL) as a source for learning about sexual assault and prevention. This study uses Entman’s (1993) model to analyze the framing of causes and consequences of, and...
This is a creative nonfiction thesis. It is a work composed of memoirs and vignettes, detailing experiences that profoundly expanded my perspective on the world.
The purpose of this thesis is to express the need for additional scholarship in the emerging field of clickbait defamation, introduced by Lawrence Lessig through his January 2020 suit against the New York Times. After an examination of the worlds of both journalism and defamation law, the importance of this...
All the Fatherless explores how the deportation of Patsy's father affected her life. It focuses on the butterfly effect that deportation has on children and their families.
The rise in social media prominence across all platforms and increased use by athletes and individuals alike has resulted in many changes in the way players and competitors have been able to utilize technology to share their opinions on matters of social justice. The ability and willingness of athletes to...
This thesis explores the popular conservative notion that colleges indoctrinate students with liberal ideology. From fourteen in-depth interviews with students and alumni about their college experience and political beliefs, the thesis details qualitative data that shows that indoctrination is not occurring in colleges, using UNC-Chapel Hill as a sample. It...
Distance learning is becoming increasingly common in college education, as nearly every higher education institution had to pivot to this instruction style in the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In order for distance learning to provide the same quality of instruction as in-person learning, educators will need to utilize...
This paper aims to uncover the relationship between social networks and antioppression in Orange County violence prevention work. Antioppression—defined and analyzed in this paper using theories of cultural competence, Intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory—refers to the work that practitioners do to account for and fight against the oppression of their...
Major League Baseball (MLB) has enjoyed steady financial growth in the recent past, which is largely attributed to media and sponsorship deals. Despite this growth, the league is losing favor with younger generations, namely Generation Z, and attendance rates are falling to historic lows with each new season. In order...
Electronic dance music has increasingly gained popularity in the United States throughout the past several years, and with the growth of streaming services, the converging roles of disc jockeys and producers in electronic dance music have begun to rely on touring and live events as their primary source of revenue....
“Diversity” has become a buzz word for organizations and institutions alike. This is especially true for journalism and mass communications schools that will often tout around brochures and informational materials that feature minority students prominently. But, sometimes the realities put forth by these schools does not reflect the actual experience...
In this thesis, the relationship between a sense of community and e-newsletters was analyzed. Although, it was found that print newspapers are known to foster a sense of community among individuals in a geographic area, in recent years, readership of print newspapers has been declining (Mersey (2009), Abernathy (2018)). Instead,...
As America becomes increasingly racially diverse, mainstream newsrooms remain largely white. For news to adequately cover minority communities, newsrooms must prioritize race-related coverage and hire and empower journalists of color. This thesis aims to explore how newspapers currently attempt to do this, through the collection of oral histories from four...
Augmented reality is becoming increasingly common in digital news, as nearly every major newsroom has released AR-driven stories in recent years. For this technology to become more than a fad, AR creators will need to pay attention to the user experience and find ways of telling stories that people...
Authenticity is currently one of the biggest buzzwords in marketing and advertising. People and brands both strive for authenticity in an increasingly curated and digital world. This thesis explores how people make perceptions of others on an extremely curated platform, Instagram, especially as they pertain to authenticity. We conducted an...
The literature investigating how political campaigns strategize and frame messages in relation to gender is abundant and growing. As more women are elected to Congress and state houses across the country, the way that gender is portrayed in campaign content has never been more relevant. Using media from six 2018...
More women than ever before are currently serving as members of US Congress. Yet despite increased gender diversity, the Republican Party maintains a reputation of being less than inclusive in both party composition and platform. In conjunction with analyses of the ideological scores, voting records and personal background information, a...
This study focused on the internal effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on employees. This impact was studied by interviewing 10 CSR and communications professionals across nine industries. There were two major questions this thesis sought to answer: how companies account for an employee’s relationship to CSR efforts and the level...
Conditions in jails and prisons are matters of great public importance. News media must have access to prisons to hold these facilities accountable. Through access, mistreatment can be brought to light and ultimately eliminated. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze state prison policies regarding media access and based...
This framing analysis determined how three national media platforms portrayed two high profile police-involved shootings of unarmed individuals from 2014 to 2016. The pivotal Ferguson shooting occurred in 2014, so cases during and after Ferguson were evaluated. Specifically, this study asked, how did three leading national news sources (The New...
Although crisis communication and crisis management are large, evolving fields of public relations research, the intersection of crisis mitigation and legal concerns is under-explored. This study attempted to fill this gap by conducting a case study of a potentially liable organization and individual in crisis. Specifically, this thesis used a...
INTRODUCTION
On a cold December day in Washington D.C., Edgar Welch burst into a family pizzeria
and accused the owner, James Alefantis, of conspiring with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to
operate a child sex trafficking ring. Equipped with an assault rifle and handgun, Welch had
driven some five hours...
For nearly a century, advertisers have used music to communicate messages on behalf of companies. However, despite their prevalence as a marketing tool, very little research has been conducted on what makes jingles an effective means of reaching consumers. In 2010, Forbes magazine published a list of the “10 Greatest...
This study focused on the rhetorical appeals and strategic presentation decisions that shape political campaign communications and how these appeals interact to form a “political outsider” identity. Through a thematic analysis of candidate announcement videos, the content and motives of its design were evaluated to identify the recurring patterns and...
Women command upwards of $20 trillion, or 27 percent of the world’s total wealth. In the United States alone, women exercise decision-making control over $11.2 trillion. And yet, 86 percent of investment advisors are men over the age of 50. This suggests conversations in the financial industry may focus on...
The opioid epidemic is a devastating drug crisis in American history with more than 28,000 deaths attributed to opioid use each year. Health communication campaigns can impact perceptions about the harmful effects of opioids, but they must be engaging to do so. Visual metaphors – artful deviations that visually link...
This thesis examines and explores the effect of the inclusion of authenticity and flaws in Jungian archetypal advertising on consumer self-congruence, brand attachment, and purchase intent. I quantitatively examine whether the introduction and exploitation of "humanistic" flaws related to a brand's existing hero archetype can enable a brand to achieve...
The ability to adapt to a changing environment is essential for businesses that strive to consistently provide value to modern consumers. Characteristics of the external ecosystem in which companies operate can greatly alter the lens through which potential customers interpret corporate communications, perceive brands and ultimately make purchasing decisions. Two...
In August, 2017, a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia took place, attracting media attention and responses from politicians. President Donald Trump in particular issued three responses, but was undemocratic in the sense that he refused to explicitly repudiate the racist, extremist groups at the rally. This study asks how...
The purpose of this study is to perform a content analysis of news articles based on or containing the inclusion of false information and find commonalities therein. The depths of the internet and its available information are seemingly infinite, with news, ideas, items for sale, music, literature, culture, and calls...
The tension between secrecy and transparency is not a new dichotomy in either US politics or popular conversation. However, in 2013, when Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to the media about an extensive surveillance program known as PRISM, the views held by many Americans regarding security and accountability reached new...
Across the nation, campus newspapers are amplifying efforts to obtain detailed sexual
assault records held by their respective universities. Should campus news organizations succeed in their requests, student reporters would have access to information that could lead to more substantive coverage of the issue and help hold institutions accountable, but...
The purpose of this project is to shed light on the Danish Jews of Copenhagen, a small
group that has remained intact despite facing obstacles. This project examines the future of Judaism in Denmark through personal testimony from nearly 11 members of the community
aged 14 to 78. By analyzing...