Browsing by Subject "Communication studies"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Care of the Machine Self: physiology, cybernetics, humanistic systems in ergonomics
    (2013-01) Martinez, Mark A.
    This dissertation discusses the ways that scientific thought and philosophy have theorized human life and machines in western thought.
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    Disassociation and identification: Remy de Gourmont’s influence on Kenneth Burke.
    (2011-06) Hayden, Alexander Joseph
    Abstract summary not available
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    The economics of labor and authenticity in Minnesota art pottery.
    (2011-10) Cole, Erin Louise Dempsey
    Abstract summary not available
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    The impact of emotional distress on the perceived effectiveness of person-centered and invisible support.
    (2012-06) Janson, Angela Sigl
    While our intentions to help people who are feeling sad, upset, or down are generally well-meant, they may often not provide the level of comfort a distressed person needs or wants in a given situation. Specifically, the comfort one desires may depend on other situational factors, such as the level of emotional upset that person is experiencing. This study examined whether, and to what extent, varying levels of emotional distress moderate people’s evaluations of person-centered and invisible support comforting messages. Results of the study suggest that emotional upset does not significantly influence people’s preference for the provision of invisible support or person-centered support. However, across all upset scenarios, messages high in person centeredness facilitated the largest gains in affect improvement, followed by moderate and low person-centered messages. Effectively measuring invisible support continues to be challenging; this study found that participants had difficulty evaluating invisible support comforting responses given the dialectical tension in this type of support.
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    Michael Pollan and ethical eating.
    (2011-07) Zimmerman, Heidi Margaret
    In this thesis I analyze the whole of Michael Pollan’s books and other media appearances as a cultural technology, in the sense theorized by Foucault, Laurie Ouellette, Tony Bennett and others. I argue that Michael Pollan’s work can be seen a technology of an ethical form of neoliberal citizenship. In my first chapter, I point out that while Pollan attempts to defend his program through a rational economic model of cost-benefit, there is a morality to his program beyond economic rationality. In my second chapter, I argue that, though perhaps the moral dimension of Pollan’s program opens up possibilities for a progressive politics of food, this moral dimension is a highly classed one. In the final chapter, I look at the ways in which Pollan, while purporting to address a race-, class-, and gender-neutral audience of equal Americans, defines a problem-cause-solution constellation that allocates blame on a racialized and gendered basis and calls upon readers to pay “karmic debts” accrued through failure to pay the “hidden costs” of the industrial food system, by freely choosing the pleasurable exercise of labor.
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    Somali-American Muslim women's use of mediated technoloy in identity expression
    (2012-03) Kelley, Debra Susan
    This thesis argues that social media give agency to a population of immigrant women within an imagined community----and real community---as they negotiate being both American and Somali Muslims in diaspora. Based on a study of 19 women's personal Facebook sites---supplemented with interviews, a focus group and ethnographic methods- this project finds out that women's self-presentations reveal attributes that rarely show bup in dominat news media coverage. Since littel is written about Somali women, documentation of their integration into Minnesota is important to understanding the immigrant process and how online social media play a distinctive role. This study explores how these refugees interpret, re-construct, and try-out their multi-faceted indentities as Somali immigrants and American citizens. The project contributes toward a better understanding of immigrant and minority communities and the role social media play in communication and development of ethnic, religious and cultural identities.