Communication Studies -- Graduate Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/10587/947

This collection features graduate student theses produced in the Department of Communication Studies.

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A Critical Assessment of Mental Health Discourse among Young Adults on TikTok
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2023-08) Horridge, Ricardo
In the rapidly evolving digital age, TikTok emerges as a significant platform influencing young adults' perceptions and discourses. This research delves deep into the nuances of how mental health is discussed amongst young adults on TikTok. Despite the recognized relationship between social media and mental health, there exists a large research gap regarding the discourse patterns, especially on newer platforms like TikTok. This study begins to fills that void, setting out to explore more than just the existence of a relationship between social media and mental health, but also the intricacies of the discourse – how it is facilitated, stigmatized, and the role of community-building, education and contrastingly negative elements in the conversation. Through detailed thematic and content analysis of 120 TikToks using hashtags #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters, #DepressionAnxiety, and #MentalIllness and 20 random sampled comments, this research uncovers the multifaceted nature of TikTok as a medium: from sharing personal experiences and seeking advice to challenging the prevalent stigmatization surrounding mental health. The findings shed light on TikTok's potential for both positive and negative influences on mental health discourse, highlighted by instances of misinformation, emotional expression, and the delicate balance between support and negativity in the conversation. The study's conclusions offer actionable insights for researchers and other academics looking to further analyze discussions on the platform. Additionally, by pinpointing existing limitations and gaps, this research sets the stage for future investigations in this critical area of study.
Activism and Public Relations: Then and Now
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2017) Benedict, Ben
This thesis explores public relations scholarship to analyse where activism and public relations articulate and intersect in their development or “then” over the past century in how public relations became defined as a corporate-economic model to “now” where public relations in its relationship to activism, is seen as a meaning-making process. In analysing the disparate collection of articles and text on activism in public relations scholarship the thesis (the author) begins with defining public relations, activist, activism, protest, social movements, and activist organizations; followed by activism in public relations historical development, offering an alternative and expanded historical interpretation of public relations; then activisms role in public relations theory illustrating the critical movement amongst scholars from the Modernist approach solidified in the Excellence Theory to where Postmodernism and Postcolonialism are exerting their influence; and activisms role in the development of public relations practices as a management process, a control mechanism, and a set of technical skill where activism has played a central role in the development of strategic communications, issues management, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Activism’s implications for the study and practice of public relations are then discussed including the challenges, omissions, and opportunities that such an investigation raises as a means of advancing contemporary public relations knowledge. This thesis supports calls for the development of a critical branch of public relations, to include public communications alongside those of organizations and state communications, for engaged scholarship, and a return to public intellectualism as public relations begins exploring not what it is, but what public relations can be.
An Analysis of Racial Bias in Newspaper Coverage of “Bloody Sunday” and the March for the Right to Vote
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2018) McKitrick, Anne-Marie
This study analyzed newspaper coverage of Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery march for the right to vote for Black Americans. Through critical race theory, news framing theory, and the theory of Orientalism, I conducted a content analysis of two American newspapers (one published locally in Alabama and one major-city newspaper) to determine the similarities and differences with respect to representation of race in the news media. Results demonstrate that the Alabama newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, reported on this event with more racial bias than did the major-city newspaper, The New York Times. The two newspapers also covered similar stories in different manners, with the major-city newspaper being predominantly supportive in tone and the Alabama newspaper being predominantly oppositional in tone. The New York Times reported significantly more slurs (all through quotes) while the Montgomery Advertiser reported significantly more stereotypes (primarily through journalistic prose). This finding showed bias in reporting as The New York Times quoted slurs to tell the story, while the Montgomery Advertiser stereotyped black people while telling the story. The findings point to more differences than similarities in how the two newspapers covered the events and inform the main conclusion that the Montgomery Advertiser reported the event with more bias. This conclusion is significant because the content of a news story and the tone through which a newspaper reports a story—specifically the marches for the right to vote—is the message the readers receive.
The Canadian Shield: Vaccine Hesitancy and Ontario’s Immunization 2020 Health Initiative
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2019) Westerveld, Kelly
There was a time when diseases such as measles, mumps, whooping cough and polio posed an imminent threat to Canadians, hopscotching across the country unimpeded. But starting with the whooping cough vaccine in 1918, Canada had a new weapon against those diseases — armour that could not be easily penetrated — and slowly the diseases’ spread ebbed. However in recent years, Canada’s shield has begun to crack. Most Canadians immunize their children, but there’s a growing trend away from vaccines and the protection they provide. Faced with falling immunization rates, the Ontario government released Immunization 2020: Modernizing Ontario’s Publicly Funded Immunization Program, a 20-point action plan with the simple goal of increasing public uptake of immunizations. This study uses both content and fantasy theme analyses to examine how Immunization 2020’s key messages manifested in media coverage, how the concept of vaccination is embodied in reader comments following media coverage about Immunization 2020, themes and stories that are present within vaccine-hesitant discourse communities and how those themes and stories function to form a vaccine-hesitant group identity that maintains vaccine hesitancy. Results from the content analysis show that of the eight key messages, evidence-informed choices was the only one to appear in every article. Notably, other key messages crucial to addressing public trust in vaccines such as shared responsibility, patients first/patient-centred or transparency did not appear frequently. In the fantasy theme analysis, vaccine-hesitant parents emerged as a rhetorical community that used four stock scenarios to create a culture among group members. Vaccine-hesitant parents engaged in discourse that positioned group members as the heroes and members of the public, the government and vaccine makers as the villains. Three rhetorical visions also emerged, creating a worldview that maintained vaccine hesitancy. Overall, vaccine-hesitant parents share common ground, symbols and stories that build a shared identity and reality. Belonging to this community goes beyond a simple decision about vaccines, making it very difficult for parents to “switch sides” and immunize their children. In the absence of another online community that encourages immunization, vaccine-hesitant parents stick with the one that persuades them to stay by validating their stories and the one with which they share an identity.
Case Study: Nova Scotia Burning Exploring Racial Discourse in Nova Scotia Media
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2013) Titus-Roberts, Jolene; Thurlow, Amy
This case study examined The Chronicle Herald’s “Nova Scotia Burning” feature series, produced in 2011 in response to a cross-burning incident that occurred in Hants County, Nova Scotia in 2010. The study used postcolonial theory to examine the discursive practices in the text to understand how issues of race, representation, and racism pertaining to Black Nova Scotians were treated. The analysis illuminated a very complex process whereby the media itself attempted to destabilize some of the dominant discourses surrounding race and racism in Nova Scotia, and yet, in the end, reproduced them through their use of language, imagery and meaning making. This study contributes to our understanding of how issues of race and racism are treated in Nova Scotia media.
Changing the discourse: The fight for gender equality in pop culture blogs
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2017-02-15) Obie, Jaclyn
Gender inequality in modern, Western society is problematic and strengthened by media reinforcement. The negative representations of women in media can actively prevent gender equality. Media, and entertainment media in particular, treat women unequally and represent them in harmful ways. Albert Bandura’s Social cognitive theory of mass communication (2001) established that the examples presented in media have a lasting impact on the audience’s values, opinions and behaviours. Using Bandura’s theory as a theoretical framework, this study is grounded in the consequence of media’s unequal representation of women. This study looks at two blogs that treat women, and people of colour, as equals, and actively point out inequality in other media. Lainey Gossip and Awards Daily are challenging a tradition of unequal gender representation in entertainment media. I did a two-case case study of Lainey Gossip and Awards Daily, which included Critical Discourse Analysis of their blog posts, and interviews with the founders of those blogs, Elaine Lui and Sasha Stone respectively. From the research, several solutions to the existing inequality in media emerged, chiefly that of representation – having women writing about entertainment media, producing media content, and shown on screen, is the first key step in achieving equality in media.
The creative small group – towards a framework of collaborative creativity within the creative sphere
(2010-10-25) Bartels, Gerald
Zur Methode wird nur der getrieben, dem die Empirie lästig wird. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Maximen und Reflexionen”) Creativity, its manifestations, and its consequences are both nuanced and elusive. As a “floating participant,” I dashed on a scooter through the Lebenswelt (lifeworld) of my participants and, for a while, abandoned the behaviour of a social researcher, a more or less passive observer of the moment. Grounded in the qualitative paradigm, this ethnographic study explores and interprets the various processes and means of communication used by a creative small group and strives to understand how the group members are influenced by and simultaneously define an environmental space that I call the creative sphere. This understanding of creativity considers the various interactive and communicative acts and the diverse environmental attributes that constitute the creative sphere. Similar to the overlapping character of the pieces of a kaleidoscope, the interactions within the creative sphere provide colourful interrelations between its social elements. Thus, creativity refers to a contextual capability for meaningful novelty or novel ideas, which emerge from interaction. The theoretical framework further develops previous understandings of creativity as only the relationship between creative individuals and their social environment. My work stresses the importance of the collaborative aspect of creativity. Consequently, I refer to communication as the driving force of the emergent phenomenon of collaborative creativity.
Cross-Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity Training in the Communications Management and Recruitment and Retention of International Students in Atlantic Canadian Universities
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2016-04) MacIntyre, Genevieve Estella; Moniz, Dr. Tracy
With the growing numbers of international students coming to study in Canada, cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity training in Canadian universities is increasing in importance. Despite the range of research in cross-cultural training, there remains a gap in the research of cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity training in communications management for multinational institutions, namely universities, within Canada, and how this training—or lack thereof—could affect the recruitment and retention of international students in the Canadian post-secondary education system. Focusing on Atlantic Canada, this study explored what cross-cultural training is currently offered and what sort of training should be offered to communications, marketing and recruitment teams that work to recruit international students and to International Centre staff and International Advisors that support these students. Through electronic survey research, this study aimed to compare the services offered and to share the opinions of communications, marketing, and recruitment staff members; International Advisors and International Centre staff members; and international students at targeted universities on the services that Atlantic Canadian universities do and should offer. Overall, the participants of all three survey groups claimed that there is a need for cross-cultural training through continuing professional development for communications, marketing, and recruitment staff; International Advisors and International Centre staff; and also for staff from other departments across the universities as international students do interact with faculty and staff other than International Advisors and International Centre staff throughout their time studying in Atlantic Canada.
Crowdfunding: A Healthy Practice?
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2016-04) Reid, Stephanie; Thurlow, Dr. Amy
With the growing shift to digital fundraising within non-profit organizations, the crowdfunding model is increasing in popularity. Given that crowdfunding platforms are not fully understood, this study applied institution theory to help explain the adoption of crowdfunding practices in non-profit health organizations in Canada. More specifically, can institution theory offer insight into the adoption of crowdfunding platforms by non-profit health organizations in a Canadian context? Through qualitative interviews at the organizational level, this study collected information on the decision-making process of individual organizations and the logics that ultimately led them to launching crowdfunding campaigns. Factors that contributed to the successes and failures of individual campaigns were also discussed in detail. The researcher concluded that institution theory could in fact offer insight into the adoption of crowdfunding platforms. Participants not only acknowledged the importance of their organization’s digital presence but also its potential impact on future organizational success. This included the organization’s ability to appeal and attract a younger demographic of donors (i.e. Generation Y). Although crowdfunding offers a unique and cost-effective solution to non-profit organizations, participants acknowledged that significant resources are required to ensure success.
Data for a Brave New World: Stem Cell and Cloning Cartoons amid Information Overload
(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2012-04) Martin, Cynthia
The emergence of cloning and stem cells from science into the public realm came with overtones of science fiction, for the announcement of a cloned sheep’s birth in 1997 lodged in peoples’ minds, preceding new research into stem cells and likely resisting communications to possible health benefits. In this study, cartoons were sourced from syndicates and examined as to evolving sophistication in scientific, political and cultural content in three periods from 1996 to 2011. Coding of 517 unit samples was completed in four spheres of concerns; culture, humanity, politics and metamorphose. Findings determined that cartoonists responded to media and public discourse in early years of Dolly’s announcement, the image of that cloned sheep providing comedic as well as worrisome fodder for cartoons. Findings from the first period of study were overwhelmingly expressed in cultural and metamorphose concerns. In the second period, politics rose substantially to become equal to culture, mirroring the time period’s political confusion and funding restrictions in the United States. In the final period, politics leads culture, indicating increased and more sophisticated understanding in and of the ramifications of cloning and stem cell issues. Throughout, the representation of humanity remained low: the two spheres within the social construction of reality, codes of Culture and Politics, were significantly dominant over the two spheres within natural laws and nature as the primary order, in Humanity and Metamorphose. A revised “image word sense” concept for coding the entirety of communication in cartoons was demonstrated, with overall content shifts determining the sophistication of messages within cartoons altered significantly over the period of study largely related to political events circa 2001. The study suggests that cartoons, which contain narratives that tell us to think not how to think, can indeed be constructed and used as communication aids. Results of this study indicate that just as in science where the cell determines what it is to be, science is informed by data and humanities theory as to nature and society. Findings also show that cartoons may aid in increasing scientific communications and citizenship and be useful to communicators as an antidote to scarcity of attention and information overload.

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