Browsing by Author "Kuypers, Jim A."

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    A Comparative Pentadic Analysis of Mediated Presidential Discourse During 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina
    Aljabri, Nadia Michele (Virginia Tech, 2007-04-27)
    In his first term as president, George W. Bush was confronted with one of the worst national attacks in United States history: the September 11 terrorist attacks of 2001. Through the devastation, however, President Bush triumphed in unifying and guiding this nation during what would become the height of his rhetorical leadership. Following his reelection in 2004, President Bush faced one of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history: Category 4 Hurricane Katrina. In its aftermath, Katrina became known as "one of the worst mishandled disasters ever." Utilizing Kenneth Burke's pentad, this study analyzes the president's rhetorical response and the primetime network news coverage following each crisis in an attempt to determine how President Bush could fare so well in one instance, consoling and leading the American people, while falling short in his second major crisis during his term as president.
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    Faculty Perceptions of Research Assessment at Virginia Tech
    Miles, Rachel A.; Pannabecker, Virginia; Kuypers, Jim A. (Levy Library Press, 2020-07-07)
    In the spring of 2019, survey research was conducted at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), a large, public, Carnegie-classified R1 institution in southwest Virginia, to determine faculty perceptions of research assessment as well as how and why they use researcher profiles and research impact indicators. The Faculty Senate Research Assessment Committee (FSRAC) reported the quantitative and qualitative results to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors to demonstrate the need for systemic, political, and cultural change regarding how faculty are evaluated and rewarded at the university for their research and creative projects. The survey research and subsequent report started a gradual process to move the university to a more responsible, holistic, and inclusive research assessment environment. Key results from the survey, completed by close to 500 faculty from across the university, include: a.) the most frequently used researcher profile systems and the primary ways they are used (e.g., profiles are used most frequently for showcasing work, with results indicating that faculty prefer to use a combination of systems for this purpose); b.) the primary reasons faculty use certain research impact indicators (e.g., number of publications is frequently used but much more likely to be used for institutional reasons than personal or professional reasons); c.) faculty feel that research assessment is most fair at the department level and least fair at the university level; and d.) faculty do not feel positively towards their research being assessed for the allocation of university funding.
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    Faculty Perceptions on Research Impact Metrics, Researcher Profile Systems, Fairness of Research Evaluation, and Time Allocations
    Miles, Rachel A.; Pannabecker, Virginia; MacDonald, Amanda B.; Kuypers, Jim A. (2019-10-09)
    This survey research study was conducted by the Faculty Senate Research Assessment Committee at Virginia in the spring of 2019 to determine how faculty at Virginia Tech use researcher profiles and research impact metrics as well as the reasons behind why they use them and how they use them; the survey also assessed how faculty perceive research assessment at the department, college, and university levels, and asked their views on the potential integration of their research into a new incentive-based budget model at the university. The results of this study also help to inform institutional policy reform at Virginia Tech. The results of this study and its implications for practice for researchers, librarians, and scientometricians, was presented at the 6:AM (the sixth) Altmetrics Conference in Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom.
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    The Feminine Mistake: Burkean Frames in Phyllis Schlafly's Equal Rights Amendment Speeches
    Hastrup, Kayla J. (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-02)
    Situated within the larger scholarship on the women's liberation movement of the 1970s exists a body of literature that analyzes the rhetorical functions of pro- and anti- Equal Rights Amendment messages in relation to communication studies. Although limited in scope, this literature acknowledges the tremendous impact of Phyllis Schlafly's STOP ERA campaign in the prevention of the ratification and unratification of states. However, with the exception of a few theses and dissertations, a lion's share of published articles proclaim the STOP ERA and Schlafly herself to be predominantly negative and serve solely as prevailing threats to the women's movement. As a result, heterogeneous scholarship grounded in communication theory proves limited when applied to critical rhetorical analyses of anti-feminist rhetoric. Using Kenneth Burke's frames of acceptance and rejection as a perspective for rhetorical criticism, this thesis demonstrates how Schlafly's conservative ideals functioned rhetorically through acceptance-based frames in the past, and through rejection-based frames after the failed ERA ratification in 1982. In doing so, I provide today's scholars with an important body of knowledge to further examine the ERA debate and its influence on contemporary feminism. Until rhetoric is fully explored within the cultural and historical conditions distinctive to Schlafly's main speeches during the ERA debate, meaningful debate about the women's movement and feminism's current state is subject to remain truncated.
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    Putting Women Back on Top?: (Re)constituting Power and Audience in The Vagina Monologues
    Gellert, Ashley Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-29)
    Eve Ensler's goal in writing The Vagina Monologues was to generate a dialogue regarding women's sexuality to counter the silence that pervades the patriarchal culture that they inhabit. To achieve this goal, Ensler constructs two ideologies—one grounded in patriarchy and another supposedly grounded in female agency and dialogue—to reveal the problems within the current ideology in hopes that her audience will adopt her new ideology and resolve the detrimental silence women endure. To evaluate its success, this study utilizes an eclectic approach—comprised of constitutive rhetoric, second persona, third persona, and bell hooks' rhetorical options—to determine if the play's content encourages the dialogue Ensler desires.
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    A Visual Rhetorical Analysis of the Hillbilly Stereotype
    Johnson, Devon V. (Virginia Tech, 2017-04-21)
    This study explores the concept of visual argument as it applies to the archetypal evolution of the hillbilly stereotype. Building on David Birdsell and Leo Groarke's theory of the archetype as a common element of visual argument, this study focuses on the visual archetypal construction of the rural hillbilly in twentieth-century mass media and in twenty first century internet memes, and it makes a case for the argumentative components of the archetype. Beginning with an analysis of early twentieth-century postcards, this study establishes the foundational elements of the hillbilly archetype as a symptom of class-based prejudice and explores how these key elements are visible in online memes, with particular attention to the genre of 'Trump Voter' memes that emerged as a response to the 2016 United States presidential campaign. These key archetypal elements compose a visual argument in favor of the idea of a degenerate and inferior rural America and represent a particularly dangerous rhetorical tool that can be mobilized to discount the concerns of rural people.
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    What Do Faculty Think About Researcher Profiles, Metrics, and Fair Research Assessment? A Case Study from a Research University in the Southeastern United States
    Miles, Rachel A.; MacDonald, Amanda B.; Porter, Nathaniel D.; Pannabecker, Virginia; Kuypers, Jim A. (Virginia Tech, 2019-09-05)
    How to best disseminate one’s research and get credit for one’s work? How to best and fairly assess the quality and impact of a given individual, group, or institution’s research? These are questions with which many are struggling, from individual researchers to departments, to a global world of research institutions. Recently, the Faculty Senate and University Libraries surveyed the faculty of our large, public research university to explore their perspective on these questions and more. In this presentation we present a summary of results from 501 respondents (out of 4451 faculty in total) representing different types of faculty (both within and outside of tenured and tenure-track positions), at different ranks, and from different disciplines. Results shared will indicate trends within the faculty on topics such as, the current most commonly used profile systems (top 5: Google Scholar, ORCID ID, LinkedIn, Elements (internal system), and ResearchGate); which profile systems are used most for: networking and connecting with colleagues (top 3: LinkedIn, Twitter, and ResearchGate), tracking research impact metrics (top 3: Google Scholar, ORCID, Elements (internal system)), showcasing one’s work to increase visibility (top 3:Google Scholar, ResearchGate, self-published sites); what types of research metrics are relied on (top 3: journal reputation (separate from impact factor), number of publications, and citation counts to individual works); the perceived fairness of evaluation by level of review (e.g., department, college, and university levels) and how they differ; and summaries of qualitative responses to questions such as why faculty rely on certain profile systems or research metrics, and perspectives on how fair research evaluation could be accomplished, within or across disciplines. Results will be summarized at the institutional level with breakout analysis of results from some disciplinary fields or other subsets. For us, these results from faculty across a range of disciplines will help inform institutional policy and practice discussions about research tracking and evaluation, such as a responsible research assessment policy. Results will also inform our in-process implementation of an institutional researcher profiles systems, and training offerings on disseminating research and assessing its impact. As movements such as DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment) and the Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics demonstrate, faculty, institutions, and funders are re-examining the way metrics are used and methods for demonstrating impact. This presentation on a university-wide survey that includes summary data and the survey questions used offers an example that could be adapted and repeated elsewhere to gauge current practices and faculty perspectives on how to change or move forward with research assessment across a range of disciplines and levels within a large, research institution.
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    What do faculty think about researcher profiles, metrics, and fair research assessment? A case study from a research university in the southeastern United States, a lightning talk overview
    Miles, Rachel A.; MacDonald, Amanda B.; Porter, Nathaniel D.; Pannabecker, Virginia; Kuypers, Jim A. (2019-10-01)
    This presentation was provided at the 2019 Digital Science North American User Group meeting. It provides a brief overview of key points from the full presentation, “What Do Faculty Think About Researcher Profiles, Metrics, and Fair Research Assessment?” by Rachel A. Miles, Amanda MacDonald, Nathaniel D. Porter, Virginia Pannabecker, Jim A. Kuypers, presented at the 10th Annual International VIVO Conference, Sep 2019, in Podgorica, Montenegro, http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93360.
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    What West Virginia? Conflict over West Virginia's State Identity: A Constitutive Approach to Activism and Public Relations
    Fay, Isabel (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-27)
    This rhetorical analysis of a coal advocacy and a coal-critical environmentalist organization examines how each group constitutes different West Virginian identities that accord with their organizational mission. Based on the constitutive concepts advanced by Edwin Black, Maurice Charland, and Michael McGee, this study has analyzed the ideological narratives, which underlie each argument, and which call into existence two antagonistic West Virginian identities. Whereas the coal industry conceives of a dutiful West Virginian people, who take pride in providing energy to the nation and fueling its economy, the environmentalists interpellate a primitive people who live at the mercy of their environment. In a father-child relationship, the groups take oppositional roles in a mutually constructed drama. Hence, this constitutive analysis of two public opponents strongly suggests that public activist groups derive their identities from conflict and are thus disinterested in resolving their disagreement.
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    Why We Are Angry: Rearticulating Fisher's Narrative Paradigm with Interactivity and Hypertext
    Moran, Taylor Catherine (Virginia Tech, 2016-07-07)
    In December 2012, the brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi, India sparked international outrage leading to numerous protests. Singh’s story raised many questions regarding sexual violence and rape culture in India. We Are Angry is a digital narrative that responds to sexual assault and misogyny in India through the story of a victim whose tragedy mirrors that of Singh and many others. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the rhetorical potential of digital narratives through the analysis of We Are Angry. Specifically, I used Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm as a lens to determine how the use of hypertext impacts the narrative’s inherent rationality, fidelity, and coherence. This thesis illustrates that digital narratives’ use of hypertext allows the creator to develop a narrative in a way that can expand the reader’s knowledge on prominent international social justice issues. Hypertext further enhances the level of fidelity and coherence for a reader who may not be familiar with the Indian setting.