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Browsing by Author "Woods, Chelsea Lane"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    A Content Analysis of Persuasive Appeals Used in Media Campaigns to Encourage and Discourage Sugary Beverages and Water in the United States
    Kraak, Vivica; Holz, Adrienne; Woods, Chelsea Lane; Whitlow, Ann R.; Leary, Nicole (MDPI, 2023-07-13)
    The frequent consumption of sugary beverages is associated with many health risks. This study examined how persuasive appeals and graphics were used in different media campaigns to encourage and discourage sugary beverages and water in the United States (U.S.) The investigators developed a codebook, protocol and systematic process to conduct a qualitative content analysis for 280 media campaigns organized into a typology with six categories. SPSS version 28.0 was used to analyze rational and emotional appeals (i.e., positive, negative, coactive) for campaign slogans, taglines and graphic images (i.e., symbols, colors, audiences) for 60 unique campaigns across the typology. Results showed that positive emotional appeals were used more to promote sugary beverages in corporate advertising and marketing (64.7%) and social responsibility campaigns (68.8%), and less to encourage water in social marketing campaigns (30%). In contrast, public awareness campaigns used negative emotional appeals (48.1%), and advocacy campaigns combined rational (30%) and emotional positive (50%) and negative appeals (30%). Public policy campaigns used rational (82.6%) and positive emotional appeals (73.9%) to motivate support or opposition for sugary beverage tax legislation. Chi-square analyses assessed the relationships between the U.S. media campaign typology categories and graphic elements that revealed three variables with significant associations between the campaign typology and race/ethnicity (χ2(103) = 32.445, p = 0.039), content (χ2(103) = 70.760, p < 0.001) and product image (χ2(103) = 11.930, p = 0.036). Future research should examine how positive persuasive appeals in text and graphics can promote water to reduce sugary beverage health risks.
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    Framing Student-Athlete Compensation: A Thematic Analysis of California Senate Bill 206
    Hotter, Jocelyn Irene (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-09)
    The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has controlled intercollegiate sports for the past 150 years, but the passing of California Senate Bill 206 on September 30, 2019, placed that power at risk. The bill will allow student-athletes to receive compensation for their name, image and likeness in the state of California, and has influenced other states to bring forth legislation of their own. The NCAA announced on October 29, 2019, that it would change its policies and bylaws to allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. This qualitative thematic analysis seeks to discover how the issue of student-athletes in the case of SB 206 was framed by the media before and after the bill was passed, and after the NCAA announced its policy change. From the analysis, three themes emerged to support student-athlete compensation, eight themes emerged in opposition, and 24 sub themes emerged for both sides. Anti-compensation framing strategies prevailed throughout news coverage before and after SB 206 passed, and after the NCAA changed its policy. Local and mainstream news outlets and sports and mainstream news outlets all presented the eight themes.
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    Madoff Madness: A Textual Analysis of the SEC's response to the Madoff Ponzi Scheme
    McDaniel, Caitlin Christine (Virginia Tech, 2019-05-10)
    On December 11, 2008, the financial world was in a panic as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the arrest of Bernard L. Madoff of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, for orchestrating a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. An investigation took place into Madoff's practices, and as a result, it was revealed the SEC failed to catch Madoff years earlier as a result of its business practices. After this became known, the SEC faced reputational harm. This qualitative analysis seeks to discover through identification and analysis of themes and sub-themes of response strategies, the extent to which the SEC applied Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) in its crisis response, in order to examine SCCT's merit as a theory in government crisis communication research. This study also offers additional response strategies imposed by the SEC to suggest further expansion of SCCT in a government context.
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    Nappily Ever After: A Theoretical Analysis of Black Women's Hair in Film
    Travis, Tasia (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-13)
    This thesis will examine the film Nappily Ever After (Al-Mansour, 2018). I will use the communication theory of identity (CTI) as a theoretical framework to analyze the film. My CTI analysis will depict how hair affects a Black female character's life in terms of her identity. My thesis will use the CTI layers, which include personal, enacted, relational, and communal, to evaluate the film. The film is organized into five parts that describe how the main character's hair changes during a pivotal period of her life: Straighten, Weave, Blonde, Bald, and New Growth. Ultimately, the thesis explores how the main character evolves to be more comfortable with herself as her hairstyles change throughout the film.
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    The Quarterbacks of the NFL Draft: A Study into the Media Coverage of the 2012 and 2020 First Round Quarterbacks
    Clements, Christopher Frederick (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-10)
    This study seeks to identify, understand, and compare the themes created, by the print media, utilized to ascribe identity to college quarterbacks as they are entering the NFL Draft. The study will compare the four first-round quarterbacks from the 2020 NFL Draft and four first-round quarterbacks from the 2012 NFL Draft; which because of its historic nature of being the first draft to include a white and Black quarterback of drafted number one and two, respectively, is used as a baseline. The study uses framing theory and previous research to understand the themes present in the media coverage of these quarterbacks from the 2020 NFL Draft and the 2012 NFL Draft. A total of 112 newspaper articles from the Newsbank database were analyzed using qualitative research methods to compare the differences in frames that exist due to the racial background of each quarterback. Additionally, the difference in narratives and expressed frames, depicted by the print media over an eight-year time span were compared and examined using framing theory. The findings reveal that in both 2012 and 2020 there was racial framing utilized, in the sports media, when describing college quarterbacks and these racial frames functioned as a reflection of the existing racial views within society. The findings also displayed a clear difference between the frames present in 2012 and 2020. This difference, however, did not point toward a lessening of racial framing, but rather to a shift in the formation of the themes utilized, by the sports media, to create the racial frames.
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    Stereotypes and Prototypes: An Analysis of the Disempowering and Empowering Portrayals of Asian and Asian American Identity in American Film
    Snyder, Megan Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-06)
    Popular culture texts such as films have become increasingly prevalent and powerful in dictating what we believe and know to be true. Throughout history, Asians and Asian Americans have been represented through disempowering portrayals that have evolved into stereotypes perpetuated in films. However, Asians and Asian Americans have worked to reclaim their identities and transform how they are portrayed in movies. Thus, this thesis examines four American films including "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961), "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005), "Minari" (2020), and "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022). By conducting a modified critical discourse analysis of how these films portray Asian and Asian American identity, this thesis depicts how disempowerment in films is connected to negative stereotypes and representations, and how empowerment in films can provide prototypes that are more authentic representations of Asian and Asian Americans.
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    When the News is the News: A Textual Analysis of NBC and CBS networks' Response to Sexual Harassment Allegations in the Wake of the #MeToo Movement
    Cline, Morgan Paige (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-30)
    As the #MeToo movement swept the nation from Hollywood to Washington, within less than a week's time in November of 2017, longstanding news anchors, Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose were fired from their respective news networks because of sexual harassment allegations. As a result, each network had to grapple with repairing a destroyed image while simultaneously fulfilling the duty to report on news objectively. This qualitative analysis examined NBC and CBS's response to the allegations of sexual harassment against each anchor, allegations of withholding information and allegations of ignoring complaints through the lens of image repair theory in order to identify if any of the strategies were present in the networks' response. Applications of image repair discourse to news media organizations is a relatively novel examination and it highlights the complex duality of an organization's right to uphold its image but obligation to present the news objectively, even when it has become the news.