Theses & Dissertations

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Open Access
REDESIGNING CAMPUS DINING TO IMPROVE SUSTAINABILITY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
(University of Oregon, 2024-09) Merrill, Maya; Selek, Hale; McWhorter, Brian
Universities across the United States, including the University of Oregon, have shifted to promote sustainable thinking and living. However, these large institutions also produce an incredible amount of food and packaging waste every day—two of the largest categories contributing to municipal solid waste in the United States. As universities shape future generations of leaders, it is important that they implement systems and products which uphold sustainable living practices and reduce their environmental impact. My research and design aims to provide strategies, system and product redesigns that will reduce the significant amount of food and packaging waste produced by thousands of consumers at UO Dining halls every day. I provide a multi-pronged approach which includes reusable and biodegradable products, educational campaigns, peer support, food waste diversion strategies and additional key steps, informed by research, observations and case studies. In addition to a dining system redesign plan, I propose three food container design solutions: a reusable lid for existing dining hall receptacles, an organic and biodegradable single use container and a complete reusable container design.
Embargo
AN ARCHAEOBOTANICAL GUIDE TO THE NORTHERN GREAT BASIN
(University of Oregon, 2024-09) Di Fiore, Sofia; Kennedy, Jaime; Gallagher, Daphne
Archaeobotany—the study of plants recovered from archaeological sites—is a discipline that offers one the opportunity to peer into the past and look at what the lives of humans looked like in times we will never experience. Archaeobotanical investigations are particularly important to the understanding of how human populations adapt to changing environments, as changes in botanical resources due to climactic shifts necessitate changes in traditional lifeways, shaping human cultures. This thesis reviews the archaeobotanical research history of the Northern Great Basin, a unique and isolated part of the intermountain west with an extensive history of human occupation that makes it an important locus of archaeological study, providing the opportunity for researchers to gain a deep time view of how humans interact with their environment. This project details ten of likely hundreds of plant species represented in the area’s archaeological record, drawing inspiration from traditional plant guides to create a proof-of concept look into the human-environmental connection in this region.
Open Access
GRASS ROOTS: A CASE STUDY OF JOHN SAYLES’ LONE STAR AND UTILIZING RURALITY IN CINEMA AS A CATALYST FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
(University of Oregon, 2024-09) DiStasio, Anthony; Purnama, Ari; Rovak, Angela
This thesis investigates the portrayals of American rural life in film, examining the historical context, commonly found themes and qualities, and cultural implications involved with them. Ultimately, the argument made is that films set in rural environments can influence social change by reshaping the image of American history and identity, pieces of the national fabric in which the image of rurality plays a large role. To argue this, the thesis will first track the relationship between rurality, film, and the United States through time, pointing out important shifts in each subject and the development of the genre and thematic associations now related to rurality in film. Next, the general image of the rural United States will be crafted through compiling the common themes and features found among rural-set films. From there, a case study of John Sayles’ 1996 film Lone Star will demonstrate how a film can utilize those features to provide commentary and reflect on the national image through a rural lens. Overall, the thesis aims to show rurality in film as more than a backdrop, but a lens through which films can address the cultural foundations of the United States in order to serve as a catalyst for redefining the way history, national identity, and rural traditional life is perceived.
Embargo
The Ru-volution will be Televised: Unveiling the Commercialization of Drag in RuPaul's Drag Race through Bourdieu's Theory of Practice
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Guzman, John; Chávez, Christopher
This dissertation explores the commodification of drag by exploring the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race. Using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, the show draws its data from the first fourteen seasons of the show, as well as the first season seasons of RuPaul’s Drag: All-Stars, and the show’s behind-the-scenes series Untucked, as case studies to examine the impact of the show’s major sponsors. As a third case study, this project also focuses on RuPaul’s Drag Con, the show’s official drag convention. In using these case studies, I argue that although initially the show’s sponsors had a major impact in how drag was performed within the show, these corporate demands of drag became embedded within the program and became self-regulating. Such, the show’s popularity and the sponsor’s impact ultimately changed the field of drag and made it more palatable for a mainstream audience and advertisers. Further, since Drag Race is seen as the apex of what drag is, the show becomes a gatekeeper for those who wish to make a career out of the art form, thereby demanding people conform to the show’s limited interpretation of drag.
Open Access
Principal Leadership Through Pandemic Recovery: The Influence of Leadership, Self-Efficacy, and Experience on Student Rebound
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) FERRUA, KOURTNEY; Alonzo, Julie
The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between principal self-efficacy, principal experience, and pandemic rebound rates to better understand the attributes of school principals who are leading schools at different rates of rebounding following the global pandemic in Oregon. In the 2022-2023 school year ODE used the calculation of Average Gap Score Change to compare student achievement results in English language arts from 2018-2019 to the assessments following the pandemic. This study placed principals into performance groups by this state data. For this study, 327 principals serving in schools with poverty rates of 50% or higher within mid-sized school districts were identified using data from the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). All 327 were invited to participate in the study, and 75 principals accepted the invitation. Participants were given a demographic survey and the Principals’ Sense of Efficacy Scale, a tool that measures principals’ beliefs about their leadership using a full-scale score, and three subscales of instructional leadership, moral leadership, and managerial leadership. No statistically significant differences were noted between the performance groups for experience or self-efficacy. These findings reinforce the complexity and dynamic nature of school leadership when studying school administrators and illustrate the need for comprehensive and nuanced approaches to research on leadership and practices. Further research is needed to explore principal leadership in the post-pandemic era of education to identify the characteristics of strong leaders to promote the replication of success.
Open Access
Melt Generation and Evolution of Magmatic Systems in Extensional Settings on Venus: A Semi-Analytical Modeling Approach
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Lien, Rudi; Dufek, Josef
The planet Venus appears to be the only geologically active planet in the solar system at present, aside from Earth. This long-sustained activity is reflected by globally distributed tectonic and volcanic features and evidence for ongoing volcanism. Here, I investigate magma production in the interior of Venus to better understand what thermal conditions are required to source active volcano-tectonic interactions. I developed a two-dimensional semi-analytical model to quantify melt production rates and the thermal evolution of the Venusian interior due to thinning of the lithosphere. Results indicate that large-scale melting (10^-5–10^-2 m^3/m^2/yr) is possible under present-day Venusian conditions for a broad range of parameters, although the melt production rates are consistently lower (by at least one order of magnitude) than those at similar geologic settings on Earth. This work characterizes the interior processes that may drive magmatism, volcanism, and tectonism on Venus, which has greater implications for planet evolution.This thesis includes unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
Remote Sensing of Lake Ice Dynamics in the Lower Kuskokwim River Basin, AK
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Pletcher, Addison; Cooley, Sarah
The formation and breakup of lake ice plays a critical role in the hydrology, ecology, and subsistence activities of Arctic regions. However, little research has examined ice phenology in small water bodies and complex deltaic environments, areas that are particularly responsive to climate changes and could provide early indicators of broader environmental shifts. This study uses Sentinel-2 optical imagery to map the timing of lake ice breakup in the Lower Kuskokwim River Basin in southwest Alaska from 2018 to 2023. We detect ice breakup timing in 145,955 lakes, as small as 0.001 km2, filling a gap in our understanding of finer scale lake ice dynamics. Our results indicate that the average ice breakup date across the study period is May 14, with a standard deviation of 9.6 days. Breakup timing shows significant interannual variability, with the earliest mean breakup occurring on May 6 in 2019 and the latest on May 27 in 2023. The standard deviation in breakup timing also varies, with certain years exhibiting wider variability (e.g., 2019 and 2023) compared to others (e.g., 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022). Temperature is a primary driver of breakup timing; we identify a statistically significant positive correlation between the date of the 0°C isotherm and breakup timing. Smaller lakes (defined as lakes < 1 km2) tend to break up earlier than larger lakes (6 days earlier on average), demonstrating a faster thermal response to climatic conditions. We find that the lag interval between the 0°C isotherm and breakup date averages 8.4 days, with smaller lakes exhibiting shorter lag intervals compared to larger lakes. Our analysis of 145,955 lakes over six years demonstrates the utility of Sentinel-2 imagery in accurately detecting ice breakup, typically within 2.8 days of observed dates, despite challenges such as cloud cover, sensor resolution, and temporal gaps. The significant interannual variability, along with notable differences in breakup timing between smaller and larger lakes, underscores the responsiveness of small lakes to temperature fluctuations. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating high-resolution satellite imagery to capture rapid environmental changes, providing a more nuanced understanding of climatic impacts across diverse lake types.
Open Access
Disrupting Colonial Binaries: Gender and Masculinity on the Northwestern Frontier of New Spain, 1540-1780
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Austin, Zahran; Heinz, Annelise
The overall goal of this thesis is to expand the understanding of the role of gender in theSpanish colonization of the margins of northwestern New Spain as well as the historiographical conceptions which have previously restricted some aspects of this field of study. My sources include both published and unpublished documents, primarily centered around Hernando de Alarcón, Juan de Oñate, Pedro Fages, and Francisco Palóu. The main argument of the thesis is that the proper performance of masculinity was so important to the colonizing Spanish, including missionaries, settlers, and soldiers, that it shaped what they considered good governance, reasonable conduct, appropriate clothing, marriage practices, and sexual behavior. They used the actions of Indigenous people as a rhetorical foil both to make their own masculinity appear stronger and to mark Indigenous people as inferior and other on the grounds of their improper performance of Spanish gender norms.
Open Access
Investigating Content Multidimensionality in a Large-scale Science Assessment: A Mixed Methods Approach
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Malcom, Cassandra; Scalise, Kathleen
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills are increasingly required of students to be successful in higher education and the workforce. Therefore, modeling assessment outcomes accurately, often using more types of student data to get a complete picture of student learning, is increasingly relevant. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is promoted as a summative assessment opportunity that includes a science framework. As with many science assessments, the framework includes Life, Physical, and Earth science, which alone seems to imply multidimensionality, and also there are other sources of dimensionality that seem to be described conceptually in the framework. Using data from the 2015 PISA science assessment, a multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model was fit to see how a multidimensional model operates with the data. Before developing the MIRT model, a qualitative review of the framework for multidimensionality took place and exploratory analyses were implemented for the quantitative data, including a data science technique to explore multidimensionality and some factor analysis techniques. After fitting the MIRT model, it was compared to several unidimensional IRT (UIRT) models to determine the model that explains the most variation. The qualitative analyses generated evidence of multidimensional science content domains in the 2015 PISA science framework, which should require a MIRT model, but quantitative analyses indicate a unidimensional model is more practically significant. Once quantitative results were triangulated with the qualitative review of the framework for multidimensionality, the implications on equity and history of harm with regards to science assessments were discussed. Findings from the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the study were used to generate recommendations for different stakeholders.
Embargo
Influence of Landscape Weathering and Fire on Soil Contaminant Reactivity in Western Oregon
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Obeidy, Chelsea; Polizzotto, Matthew
Soil and water quality are global concerns that significantly impact human health and the environment. As the demand for soil and water resources increases, it is essential to understand the reactions that govern the fate of contaminants in the environment. Contaminants like arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), and manganese (Mn) can pose significant threats to soil and water quality, and complex landscape-scale processes influence their fate. However, understanding how these processes impact soil contaminant reactivity can be complicated due to the inherent spatial and temporal heterogeneity of earth surface processes. For example, soil weathering controls the pedogenic minerals that can react with contaminants and can release metals from parent materials into soils - processes that ultimately occur at the molecular scale but play out across landscapes over large time scales. External perturbations to soil systems, such as wildfires, can further influence soil and water quality by impacting soil contaminant cycling and the minerals governing these reactions. Wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe; hence, it is crucial to understand the landscape controls that drive contaminant reactivity.The objectives of this work were to (1) understand how soil weathering influences contaminant reactivity (2) quantify fire-induced Cr and Cr-reactive mineral generation and transport from burned soils as a function of landscape position; (3) determine how multiple contaminants (Co, Mn, Ni, and V) are impacted and transported from burned soils across a landscape. Data reveal that amorphous-pedogenic minerals, driven and maintained by soil weathering, greatly influence soil contaminant reactivity. When subjected to fire, amorphous phases associated with contaminants increase before transforming into more crystalline phases with reduced sorption capacities. Furthermore, Cr(VI), a Class A carcinogen, was generated during burning and correlated with amorphous soil minerals that varied across a landscape. Contaminants released and transported from burned soils exceeded drinking water standards for Cr(VI), Mn, and Ni; the degree and persistence of contamination depended on landscape position. These findings assist in understanding how soil contaminants are influenced by weathering across a landscape and the subsequent transformations and transport that can occur after fire. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished coauthored materials.
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Essays on Competition in the Tech Industry and Platform Economies
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Chang, Boyoon; Miller, Keaton
This dissertation examines competition dynamics within technology industries and platform-based economies. It examines three core aspects: acquisition strategies employed by incumbent firms, pricing strategies undertaken by an entrant firm, and the impact of antitrust regulatory interventions. Chapter 1 gives an overview of each dissertation chapter. In the second chapter, I investigate the acquisition strategies of major tech companies -- Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, and the interactive dynamics at play. This study separates the underlying motivations that drive these firms to make acquisition decisions, distinguishing between internal motives that seek scale economies and competitive motives that arise to prevent a competitive disadvantage. Using a rich dataset of acquisition records, I quantify the degree to which these firms are responsive to these distinct motivations. By accounting for forward-looking behavior of firms and relying on Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium concept, I find a set of parameter estimates that make agents' observed actions yield higher expected future returns than their alternatives while also making their observed actions the best response to the moves of other market players. I find that competitive motives can explain a significant share of acquisition decisions, sometimes overshadowing the internal motives. The third chapter, co-authored with Keaton Miller, studies the commission rate policies of leading app distribution channels. It examines the effect of the regulatory intervention that aimed to change these policies. Specifically we investigate the effect of the legislation implemented in South Korea that allows developers to opt for mobile payment systems outside the conventionally required billing system of the app stores. We investigate how this regulation affected app performance, particularly among apps which were likely to be most influenced by this change. Using difference-in-differences and triple-difference-in-differences techniques, our finding suggests a potentially positive impact on app revenue, albeit with some degree of noise due to limited data. These results represent a novel finding, as they represent one of the first attempts to empirically measure the effects of this legislation. The fourth chapter explores whether aggressive pricing strategies can provide a competitive advantage to a smaller app distribution platform with a limited user base. Using proprietary data of one of the minor platforms in South Korea which charges significantly lower commission rate relative to the major players, I use difference-in-differences technique to examine key app performance metrics. I find that the volume of in-app traffic and the number of paid users increase, which implies that the strategy is successful in attracting user traffic on the platform in the short term, while I find these effects to be more significant in the short-run than in the longer-term. Overall, this dissertation provides comprehensive insights into competition within the tech industry and platform economies. It analyzes the regulatory effects aimed at spurring competition, examines the competition and strategies among incumbent firms, and explores the strategies employed by a new firm to compete against the established incumbents. This dissertation includes unpublished co-authored material.
Open Access
Catholic Poets of the Great War
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Kerr, Mina; Peppis, Paul
The First World War poetry canon has long been defined by the works of Anglo-Protestant, agnostic, officer class soldier poets. Though the hegemony of this canon has painted the war as a faith-destroying event, poetic representations of the war involving and often celebrating religious faith were plentiful. Catholicism was a major religion in countries on both sides of the conflict: in 1910, 65% of Europeans were Catholic, including more than 40 million French citizens, 35 million Italians, 38 million Austro-Hungarians, and nearly 6 million people in the British Isles (Liu, Jenkins). This dissertation traces representations of Catholicism in British Isles First World War poetry across a variety of contexts, ranging from high modernist works to Catholic poetry written for popular audiences. Likewise, I investigate the influence of Catholicism upon representations of the war by non-Catholics, including uses of Catholic imagery by secular poets as well as influences of Catholic authors upon non-Catholic ones. I argue for the incorporation of Catholic First World War poetry into anthologies and teaching materials based on the widespread significance I establish of both Catholic poetry and wartime imagery derived from Catholicism.
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The Texture of Affect: Catastrophic Violence and the Matter of Knowing in Late Twentieth Century U.S. Literature
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ecklund, Ashley; Wood, Mary
DISSERTATION ABSTRACTAshley Ecklund Doctor of Philosophy in English The Texture of Affect: Catastrophic Violence and the Matter of Knowing in Late Twentieth Century U.S. Literature This project addresses affectivity as an epistemological resource and affects as im/material phenomena that are expressed in certain works of literature as accumulating climates pertaining to specific bio-political events of violence. The texts discussed in this project are Charles Johnson’s work of short fiction “Exchange Value” (1981), Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus II (1986-1991), and Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Tropic of Orange (1997). Through both allusion and explicit content, these works address the allegedly distant catastrophes of the Middle Passage, the Holocaust, and Japanese American internment along with countless other entangled violences through grotesque imageries in the everyday late-capitalist settings of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. These earth-shattering and world-bending events are linked to the capitalist system-sustaining structures of our familiar daily routines such as buying a jacket at the mall, going to a country club for bingo, or driving down the highway during rush hour. Putting multiple contexts for different global events together through three texts which are partially set and published in the 1980s-1990s United States has allowed me to show how narratives reach across time and place to spatialize catastrophically violent histories via resonant affective connections; though distinct in terms of context, narrative form, and genre, each text centers capitalism as constitutive for ongoing catastrophic conditions and develops images of affect through the texture of everyday material living conditions. For this project, texturing, in terms of “The Texture of Affect,” is an encapsulation of violent histories into the atmosphere of narrative frames, the syntax of drawn patterns, and prose imagery which work to inscribe affect as tangible, palpable, and mattering in a polysemic sense. With vivid sensory detail, and other text-specific choices in form, these works show the importance of situating global catastrophes outside the concept of one-off tragedy. This dissertation includes previously published material.
Open Access
The Way of Life: A New Oratorio
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Fulton, Hannah; Kyr, Robert
“The Way of Life,” a new oratorio with music and text by Hannah E. Fulton, is a celebration of life and the connection between humanity and nature. It explores the coexistence of positive and negative experiences in life: the paradoxical cycle of triumphs and troubles we all face in our lifetimes. This piece connects this human cycle to the cycles of life, death, and renewal in nature, and in all life on earth. These themes are explored in the piece through a series of six meetings between the two vocal soloists, a mezzo-soprano and baritone, who represent a human being and the voice of nature, respectively. Through these six encounters, which occur over an extended period of the human being’s life, they experience a range of life’s emotions, including joy, grief, anger, hope, and reverence. Through these seasons of life, the oratorio’s main character deepens their understanding of what it is to be alive, and the connection between all life on earth. This piece encourages both listeners and performers to reflect on their own experiences of life and their connection to each other.This work is scored for mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists, SATB chorus, and chamber orchestra. Its performance is approximately 60-70 minutes long.
Open Access
Ecological Intensification of Oregon Hazelnut Orchards: Restoring Native Plant Communities in Shared Ecosystems
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Lane-Massee, Marissa; Hallett, Lauren
The rapidly expanding Oregon hazelnut industry offers a unique opportunity for restoring ecosystem services to private lands that were historically oak-prairie dominated habitats. With typical orchard management consisting of bare-soil orchard floors, ecological intensification through the use of native conservation cover may directly benefit farmers and their operations, saving time and money spent on land management. With the hazelnut industry currently investing resources into young orchards, soil management with cover crops has become a contentious point of research. Looking towards the future, understanding how cover crops can be tailored towards an expanding and aging Oregon hazelnut industry is imperative. Here, I study the feasibility of large-scale native conservation cover implementation in a mature orchard, with measurements of compatibility to orchard management practices and desirable ecosystem services that farmers can directly utilize. My results show that native conservation cover can successfully suppress orchard weeds, align with important pest management timeframes, facilitate hazelnut pickup during wet harvest years, reduce chemical and mechanical inputs, and while not having a significant effect on soil moisture, significantly reducing soil temperature during summer months. This study demonstrates the feasibility and compatibility for native conservation cover to be used in commercial hazelnut systems, and the capacity at which native conservation cover directly benefits the farmer and agroecosystem alike.
Embargo
A Counterhistory of the Ratchet: Black Aesthetics in the New Millennium
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Thompson, Jalen; Ovalle, Priscilla
Framing my discussion in the 1990s and early 2000s, my dissertation—“A Counterhistory of the Ratchet”—explores what I term “the ratchet aesthetic” as both an aesthetic language that rejects the politics of respectability and a reading method for redressing performances of Black female hypersexuality and excess in film, television, and music video. In Black southern vernacular, “ratchet” is a term used to describe people and behaviors that are deemed socially deviant. This includes being loud, disruptive, sexually explicit, angry and a host of other non-respectable actions. The term is often used as a way to police the boundaries of respectable Black femininity. Following the work of scholars in hip hop feminism and Black feminist cultural criticism, I argue that Black femme cultural producers adopt excessive performances of Blackness that elicit an expansive viewing experience of emotions, feelings, and beauty and that challenge the viewers’ perception of Black femme expression. Chapter 1 “Preliminary Thoughts on the Ratchet Aesthetic” situates the ratchet aesthetic as an intervention in Black aesthetics. Chapter 2 titled “The Televisual Ratchet Aesthetic” analyzes Martin Lawrence’s drag embodiment of the character Sheneneh Jenkins from the television series "Martin" (1992-1997). By looking at the performance of Sheneneh’s ratchet aesthetic, I argue Lawrence’s performance as Sheneneh undermines the heterosexist and gender specific logic of the series. Chapter 3 titled “The Cinematic Ratchet Aesthetic” uses the 1997 film "Black American Princesses" (or "B.A.P.S.") starring Halle Berry (as Nisi) and the late comedian Natalie Desselle (as Mickey) to investigate the visual iconography of the Black American Princess in American culture. With a creative team including two-time Academy Award winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter and celebrity hair stylist Kim Kimble, I argue that through wardrobe, makeup, hairstyling, and nail art the film immortalizes distinct stylistic conventions of working-class excess in the latter half of the 1990s and progresses a narrative of refinement over the course of the film. Chapter 4 titled “The ‘Real’ Ratchet Aesthetic” looks at the career of the reality television star Nene Leakes from the Real Housewives of Atlanta (2008-present). I explore Leakes' blonde embodiment as a form of ghetto fabulous identity formation. Finally, my coda “The Ratchet Aesthetic in the Twenty-First Century” ends with a discussion of the rapper and reality television personality Sukihana and "baddie" culture to explore the kinds of futurity the ratchet aesthetic offers in the progression of the new millennium.
Open Access
Enhancing Multilingual Information Extraction Towards Global Linguistic Inclusivity
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Nguyen, Van Minh; Nguyen, Thien Huu
In our interconnected world, the diversity of around 7,000 languages presents challenges and opportunities for bridging language barriers. Multilingual information extraction (Multilingual IE) is crucial in natural language processing (NLP) for extracting information from texts across languages, facilitating global understanding and information equity. Despite advancements, the focus on high-resource languages has marginalized speakers of less-represented languages. Multilingual IE seeks to correct this by embracing linguistic diversity and inclusivity. This dissertation enhances Multilingual IE to address challenges of linguistic diversity, data scarcity, and model generalization, aiming to make IE technologies more accessible. It focuses on developing sophisticated algorithms for tasks like event trigger detection, event argument extraction, entity mention recognition, and relation extraction. The goal is to create a system capable of accurate information extraction across diverse languages, supporting global communication and cultural preservation. Furthermore, the importance of IE in the era of large language models (LLMs) remains significant. While LLMs have broadened NLP's capabilities, the precise, context-specific information provided by IE is essential, especially in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) settings. This underscores IE's ongoing relevance, ensuring LLMs retrieve accurate, relevant information and highlighting IE's critical role in advancing NLP.
Open Access
Reproducing the Frontier: How Media Images Shape Perceptions of Natural Environments of Wilderness.
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Wilson, Travis; Foxman, Maxwell
The visual image has long been renowned for its world-shaping abilities. This study argues that the worlds of images give life to visual cultures for how audiences go about “visualizing” physical space through images that blur the line between fiction and reality. This study attempts to uncover a longstanding myth of how visual culture has led to the social and physical change of the state of Montana, specifically in how the cultural myth of the American Frontier has been creatively reproduced through visualized entertainment to promote fantasy over reality for the purpose of creating and regulating power relations among territories, races, and genders. An analysis of the television show, Yellowstone, is analyzed to deconstructs how visual biopolitics shape and dictate a new frontier, maintaining oppressive structures throughout the natural landscape that imply relations of purification, exemption, and expulsion. This study begins by understanding what the Frontier Myth is and how it came to be, followed by understanding how it is utilized in the entertainment show Yellowstone, whereby the portrayals of territorialization, race, gender and agriculture are analyzed. Lastly, the study will suggest further research opportunities for future studies.
Open Access
Are You Still Watching: An Overview of Streaming in India
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Biswas, Indroneil Bir; Sen, Biswarup
The rise of the internet and digital technologies in the last three decades has transformed how individuals and societies consume, and make sense of, media. Digital penetration affects almost every aspect of social life, including the form, content and affordances offered by transnational media conglomerates. The post-2000s shift from traditional broadcasting to digital streaming has raised a new set of questions about contemporary media technologies. This study, rooted in the theoretical framework of global media, political economy and cultural studies, enhances the existing scholarship around the concepts of hybridity and glocalization by analyzing the effects of the relatively new, dynamic technology of digital streaming in a rapidly digitizing economy of India. I will concurrently analyze the factors behind the global leader Netflix’s relative struggles, and the emergence of Disney+Hotstar and JioCinema as the domestic leader in India. The present investigation argues that in the arena of global media, conglomerates, technologies, platforms need to localize their message, agendas, ideology for effective consumption, interpretation and adoption.
Open Access
Mino-Bimaadiziwin: Culturally Responsive Health Messaging in Ojibwe Communities
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Mahliaire, Nii; Mundy, Dean
In response to the opioid crisis disproportionately affecting Native American populations, this dissertation examines the communication preferences of the Ojibwe community in Northern Minnesota for addiction recovery program materials. It seeks to answer the question: What preferences do Ojibwe community members have for messaging within addiction recovery program materials, and in what ways can their preferences inform the creation of effective communication tools that encourage engagement with available recovery resources?Employing grounded theory and Indigenous Standpoint Theory, the study unfolds in phases, each contributing to a comprehensive understanding of effective communication strategies within Ojibwe communities. Initial pretesting at Northern Minnesota Addiction Wellness Center informed the development of culturally sensitive research tools, laying the groundwork for future phases and ensuring the study's approach resonated with the cultural context and recovery practices of the Ojibwe community. The first phase gathers insights through interviews with a diverse group of participants: healthcare professionals who treat opioid use disorder, community Elders, and Ojibwe individuals who have experienced addiction recovery. These interviews aim to identify the specific barriers and facilitators to effective communication, revealing the complexities of addressing substance use disorder within this cultural context. The second phase shifts toward active community involvement through Collaborative Creation Circles. This approach engages Ojibwe members who are currently clients at Northern Minnesota Addiction Wellness Center in the process of designing culturally resonant recovery materials. This participatory co-design method ensures the materials reflect genuine recovery narratives and empower participants to share authentically. The final result of this research was the creation of a comprehensive website named Mino-Bimaadiziwin, a digital resource platform inspired by the insights from the community. It features several key components: Personal Stories, offering narratives of recovery; a Decolonial Perspective, which challenges conventional narratives around addiction; Cultural Practices, highlighting traditional healing and recovery methods; Artistic Representations, showcasing community art; and an interactive map of Resources. Each element is crafted to address the distinct needs of the Ojibwe community, aiming to provide a holistic and accessible repository of recovery resources. This dissertation contributes to the broader field of communication and public health by illustrating the importance of incorporating Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into health messaging. Through a detailed exploration of the Ojibwe community's communication preferences, the study highlights the potential for culturally tailored messaging to enhance engagement with recovery programs. Ultimately, it seeks to offer pathways for improving health outcomes and well-being in Ojibwe communities, advocating for a respectful integration of cultural values and practices in public health initiatives. This work not only addresses a critical health issue but also reinforces the value of culturally informed research methodologies in creating meaningful and effective health communication strategies.