Journalism and Communication Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Journalism and Communication Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Activism"

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    Plains Spoken: A Framing Analysis of Bold Nebraska's Campaign Against the Keystone XL Pipeline
    (University of Oregon, 2017-09-27) Moscato, Derek; Sheehan, Kim
    This dissertation focuses on the use of strategic communication in the context of contemporary environmental activism. It examines the case of Bold Nebraska, a grassroots advocacy group opposing the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline in the state of Nebraska. Such an analysis of activist communication informs several areas of research, including public relations theory and practice, social movement theory, and environmental communication. To understand the construction of strategic communication within such activism, this study employs a movement framing analysis, a media framing analysis, and a rhetorical analysis. A quantitative framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s website communication against the pipeline during the five-year period of 2011 to 2015 assesses how activists craft and project strategic messages. A framing analysis of Bold Nebraska’s national media coverage during the same timeframe highlights the relationship between activist framing and mainstream news coverage. Finally, a rhetorical analysis of Bold Nebraska’s 2014 Harvest the Hope concert is provided to understand the role of rhetorical appeals in building an environmental activism metanarrative or master frame. Taken together, these three approaches provide both a more holistic means to considering environmental activism campaigns in the context of strategic communication, and fill in the gaps for understanding the interplay of social movement organizations, public relations, and persuasion. This study brings a framework of strategic advocacy framing to the realm of environmental politics, and builds upon this framework by considering the dynamic of populism in activism. It also explores the role of strategic communication in evolving a movement organization’s metanarrative as it toggles between short- and long-term goals. Finally, it identifies a civic environmental persuasion built upon the attributes of narrative, hyperlocalization, engagement, and bipartisanship in order to build broad support and influence public policy.
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    Struggling for Ideological Integrity in the Social Movement Framing Process: How U.S. Animal Rights Organizations Frame Values and Ethical Ideology in Food Advocacy Communication
    (University of Oregon, 2008-06) Freeman, Carrie Packwood
    Social movements that fundamentally challenge the status quo struggle to connect theory and practice by framing advocacy messages in ways that serve the utilitarian purpose of resonating with mainstream public values while also demonstrating deontological integrity in authentically reflecting their own radical ideology. This study examines the animal rights movement's framing challenges in transforming discriminatory worldviews against nonhuman animals (NHAs) to create respect for them as inherently valuable subjects. U.S. animal rights organizations (AROs) increasingly focus on protecting animals exploited for food, and this dissertation examines frames used in such food advocacy campaigns of five national AROs: Compassion over Killing, Farm Animal Rights Movement, Farm Sanctuary, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and Vegan Outreach. Using textual analysis of ARO advocacy and interviews with ARO leaders, this study analyzes how and to what extent AROs do or could construct less speciesist frames that resonate with a largely speciesist American public. Findings reveal AROs framed problems with agribusiness around farmed animal cruelty and commodification, human and environmental harm, and unnecessary killing. Solution frames suggested consumers eat a total or largely plant-based diet, and some proposed industry welfare reforms. To motivate audiences, AROs appealed to values, such as: compassion, sentience, moral consistency, desire to make a difference, choice, pleasurable and convenient food, belonging, life, concern for fellow human beings, honesty, American populism, naturalness, freedom, and American pride. Strategically, AROs leaders applied both deontology and utilitarianism in choosing to prioritize NHA altruism rather than human self-interest, but most leaders favored utilitarianism in choosing to privilege animal welfare over animal rights for wider appeal. Overall, while some ARO messages supported animal rights, promoting veganism and respect for NHA subject status, many frames used animal welfare ideology to achieve animal rights solutions, conservatively avoiding a direct challenge to the dominant human/animal dualism. Changes to framing strategy are prescribed in support of frame transformation, such as emphasizing injustice, respect, freedom, life, and a shared animality. This deontologically aligns animal rights theory with advocacy practice in a way that also strategically incorporates both environmental ethics and human rights and merges nature and culture.
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    The Making of the White Middle-Class Radical: A Discourse Analysis of the Public Relations of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador between 1980 and 1990
    (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) Valencia, Ricardo; Martinez, Gabriela
    This study explores the role of public relations in the formation of a collective identity of the activists of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) between 1980 and 1990. CISPES was a radical U.S.-based organization comprised of a majority of white college-educated members. CISPES had two goals: 1) stop the U.S. military assistance to El Salvador, and 2) support the Salvadoran revolutionary movements that were fighting a U.S.-backed government. Through interviews, discourse analysis and historical research, this work shows that CISPES used as currency the whiteness of its activists, in conjunction with its educational background, to influence public opinion and policy-making in the U.S. The formation of CISPES as a white organization was partially achieved by continuous negotiations with Salvadoran radicals living in the U.S. Early in the 1990s, CISPES' collective identity as a white organization entered in crisis as internal debates on gender and race along with social changes in the national and international levels challenged dominant views and the status quo of whiteness and what this implies in political, social, and cultural spheres. This work proposes two models: the intersectional recruiting process and the ideological identity model of public relations. Both models were created using dialectical methodologies that understand public relations and social movements as processes of permanent contradictions between social conditions and ideology/discourse creation. This dissertation has real applications because it reveals how activist public relations can help the global struggle for social justice.