Spring 2017 Senior Project Presentation Schedule

 

Monday

5/1

Garey Café

 

10:30 AM

Title:

Get Woke Nova

 

 

Presenters:

Serene AlHalabi

Kat Gowland

Brynn Bannister

Sarah O'Connor

 

 

Description:

Get Woke Nova is a student campaign that aims to facilitate dialogue around issues of race and promote the importance of allyship and inclusivity on our campus. Our goal is to help students become more comfortable talking about the uncomfortable by “getting woke” about the discrimination some students face. We have done this through social media, handing out “Get Woke Nova” merchandise, and implementing creative installations all over campus throughout the semester. Our presentation will outline our process in more detail, the progress we've made, the challenges we’ve faced, and the overall reactions to our campaign.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Billie Murray

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Terry Nance

 

11:30 AM

Title:

Analyzing Sex Work Identity Through The Lense of Instagram

 

 

Presenters:

Ciara Earry

Faith Wells

Andrea Pinckneh

Michael Williams

 

 

Description:

This study investigates the social media platform of Instagram and its role in showcasing the stigmatization that exists in the sex industry. Due to the lack of research surrounding this specific phenomenon and the increasing popularity of sex workers' Instagram accounts, this study seeks to bring to light the role in which Instagram plays in influencing complex idealized perceptions around sex work which has ultimately led sex work to be highly stigmatized.  This study explores and seeks to understand how the images and content that individuals are exposed to on Sex workers' Instagram accounts influence their creation and portrayal of self. The extant research shows that female sex workers have been found especially susceptible to the stigmatization and judgement that arises from any mention of sex work. Due to the social media's strong influence over this population and the increased use of technology and social media in everyday life, this study will focus on the effects of Sex Workers' Instagram accounts on both sex and non-sex workers. The research questions how the identities communicated through images and captions on Instagram influence sex workers concept of the ideal self and non-sex workers perception of sex workers.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Amy Way

 

 

Second Reader:

Prof. Hezekiah Lewis

 

12:30 PM

Title:

Innovation In The Work Place

 

 

Presenters:

Jacqueline O'Neill

Michaela Frost

Catherine Connolly

Grace Massimino

 

 

Description:

Qualitative study using interview and observation methods to analyze how innovation is created or encouraged in the work place. Specifically looking at innovation centers on college campuses.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Amy Way

 

 

Second Reader:

Prof. Derek Arnold

 


 

 

Tuesday

5/2

Garey Café

 

8:30 AM

Title:

Care for CARES

 

 

Presenters:

Peter Prokop

Sarah Freitag

Anne Johnson

Caroline Foley

Anthony Pelkey

 

 

Description:

For decades, immigrants and refugees have been characterized as usurping national resources, dangerous, disease-ridden and criminal --such rhetoric in the America is dangerous and certainly not new. 

 

Our project has two main goals. Firstly, the broad goal of our project is to positively shape the dialogue surrounding refugees and immigrant issues while debunking myths and stereotypes about the migrant experience. We hope to accomplish this through our second primary goal, which is to help Villanova Law School’s CARES Clinic, a clinic run by the Villanova Law School that provides student representation to refugees who have fled their home country due to human rights abuses and are seeking religious or political asylum in the United States, to engage local and regional audiences via social media and video content. By engaging a broader audience, we hope that CARES will be able to more effectively carry out their service.

 

Our project seeks to draw upon the spirit of Boggs (2011), to use our campaign not only to help our audiences learn facts, but also to inspire them to become active citizens. Of course, facts will be an important aspect of the campaign, but by partnering with CARES, an organization that actively works to make a change for people who need help. It is interesting however that Boggs mistrusts politics and suggests that millennials rightly mistrust politics as a vehicle of social change. On one hand, we have to fight against the political climate and offer a counter-voice with our campaign. On the other hand, we recognize that instead of just trying to beat the system, CARES uses their political understanding and resources to help refugees. Like CARES, we hope to adopt an attitude of working with the political system, in order to make full use of the resources that we do have and to understand the forces we are up against. We are combining civic engagement and advocacy, hoping to prove to our audience that the situation is not hopeless and that we can still do something to help refugees within the political system we have right now.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Billie Murray

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. John O'Leary

 

 

9:30 AM

Title:

"If I win, they're going back." - Developing a Refugee Resettlement Website

 

 

Presenters:

Kelsey Hanson

Ralph "Trey" Johnson

Isabel Manfredonia

Brittany Lam

 

 

Description:

When Donald Trump followed through on his campaign promise regarding immigrants and refugees, he sent immigration advocates across the country into a tailspin. Already forced to the margins of society, families of refugees fleeing war and poverty were left desperate and confused in airports and immigration offices. After researching and discussing the relevance of assisting organizations dedicated to refugee care, our team reached out to HIAS Pennsylvania, a non-profit committed to assisting the refugee population in the Greater Philadelphia Area. One of the tasks that they had been hoping to address but did not have the time nor the resources to execute was website re-design. HIAS PA’s website is outdated, featuring programs that the organization no longer offers and statistics that are no longer relevant. Thus, we have developed a new website for them, with updated an design and information, new content elements, and a digital platform that engages both the public and their clients.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Billie Murray

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Amy Way

 

10:30 AM

Title:

Conveying Authenticity in Modern Mommy Blogs

 

 

Presenters:

Alexa Batsides

Marie Bouffard

Samantha Gibney

Shannon Murphy

 

 

Description:

We are conducting a rhetorical analysis of various "mommy blogs" in an effort to identify the communicative strategies through which they illustrate authenticity. Because these blogs generate significant traffic, we argue that they serve as narrative tools that contribute to modern discourses surrounding motherhood.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Amy Way

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

 

11:30 AM

Title:

Spilling the T:  Misrepresentations and Redefinitions of Drag Identity and Culture

 

 

Presenters:

Aidan Borillo

Joanna Carbone

Breanna DiMaio

Julianna Furfari

 

 

Description:

This project used a qualitative media criticism in order to analyze the fifth season of the show, RuPaul's Drag Race, and its ability to accurately represent the larger drag community; specifically, how “Rugirls” influence the self-perception of lesser known or “local queens”—drag queens who perform at smaller clubs across the country.  We look at the encouraged norms, including but not limited to: linguistics, appearance, values, beliefs, and traditions of the show. Specifically, how they compare to the drag audience at large.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Shauna MacDonald

 

12:30 PM

Title:

Dating Applications and Relationships During College

 

 

Presenters:

Cory Fugale

Michael George

Emma Moran

Ryan Spivey

 

 

Description:

Using the method of survey research, we explored how students at the college level utilize online and mobile dating applications in means of relationship building.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Sheryl Bowen

 


 

1:30 PM

Title:

The Refugee Reaction: A study on the effects of images of refugees on viewer’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviors

 

 

Presenters:

Mona Hoorfar

Meliné Derderian

Matthew Moorhead

 

 

Description:

With the recent shift in political power, the refugee crisis and attitudes towards “others” has dramatically come into the spotlight again in the recent months. Due to this realization, we conducted a quantitative experiment in order to analyze the effects of images of middle eastern refugees that are throughout media to understand viewer's perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Sheryl Bowen

 

3:00 PM

Title:

Mental Health Stigma on College Campuses

 

 

Presenters:

Karlie Crispin

Bridget Dandrea

John Hinchen

Morgan Melnick

 

 

Description:

Our group is examining mental health stigmas that exist on College Campuses today. While working alongside the Villanova University Counseling Center, we created two hand outs; one to promote a First-Year Adjustment Group hosted by the Counseling Center for those struggling with adjustment to college and another that had general information about the services provided by the Counseling center that can be distributed to both students and faculty. Our hope is that we have created something that can be used annually to help those struggling with Mental Health issues.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Billie Murray

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. William Cowen

 

 

 

4:00 PM

Title:

Gender Stereotypes: Netflix vs. Broadcast Television

 

 

Presenters:

Laura Westhoff

Kendall Peel

Joe Norton

Alex Yanoff

 

 

Description:

A content analysis of Netflix original series and broadcast television series that looks specifically at gender stereotypes in the categories of major and minor characters, occupation, and physical features. The aim of our study was to determine whether or not portray themselves differently on a streaming service which is subscription based versus broadcast television which has to abide by FCC standards.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 


 

 

Wednesday

5/3

Garey Alumni Events Room

 

9:30 AM

Title:

Reverse Culture Shock and Its Effects on Sojourner Identity

 

 

Presenters:

Chin-Shih Huang

Madeline McCarthy

 

 

Description:

Young Yun Kim’s cross-cultural adaptation theory not only applies to the people who enter a completely new culture but also explains when sojourners who already have experienced the adaptive process in foreign countries re-enter their home countries and experience reverse culture shock. This project investigates how Kim’s stress-adaptation-growth model describes sojourner’s reentry shock and adaptation experiences and how their self-identities (including personal and social identities) develop after reentry.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Amy Way

 

10:30 AM

Title:

Facebook’s Impact on Millennial Media Trust

 

 

Presenters:

Alex Alden

Sam Cruse

Chris Scalia

Sean Fitzgerald

 

 

Description:

We (Alex Aldan, Sam Cruse, Sean Fitzgerald and Chris Scalia), are senior Communication majors completing a senior project analyzing the effects of Facebook use on political participation and media trust among millennials. Through this investigation, we hope to better understand how social media use affects the way in which millennials access, interpret, and advance their political knowledge. Utilizing a nuanced version of the Multi-Step Flow paradigm, our study has culminated in a plethora of important correlations related to the political knowledge, information diversity, opinion seeking, and sharing behaviors of millennials on social media platforms, with a specific focus on Facebook.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

 

11:30 AM

Title:

The Semester of Realizing Things: A Case Study

 

 

 

 

Presenters:

Marion Ahearne

Margaret Cavanaugh

Samantha Faust

Natalie Merlo

 

 

 

 

Description:

In looking at the facets of group efficiency, role negotiation and individual identity we intend to uncover how people contribute to their group’s goals while constructing their own identities. As individuals may not be conscious of how influential their efforts are until they are given the chance to reflect back on the work, we will be using Weick’s (1993) Sensemaking theory to explore how individuals create stories to help explain what unfolded.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Amy Way

 

 

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Maurice Hall

 

 

1:30 PM

Title:

The Triangulation of Friendship Initiation, Media Effects, and Physical Attractiveness

 

 

Presenters:

Sara D’Onofrio

Rachel Kim

Jennifer Lambert

Kathleen Treganowan

 

 

Description:

Human interaction, the need to belong, and community commonly call into question the patterning of interaction. With research covering primarily the initiation and happenstance of romantic relationships in terms of physical attractiveness, the three key concepts proposed are physical attractiveness, friendship, and the media. This study explores the external variable of media to measure significant aspects of friendship formation. This new research closes this gap by examining how the media’s portrayals of physical attractiveness as well as depicted friend groups are linked to college-aged females’ friendship choices. Romantic partnerships are known to form through the four laws of attraction: similarity, proximity, perceived physical attractiveness, and reciprocity. According to the matching hypothesis, friendships follow the same design. However, with media that not only emulates real life, but also expose us to “real life,” have we fallen victim to more than just physiological relationship initiation? 

 

By employing a survey to investigate the potential relationships between organic friendship initiation, “media driven” friendship initiation, and the common denominator present in both schools of thought: physical attractiveness, this study aims to measure the extent to which people “match” organically or with media influence. To evaluate whether people choose to initiate friendships with those who are of equal or close to equal physical attractiveness to themselves as a physiological reaction, or whether (and how) the media portrayals of physically attractive personae and their friends that they follow influence their friendship formation, this study additionally, looks to discover whether this social condition is rooted on the notions that physically attractive people are more trustworthy, more persuasive, and have an easier time socializing and participating in a social hierarchy.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Thomas Ksiazek

 

 

 

3:00 PM

Title:

Analyzing Cyberbullying Through Social Media Outlets

 

 

Presenters:

Josh Hart

Kris Jenkins

Darryl Reynolds

 

 

Description:

As technology grows so does cyberbullying and the effects from it can be devastating. As a group, we looked at the case of Amanda Todd who took her own life in October 2012 due to being cyberbullied. We looked at how cyberbullying has a platform on social media outlets specifically Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. We looked at comments and posts and judged the severity of the cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is something that goes on every day and there is not an answer for it. Social media outlets need policies that will protect its users and create a safe environment for all.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Qi Wang

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Thomas Ksiazek

 


 

 

Thursday

5/4

Garey Alumni Events Room

 

8:30 AM

Title:

Too Crass for Class

 

 

Presenters:

Elizabeth Manheimer

Sophia Pizzi

Maureen Paglia

Carolyn Hanuschek

 

 

Description:

Our senior project asks: what are the ways dating apps communicate notions of class? We engage in a rhetorical analysis of the marketing materials and app structures of Tinder, Bumble, and the League to explore whether or not these dating apps break or reinforce class boundaries.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Susan Mackey-Kallis

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Shauna MacDonald

 

9:30 AM

Title:

The Uses and Gratifications of Social Media Platforms

 

 

Presenters:

Connor Brewer

Meghan Joumas

Ekiah Lewis

Haley Millstein

Julie Piscina

Katie Tangney

 

 

Description:

As social media and the ability to constantly communicate evolves, the way in which individuals converse across these various platforms changes, too. Although there is vast amounts of literature published regarding the evolution of language and communication through social media platforms, the studies published are not always relevant, as technology is constantly evolving. Many studies focus on outdated communication and social media platforms, or only focus on the uses and gratifications for one or two specific platforms. It is especially difficult, as many social platforms now have similar communicative motives. 

 

Why do individuals choose one platform over the other? Previous studies focus on social media as well as digital communication platforms, but neglect to identify specific interactions in order study the evolving new structure of language and communication. It is clear that there is a gap in the literature regarding why individuals choose to communicate over certain platforms. Why do we communicate with one person through one medium versus another, and is there an underlying reason for it? What drives us to use one platform over another? Do we use platforms for different purposes, uses, or gratification? How does our communication style change from one platform to the other?

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Susan Mackey-Kallis

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

10:30 AM

Title:

The Cinematic College Experience: Forming College Realities through Retrospective Sense-making

 

 

 

 

Presenters:

Trevor Davis

Sam Garger

Madeline Murphy

Pat McNulty

 

 

 

 

Description:

Through interviews and rhetorical analyses of college films, our qualitative research study looks into college-aged films and the realities formed around their experience. We specifically look at how first-year college students formulate their realties based on the influence of the films Superbad and Animal House. With the unfortunate prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses nationwide, our goal is to see whether comedy college films play a role in this epidemic. This study seeks to explore how the dialogue and visuals of these two comedy films influence student’s perception of what their college reality may be like upon entering their first year. We also seek to discover whether the light-heartedness and comedy portrayed in the films plays a role in desensitization of sexual violence and the downplaying of sexual assault on college campuses.

 

 

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Emory Woodard

 

 

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Susan Mackey-Kallis

 

11:30 AM

Title:

Branding the Body: Healthy is the New Wealthy

 

 

Presenters:

Gabrielle Maniscalco

Leah Connolly

Michael Dombrowski

Valerie Renda

Jasmine Truong

 

 

Description:

We are focusing on the idea of fitness influencer's "fitspiration" posts on Instagram, which often feature expensive workout clothes, equipment and food that the average person cannot afford. We believe that the fitness communities these influencers create and urge their followers to strive towards are only achievable for those with endless money and time, and thus create a sort of health gap. We will be examining influencer's Instagram posts, captions, and comments from their followers to evaluate this suggested link between wealth and fitness.

 

 

Advisor:

Dr. Susan Mackey-Kallis

 

 

Second Reader:

Dr. Thomas Ksiazek