School of Communication and Multimedia Studies

In the elections of 2018, Brazilians chose Jair Messias Bolsonaro, the first Far-Right candidate, to be the future President of Brazil. In a 28-year political trajectory, he changed political parties eight times. The constant change demonstrates his ability to use rhetorical devices and adapt to new appeals. The researcher of this work outlined Bolsonaro’s rhetorical rise, tested his rhetorical personae, “mito” and “Tropical Trump” based on the work of Ware in Linkugel (1982). No other foreign candidate mirrored Trump as much as he did. Bolsonaro also used US imagery in videos, borrowing images and terminologies found in the US culture. By analyzing his rhetorical strategies, the researcher identified Bolsonaro’s representative anecdote in his appeals that led to his rhetorical motivation as outlined by Burke’s dramatism.

Avatars are growing in popularity and presented in many computer-mediated communication environments like social media, virtual 3D worlds, and augmented reality applications. With its incredible success in the Asian market, followed by the latest rapid increase in popularity for digital avatars in the Western market, it is necessary to look at the avatars' roots and their newfound use as celebrities. Virtual celebrities or influencers are digital characters consumed in digital mediums, with a given personality, background story, and the first-person point of view of the world, accessible to different social media platforms. These virtual celebrities are now being used for various entertainment industries, with game companies currently leading the way in building their metaverse by attracting audiences to virtual experiences, fueled by the need to sell live content during the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper traces the complex history of the Hindu avatara to a digital representation. It will explain how it has been affected by the context of literature, virtual gaming worlds, films, and new trends, moving away from a God-centered culture to one centered on humans. This effect is caused by the need for people to create a virtual presence and express themselves in virtual environments. Since its early beginning, avatars have filtered into the mainstream, and different brands have taken advantage by adopting them to represent their values to attract more customers and appear more reliable. This adoption led them to partner up with the entertainment industry creating virtual avatars, virtual concerts, and merchandise all tied in the metaverse.

The shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 paved the way for activism controlled by youth led by key students banding together following the incident. Student activists from the school emerged particularly via social media and organized large-scale efforts in order to create discourse surrounding gun control through their March For Our Lives movement. Studying the overlap between youth activism, the response to trauma, the systems at play within social media, and the role of commercialization, this paper dives into the complexities of activist based discourse as it evolves and the forces at play within youth activism in general. Looking at these existing efforts aids in exposing both the pros and cons of activism mediated by social media and the role that larger systems play in an activist’s mission.

Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys is a short film inspired by the 1937 short story “Fessenden’s Worlds” by Edmond Hamilton.
The first chapter situates the original story in science fiction film and media, and in wider folklore. Parallels and contrasts within the storylines of the original “Fessenden’s Worlds” and the Biosys short film are discussed.
The second chapter examines all production techniques used to create Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys. Aspects of filmmaking include storyboarding and previsualization research, production design and prop building, and filming for green screen compositing.
The post-production software techniques used to create Fessenden’s Worlds: Biosys are discussed, including hard surface and organic 3D modeling in Maya; texturing in Substance Painter; rendering in Arnold; particle and geometric procedural visual effects using Trapcode Particular, Mir, and Shine; and motion graphics design for device displays in Adobe After Effects.

This study seeks to analyze the performative activism and political performance that took place during the Black Lives Matter protests between May and November of the year 2020. Various points of view perceive such acts as merely reductive or otherwise worthy of disdain, however, this study seeks to analyze these acts to identify different components within each performance. The primary focus is to further understand the advantages and disadvantages of performative activism and political performance. This research concentrates on examining the significant social and political impacts of these performances and their symbolic nature. This study also evaluates how discourse related to marginalized communities enters the public sphere and influences it. This study will include the analysis of performance via social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter during the 2020 resurgence of Black Lives Matter, including performances carried out by political leaders along the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign trail.

African international students continue to remain one of the least represented and studied groups of international students. In addition to the acculturative stress typically experienced by international students, African students inherit the marginalization of their racial/ethnic group in the United States. As such, scholars acknowledge the need for continued research into the experiences of African international students. Utilizing the Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross- Cultural Adaptation and elements of postcolonialism, this thesis explored the experiences of 10 African students in the United States. A qualitative analysis revealed that host receptivity, perceived cultural differences, expectations, and language/accents influenced intercultural communication. The challenges experienced in intercultural interactions allowed for the emergence of an intercultural identity such that the participants existed in a third space as intercultural Africans. This thesis adds to existing research on cross-cultural adaptation and negotiated identity, while also providing practical implications for schools.

This thesis examines the multifarious presentation of one’s identity on a singular social network site through their usage of both “finsta” and “rinsta” accounts on Instagram. A rinsta is one’s primary and more public Instagram account. A finsta is a highly privatized secondary Instagram account that functions as a liminal space for users’ impression management engagements. In-depth interviews were conducted with participants who identified as having created a finsta account and thematic analysis was subsequently employed to understand how they conceptualized their motivations and behaviors within their constructed networks. It was found that users were motivated to create and maintain a finsta by a desire for privacy, social inclusion, and the freedom to generate content that would be considered socially unacceptable on rinsta. This socially unacceptable content was often humorous or emotionally expressive. Finstas are also characterized by in-depth communal interactions in comparison with the more superficial interactions on rinsta.

Throughout history, women in comics have played subordinate or lesser roles compared to males and were stereotyped. Today, representations have improved in comic-based tv shows. This thesis is answering three research questions: How does one define a “strong female character” within the comic-based and comic-styled genres, specifically in the TV shows Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, and Wynonna Earp? How does race/gender intersectionality affect the ways in which the non-white characters express masculinity or femininity compared to the white characters? How do the videos made by fans of the three tv series define a “strong female character?” This study applies textual and participatory cultures analyses. It is interdisciplinary and uses theories from different areas. This research finds that Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, and Wynonna Earp simultaneously reinforce and challenge stereotypes such as emphasized femininity, hegemonic masculinity and the “Black Buck.” Future research might examine white stereotypes with the white heroines.

Many theories exist attempting to explain the allure of horror films to the human psyche. None can fully explain this fascination to the horror genre. However, there are clear visual techniques used routinely in these films to produce fear in audiences. This thesis explores the application of those cinematic techniques used in horror cinema for well over a century into a virtual reality (VR) experience, The Invasion. Using a wide range of examples from classic horror films, The Invasion endeavors to show how the lessons learned from the study of horror cinema’s use of color theory, light, shadow, and sound design, when paired with the virtual reality medium, can provide a richer, more immersive horror vehicle and create new possibilities for fear-based content.

Assigning stereotypical behaviors and traits associated with young people—selfabsorbed, narcissistic, lost, technologically dependent, disrespectful, financially unstable, etc.—to Millennials have become common practice in popular media and colloquial discourse and are not without consequence. Although the contemporary discourses circulating through society appear to be characteristically Millennial, similar discourses have historically appeared in conversations surrounding preceding generations. This thesis uses five popular culture case studies that capture the zeitgeist of both young Boomers and Millennials to compare discourses and critically examines the overlapping references between age groups and generational categories. This research also aims to bring visibility to the relevance of age getting lost amidst discourses about generations. Using textual analysis via discursive formations, this project reveals the reproduction of dominant power structures among generational discourses and poses implications to those power structures.