An art installation that mixed the knowledge gained from both the science and artistic sides of communication via the High Downs School of Communication. The goal of the installation was to have visitors reflect on their own social media experiences by viewing the experiences of others that were included in the installation.

As a Journalism/Public Relations student minoring in Fashion, I have found myself interested in and surrounded by event production. As a member of the ASU student organization, The Chic Daily, I was beginning to see our production value decrease as we hosted our semesterly charity fashion show events. Factors playing a part in that included so many various items such as who was leading the production, how much time we had, venue conflicts, time conflicts, etc. I saw that our main problem was that two months was not enough time for full-time students to plan a quality, large-scale event, thus our student organization’s tradition needed to evolve into hosting a yearly non-profit fashion show instead. I also saw an opportunity for our events to be so much more than just a student-based event. For my Barrett, The Honors College Thesis, I created a public relations campaign to promote a fashion show I produced, and analyze the impact of the media campaign on the attendance and overall perception of the show. I conducted secondary and primary research regarding our past fashion shows, including relevant interviews with previous producers, event statistics and a social media audit. Moving forward, I began the branding process for our next show, including building a branding guidelines book, organizing and creatively directing promotional photoshoots, and organizing the timeline for a model casting, picking the venue, coordinating with sponsorships, building a budget, building media lists, drafting media advisories and pitches, and more. In producing the fashion show, I created a magazine to put on every guest’s chair, as well as curated the runway choreography, vendor organization, model and designer lineup.

American democracy is perishing, and in order to address this trend, we must improve our perceptive and communicative abilities. To begin, this thesis examines the different influences that affect the behavior of American voters, some of which are innately political and some that are not. American polarization, social media, the two-party system, human hardwiring, and a general lack of incentive to engage are all examined at length to set the table for solutions. Solutions, in the context of this thesis, are not policy solutions but rather internal solutions. Given that democracy is such a participatory process, it appears most useful to provide tangible, personal takeaways. By exploring how to harness the power of influence, epistemic humility, open-mindedness, and appropriate media consumption, we have the tools necessary to pursue a more refined free speech society and democracy. If democracy is something the American collective is interested in preserving, we must adjust the way we process the world, and in this thesis, the foundations are set for a more productive democracy.

Many children with disabilities need physical therapy treatment but it can be difficult to instruct patients with restricted or limited communication. Most exercise cards and depictions used in communicating instruction to pediatric special needs patients are not representative of children with disabilities. This project aimed to create inclusive physical therapy exercise cards depicting children with disabilities. The goal of these cards was to help communicate instructions and motivate children to perform their exercises in clinical settings. The exercise selection was based on observations from working with children with disabilities in a pediatric physical therapy clinic. As a result, photos of children with developmental disabilities were taken performing exercises and subsequently made into cards and provided to physical therapists (PT). The PT’s used the cards for at least a week and reported on their functionality. The feedback from PT’s regarding the use of exercise cards in therapy sessions was overwhelmingly positive. With the positive feedback from the PT’s, the cards will be published and donated to pediatric physical therapy clinics in Arizona.

According to The Joint Commission, most sentinel events in healthcare can be attributed to errors in communication. Thousands of medical students in the United States lack adequate communication training. Current literature illustrated that communication skills training programs increase confidence and communication skills of medical students and residents. These programs vary in techniques, with many including lectures and role play exercises. This project aimed to improve outcomes at a forensic facility in Arizona by utilizing a student role play intervention and lecture. Outcomes were measured utilizing developed pre- and post-intervention surveys. The surveys included a validated tool which measured four communication skill categories. A convenience sample consisted of pre-medical interns who participated in the project. The small sample size (four) led to descriptive statistics utilization to provide preliminary data. Prior to the intervention, communication skill average scores were as follows: listening (15), giving and getting feedback (12), sending clear messages (13.75), and handling emotional interactions (11.5). Post-intervention, the average scores for the communication skills were as follows: listening (18.25), giving and getting feedback (13), sending clear messages (16), and handling emotional interactions (12.75). Average scores for each category showed an increase after the implementation of the intervention. The survey was completed for four (100%) of participants, and 75 percent of participants stated they felt more confident with utilizing communication skills in their internship. A communication skills training program can enhance communication skills of medical trainees by providing structured support. Further research is needed on effective techniques to train medical trainees.

The construction industry requires effective communication between project stakeholders in various locations. This communication can be facilitated by in-person site visits or phone calls. However, these traditional methods can lead to wasted travel time or the omission of critical visual site details. In theory, augmented reality (AR) can support consistent understandings of site environments in a similar way to in-person visits also with the efficiency of phone calls. Similar to the telestrator (i.e. video marker) seen during a football game, virtual content is overlayed over a real physical view of a space. While many studies explored the potential benefits of AR application for communication in controlled environments, they also mentioned the necessity to implement AR in uncontrolled environments. This dissertation’s main objective is to explore AR in live construction sites. First, this research explores literature through a comprehensive review to understand what has been documented in the literature: what shows consensus, what shows divergence among the existing studies, and understand the different contexts that would trigger challenges. Second, this research evaluates the utilization of augmented reality (AR) by exploring practitioners performing AR calls on field in real-time highway construction. During these trials, an on-site user engaged in an AR call with an off-site user. These calls were analyzed, and follow-up interviews were then conducted with the users to get a rich understanding of the users’ behaviors and perceptions. This field testing enabled the author to explore beneficial and challenging factors that affected the use of AR, categorize them, and identify ways in which AR technologies may, and may not, immediately support site-based communication for ongoing construction application. Third, this research establishes a decision-making framework that incorporates the advantageous and challenging factors outlined in paper 2. This framework considers various contextual factors and user behaviors related to the application in order to address and mitigate some of the challenges. This framework is given to users to test its content, comprehensiveness, and workflow. The framework is then updated and developed based on three rounds of Delphi panels to get a final consensus from users. The results of this dissertation offer a tool for users who never used AR on site before, support its use when it is effective, and avoid it when it is not.

Collaborative Video Viewing (CVV) transforms passive video-based learning into an engaging, active process. While collaborative modes have different affordances that could potentially influence knowledge co-construction, no study has directly assessed the impact of collaborative modes in CVV activities. Therefore, this current study seeks to investigate how collaborative modes influence learning outcomes, learning engagement, group interaction and the co-construction process.The study utilized a within-subject, counterbalanced experimental design, in which each participating undergraduate student was paired in dyads. These dyads were assigned to engage in two separate CVV sessions: one using synchronous voice-based collaborative mode (SV) and the other using asynchronous text-based collaborative mode (AT). After each session, participants completed a test consisting of retention and application questions. ANCOVA was utilized to analyze the test scores. To ascertain if the different scores were a result of varying levels of learning engagement, dyad discussions were coded using ICAP coding (Chi & Wylie, 2014). Furthermore, to delve deeper into the group interaction mechanism in SV and AT, a codebook was developed to analyze the discourse that occurred during dyad interaction. Sequential analysis and thematic narrative analysis were employed to visualize interaction patterns and the co-construction process. The findings indicated that, generally, SV dyads performed better on application scores and have significantly higher interactive learning engagement than AT dyads. In line with ICAP predictions, the higher-score groups in both SV and AT engaged in more generative processes, leading to more constructive and interactive comments than lower-scoring groups. In terms of group interaction, both SV and AT primarily use descriptive discourse for co-explanation. However, the SV groups exclusively introduce discourse expressing uncertainty, which subsequently leads to group negotiation. The study identified distinct knowledge co-construction phases, including (a) co-explanation, (b) negotiation, and (c) application. Although the co-explanation phase is the most frequent in all dyad scores in both SV and AT, the negotiation phase appears to differentiate low-high score dyads from high-high score dyads. These findings hold research implications for understanding learning engagement and group interaction in various online collaborative modes, as well as for the instructional design of active video-based learning through collaborative video viewing.

Communications around sustainability have been found to be incongruent with eliciting the transformative change required to address global climate change and its' repercussions. Recent research has been exploring storytelling in sustainability, specifically with an emphasis on reflexive and emancipatory methods. These methods encourage embracing and contextualizing complexity and intend to target entire cognitive hierarchies. This study explores the possibility of using emancipatory and reflexive storytelling as a tool to change attitudes pertaining to the Valley Metro Light Rail, an example of a complex sustainability mitigation effort. I explore this in four steps: 1) Conducted a pre-survey to gauge preexisting attitudes and predispositions; 2) Provided a narrative that uses storytelling methodologies of reflexivity and emancipation through a story about the light rail; 3) Conducted a post-survey to gauge attitude shift resulting from the narrative intervention; 4) Facilitated a focus group discussion to examine impact qualitatively. These steps intended to provide an answer to the question: How does emancipatory and reflexive storytelling impact affective, cognitive and conative attitudes regarding local alternative transportation? By using tripartite attitude model, qualitative and quantitative analysis this paper determines that reflexive and emancipatory storytelling impacts attitudinal structures. The impact is marginal in the survey response, though the shift indicated a narrowing of participant responses towards one another, indicative of participants subscribing to emancipation and reflexivity of their held attitudes. From the group discussion, it was evident from qualitative responses that participants engaged in emancipating themselves from their held attitudes and reflected upon them. In doing so they engaged in collaboration to make suggestions and suggest actions to help those with experiences that differed from their own. Though this research doesn’t provide conclusive evidence, it opens the door for future research to assess these methodologies as a tool to elicit shared values, beliefs and norms, which are necessary for collective action leading to transformative change in response to global climate change.

During uncertain situations such as a crisis or risk scenario, journalists experience challenges in filtering, verifying, and curating information and adapting to the new work conditions. Utilizing Sensemaking Theory, this qualitative study aims to understand how journalists construct reporting decisions on uncertain scientific topics, given the potential impact of these stories on the public’s understanding and acceptance of science. The study focuses on Kuwaiti journalists’ handling of science and health information during the outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID‐19). The research adopts a narrative approach, conducting in-depth interviews with science reporters and managing editors from digital news outlets in Kuwait. Thematic analysis of the data indicates that journalists’ handling of COVID-19 uncertain science news was mainly influenced by interests, emotions, external pressures, personal stances, and organizational alignment rather than a thorough evaluation of claims. This suggests a lack of expertise and competence in effectively evaluating and interpreting science news. The study identifies six primary sensemaking approaches used by science journalists and reveals the implicit connotations that underlie Kuwaiti journalists’ roles, which are heavily influenced by their professional, social, and cultural realities. The findings suggest that journalists’ perceptions of their surrounding environment, including their country’s level of scientific contribution, public interest in science, and the overall state of journalism, are important dimensions influencing their perception of their role. Additionally, the study adds to the body of research on gatekeeping by highlighting the influence of sensemaking on journalists’ resistance and compliance with a gate and how this may sometimes lead to overlooking a gate’s presence. Moreover, the study contributes to understanding journalists’ news values and value prioritization during uncertain times. It emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between sensemaking and news values, where values serve as both selection and sensemaking devices. The findings also shed light on how journalists justify their control over uncertain information dissemination, using uncertainty, audience perception, and social responsibility to legitimize their actions and deflect criticism. The insights gained from this study have significant implications for journalistic practices, ethics, and responsibilities in the context of uncertainty and health crises.

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) offer community spaces where players can interact and develop a diverse range of skills online, such as communication and socialization, that can be applied offline. Designing more inclusive community spaces is crucial to give a more diverse range of individuals the chance to develop these skills. One way to add diversity to an online community space is to attract players with diverse personalities and play styles. This study is a qualitative exploration of personality and play in Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV). The specific research question is: what kinds of patterns exist in player personality and in the choices players make in a massively multi-player online (MMO) game Subjects were given the Big 5 personality survey to measure the five core personality dimensions. The survey also included FFXIV-specific items about in-game preferences and play styles of the players, and it concluded with open-ended questions that allowed subjects to explain certain choices. Thematic analysis was used to find patterns in the open-ended questions. The results of this exploratory study indicate that the players in this community are mostly casual and play FFXIV for the content and social aspects of the game. They enjoyed the customization options and gameplay of FFXIV. It is important to be open to the different backgrounds of players who join the Free Company (FC) and to accommodate their preferences and choices in the game. Consistent player interactions and activities with other members in their FC help to create a sense of community.