For decades, women in the field of sports media have battled for equality with their male counterparts. In 1972, Title IX was passed, stating that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In 1978, the iconic court case, Melissa Ludtke and Time Inc., v. Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball, confirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that women should be given the same rights as men, specifically in regards to locker room access. Today, legally women and men in the field of sports media have the same rights. But many people would argue that is not the case. In the five decades succeeding these milestones, women have continued their fight for a more level playing field. Women in sports media are largely stereotyped, they are often judged based on their looks not their knowledge, they are underrepresented in a field that is male dominated. It could be assumed most women working in sports media have at least one instance where they have been judged on the basis of sex. And in 2021, sexual harassment allegations are still being made in the industry.. How will the events of this decade shape the future for women in this field? What strides are left to be made and how will they be achieved?

On March 12, 2020, The Walt Disney Company announced that its U.S. Disney Parks, Disneyland and Walt Disney World, would close because of COVID-19. This study aims to determine how park annual passholders and frequent guests of the U.S. Disney Parks reacted to COVID-19 related news from The Walt Disney Company and if it impacts their decision to visit the parks. To determine this, five focus groups were conducted with annual passholders and frequent guests of the U.S. Disney Parks. Their social media habits, relationship with The Walt Disney Company, and reactions to COVID-19 related news was discussed. The results showed that while annual passholders and frequent guests may get their information from third party accounts, face confusion on some topics, and have reservations about COVID-19 during park reopenings, they still trust The Walt Disney Company and are eager to enter the parks again.

Fruit King a personal and historical audio narrative of a Sicilian immigrant turned American success completed in conjunction with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University. This project was completed with the guidance and support of thesis director, Dr. Dawn Gilpin and thesis second-chair, Dr. John Craft. This thesis project has been executed in the form of a podcast, website and research report that recounts and relishes in the legacy and life of Joseph DiGiorgio, the once 14-year-old who immigrated from Cefalu, Sicily to Ellis Island, New York in 1888. He went from selling fruit in a cart and borrowing money from the bank to establishing the Baltimore Fruit exchange and becoming the director of the Maryland National Bank by 21 years old. His billion-dollar business, the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation, became the world’s largest fruit grower of grapes, plums and pears in the 1940s, and he landed a feature story in Fortune Magazine in 1946. To me, he is my great-great-great-uncle Joe, but to the world, he is what the New York Times crowned him: the Fruit King.

Billions of people across the world use social media. Because a large portion of those users are college students between the ages of 20 and 22, this study sought to explore social media's effects on a female college student’s body image. The study’s research questions are: How does social media affect female college students’ feelings about their physical selves, and do such effects differ across platforms? Interview data are analyzed based on theories of social comparison, normative influence, narrative-induced transportation, media richness, and social presence. Results reveal that social media affects female college students' perceptions of physical images, and overall this effect is more often negative than positive. Also, Instagram offered a more perfectionist visual culture than Facebook and Twitter.

Influencer marketing is a fairly new concept within the marketing industry. Even though this strategy of digital marketing has not been around too long, it has grown an immense amount over the last 5 years. This thesis analyzes how influencer marketing affects consumer behavior. This was done through a literature review that highlights how consumers make decisions, the influencer marketing industry, and two case studies that evaluate influencer marketing campaigns along with their effects on consumer behavior. In addition, an online survey was distributed to consumers who actively follow influencers on social media to capture respondents’ attitudes of influencers and if they have been affected by them. The analysis of the responses showed that in this study, females are more affected by influencers than when compared to male responses. Other key insights were that the majority of respondents do not trust influencers; but yet, they still follow their content and take interest into influencers’ recommendations. The results indicate that there is a complex relationship between influencers and their followers that can be investigated upon further research. I recommend that influencers become more transparent with their followers to gain trust and authenticity so their followers view them as a credible and reliable source. Implementing the recommendations in this thesis can lead to more trust between influencers and their followers, as well as, more effective social media influencer campaigns for companies.

This project includes a travel blog made while studying abroad in Dublin, Ireland during spring semester of 2020. The blog is called Sierra Sage and can be found at https://sierrasage.travel.blog/. The project also includes data and analysis from six paid advertisement campaigns made on Google and Facebook/Instagram. The blog includes 24 blog posts targeted toward students interested in study abroad and/or travel, and each campaign on both platforms applies to a separate blog post written as part of the project. The paid advertisements were completed using funding from Barrett, The Honors College.

This paper outlines a responsible innovation framework to evaluate technologies designed for education. Traditionally, technologies being implemented for development of education come from foreign nations with less cultural understanding of the needs of the country they are trying to serve. This framework outlines categories that impact the success or failure of an educational technology. The framework is explained and then applied to the SolarSPELL case; an offline digital library designed to bring information to resource constrained areas around the world. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors determining success and failure of educational technology projects and design a framework that can be used moving forward to assess projects prior to the final implementation stage to encourage more successful projects. The framework designed in this research proved useful for evaluating educational technology designed for resource constrained areas.

An Ocean of Stars is 310-page novel, written over the span of eight months. The story is one of friendship, love, loss, and finding home. It is centered on the idea that a human's deepest desire is to simply know who they are and where they're from. The two main characters, Alannis and Grey, go on an adventure to discover where they are really from--a hidden continent in the South Pacific Ocean--and stumble into friendship along the way. The novel is 82,000 words and is in the young adult fantasy fiction genre.

Ever since Cleveland-based disc jockey Alan Freed coined the term "rock 'n' roll" in the early 1950s, the genre has gone through various mass media and digital changes over the decades. These changes took place on the radio, television and internet. Each platform had its own unique ways of increasing the popularity of rock artists as well as the genre itself. Although the radio is not as popular today as it was in the 20th century, it helped pave the way for today’s most popular music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The television gave artists a chance to be seen nationally or even worldwide. Music videos and live performances allowed viewers to see past artists’ voices and witness their energy. The internet gave bands and artists multiple platforms to share their content and connect with fans. In 2020, having a social media presence became essential for artists wanting to maintain a successful music career during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rock music most likely would not be what it is today if it had not gone through these various changes.

Tiger Woods’ adultery scandal was one of the most widely covered sports stories of the 2000s, in part because of how famous he was as a person and athlete. But the scandal and Tiger’s handling of it provided public relations professionals one of the most relevant crisis communications case studies in the history of sports. This case study is split into three sections; pre-scandal, the scandal itself and then his road to recovery. The case study is accompanied by an essay analyzing Woods’ crisis communications and image restoration strategies.