Internet pornography is a cultural and generational phenomenon. A majority of the academic studies involving pornography tend to focus on the physical and psychological responses to pornography. From a Communication perspective, Internet pornography provides an interesting area of study as both a form of media and a topic of discourse. This study analyzes textual user responses to Internet pornography via comment sections on the popular pornographic website Pornhub.com. Eight classifications of comments were developed to include comments of Praise, Self-Promotion, Self-Description, Fantasy, Advertising, Asking/ Answering, Critique, and Miscellaneous content. Publicly available user profiles were also coded in complement to their respective comments. Profiles yielded user reported Age, Sex, Sexual Orientation, Relationship Status, and more. Through classification and close textual analysis, this study attempts to understand how and why users “talk back” to their porn.

Between 2001- 2003 there has been a surge in an ancient yet taboo tradition of bacchabazi in Afghanistan; baccha meaning “child “and bazi meaning “gaming” with a connotative meaning of “boys for play”. This is a significant concern because the act of bacchabazi is one that focuses on the sexual exploitation of young poverty-stricken Afghan boys for the sole purpose of elevating the statuses of their owners, mainly high ranking ex-military officers. By engaging in research of bacchabazi I intend to find answers surrounding why the act of bacchabazi has increased and what the triggers are, that permit it to flourish? The objective of my research is to look at the factors involved in this practice, including aspects of class, socioeconomic status, and conflict areas. The method I am going to use is a feminist discourse analysis of media artifacts current and historical ones. This will include newspapers foreign and domestic, blogs, academic texts, and documentaries reported by researchers within the field of child exploitation in Afghanistan, specifically focused around bacchabazi. This analysis will be done through a lens of transnational feminism while supplementing theories of colonization and post-colonization. Since the theoretical context is colonization and post-colonization, my research will fit into existing related scholarship and contribute to the field because there is not a substantial amount of research currently being published. Since my data is still accumulating I do not have solidified results but rather, informed opinions that would infer recommendations for the young men affected. Some proposed findings/recommendations include: education for the young men with the purpose of identifying the ramifications of being selected/recruited as a bacchabazi, support in way of agency for the young men, and an increased awareness among local jurisdiction in regards to not criminalizing the actions forced upon the young men.

Approximately 54 million Americans have some form of cognitive or physical disability. This minority status crosses lines of age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. We are all subject to becoming disabled, should we experience illness, an accident, genetic difference, or the effects of aging. Despite such large prevalence, we are faced with limited and stereotypical images of disability as a problem that should ideally be fixed or eliminated. Such a view is the medical model, which contrasts with a more inclusive view of disability, the social model. The social model holds that being disabled is a neutral form of human difference. Problems come from the lack of accessibility for disabled individuals in a society built predominantly for people without disabilities. My project uses the social model framework; first, I will analyze representations of disability in contemporary media. This uncovers marginalizing portrayals of disability that manifest in television today, such as pitying attitudes, “supercrip” depictions, and disability as a burden. Second, I will use focus group methods to examine perceptions of disability among UW students with and without disabilities. I will ask students to interpret various media portrayals of disability and examine salient patterns among their responses. I hypothesize that students will tend toward stereotypical generalizations consistent with the medical model of disability. I predict these results will demonstrate a need for students to develop skills for critical media consumption. With the results of this project, we can identify points for intervention and reframing of harmful stereotypes about disability.

This study explores mass media as a means of reducing intergroup prejudice. The theoretical impetus for this study was contact theory, the idea that interaction with individual members of outgroups can reduce prejudice toward the group as a whole. The field has recently expanded to include non-interpersonal types of contact, including parasocial contact, and contemporary research points to parasocial effects comparable to and even wider reaching than those from interpersonal contact. Evidence of prejudice reduction through use of imagined contact scenarios and stories about ingroup members in contact situations sparked my interesting in entertainment as a potential vehicle for prejudice reduction through mediated contact, a topic which surprisingly little research has examined. Synthesizing the literature on mass media cultivation effects in the field of communication, and perspectives in social psychological research, I examine mediated parasocial contact’s potential application in situations in which geographic limitations or active cognitive filtering in prejudiced individuals act as a barrier to contact. I theorize that parasocial contact via mass media can be a viable alternative to interpersonal contact in these situations because it affords ease of exposure with one media artifact potentially viewed by millions, and it has the potential to subvert cognitive resistance to contact if put in the format of entertainment: viewers don’t expect the message to be strategically crafted to influence them. Parasocial contact appears to be mediated by cognitive change (stereotype alteration) which could have a far more lasting effect on prejudiced behavior and beliefs than the affective change observed from interpersonal contact. This might prove an advantage of parasocial contact over even feasible interpersonal contact. The focus of the present study is theoretical understanding, with the ultimate goal of designing an experiment to explore the impact and potential mediators of parasocial contact via entertainment media on prejudice reduction.

The news media play an important role in Americans’ views and assessments of politics. Within the United States there is the perception of a political divide between Democrats and Republicans. One result of this partisan division is a partisan media. Depending on a network’s political inclination, the network is more likely to maintain a particular political standing. This difference in news media networks influences the content, and therefore the language, that news networks will broadcast to the public. With such a great political divide in both the American political system and the media, it is important to analyze the bipartisan discourse that is occurring within the media news networks. The term “bipartisanship” refers to a political condition wherein opposite political parties find a common ground through compromise. Bipartisanship in politics can refer to many different situations regarding the electoral process, passing legislation, etc. The actual process of establishing bipartisanship involves compromise or agreement from both political parties on part or all of a political issue. Therefore, bipartisan discourse can influence the government’s ability to work together despite political differences. This study aims at finding what speech codes emerge in different media outlets. Speech codes theory looks at the words that are meaningful to people who share a cultural code. Speech codes theory identifies words that extend beyond the dictionary definition and instead point to what people latch onto as a culture. This research applies a political science lens to a communication study to look at the communicative aspects in this specific political arena. There is a strong national conversation about the influences of partisanship and polarization within our society. However, the conversation surrounding bipartisanship may not be as prominent, and therefore deserves research to examine what influential discussions and arguments are being made regarding this important term in American politics.

A high level of diversity in news content exposes consumers to a range of perspectives, which ideally leads to heightened awareness as well as informed decision-making. This study examines the level of content diversity of three different news platforms—print, online and mobile phone application (“app”)—to determine which method of news dissemination offers the most diverse spectrum of content. A relatively new type of news outlet, the mobile phone app in particular has seen a recent increase in popularity with its portable format. This mobility, however, raises the question of whether the news app offers the same wide range of news as more traditional formats. Through quantitative content analyses of the three platforms of two major national newspapers—The New York Times and USA Today—this research project seeks to discover whether the news app specifically is more or less diverse in content than more conventional formats. An assessment of the findings will also reveal any implications of the possible adaptation of the mobile phone news app as an additional primary news source.

This research examines the cultural climate that existed in Seattle’s Central District and on Jackson St. in the 1940’s-1960’s and the music produced at the time, jazz music. I examine Seattle’s changing laws (like racial restrictive housing covenants and prohibition), newer freedoms in the Black community (like desegregation), the influence of the Great Migration, and changing national attitudes toward racism and equality. I parallel those changes with evolutions in the styles of jazz produced throughout this period, and the social, political and economic landscape becomes evident in the music, to the extent that the way jazz sounded at a certain time reflected the social, political and economic atmosphere. I look at these issues through the lens of Floyd Standifer, a well-known Seattle trumpet player, who began his career in the 1940’s and was active in the Seattle jazz community until his death in 2007. Standifer witnessed some of the most radical changes in the socio-political landscape of Seattle throughout the ‘40’s through ‘60’s that I examine. The malleability he demonstrated in his music is testament to the changing social climate, population increases in the Black community, new freedoms, and the changing desires of community members and music venue patrons. In the shift from “rags” to jazz to rock ‘n’ roll, I demonstrate how jazz can be seen as political and reflects how music lies at the heart of the African American resistance to oppression during this period.