Student Work

Graduate Student Research

Novices Developing Familiarity with Desktop Videoconferencing

Doctoral Student E. Sean Rintel is investigating how novices develop familiarity with desktop videoconferencing. He recruited twelve pairs of people in long-distance relationships--mostly couples, some family, some friends--to use desktop videoconferencing to talk to one another from their own homes for two months. Each pair could talk whenever they wanted about whatever they wanted during the trial period, and those conferences were recorded. Each pair was also interviewed before, during and after their trial. The goal is to determine what challenges the pairs face in coming to grips with the technology as they simultaneously try to maintain their relationships. One of the early findings is that getting underway, which involves moving from logging on to the first substantive topic, was often complicated by attempts to ensure that each party could be seen and heard at an acceptable level of quality. Pairs had to learn how to describe the problems they were having seeing and hearing one another, and how to solve those problems. This project was made possible in part by the donation of Session videoconferencing software and hosting services by Wave3 Inc.

Faceless Words: The Effect of Message Disembodiment on Deliberator Elaboration and Individuation

Master's Student Michael Mussman's research experiment explores whether deliberator anonymity affects the amount of topically-relevant elaboration, which is often said to be a sign of rationality, found in the messages of a computer-mediated deliberation. The experiment compares the messages created by a group of deliberators identified by their names and photos with the messages from a group of anonymous deliberators. He hypothesizes that messages created by anonymous deliberators will contain fewer instances of "individuation", or language which relates the deliberation's topic in terms of the deliberator's persona or the personas of other people. He further hypothesizes that messages with less individuation will have more statements of elaboration which expand upon the topic. After a lengthy review by the Institutional Review Board, Mike is currently recruiting participants for the study from the undergraduate classes of Professors Halkowski, Seo, and Martin. Data analysis is underway and anticipated to be completed soon. Mike will be graduating in August and beginning doctoral work in the fall at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, studying public policy.

The Spouses of Presidential Candidates: The Media's Coverage of the Unofficial Running Mates

Lauren Bryant, Master's Student in Communication, analyzed 175 newspaper articles to determine how the spouses of the Democratic presidential candidates were portrayed in the news media during the 2008 primary season, and if the news media relied upon traditional gender role expectations in their coverage. This study suggests that the New York Times and the Washington Post did not engage in gender bias in their coverage of Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton. The analysis indicates that instead of depicting the spouses in traditional gender roles and relying upon traditional gender role expectations which is consistent with previous literature on first ladies and political spouses, the New York Times and the Washington Post relied upon the expectations of spouses of presidential candidates in their depiction of these individuals.

Presidential Campaign Discourse

Doctoral Student Marina Marcou-O'Malley's research concentrates on presidential campaign discourse. She is currently working on campaign discourse "missteps" which pose problems for maintaining control of the message for which campaigns strive. Her research is at a very early stage, which allows her to monitor the current presidential race and collect examples of situations where campaigns have lost control of the discourse. A "misstep" is defined as an instance during the campaign when the candidate or a surrogate has said something the mass media treats as a problematic statement and devotes lots of attention to its scrutiny.