Publication Date

Summer 2009

Type of Culminating Activity

Thesis

Degree Title

Master of Arts in Communication

Department

Communication

Major Advisor

Natalie Nelson-Marsh, Ph.D.

Advisor

Donald Winiecki, Ed.D, Ph.D.

Advisor

Heidi Reeder, Ph.D.

Abstract

Communication is both process and art. It is the vehicle through which we share our thoughts and feelings as much as it is a creative activity resulting in the production of new meanings and ways of knowing. While we commonly understand communication as a continual process of reception and interpretation, new electronic media continue to extend our knowledge of what constitutes communication and how we characterize communication. Challenging the longstanding assumptions of fixed and positioned ways of knowing, studies with new electronic media accentuate the burgeoning contrast between the authority and stability of the written word and the mutability of the electronic word (Craig & Muller, 2007). These studies also increasingly highlight the need to problematize virtual communication in its own terms, examining it as a “technologizing” of message dissemination and reception and construction of the self over time and space (Gozzi & Haynes, 1992; Ong, 2002).

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