Thesis Projects
Each year, a number of Communication, Culture, & Technology students choose to pursue the Master’s thesis. This project serves as a capstone experience that integrates and extends the knowledge acquired during studies in the program and can serve as a representation of students’ analytical abilities for professional purposes or for further graduate studies. Explore some recent examples below.
2020 Thesis
- For Us By Us: Innovating a 90’s Streetwear Brand for Today’s Fashion Industry
by Dominique Haywood - YouTube as an Ally of Convenience: The Platform’s Building and Breaking with the LGBTQ+ Community
by Jill Fredenburg
- Characteristics and Trends of the Voter Registration and Turnout Rate of Asian Americans in U.S. Elections: A Demographic Study of Asian American Political Participation
by Zihan Xiao
- Setting Intentions: Considering Racial Justice Implications of Facial Recognition Technology
by Taylor Vinson - Women, Work, and Family: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Gender Identities and Archetypes in Television Dramas
by Jiaqi Zeng - Community Identity, Gender, and Romance: An Analysis of Galgame Fan Culture
by Siheng Zhu - What Do the Guards Think? Tracing the Discourse of Employee Surveillance in Academic Institutions
by Jenny Lee - A Modern Digital Accessibility Issue: Understanding Social Media Anxiety in Users
by Hayley Pontia - Sounding the Alarm for “Watchdogs”: Threats to Journalists’ Digital Safety and Protection Strategies
by Yaolin Chen - Mediums and Imbrication: Toward a Middle-Oriented Historiography of Technologies
by Matthew Lindia - A Floating History: The Korean War and China’s Political Use of War Memory
by Huazhi Qin
- An Economy of ‘Likes’: Instagram and Debord’s Spectacle
by Jacob Pulitzer
2019 Thesis
- “The Medium is a Misnomer: The Missing Discussion in Online Discussion Forums“
by Roma Abhyankar - “I Feel Rejected: Alienation and Social Connection in the Personal Narratives of School Shooters“
by Mihika Sapru - “Humanizing Japan After World War II: Motifs of Sentiment and Sensibility as Expressed by the Mother Figure in Kinoshita Keisuke’s Hahamono Films“
by Fanglin Wang - “Melodramatic and Formulaic: The Global Appeal of Korean Television Dramas“
by Kathryn Hartzell - “The Myth of Women’s Empowerment: The United Nations and Athleta’s Corporate Social Responsibility“
by Grace Maliska - “Five free expression safeguards from a Facebook user’s perspective“
by Zak Rogoff - “Voter Privacy: A Transatlantic Comparative Analysis of Electoral Systems“
by Catherine Boardman - “BOLD Magazine: A Brave Space For Young Adults To Live Authentically“
by Whitney Maddox
2018 Thesis
2018 Thesis
- “Private Post: Personal Messaging in U.S. Postal and Electronic Mail”
by Rebecca Kielty - “Posts and G-G-Ghosts: Exploring the Portrayal of Stuttering in IT (2017)”
by Mary-Cecile Gayoso - “What’s in Your Face? Discrimination in Facial Recognition Technology”
by Jieshu Wang - “Unwrapping Presence: The Impact of Cell-Phones on Face-to-Face Conversations”
by Amanda Morris - “An American in Paris: Investigating the Discourse of “No-Go Zones” Through Documentary Film”
by Holly Koch - “Desegmenting a Gameworld: The Super Mario Series”
by Ojas Patel - “Tying the Knot: A Discussion with Indian Americans on Arranged Marriage through Bollywood”
by Madhavi Reddi - “Sex, Lies, and Imitation Games: The Ethical Implications of an Artificially Intelligent Girlfriend”
by Ellen Kaufman - “An Agent-Based Modeling Approach to Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma on Networks”
by Chen Shen - “ComicCon-Networked Culture and Participatory Business in the US, Japan, and China”
by Zhihua Wu - “NewSpace: An Era of Entrepreneurial Branding”
by Shalina Chatlani
2017 Thesis
2017 Thesis
- “Leave Me Alone: Protecting Children’s Privacy in the Digital Age”
by Katherine Hild - “Political Socialization of the Deaf Community Through New Media Accessibility”
by Julia Wardle - “Televised Feminism and Consumable Solutions: Japanese Feminism through The Lens of Female Oriented Workplace Dramas”
by Yasheng She - “Rhetoric of Beekeeping: An analysis of science, resistance, and innovation for the future of biodiversity conservation”
by Lauren Neville - “The Crypto Wars: An Interpretation of the Privacy versus National Security Debate from a Standards Perspective”
by Sushovan Sircar - “Nostalgia in Anime: Redefining Japanese Cultural Identity in Global Media Texts”
by Susan Noh - “Celebrating and Discussing the Queerly Masculine: Hollywood Superheroes Reimagined in Fan Videos on Chinese Barrage Video Websites”
by Jingyi Gu - “Chinese American Participation in the 2016 Presidential Election: The Influence of Chinese Ethnic Media”
by Siyu Yin - “Digitizing #PublicReach: How Indian Government leverages social media presence for government communication”
by Komal Sachdeva - “ICTs and the GCC: Economic Infrastructure and Policy Control”
by Mariam Karimi
2016 Thesis
2016 Thesis
- Do Political Film Adaptations Affect Voter Knowledge?
by Angela Hart - Online Lovers and Offline Liars: A Communication Theory Analysis of MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show
by Ryann Price - Exploring Political Interest as a Multidimensional Concept
by Isaac Riddle - ICT for Dictators: How Global Populists Leverage Internet for Political Gain
by William Vogt - code/quilt
by Olivia Payne - Decoding the Candidates: A Semiotic Analysis and Literacy Guide to Graphic Design Principles in Political Campaign Branding
by Jilanne Doom - The Digital Gatekeeper: How Personalization Algorithms and Mobile Applications Have Changed News Forever
by Molly Crain - Who Used Our Findings? A Study of American Foundations and the Evaluation of Policy Research
by Jaime Gonzalez-Capitel Martorel - Disrupting the Status Quo: A Case Study of Digital Mobilization and Digital Activism in Black Lives Matter
by Tyler Goodridge - Ephemerality and the Archive: Memory in the Age of Digital Remediation
by Nathan Dansky - From Social Media to Art Making: Synthesizing Filipino Diaspora Discourse on Typhoon Yolanda
by Amanda Andrei - Queer Embodiments, Abstract Drag, and Derek Jarman’s ‘Blue’
by Hannah Calkins - Communication Efficiencies: Utilizing Electromagnetic Spectrum for Wireless Broadband Services
by J. Stephanie Rose
2015 Thesis
2015 Thesis
- Understanding and Engaging YouTube Communities
by Kelsey Savage - Where the Schoolhouse Gates End: An Analysis of State Cyberbullying Laws
by Andrew Postal - The White House in Technicolor: Race and Representation in Televisual Political Dramas
by Anupam Chakravarty - Tough Turtles and Pretty Princesses: A Content Analysis of Gender Representations in Popular Children’s Media
by Shannon Case - Green Building Standards in the Gulf
by Lisa Zimmermann - The People’s History of Steam
by David Shen - Understanding the Relationship between Media Use and Maladaptive Daydreaming
by Handan Uslu - Charity, Anonymity, and the Power of the Heroic Crowd
by Catherine Gach - New Political Actors in the Age of Big Data
by Owen Agho - Mapping Student Activity Data to the Visual Design of Online Learning Environments
by Daniel Davis - An Analysis of Techno-Legal Approaches to Discrimination in Data-Driven Marketing
by MinAh Yeom
CCT theses from previous years are available through the University’s Electronic Thesis Database.