As with women journalists in other male-dominated fields, female music writers have long endured gendered harassment. In the newsroom, this sexist treatment is foisted upon female music journalists by their male editors and colleagues; in the outside world, it often occurs at the hands of male sources, readers, and online trolls. Unfortunately, the victims of such abuse are frequently left to cope with it alone, and many report that their mental health suffers in the process. Some may even ultimately decide to quit pursuing music journalism entirely. These women report wanting to feel more supported within their work environment, as well as through informal means, such as via a network of fellow female writers. Feminist media theory, utilitarianism, and ethics of care will serve as the study's theoretical bases. This research, based on in-depth interviews with women music journalists, suggests that the vast majority of participants had faced sexism and/or gendered harassment during their time as a female music journalist, experiences that left many of them feeling frustrated and devalued. Based on the research, I offer recommendations on how to make the industry more inclusive for women writers.

Unfavorable opinions and images of the public relations industry have persisted for decades, and the industry still struggles to deal with them. Additionally, it is a demanding profession that is expected to grow faster than average but struggles to retain talent. Public relations research has also predominantly focused on how nonpractitioners perceive public relations. The present study psychoanalytically analyzed two movies with cinematic representations of public relations practitioners and 20 interviews with public relations practitioners to examine how practitioners' self-perceptions of public relations unconsciously influence their practice and expectations, as well as their stress and burnout. More specifically, stress and burnout dynamics were explored among younger and older practitioners and gender.

The overpopulation of domestic animals has become an ongoing problem across the United States. Approximately 1.5 million animals are being euthanized in the United States every year. In fact, shelters euthanize about 23 % of the animals they take in. However, the euthanasia rate would be much greater without animal rescues, which are different than animal shelters. Animal rescues are unique from shelters because they are not government-funded, and they do not usually have a physical location. Because of these factors, animal rescues rely on volunteers to care for the animals they save and donors to fund their operations. Animal rescues heavily depend on social media to fulfill many of their needs, including fundraising and volunteer recruitment, which makes the nonprofits particularly vulnerable to failure without a social media following. This research combined a content analysis of animal rescues' Facebook posts with a survey of the rescues to determine which Facebook affordances and message frames animal rescues used online were positively related to online and offline success metrics. The content analysis focused on analyzing posts for message frames, and the survey provided information about annual success. The combination of a content analysis and a survey uncovered relationships between Facebook characteristics, …

Climate change is one of the preeminent problems facing humanity today. It has the potential to cause incalculable damages, loss of life and property, and can create an almost unlivable habitat for humans on this planet. Governments need to act in order to stop future climate harms, but the electorate must be literate in the subject in order to do so. One of the jobs of the media is to inform the public, and so it is imperative that the media find a way to accurately inform the U.S. electorate about the changing climate in order to stimulate pro-environmental behavior and voting. It was hypothesized in this thesis that journalists should utilize narrative instead of simply relaying statistics and fact-based information to better engage the electorate and that it would prove a better way to educate them about science topics such as the climate. However, the politicization of such topics could not be ignored and so needed to be accounted for. A 2x2 factorial analysis was done using narrative versus fact-based stories with either conservative or liberal news outlet headers. These were then tested against three covariates: political ideology, narrative transportation, and locus of control. This research found that political …