The Right to Know: The Indian Journalist’s Right to Information Since 2005

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Marie Magleby and Professor Edward Carter, Communications When governments keep secrets from citizens, corruption prevails and democracy remains a far-fetched ideal at best. However, government transparency – an antidote to corruption – is an inconceivable idea to much of the global population. In a high-pressure effort to approach this ideal, India enacted the Right to Information […]

Understanding Oral Arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court

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Sebastian Dunlap and Professor Edward Carter, Esq., Communications Department The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not there is a statistically significant pattern to the questions posed by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court when hearing oral arguments before the court. Oral arguments are considered by many to be merely a formality of […]

Darfur and the Media: Framing and its Effects

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Tamara Sanford, C. Lyn and Dr. Robert Wakefield, Communications As the conflict in Darfur persists, conditions continue to deteriorate for those living in the area. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, even by the most conservative estimates. The United Nations puts the death toll at roughly 300,000 (Lederer, 2008). Up to 2.5 million […]

The Mismatch Negativity in the Categorization of Speech Sounds

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Emily Chapman and Dr. David McPherson, Audiology and Speech Language Pathology Discussion of Results Our objective in this research was to study the categorization of speech sounds (phonemes) in normal subjects and subjects with disorders of auditory discrimination. The hypothesis we set forward was that there would be an evident difference in the MMN elicited […]

Perceptions of Western Religious Music Among Non-Western Latter-Day Saints

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Matthew Astle and Professor Richard Long, Communications As the LDS Church continues to grow and expand in developing nations throughout the world, it is presented with the unique challenge of overcoming cultural differences to create a truly global brotherhood. One of the most culturally sensitive areas that the Church must deal with is that of music. […]

Playing with Fire

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Natalie Tripp and Professor Robert Walz, Communications Playing with Fire is a documentary I started working on in the spring of 2010 after meeting Brigham Young University faculty member Dr. Jani Radebaugh. Dr. Radebaugh is a phenomenal geologist and is known around the world for her work in planetary geology, particularly for her studies of […]

“Vanth and Child”: An Investigation of the Mislabeled Etruscan Urn Mother and Child

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Cassandra Scheerer and Dr. Mark Johnson, Visual Arts & Communication Since its discovery in Chianciano, Etruria, the identification of the figures in the Etruscan cinerary urn Mother and Child (Fig.1) as a mourning mother holding her deceased child has gone uncontested. Reasons for this include the fact that the inscriptions do not identify the figures […]

Facebook Users’ Perceptions of Businesses’ Facebook Pages

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Nicole Goring and Dr. Steven Thomsen, Communications College students in the United States and New Zealand were surveyed about their Facebook usage patterns, attitudes toward businesses’ pages on Facebook, and factors that could motivate them to join a business’s Facebook page. Several studies have researched businesses’ perspectives on using social media to reach their audiences, […]