Brand image is perhaps the most important asset to modern marketers. Some marketers have chosen to use spokescharacters (such as Pillsbury’s Pillsbury Doughboy) to represent their brand. The most successful spokescharacters encourage the development of parasocial, or one-sided, relationships with consumers. Research has begun focusing on improving our understanding of how consumers develop these relationships. This research extends previous studies by exploring possible moderators that may potentially play a role in consumers’ behaviors and attitudes towards the brand. More specifically, this research has focused on changes in consumer spokescharacter relationships when changes in spokescharacter imagery occur. To investigate, I performed an experiment with students from the Milgard School of Business as participants. Using questionnaires, respondents were first asked to answer questions regarding self-congruency with the Pillsbury Doughboy. Once these questionnaires were completed collected, respondents were then shown one of four images – the original Doughboy, a blue Doughboy, a muscular Doughboy, or a Doughgirl. Each group was exposed to only a single image. Respondents were then provided a second questionnaire with scales to evaluate opinions on the provided depiction as well as a repeated set of the original self-congruency questionnaire. For results, I expect to find that sociality and effectance motivations as well as self-congruency play roles as moderators in the impact of changes in spokescharacter imagery on the consumer spokescharacter relationship.

This research examines how three Seattle-based global health organizations produce particular perceptions of mental health in the “developing world.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Health Alliance International, and The University of Washington Program on Global Mental Health all incorporate mental health into their work abroad in some capacity. Their programs and the way they publicize them are both methods of setting standards for the global health industry and of acquiring potential major donors. I use critical discourse theory, relational poverty theory, and critical development theory in examining these materials to determine which organizations produce what types of representations. I argue that certain representations serve to reinforce unequal power structures between those giving and receiving aid while other representations challenge these structures. Some programs and publicity for mental health interventions support the discourse of people living in the Global South as only being susceptible to mental illness after traumatic events. Other programs take a more holistic approach that acknowledges the daily burden of mental illness and challenges unequal power structures by encouraging collaboration between the organization and the communities receiving aid. Using content and discourse analysis in this research, I argue that specific key terms such as “mental health” are strategically placed in press releases and other publicly available materials to produce either a discourse of otherness or one of similarity. The types of discourses produced through these representations have real world implications as they either reinforce or challenge existing power structures.

Himalayan adventure travel is a burgeoning industry in some mountainous regions of Nepal, India, and the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People‘s Republic of China. The development of a trekking and expedition mountaineering infrastructure has created employment opportunities in remote areas and allowed visitors from around the world to embark on life-changing explorations to some of the planet‘s most unique destinations. However, with the rapid, uneven, and largely unregulated growth of this industry have come environmental and resource challenges, the creation of new economic and social arrangements, and renewed questions of equity and safety. Despite—or perhaps because of—the prominence of Himalayan adventure travel in the popular consciousness, the historical, social, political, and economic drivers responsible for maintaining and reproducing the current paradigm remain poorly understood. The industry‘s growing pains are highlighted by the mounting human toll of disasters in the mountains, most recently the earthquake that destroyed Everest Base Camp in April 2015. Although the proximate cause of these disasters were natural events, growing unrest suggests that their ultimate causes are in fact chronic and unnatural. My research is based on eight months of fieldwork in the Himalaya and combines analysis of theoretical, historical, and contemporary sources with personal experience as a Himalayan expedition leader. I argue that the current Himalayan adventure travel paradigm is unsustainable, and that only a profound reimagining of sociopolitical relationships—those between the state, local and global civil society actors, and adventure travel practitioners and participants—will allow it to continue. My findings demonstrate that recent developments reflect longstanding systemic problems and that current events may serve as a catalyst for previously underrepresented stakeholders in adventure travel to translate their growing assertiveness into meaningful and lasting solutions.

Until today, the Coptic culture is seen and studied by most of its onlookers as a dead Egyptian culture of late antiquity, neglecting the fact that there are more than 20 million people who identify as Coptic and live across continents and cultures. Copts only lived in Egypt until about 60 years ago, and thus, the sudden incline in rates of migration to different countries raised concerns regarding the loss of their culture's identity(ies), and opened dialogues concerning cultural adaptation. In light of these concerns and dialogues, this study explores what it means to be Coptic in a diverse society such as the U.S. The Coptic culture is founded on Orthodox Christian beliefs that are embedded in the symbolic significance of the physical aspects of the culture (i.e music, art, etc). Dressing these religious values in the aspects of a culture is a concept in this research termed as the "immersive experience" and has also been thoroughly explored. The data needed for this study has been gathered through 35 interviews, four focus groups, full participant observation, and auto-ethnography in three specific Coptic communities: Copts in Washington DC, Seattle, and in Mallawi in Egypt. The findings of this study construct a framework of meanings that shapes how the Coptic faith is embodied in the Coptic culture and how different Copts who have settled here in the States negotiate their culturally-embodied faith with the cultures of their new homelands. The framework suggests a theoretical approach that can provide both a proper transition of faith to new homelands, and a successful way to maintain heritage. This work is not only helpful to Copts, but also to communities of similar religious structure, and communities who wish to remain unified but not uniformed with their peers across different spaces and cultures.

Existing work argues that intergenerationality and interraciality in LGBTQ communities is in need. In one report, “many of the issues facing both younger and older LGBT people are related to weak intergenerational ties, particularly with LGBT people of a different generation.” Additionally, the Group of the Advancement of Psychiatry argues, “often, ‘the gay community’ being studied consists of gay, white men. One reason for a paucity of literature on gay people of color, for example, is researchers' lack of recognition of diversity within the gay community.” As a young queer person of color, I see and feel the imperativeness of intergenerationality and interraciality in the LGBTQ community. Many young LGBTQ people don’t have many intergenerational relationships with other LGBTQ people, resulting in a lack of much needed mentorship. Likewise, many spaces that I and other LGBTQ people of color exist in are not representative of racial diversity or our own races. Following the work of the “Dragon Fruit Project,” a LGBTQ intergenerational storytelling organization within the Asian Pacific Islander community, I conducted interviews with people, diverse in age and race, in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York about their experiences in interracial or intergenerational communities. I used academic sources regarding LGBTQ intergenerationality and interraciality, and connected the key academic findings to the themes brought out of the interviews to create a prototype of an intergenerational and interracial LGBTQ community. As a result, I connected LGBTQ people in the Seattle community of all races and ages. With the LGBT elders of color population “projected to increase by 217 by 2030” and the rise of LGBT people being out in the future, the need to redesign and incorporate interraciality and intergenerationality in the LGBTQ community is imminent to accommodate the future of what the LGBTQ community will be.

Mass media can play dual role in the social life: reflect or affect political and social opinion. The current migration crisis in Europe is one of the cases when mass media can reflect the people's opinion and interpret the reaction of political officials, and in some cases can influence the possible changes in immigration policies of taking in refugees. This research analyzes mass media representations of migration from the Middle East to Europe between July, 2015 and February, 2016. This period spans the terrorist attack in Paris in November 13, 2015, which my research finds is an important turning-point in the discourses about migrants, with potential implications for changes in migration patterns in the wake of high profile terrorist violence. The research examines mass media representation of the current migrants in more depth and shows that the revising of immigration policies in many cases can reflect mass media representation of migrants and social discourses about immigration. Also, the study analyzes shifts in asylum admission numbers accepted by some European countries, mostly Germany, the United Kingdom, and France before and after the Paris attack. This research uses mixed methods including quantitative method to analyze existing statistical data which can provide main data about accepted asylum applications, and qualitative content analysis to study mass media editions and to analyze representation of immigrants in mass media at different periods of time.

For many immigrants to the United States, the process of acculturation, adapting to the ideals, values, and behaviors of a new culture and balancing them with those of a culture of origin, can be mentally and emotionally challenging. One potential response to these problems is art therapy. In the west, art therapy has been used as a successful intervention for a range of mental, emotional, and social problems, however there is little research on how making and sharing art may specifically affect immigrants. This research aims to examine the effectiveness of art making and sharing as a coping mechanism for acculturation. After reviewing the literature on the impacts of immigration and the benefits of art making, I interviewed seven immigrant artists from different countries, focusing on the role that art plays in their personal acculturation process. The results of my interviews provide a deeper insight into the effectiveness of using art as an individual and community coping mechanism and suggest several lessons that recreational or community-based art programs could use to ease the difficulty of acculturation for other immigrants.