International students transition from a controlled environment in their home countries to an unfamiliar one with new culture in their host country. This highly complex change can bring about information seeking needs to navigate everyday life. As a result, international students may turn to their host university for answers and resources. This research study aims to examine the perceptions of undergraduate international students at the University of Washington (UW) with regard to the support they receive from their host university for their everyday life information seeking (ELIS) needs. The question guiding this study is: How do perceptions of support from the host university in everyday-life information seeking of 1st-year international students compare with those of 4th-year international students? Findings will be based on data from a survey of UW undergraduate international students about their perceptions of support from their host university. Results of this research study will contribute to the scholarship of Culture Learning Theory, which concerns the challenges experienced by sojourners in navigating through a new culture. Moreover, the findings have scope to support host universities as well as organizations within the host university that serve international students. I plan to disseminate a findings report to UW institutions such as International Student Services (ISS), Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS), Center for International Relations and Cultural Leadership Exchange (CIRLCLE), etc. The report will contain a robust data analysis of the satisfaction of international students at UW, and will detail future recommendations from the participants about what will improve their experience abroad. By conducting research on the perceptions of international students pertaining to the support they receive from the host university for their ELIS needs, both scholars and university staff will gain perspective on how international students experience information-seeking aspects of culture learning.

Within the United States, anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders in adults (Stein et al., 2017), and the use of online platforms to receive support for the disorders has significantly increased (Pendse et al., 2019). Current research has illustrated the promise of online communities in meeting support needs. To build on these findings, I will examine how users elicit support, and whether certain elicitation strategies receive greater engagement from other community members. Thus, using content analysis, this study compares the strategies posters employ to request social support, the types of support (i.e., informational, emotional, esteem, social presence) that creators request, and the frequency of responses that creators receive, by examining r/Anxiety posts with the most (n=100), and least (n=100), engagement. I am contributing to the interpersonal communication literature through my adaptation of support marshaling in an online context (Crowley et al., 2016), to answer: How do posters of the r/Anxiety subreddit elicit support? What type of support do posters request most often? How do posts with more replies differ from those with fewer responses? I anticipate emergent results will indicate that the creators utilizing multiple forms of support elicitation will have greater engagement from the r/Anxiety community. This work will start to fill the gap in knowledge of support marshaling strategies present within anxiety online forums while providing more knowledge about how posters can use the results to form engaging posts and recieve more support.

In this manuscript, I analyze the metaphors used by the British press during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the implications of rhetoric on people’s conceptions of health. This project is situated at the intersection of language, disease, health communication, and media studies, allowing me to explicate how language shaped people’s lived experience of the pandemic. To achieve this, I combine I.A. Richards’ division of metaphors into a tenor (the new concept being described) and vehicle (the old concept being used as a reference point), Kenneth Burke’s notion of a terministic screen, and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s theory of metaphorical entailments to explicate a new theory on the impacts of metaphor, bringing these elements into the field of rhetoric of health and medicine. I argue that the tenor of metaphor functions as a terministic screen and that the impacts of this terministic screen can be understood using metaphorical entailments. I propose a theory where these entailments can be plotted onto an XY plane and compared with each other. Using this theory, I analyze the metaphors used in press reports between January 1, 2020 to April 8, 2022 from four widely read British newspapers to assess the role of the press in shaping people’s perceptions of the pandemic and its consequences. I identify metaphors that construct and deconstruct borders to establish an “other”; economic metaphors that are mixed with military and natural disaster metaphors to frame the pandemic as an economic, not health, problem; and war metaphors that rhetorically implicate the pandemic, plastics, and bodyweight as events and objects that should be understood in terms of war. These rhetorical framings constrain people’s thinking and cause them to think about the economy and borders at the expense of their own personal well-being.

The study of social media usage has become increasingly important in today's digital age as social media has become a central aspect of many people's lives, particularly for entertainment purposes. This is particularly relevant in the context of foreign populations in the United States, as the preferences and habits of individuals from different cultures and backgrounds can provide valuable insights into the changing nature of social media usage. The aim of this research was to study the use of social media for entertainment among international students in the United States. An online survey was conducted with 27 participants around age 16 to 24 to gather data on their social media habits. The survey consisted of five questions regarding their daily use of social media for entertainment purposes. The results of the survey showed that participants spend between 2 to 6 hours daily on social media for entertainment purposes. The most widely used social media platforms among the participants were global platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Interestingly, participants showed a greater preference for global English-based social media platforms over local, language-specific platforms such as WeChat, Kakao Talk, and LINE. The findings of this research provide valuable insights into the social media habits of international students in the United States. The results suggest that there is a clear preference for global English-based social media platforms. Additionally, the results also indicate the importance of considering gender differences when studying social media usage patterns. This research underscores the need for continued investigation into the changing nature of social media usage, particularly in the context of foreign populations.

Nowadays, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have become buzzwords for many companies. However, some companies promote DEI just for its financial outcome and reputation rather than aiming to establish an inclusive work environment for minority groups. This study defines and differentiates between superficial and authentic diversity in the workplace, specifically gender and racial diversity in the US management consulting industry. I focus on consulting because DEI-related studies were rarely done in this field. Additionally, consulting is a newly-emergent and high-paying industry where if inequality exists and is overlooked, it will influence other businesses for the worse. The research purpose is to validate the thesis that superficial diversity is currently appearing in consulting companies and investigate what factors will contribute to superficial and authentic diversity respectively. Research findings will be based on interviews conducted with consultants coming from different racial and gender backgrounds. Interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed through the thematic method to identify a pattern of what particular behaviors or actions will lead to superficial and authentic diversity across a chain of recruitments, promotions, and retentions. The expected result will tease out the underlying logic that could promote impactful DEI culture and generate practical suggestions based on this insight. Along this line, the research findings will help employees differentiate between superficial and authentic diversity and allow employers to recognize what type of DEI they are committing to so that they can avoid self-deception regarding DEI initiatives. By uncovering the nuances between superficial and authentic diversity, we can make transparent which company is pursuing authentic DEI for a higher level of social equity and which company is just conducting lip service for its own interest. Ultimately, this study intends to reduce racial and gender inequity in the US consulting industry and the entire workplace accordingly.

In the era of the internet, numerous individuals participate in fan communities on online social platforms to pursue their interests. Despite all members sharing genuine passions, these communities exhibit varying levels and types of engagement, with some attracting millions if not billions of active users daily, while others show little to no activity. Additionally, users tend to engage in discussions on certain topics more frequently in specific communities. This research aims to explore the reasons behind this difference by investigating the interaction between community size and openness. While previous works focus on the impact of either size or openness, this study develops hypotheses on how their interaction affects member engagement. A survey study is outlined to test these hypotheses, examining members' sense of belonging, level of hostility, and variation of opinions in four distinct communities representing different interactions between community size and openness: large and open, large and closed, small and open, and small and closed. The survey will be distributed among TFBoys fans on Sina Weibo in the Spring of 2023. The expected results will provide insights into how community size and openness interact to influence member engagement in online fan communities, offering recommendations for online social platforms to design features that promote member engagement and contribute to scholarly knowledge in Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media Studies.

In the spring of 2021, a man suffering from what he called a “sexual addiction” obtained a gun and attacked three different Asian massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia, killing eight people – six of whom were Asian women. This event, alongside the rise in violence against Asian American women since the beginning of the pandemic, motivated me to investigate the role of stereotypes in portrayals of violence against Asian American women. I first conducted a literature review on the history of Asian American women in the United States, the stereotypes that have arisen, and their lasting impacts. I chose to perform thematic analysis on the coverage of the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings in order to investigate the effect of stereotypes in the portrayal of significant act of violence against Asian American women that received intense media attention. I analyzed 48 articles from 4 different news sources within a 48 hour and 2 week time frame, coding for relevant themes. Ultimately I expect to find that the coverage reinforces historical stereotypes that sexualize, objectify, and dehumanize Asian American women, and fails to address the nuances of the shootings. By becoming aware of the ways that stereotypes of Asian American women inhabit their portrayals, we can begin to confront these stereotypes and prevent their presence when taking action against violence against Asian American women.