Backcountry Broadcasts is a multimedia project that aims to empower women in the great outdoors. This platform serves to inspire, encourage and appreciate women in the wilderness through photography, personal stories and more. Through our passion for the outdoors, we're incorporating our own female experience with the voices of others to bring light to the importance of gender inclusivity in the backcountry.

Media Mentality is a media education resource website designed to aid students in early career development. This project was developed with a few goals in mind: improve accessibility, provide opportunity and inspire a new generation of the workforce. We wanted to level the playing field as students enter undergraduate programs with varying degrees of experience. We see this website as an opportunity for interested parties to continue the research and add to the wealth of knowledge in a student worker role. The hope is that students, particularly freshman and first-year transfer students will utilize the site, expand their horizons, learn about all the career opportunities available to them, and push the envelope when it comes to the curriculum taught at Arizona State University. Visit www.mediamentality.com

Americans today face an age of information overload. With the evolution of Media 3.0, the internet, and the rise of Media 3.5—i.e., social media—relatively new communication technologies present pressing challenges for the First Amendment in American society. Twentieth century law defined freedom of expression, but in an information-limited world. By contrast, the twenty-first century is seeing the emergence of a world that is overloaded with information, largely shaped by an “unintentional press”—social media. Americans today rely on just a small concentration of private technology powerhouses exercising both economic and social influence over American society. This raises questions about censorship, access, and misinformation. While the First Amendment protects speech from government censorship only, First Amendment ideology is largely ingrained across American culture, including on social media. Technological advances arguably have made entry into the marketplace of ideas—a fundamental First Amendment doctrine—more accessible, but also more problematic for the average American, increasing his/her potential exposure to misinformation. <br/><br/>This thesis uses political and judicial frameworks to evaluate modern misinformation trends, social media platforms and current misinformation efforts, against the background of two misinformation accelerants in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. presidential election. Throughout history, times of hardship and intense fear have contributed to the shaping of First Amendment jurisprudence. Thus, this thesis looks at how fear can intensify the spread of misinformation and influence free speech values. Extensive research was conducted to provide the historical context behind relevant modern literature. This thesis then concludes with three solutions to misinformation that are supported by critical American free speech theory.

As social media and technology continue to impact the way students communicate and receive information, it is encouraged that university student-run organizations utilize social media platforms as a tool to further the development of their organizations. Social media platforms allow student organizations to network, promote awareness of their organizations, current campus events, and provide the opportunity to develop strong associations and interactions among students. Overall, student-run organizations currently utilize a wide variety of social media; however, frequently it is used without a clear understanding of its role and best practices, which could lead to a loss of effectiveness in their communication with students. Therefore, these factors suggest the need for university student-run organizations to recognize and understand the opportunities that effective social media strategies can bring as a communication tool to enhance student engagement.

In this creative thesis project I use digital “scrolleytelling” (an interactive scroll-based storytelling) to investigate diversity & inclusion at big tech companies. I wanted to know why diversity numbers were flatlining at Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, and took a data journalism approach to explore the relationship between what corporations were saying versus what they were doing. Finally, I critiqued diversity and inclusion by giving examples of how the current way we are addressing D&I is not fixing the problem.

Media Mentality is a media education resource website designed to aid students in early career development. This project was developed with a few goals in mind: improve accessibility, provide opportunity and inspire a new generation of the workforce. We wanted to level the playing field as students enter undergraduate programs with varying degrees of experience. We see this website as an opportunity for interested parties to continue the research and add to the wealth of knowledge in a student worker role. The hope is that students, particularly freshman and first-year transfer students will utilize the site, expand their horizons, learn about all the career opportunities available to them, and push the envelope when it comes to curriculum taught at Arizona State University.

Today, some modern zoos, aquariums, and similar animal-exhibiting institutions continue to shift their priorities toward a focus on the conservation of wildlife. Conservation challenges span a broad subject area. The focus that any institution chooses can vary greatly in terms of magnitude and measures of significance. Many modern zoos often choose to make global conservation a central institutional priority: conservation of biodiversity, habitat protection, species extinction, and more. Some institutions, however, set conservation priorities on a smaller scale, focusing on contributions that have a more indirect effect on wild species and habitats, such as the welfare of populations in captivity, raising public awareness of conservation missions, and conservation education. By comparing the institutional priorities of two organizations within the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the Phoenix Zoo, I explore how each institution manages its living collections and works toward its respective conservation mission. I interviewed members of each institution and analyzed the similarities and differences between the organizations based on their management of living collections, and how different mission statements might shape their work. This included investigating the focus each institution has on animal welfare, in situ and ex situ conservation, and maintaining public interest. This also required defining what conservation and welfare mean to each institution and how that affects the management of their living collections. From a literature review and interviews with representatives from each institution, I was able to determine that despite any differences in style or in the language of respective mission statements, each institution prioritizes connecting the public and conservation of biodiversity. While they employ different approaches - one institution takes a regional interest in the Sonoran Desert ecosystem and landscape; the other takes a more global approach to its experiences, exhibits, and collections - the core values and ultimately the vision remain the same. Conservation may serve as the primary motivator for both the Museum and the Zoo, but my thesis is that this rationale could not be realized by itself for these institutions. Rather, conservation as a core value relies upon the support of other critical institutional priorities working together. In this way animal welfare, public engagement, and conservation relate to one another as institutional values and create the impact that the zoo and museum have on their local communities, as well as on conservation as a whole.