Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

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.

In 2020, the nation was hit with a pandemic both physically and socially. Due to COVID-19, media interaction, social media engagement, and online consumerism became necessary. In relation to widespread disease, social outbreaks concerning the black lives matter movement, police brutality, the presidential election and diversity & inclusion, set a call to action for Americans. Top fashion and shoe-manufacturing companies that engage with the public socially, financially, personally and for entertainment were evaluated on their contributions to Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. Through external marketing and communication strategies, shoe-wear companies display their approaches to social justice, equity and/or social responsibility. Inclusion & Diversity has different facets including, socioeconomics, gender roles, and race that contribute to how<br/>consumers interact with companies. This paper consists of a literary review, three company audits and analysis, and recommendations. The literary review in the introduction of my paper, explores the approaches to Diversity and Inclusion of shoe-wear companies as a response to social inequity. I conducted three audits to assess the history of Diversity and Inclusion at Nike, Adidas and PUMA to their approaches and commitment to Inclusion and Diversity through their marketing and communication strategies. I then conducted a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis based on the marketing and communications of the<br/>respective companies to gain depth in my findings of sentiment, message strategy, corporate hierarchy, and suggestions for future communications. My analysis provided a conclusion that Diversity and Inclusion in marketing and communication strategies is an essential factor in the growth and success of the company. I identified that each company has areas of opportunity to create more visibility for the LGBTQIA+ ( Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and nonbiary people) community, should continue to produce reports that analyze exactly how they plan to support Diversity and Inclusion and continue displaying their<br/>commitment on social media.

Something Like Human explores corporate social responsibility through a triple lens, providing a content analysis using previous literature and history as the standards for evaluation. Section I reviews the history of corporate social responsibility and how it is currently understood and employed today. Section II turns its focus to a specific socially conscious corporation, Lush Cosmetics, examining its practices considering the concepts provided in Section I and performing a close analysis of its promotional materials. Section III consists of a mock marketing campaign designed for Lush in light of their social commitments. By the end of this thesis, the goal for the reader is to ask: Can major corporations be something like human?

Coverage of Black soccer players by Italian media outlets perpetuate narratives rooted in anti-Black racism. These narratives reflect the country’s changing attitude toward immigration. Historically a country from which citizens emigrated, it is now a recipient of immigrants from Africa. These changing demographics have also caused a shift in the focus of racism in Italy, from discrimination against southern Italians to anti-Black racism. As the country has explored what defines a unified Italian identity, Afro-Italians have been excluded. This study evaluates how these perceptions of Afro-Italian soccer players manifest according to various racial frames, and the frequency with which they do so in three Italian sports dailies: La Gazzetta dello Sport, Corriere dello Sport – Stadio, and Tuttosport. In this context, Afro-Italian refers to an Italian citizen of African descent, and anti-Black racism denotes any form of discrimination, stereotyping, or racism that specifically impacts those of African descent. For this study, a representative sample was collected consisting of website coverage published by the three sports dailies: articles devoted to Mario Balotelli that appeared between 2007 and 2014, and articles devoted to Moise Kean between 2016 and 2019. Three coders recorded the content of the sample articles on a spreadsheet organized by the type of racial frame applied to Black athletes. The analysis reveals that the players were frequently portrayed as being incapable of self-determination and of having an innate, natural athletic capability, rather than one honed through practice. The coders noted that in addition to explicit racial framing, there were also instances of implicit and subtle ways these racial frames manifest. In future research, the coding procedure will need to be adapted to account for these more layered and nuanced manifestations of anti-Black racism.