Employing qualitative methods and drawing from an intersectional framework which focuses on the multiple identities we all embody, this dissertation focuses on oppressions and resistance strategies employed by women of color in Xbox live, an online gaming community. Ethnographic observations and narrative interviewing reveal that women of color, as deviants within the space, face intersecting oppressions in gaming as in life outside the gaming world. They are linguistically profiled within the space based off of how they sound. They have responded with various strategies to combat the discrimination they experience. Some segregate themselves from the larger gaming population and many refuse to purchase games that depict women in a hyper-sexualized manner or that present people of color stereotypically. For others, the solution is to "sit-in" on games and disrupt game flow by 'player-killing' or engage in other 'griefing' activities. I analyze this behavior in the context of Black feminist consciousness and resistance and uncover that these methods are similar to women who employ resistance strategies for survival within the real world.

This study explores how WeChat, one of the most popular Chinese-based Social Network Sites (SNSs), has been adopted and used under different patterns between two Chinese generation cohorts, namely “The post-70” (i.e., people who were born in the 1970s) and “The post-90” (i.e., people who were born in the 1990s). Three major issues were examined in this Study: (1) what are the differences in WeChat connection between two generations; (2) how Chinese post-70 and the post-90 cohorts differ regarding their cultural value orientations and how those differences influence their WeChat connection; (3) if there is a participatory cultural divide between two generation cohorts. Two hundred and eight the post-70 cohort and 221 the post-90 cohort were recruited to complete a 91-item survey. Results indicated significant differences between the post-70 and the post-90 cohorts in WeChat adoption and use, collectivistic/individualistic (COL/IND) orientations, and participation in creating and spreading of popular online memes. Moreover, factors influencing human capital- enhancing activities on WeChat were examined. Also explored were the influence of cultural values on the motivations to connect to the Internet and frequencies of different types of WeChat activities. Major findings and limitations were discussed.

This study investigated how young adults communicate their decision to religiously disaffiliate to their parents. Both the context in which the religious disaffiliation conversation took place and the communicative behaviors used during the religious disaffiliation conversation were studied. Research questions and hypotheses were guided by Family Communication Patterns Theory and Face Negotiation Theory. A partially mixed sequential quantitative dominate status design was employed to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Interviews were conducted with 10 young adults who had either disaffiliated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Watch Tower Society. During the interviews, the survey instrument was refined; ultimately, it was completed by 298 religiously disaffiliated young adults. For the religious disaffiliation conversation’s context, results indicate that disaffiliated Jehovah’s Witnesses had higher conformity orientations than disaffiliated Latter-day Saints. Additionally, disaffiliated Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced more stress than disaffiliated Latter-day Saints. Planning the conversation in advance did lead to the disaffiliation conversation being less stressful for young adults. Furthermore, the analysis found that having three to five conversations reduced stress significantly more than having one or two conversations. For the communicative behaviors during the religious disaffiliation conversation, few differences were found in regard to prevalence of the facework behaviors between the two groups. Of the 14 facework behaviors, four were used more often by disaffiliated JW than disaffiliated LDS—abuse, passive aggressive, pretend, and defend self. In terms of effectiveness, the top five facework behaviors were talk about the problem, consider the other, have a private discussion, remain calm, and defend self. Overall, this study begins the conversation on how religious disaffiliation occurs between young adults and their parents and extends Family Communication Patterns Theory and Face Negotiation Theory to a new context.