Skip to main content
News Articles

Graduate student theses shed light on comms issues

With the end of another school year closing in on the BYU student body, many graduates are starting life after school head-on. Among the communications graduates departing campus this year, two have completed extensive research for their master’s theses in the realm of communications and media effects.

Emma Nordquist

Emma Nordquist’s Master’s thesis focused on diversity and inclusion within Fortune 100 companies.

Emma Nordquist, a graduate student from Spokane, Wash,. has focused her research on culture, diversity and inclusion. Her thesis, “Diversity and Inclusion: An Analysis of the Websites of the Best Companies to Work for and of the Websites of Fortune 100 Companies,” explored how diversity was being discussed. She researched if religious diversity was mentioned, and if diversity and accommodation practices enhance or inhibit corporate culture.

Afterwards, she made six strategic recommendations on how companies can effectively communicate diversity to their organization, potential employees, customers and investors:

  1. Be transparent. Give specific examples of how diversity is present and how it is accommodated.
  2. Dedicate a singular page to “Diversity and Inclusion.”
  3. Use testimonials from clients and current employees.
  4. “Diversity and Inclusion” should be its own page and should use that title.
  5. Diversity needs to be present on more than just a webpage.
  6. Provide lots of realistic pictures.

Nordquist is currently the Customer Marketing Analyst at Vivint.

Sara Shawcroft conducted her Master

Sara Shawcroft conducted her Master’s research on text messaging and its implications on modern communication.

Sara Shawcroft conducted her thesis on text messaging and its implications on modern communication, specifically regarding gender. According to the abstract, “The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether there are gender differences in the use of text messaging and, if so, what the differences are.” Participants in the study were recruited via a convenience sample of 27 participants between the ages of 18 and 35. Shawcroft’s research found the following:

  • When arguing, males prefer a phone call or face-to-face interaction rather than text messaging so as to avoid misunderstanding. Females prefer text messaging to moderate responses.
  • Females tend to text to exclude others in present company to maintain privacy more so than males.
  • While texting, most females prefer longhand rather than shorthand, where males are split.
  • Males tend to text to keep themselves awake while females tend to text to keep others awake.
  • Females expressed that asking for a date via text was inappropriate while males had no opinion.

Shawcroft is originally from Swanton, Ohio, but currently resides in McRae, Ga., where she works part-time drafting content using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).