COMM 110: Quantitative Research Methods in Communication 

Throughout the winter quarter of junior year, I examined the relationship between individuals and characters/celebrities to understand why and how one may develop a personal attachment to someone they have never met and, in some cases, may not even exist. I had always been captivated by how our interpersonal relationships shaped our personalities and impacted our perspective. Knowing that media also shapes the way we tend to view ourselves, I was curious about further learning how both may intertwine as we form parasocial connections despite never having in-person interactions. 

Analyzing previous research on the subject, and incorporating PLO #5, I delved further into understanding why one might begin to bond with celebrities and characters. From this I hypothesized that dependency on parasocial relationships stem from the support (or lack thereof) from interpersonal relationships and statuses one currently holds. 

COMM 111: Qualitative Research Methods in Communication

For this project, students were asked to study a form of content and develop a research presentation on how we felt our media pieces affected certain communities based on the way the medium encouraged us to interact with them. 

Throughout the presentation, our group focused on what social values were most present when examining the makeup of children's television shows and what negative attributes were portrayed based on negative depictions of gendered roles within the shows. We examined popular shows across the decades, from the 80s to current day, and wanted to see if gender roles over the course of time had a better or worse representation based on how characters acted. 

Utilizing PLO #5, our we were able to draw upon previous research focusing on gendered roles and impact of children's shows to provide a foundation for our research question. By using a content analysis approach, our group inferred that negative depictions of gender roles vastly differed between males and females, but noticed an overall trend for a depictions of gendered roles for the more modern era of children shows.