Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6559

Date

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Communication

Committee Chair

Gray Matthews

Committee Member

Christina Moss

Committee Member

David Goodman

Abstract

This project investigates what Mr. Fred Rogers referred to as "our kind of communication" in a 1969 Senate testimony wherein he was awarded twenty million dollars to fund continuation of his children's educational television program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I ask how "our kind of communication" manifests throughout the series' thirty-three year run and then contextualize the communicative mode's significance in the present day. I position this study as a communicative, philosophical inquiry which connects issues of pedagogy, rhetoric, epistemology, and ontology. First, I ground the study in relevant literature regarding mass media and (public) television, rhetorical televisual framing, an amended invitational rhetoric, epistemic rhetoric, and a turn toward epistemologies. Through ethical close reading in the spirit of post-qualitative inquiry, I observe four overarching patterns that create the inscape of Mr. Rogers's "kind of communication." Finally, centering resonance theory, I locate and illuminate a listening-based epistemology demonstrated by Mr. Rogers over time that promotes hope within the Western paradigm and promise for developing an ecology of knowledges.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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