Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2013 Polygamy is creepy, wrong, and sick! (however, I find it fascinating) : parasocial comparison, parasocial processing, parasocial contact hypothesis, and polygamy Thomas Phillip Madison Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Madison, Thomas Phillip, "Polygamy is creepy, wrong, and sick! (however, I find it fascinating) : parasocial comparison, parasocial processing, parasocial contact hypothesis, and polygamy" (2013). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2222. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2222 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. POLYGAMY IS CREEPY, WRONG, AND SICK! (HOWEVER, I FIND IT FASCINATING): PARASOCIAL COMPARISON, PARASOCIAL PROCESSING, PARASOCIAL CONTACT HYPOTHESIS, AND POLYGAMY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Manship School of Mass Communication by Thomas Phillip Madison B.A., Texas Tech University, 2002 M.A., Texas Tech University, 2008 December 2013 This work is dedicated to families -- polygamous, monogamous, multiracial, multiethnic, and the many other beautiful forms they may take. Nobody really knows what a family is supposed to look like, but we all know it in our hearts when we see one. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not exist if it weren’t for the support from an endless stream of people who either believed in me or put up with my less desirable character traits. I’ve said it in my master’s thesis and I’ll say it again: I thank God for carving my path through the influences of the following people. No doubt some people whom are due credit will be overlooked in this section. I wish to apologize in advance, and please rest assured of this -- if I overlooked you, I will be painfully aware of it for the rest of my life. The people who have always been there and who I hope will be there for years to come are my wife Leticia, my parents Dr. Tom and Ann Madison, my grandmother, Clydelle Madison, my aunts and uncles, Alice, Ken, Cynthia, Mike, Miriam, and Charlie. My great aunt, Joyce Jarmon, is also someone I’d like to mention, as she, well into her 90s, has taken to social media as proficiently as a teenager. As mean as I was to her when we were kids, my sister, Merriet Madison has always provided a shoulder to cry on. If the world were full of people like her, life would be both exciting and comfortable. Sadly, my grandmother Gwendolyn Scherz and grandfathers Otto Scherz and Thomas Franklin Madison Jr. are no longer here to see this thing come to an end. As far as in-laws go, I married extremely well. They are too numerous to name, but I have at any given time 14 brothers and sisters-in-law in Mexico, as well as around 30 nieces and nephews. These people I consider as much my family as my blood relatives. I am incredibly thankful for all of my family’s support over the years. It is support like this that helped me become educated and productive enough to get into the incredibly competitive doctoral program in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. iii In February 2008 Dr. Margaret “Peggy” DeFleur called me at Texas Tech and said the Manship School at LSU wanted to fly me in show me the campus. She was the first contact I had with the University. Over the past five years Dr. DeFleur has been one of the most inspiring and comforting people employed at LSU. She has seen armies of graduates students come and go, and I have no doubt her expertise and engagement are at least in part responsible for their successes, just as she is for mine. During my visit to the LSU campus, I later met Amy Ladley (now a Ph.d.), Amy Martin, Dr. Ralph Izzard, Dr. Monica Postelnicu, Raluca Cozma (now Ph.D.) -- all instrumental in my decision to accept the Manship School’s offer to join the doctoral program. I have remained friends over the years with Dr. Gennadi Gevorgyan, Dr. Masudul Biswas, and Dr. Chris McCollough, whom I also met during my first visit to LSU. Dr. Amy Reynolds took the reins from Dr. DeFleur regarding graduate student advising, and has been there for me on numerous occasions. One day, future Manship graduates will write of her as I have Dr. DeFleur. The Manship School’s grad program is in good hands with Dr. Reynolds. Chris McCollough, Ph.D., may be one of the most considerate people I have ever met. In September 2008 Hurricane Gustav devastated parts of South and central Louisiana, as well as Mississippi. In Gustav’s aftermath, the Baton Rouge streets were quite dangerous. Giant trees had ripped out power lines all over town and many parts were flooded. Power was out in some parts for weeks and the National Guard was mobilized to get food, water, and ice to the survivors. Almost five years later the city is still repairing itself. Immediately after the hurricane, however, Chris took it upon himself to drive around to the homes of us incoming doctoral students to check on our statuses. Luckily nobody was injured, though some of our homes had iv been damaged. Chris organized a barbecue to get us all together, away from ruminating about our situations in humid darkness, and to put food in our freezers to good use before it went bad. Chris also helped me in my job hunt. His wisdom and experience proved invaluable as I began my formal job search, and some of his pointers not only helped me find work as a professor, but will shape how I teach students in the immediate future. I am proud, privileged, and honored to include Chris among the people I call “colleague.” Patricia Smith, Dr. Erica Taylor (who finished the Ph.D. program in an astounding 3 years), Dr. Ashley Kirzinger, Dr. Matthew Thornton, Jason Laenen, Emily Pfetzer, and I formed the 2008 Manship doctoral cohort. We sweat, bled, suffered, starved, stressed, panicked, and sometimes even had fun together. At this time we have all gone our separate ways, but having the shared experience of the program with these people has been an honor for me. I want them all to know that time together, in my mind, was very special, and I wish them all the best as we take our shared experience in our respective directions. Jason Laenen and I met Richard Graymer in a digital humanities class taught by Dr. Lillian Bridwell-Bowles. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend quite like Richard, one of the most prolific and productive artists and musicians I have ever known in my life. We are all our own worst enemies, and friends like Richard recognize this and stop us before we drive ourselves insane. Richard’s friendship and support over the years brought me back from the edge of insanity on numerous occasions, and I’d like to publicly acknowledge what an outstanding person he is. I will forever reflect fondly upon the times we spent hashing out life, trying to figure things out, and just accepting that most things we’ll never figure out – we just have to live through them. v Alex V. Cook came to LSU in August of 2012 as the Student Media Advisor for the Manship School. As did the other people mentioned in this chapter, Alex has shaped the way I think about life, particularly in such diverse concepts as creative expression, fatherhood, and journalism. There is usually a social distance between a grad student and the faculty and staff. With Alex, our relationship feels more like a kinship -- the kind good friends feel with each other but not necessarily the real and often-obnoxious kind between blood relatives. Plus, it really says something about a friend when around 70% of the time you go to lunch with them you end up laughing so hard the muscles in your neck and skull hurt. For having the privilege of knowing Alex Cook, I am very thankful. Dr. Laura Crosswell and myself suffer from similar fears and anxieties. We defended our dissertations a couple of months apart, but the time leading up to our completion of the documents and organizing the defenses was incredibly maddening. I am quite thankful for having her as a friend and colleague and, in general, someone who understands exactly how it feels to be tightly gripped by the icy fingers of academic terror. I value her friendship and want to acknowledge that her support in my own times of dissertation stress helped get me through. I only hope that I was as helpful and comforting to her during her times of stress as she was to me. One of the formative experiences of my doctoral career was working in CreateLab. CreateLab is an extracurricular group supported by the Digital Media Initiative to identify technological problems in mass communication and find creative tech solutions. Kristin Hinton, Rachel Weaver, Vilien Gomez, Haley Shales, Prentiss Darden, Mallory Richard, Chris Carpenter, and I were the inaugural group. Working with these people was an incredible challenge (considering my “advanced” age), but one of the more rewarding things I ever had the opportunity to do.