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Photo by Dorothy Bowles

Jimmy and the Doctors — Mark Miller, Albert Einstein and James Dean congratulate Ron Sitton on his successful defense in 2003. Sitton used Miller's VBPro for his dissertation.

The Tennessee Years

   I sat in Dr. Mark Miller's office asking him to head my dissertation committee and be my adviser. We'd met everyone else on staff, and I realized he knew his business. But some of my fellow first-year doctoral students thought I was crazy.

   "That's a double-barreled question if I've ever heard one," I replied. "I'm here to do both."

   Miller smiled mischieviously.

   "Good, then you won't mind if we don't take any of your master's credits toward your degree," he intoned.

   That punched me in the gut; other students had applied as much as 17 hours from their previous work towards the goal. But I trusted him.

   Looking back, I'm glad I did. I graduated from the University of Tennessee May 7, 2004, with my doctorate of philosophy in communication.

   This followed a successful dissertation defense one year prior, and a bunch of revisions to my work, "Framing by Media and Social Movement Organizations: Cross-Cultural Prestige Press Coverage of the Kyoto Protocol," available here. Framing can be understood as both a tactic, i.e. a function of elevating the perception of the most important facts within an issue, and a product, i.e. the organization of experience.

Tattau's toon described Sitton's frantic pace while trying to finish the dissertation. Writing and revisions took up a good three years.

   The joy of just getting through the defense was evident by this homepage post:

May 7, 2003 - Knoxville, Tenn. — The master procrastinator, king of the procrastination nation, danger to morality ... yep, that cat done defended his diss.

   After a two-hour session with Sitton's adviser, the venerable Dr. Mark Miller; dissertation committee members Dr. Bonnie Riechert and Dr. David Sachsman of the communications discipline, and Dr. Sherry Cable of environmental sociology, Ron Sitton attained the elusive goal of successfully defending the dissertation.

   "I feel like I should be more relieved than I am," Sitton said. "Even so, it feels good."

   Sitton plans to make revisions in Knoxville over May and June.

   Though the title's not official until graduation, Sitton used the moniker "Dr. Ron" at Sassy Ann's that evening. It went over well with his first public performance while playing the harmonica.

   I continued working on his dissertation while teaching at Muskingum. Dr. Donna Edsall said at the time that she didn't know anyone who finished their dissertation in a year while also teaching classes. To exacerbate the situtation, I moved three times within the next year while trying to finish the revisions.

1999 Graduate Student Association — (l. to. r.) John Moore, Rob Power, secretary Doug Chatham (standing), Ron Sitton, President Kadesha Washington, Anne Pemberton, Vice-President Fred Coulter and Seth Rayman discuss issues affecting graduate students at the GSA's mid-winter meeting. This picture appeared in The Daily Beacon.

   But I did not spend all of my time at the University of Tennessee ONLY taking classes or working on the dissertation. I also taught Intro to Journalism and Media Research courses through the College of Communication (see student evaluations, comments and projects). I helped Glynn Wilson and Bob Hess bring The Southerner to life during my "free time," and even brought Playboy to the UTK campus for a magazine workshop.

   In addition, I served from Fall 1997 through Spring 1999 as a Communications College Graduate Student Association representative. I closely followed the problems with the bridge to the Agricultural campus.

A bridge for traffic out of Neyland Stadium threatened the Native American burial grounds near the Agricultural campus. For awhile, information on the problem could be found on the SPEAK Web site.

   An Indian burial ground provided a "problem" for the UT administration as it sat "in the way" of the highway-style bridge. A group of more than 200 faculty and students protested to the administration during a public hearing called by the GSA, as the deal had already been made with the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

   Because of this action, I introduced a GSA resolution promoting the discontinuance of the four-lane monstrosity in favor of a less-intrusive alternative. Shortly thereafter, similar resolutions passed the Faculty-Senate and SGA Senate. As a result, the bridge wound up moving to the right of the burial mound rather than going over or through it.

   The UT Years also featured some fun along the way as I started singing the blues at Sassy Ann's and during Wilson's porch parties. I also went to Chicago for the first time to present a paper at the annual conference for the Midwest Association of Public Opinion Researchers. Now I try to take my family back to East Tennessee whenever possible.

Dissertation: "Framing by Media and Social Movement Organizations: Cross-Cultural Prestige Press Coverage of the Kyoto Protocol." This dissertation examines the effects of news values and media routines on the framing of societal issues, with emphasis on cross-cultural prestige press coverage of the Kyoto Protocol. To find evidence of these processes, a computerized content analysis using Dr. M. Mark Miller's VBPro suite of programs examined 421 American prestige press articles, 721 British prestige press articles, 112 news releases and 443 opinion pieces appearing from January 1997 to Sept. 11, 2001. The dissertation provides a synthesis of communications and sociological literature, and a cross-cultural comparison of an international environmental issue. Methodologically, VBPro was shown to quantify master frames for the first time. The dissertation also provides a practical explanation to journalists and stakeholders in government, science, business, and social movement organizations of how news values and media routines lead to the acceptance or rejection of issue frames, as well as the possible de-legitimization of sources outside the media routine.

MAPOR Conference Paper: Voting Green: The Environment Factor and Media Use in the 1996 Presidential Election. Authors: Ronald Sitton and Dr. M. Mark Miller. This paper analyzed the 1996 National Election Studies panel data to determine which presidential candidate voters chose as the best candidate to protect the environment. It was presented at the 25th annual meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, Nov. 17-19, 2000. This paper is a updated version of a project written in Spring 1998 to satisfy the requirements of Dr. M. Mark Miller's Risk Communication class.

Environmental Sociology: Framing, Social Constructionism and Mediated Communication. This paper fulfilled the requirements for Dr. Sherry Cable's course and led to my dissertation.

Sociology: Erving Manual Goffman. This paper fulfilled the requirements of Robert Perrin's sociological theory II course in Fall 1999.

Members of the Graduate Student Association hold a sign celebrating the "Love Your Library" 5K in 1998. While mostly apathetic at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Sitton (top right) stayed involved at the University of Tennessee.

UT Symposium Paper: The UPS Strike of 1997: A Case Study Using Web-Based Content Analysis. Authors: Glynn R. Wilson, Ron Sitton, Dr. Robert Gwynne, Kendra Jones, Gene Costain. This paper used a computerized content analysis of UPS strike coverage in major American newspapers from August 1 through September 1997. It was presented at the Twenty-First Annual University of Tennessee Communications Research Symposium and can be found in Volume 19 of the proceedings.

Communication Theory II: The Framing Umbrella: Enhancing the Boundaries of a Theory. This paper from May 11,1999, fulfilled the requirements for Dr. Benjamin Bates' course, and ultimately led to the theoretical portion of my dissertation.

Communication Theory II: Agenda-Setting as a Theory: A Dissection. This paper from Feb. 23, 1999, fulfilled the requirements for Dr. Benjamin Bates' course.

Sociology: Robert Ezra Park. This paper fulfilled the requirements of Robert Perrin's sociological theory course in Fall 1998.

Education: Teaching Mass Communication Writing: A Contrast of Technique (28K). This paper provides the guidelines and ideas I used in developing my first class. It was written in Summer 1998 to satisfy the requirements of Dr. James Crook's Communication Education class.

Public Opinion: The Marijuana Question. This paper attempts to decipher public opinion concerning marijuana legalization. Written in Spring 1998 to satisfy the requirements of Dr. M. Mark Miller's Public Opinion class, this marks my first html attempt and thus continues to bear the UTK url at the bottom of the page.