Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Perceptions Of New Media Among The Lakota Nation, Isabelle C. Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception, the worldwide web has fundamentally altered our understanding of communications. With the rapid adoption of new media around the globe, individuals are increasingly able to communicate with people on the other side of the planet in real-time--traditional boundaries like time and space are no longer relevant barriers to intercultural communication. As such, scholars are scrambling to recognize and understand the broader implications of social media, videoconferencing, blogging, etc on more traditional definitions of culture. Additionally, researchers are beginning to study the ways in which minority cultures are utilizing new media, and the way that new media impacts …

The Screen To Desire, Joseph Parra

Theses and Dissertations

Joseph Parra reflects on our often embellished online personas and their effect on our desires. Through luscious 3-dimensional painting Parra translates the seductive desire of the hypermasculine male-presenting figure through glorification and criticality. The tactile painting also acts as a rebellion to accurately represent “real” life on the digital screen.

Examining The Perceptions Of Fake News, Verification, And Notices On Twitter, Brendan Patrick Gwynn

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of social media platforms has had a significant impact on the conventional model of gatekeeping. With increased access to information--as well as the ability to contribute to the public discourse--individuals no longer need to rely on the mass media for news. These realities have led to increased conversations surrounding credibility in the digital age. Although not a new concept, fake news has become increasingly common in recent years. The web--particularly social media outlets, like Twitter--have enhanced the spread of misinformation. To combat this, social media platforms have introduced gatekeeping features like verification marks and warning labels. However, questions …

Influence For Change: Consumer Perceptions Of Social Media Influencer Engagement In Social Responsibility, Lauren Elizabeth Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media has become a place for Social Media Influencers (SMIs) and brands to interact with users. For decades, brands and companies have been engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility, which has recently become highly visible through social media. While not brands, SMIs have also started engaging in and creating social responsibility content on social media platforms, such as Instagram. An experimental design study of 421 participants was conducted to examine and compare consumer perceptions. Using self-presentation theory as a framework and experimental design, this study analyzes consumer perceptions of brand and SMI credibility and authenticity when engaging in social responsibility …

Agenda Setting In The Digital Age: The Impact Of Mass Media And Social Media On The Topic Of Sexual Harassment, Melissa True Gibbs

Theses and Dissertations

The news media plays an important role in communication. The function of the media in a free society is to inform the public, be a watchdog of government, provide a voice for the voiceless, and help determine which issues should be discussed in the community. The power of the mass media to guide the social agenda and influence the public's perception of what issues are important has been questioned in the digital age. This study examines traditional agenda-setting in the digital era to understand how the theory functions in a computer mediated society. The #MeToo movement acts as a case …

Linking Exposure To Political Content On Social Media With Political Polarization: The Mediating Role Of Anger, Audrey Anne Halversen

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has detailed concerns that exposure to both pro- and counter- attitudinal content on social media can result in outcomes of ideological polarization (e.g. Bail et al., 2018; Lu & Lee, 2018). However, further research is needed in order to understand the conditions under which this polarization may take place. To investigate this issue, this study utilizes a sample of 414 social media users in the U.S. to investigate the mediating effects of a) anger toward political opposites and b) anger toward oppositional social media content on the relationships between various types of political content exposure and the outcome …

Creating A Long-Term Relationship Between A Museum And Its Patrons: Examining Social Media As Opr Tool, Kylie M. Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study comprised of six case studies explores museums’ practical usage of social media as an organization public relations tool. Analyzing six different museums using both surveys and interviews, this research provides a strategic, theory-based framework for any organization to utilize social media effectively by increasing public trust and engagement. Understanding the role that social media plays within organizational public relations is crucial for both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Because nonprofit organizations are often operating under time, personnel, and financial constraints, the accessibility and zero-cost of social media are hugely advantageous tools for non-profits organizations. However, without a …

( Dis ) Ability Discourse And The Mediation Of Disabled Identity In Young Adult Literature And Television, Daniel Freeman

Theses and Dissertations

The primary aim of literary (and media) disability studies scholarship has been to examine the rhetorical effects of the various representations of disability that are found throughout literature, television, and other cultural sites of inquiry. The Internet has helped to facilitate this aim, opening these types of discussions to the general public. Social media has given individuals the power, agency, and voice to assert their ideas about disability identity, and (dis)ability (as a system; see Schalk, Bodyminds Reimagined) more broadly to the world, and in doing so, has radically altered the author-text-audience relationship. My project examines the authorial choices of …

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet, Or @The_C_U_R_B, Candace B. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Banquet (The C.U.R.B.) is an interdisciplinary art project consisting of citizen science experiments, community events, and social media storytelling that collectively examine critical issues of environmental, social, and food-based justice as we face oncoming climate crisis. The project explores lessons learned about/with/from Brooklyn's feral edible plant and animal species, many of whom have long and complicated relationships with humanity. Artist Candace Thompson of The C.U.R.B. forages and processes these beings into food and medicine, and conducts DIY remediation experiments with them in an attempt to mitigate any contamination found therein. She shares her fndings via an …

Ustube - A Grounded Theory Analysis Of The Relationship Between Youtube And Influencers, Alex Michie Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

Since YouTube's launch in 2005, it has grown into one of the most visited social media platforms in the world. It launched with the slogan "Broadcast Yourself" with the promise that the content sharing site would allow anyone to post, share, and interact with videos from anyone around the world for free. Many people took advantage of that promise and became Internet celebrities, or "influencers," in a short amount of time, amassing millions of subscribers and billions of views. The success of these YouTube stars has led them to land roles on TV and in films, launch music careers, write …

Ustube -- An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Youtube And Influencers, Alex Michie Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

Since YouTube's launch in 2005, it has grown into one of the most visited social media platforms in the world. It launched with the slogan "Broadcast Yourself"with the promise that the content sharing site would allow anyone to post, share, and interact with videos from anyone around the world for free. Many people took advantage of that promise and became Internet celebrities, or "influencers,"in a short amount of time, amassing millions of subscribers and billions of views. The success of these YouTube stars has led them to land roles on TV and in films, launch music careers, write books, and …

A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel

Theses and Dissertations

I bring together the relational ethics of feminist critical theory with approaches of multimodal rhetoric to examine the ethical implications of composing on social media platforms. Most social media platforms are designed to value consumerism, efficiency, quantity of web traffic, and constant synchronous response over concerns of responsible and critical communication. I propose a rhetorical approach of techno-social relationality (TSR) as an intervention against such corporate-minded design. Through this approach, I argue that civil engagement is not limited to people’s social responsibilities but rather is entwined in complex, material-technical contexts. By considering the responsibility of our machines as much as …

The Impact Of Breakups On Social Media Use Among Digital Natives, Hyejin Kim

Theses and Dissertations

Digital natives, who are born and raised with digital technologies, have a deep affinity with social media. Social media has a great influence over an individual's daily life, even on his/her intimate and romantic relationship. As a breakup of romantic relationships can commonly happen to digital natives, and as it is likely to cause distress and psychological symptoms afterwards, this study attempted to find out the impact of breakups on social media use among digital natives. The quantitate survey was conducted with 175 valid participants between the ages of 18-30. These participants were those who currently live in the United …

Orthodontists’ And Patients’ Preferences In Website Design In The Selection Of An Orthodontic Practice: A Comparative Study, Taylor R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: To determine which website characteristics are preferred by orthodontists, adult patients, and parents of patients.

Materials and Methods: 1,000 active members of the American Association of Orthodontists and 750 active orthodontic patients/parents were sampled. Participants rated the importance of website characteristics, indicated presence of those characteristics on the current website, and ranked sample website images. Preferences were compared between orthodontist and the patient/parent group using t-tests and sample websites were compared using ANOVA models and Tukey’s adjusted post-hoc tests. Significance level was set at 0.05.

Results: 11 of the 16 website features showed significant differences between patients/parents and orthodontists. …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Violence, Transcendence And Spectacle In The Age Of Social Media: #Jesuischarlie Demonstrations And Hollande's Speech After The 2015 Terrorist Attacks, Barbara Luisa Desoto

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the reactions — both in real life and on social media — to two terrorist attacks in Paris: satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the Bataclan shooting in November 2015. Using Richard Sennett's Fall of Public Man and Antonin Artaud's Le théâtre et son double to explore these reactions as theater, this approach reveals the religious nature of supposedly secular reactions to religious extremism.

Digital Photography As Experience Artifact, Ryan V. Brennan

Theses and Dissertations

Through the screen interface, the boundary between personal and collective experience is being redefined both spatially and temporally. Here, memories are given independent mediated existence, taking form in digital photographic artifacts that can be communally shared and manipulated into a synthetic continuum.

The Actor Behind The Camera, Zechariah H. Pierce

Theses and Dissertations

Through an accidental discovery of an interest in the film making process, I decided to explore the opportunities that would come through self-education in the field. Along the way, I found that the process of working behind the camera can, in fact, help the actor’s career in front of the camera and provide a chance to train in a nontraditional way. After directing two projects (one simple and one more complicated), I decided to propose a class in which students would be required to self- produce their own video projects online. The class was vastly popular, and the students’ responses …

The New Gatekeepers: How Blogs Subverted Mainstream Book Reviews, Rebecca E. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Book reviewing has a fraught history in the United States. Reviewers have long been accused of not being analytical enough. It should be no wonder then with the emergence of social media that online book reviewing has become increasingly popular. Online reviewers, especially book bloggers, are no literary gatekeepers in their own right, shaping the tastes of readers across the world. Book blogs in particular pay special attention to titles which have long been derided by institutions such as libraries, academia, publishers, and bookstores. These literary gatekeepers typically ignore romance, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, young adult fiction, comic books, and …

Blogs, Books, & Breadcrumbs: A Case Study Of Transmedial Fairy Tales, Kristy Gilbert Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding transmedial storytelling is particularly important to fairy-tale studies. Monomedial views have long been unable to account for all of fairy tale tradition. Although the form originated in oral culture, it has long been a liminal, hybrid form that retains aspects of orality even while its principal mode of transference for some time has been something other than face-to-face communication. Transformations and adaptations across different media and contexts has resulted in a system of fairy-tale tradition that is massively intertextual and transmedial. No one medium can claim primary control over the fairy-tale tradition. Throughout time, oral tellings have inspired literary …

The Art Of Perl: How A Scripting Language (Inter)Activated The World Wide Web, Norberto Gomez Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

In 1987, computer programmer and linguist Larry Wall authored the general-purpose, high-level, interpreted, dynamic Unix scripting language, Perl. Borrowing features from C and awk, Perl was originally intended as a scripting language for text-processing. However, with the rising popularity of the Internet and the advent of Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web (Web), in the 1990s, Perl soon became the glue-language for the Internet, due in large part to its relationship to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Perl was the go-to language for on the fly program writing and coding, gaining accolades from the likes …

Interactive Web Technology In The Art Classroom: Problems And Possibilities, Marie Lynne Aitken Oxborrow

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that the use of technology in curriculum, and art classrooms in particular, can benefit students. This thesis outlines these benefits which include the potential for technology to make learning more personal, assist students in their future careers, and allow opportunity for collaboration. Still, several obstacles impede the full-fledged realization of that potential, often leading teachers to avoid or ignore technology in their pedagogical strategies. This thesis addresses these obstacles and provides practical and theoretical solutions. Once these obstacles are overcome, teachers will be better able to incorporate new technology in their lessons, such as social media, podcasts, …