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Hashtagging Your Health: Using Psychosocial Variables And Social Media Use To Understand Impression Management And Exercise Behaviors In Women, Caitlyn Hauff Dec 2016

Hashtagging Your Health: Using Psychosocial Variables And Social Media Use To Understand Impression Management And Exercise Behaviors In Women, Caitlyn Hauff

Theses and Dissertations

Our society has become heavily reliant on social media, especially in the health and exercise domain. Social and environmental factors impact females’ body image perceptions and create body image disturbances, yet little research is dedicated to the exploration of how social media, and social comparisons through social media exposure, impact exercise behaviors and body image perceptions in females. Considering Perloff's (2014) theoretical model, the current study explored how the interaction between individual psychosocial variables and social media use predict exercise behaviors and engagement in impression management in women. Using a mixed methodological approach, the specific aims of this study were …


Young Adult Authors, Readers, And Feminized Social Media, Margaret R. Kohlmann Aug 2016

Young Adult Authors, Readers, And Feminized Social Media, Margaret R. Kohlmann

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at YA literature, a feminized genre that continues to gain momentum in publishing and popular culture. Specifically, I look at YA authors and their readers’ interactions on social media and the manner in which these conversations are gendered. I argue that YA authors are expected to utilize feminized traits on social media with their readers and fellow authors, but they use same traits to create social change in the genre and industry. This project analyzes three different types of readers: Readers, Reader-Creators, and Bloggers and their interactions with YA authors on social media. My interviews with five …


Queering By Example: Sex Education In The Age Of Vlogging, Zoe M. Simpson Jun 2016

Queering By Example: Sex Education In The Age Of Vlogging, Zoe M. Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 1990s saw the rise of third wave feminism, queer theory and the digital age. This paper looks at how the three come together in YouTube video bloggers’ promotion of queer sex-positive ideology. Sex positivism is the belief that all safe, consensual sex is healthy, while queer theory emphasizes the diversity and instability of sex and gender identities. YouTube vloggers engaged in life-streaming profit from the entertainment value of revealing personal sexual information while framing their sexual revelations as healthy, shame-free sex positivism. In doing so, they also put their unique and sometimes changing sexualities on public display, in effect …


Differential Reinforcement In The Online Radicalization Of Western Muslim Women Converts, Heather Cone Jan 2016

Differential Reinforcement In The Online Radicalization Of Western Muslim Women Converts, Heather Cone

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The emerging phenomenon of Western women Islamic converts learning radicalized ideology through social media constitutes a challenge to cyber policy makers hampered by a lack of gender-nuanced radicalization research. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative case study was to develop a greater understanding of how the differential reinforcement tenet of social learning theory may help to explain the conversion and radicalization of Western women towards a fundamentalist Islamic ideology through their participation in the social media. Key research questions explored how participation in online social media may create vulnerability towards radicalization and exploitation. The blogs of 3 different Western women …