Digital Commons Network^™

Examining Place Meanings In The Social Media Of The U.S. National Park Service, Camille Marcotte

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

National parks are important ecological and cultural resources worldwide, and in the United States, many have begun to use social media to guide visitors’ experiences and to communicate about special qualities of place. But, how exactly are social media messages crafted, and how do they attempt to structure viewers’ ideas about national parks? To answer these questions, this study used rhetorical discourse analysis to examine a one-year sample of texts and images from Facebook posts drawn from three large U.S. national parks. Results of this study showed that parks use different stylistic devices and methods of persuasion to make claims …

Cyberbullying Prevention In Schools, Robin Neorr

Masters Essays

Cyberbullying is a growing problem among teenagers. Students are always connected via text messages and social media websites. The years of a student being bullied at school and then going home to a safe space where their bully was no longer able to torment them are over. Constant connectivity allows for 24-7 access for the bully to torment their victim. Combine this with an increasing number of social media outlets and the tormentors’ belief that they can remain anonymous online; it is clear there is a need for students to learn ethical communication methods in school.

This essay will examine …

Identifying A Customer Centered Approach For Urban Planning: Defining A Framework And Evaluating Potential In A Livability Context, Golnaz Sarram

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In transportation planning, public engagement is an essential requirement forinformed decision-making. This is especially true for assessing abstract concepts such aslivability, where it is challenging to define objective measures and to obtain input that canbe used to gauge performance of communities. This dissertation focuses on advancing adata-driven decision-making approach for the transportation planning domain in thecontext of livability. First, a conceptual model for a customer-centric framework fortransportation planning is designed integrating insight from multiple disciplines (chapter1), then a data-mining approach to extracting features important for defining customersatisfaction in a livability context is described (chapter 2), and finally an appraisal of …

Image Forgery Detection With Machine Learning, Lubna Alzamil

All Master's Theses

The issue of forged images is currently a global issue that spreads mainly via social networks. Image forgery has weakened Internet users’ confidence in digital images. In recent years, extensive research has been devoted to the development of new techniques to combat various image forgery attacks. Detecting fake images prevents counterfeit photos from being used to deceive or cause harm to others. In this thesis, we propose methods using the error level analysis algorithm to detect manipulated images. We show that our combination of image pre-processing and machine learning techniques is an efficient approach to detecting image forgery attacks.

Student Success And The Impact Of Social Media: Integrating And Regulating Boundaries, Brianna Facemire

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I will be examining the impact social media has on student success. I do not define success as only academic success. I believe success is a combination of mental and physical well-being, academic success, and the opportunities available to students during their time at the institution as well as after. The guiding question for my research is: how is social media negating students to reach their full potential? I will use the works of John Dewy, Paulo Friere, Arthur Chickering and others in hopes to address this question of concern. My overarching thesis is social media is …

Adoption Of Pasture Management Practices In Rondônia, Brazil: Social Media As An Informational Influence, Cassandra Sevigny

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The welfare of rural households depends on income from agricultural production. The adoption of new agricultural practices can improve farmer welfare by increasing yield and/or lowering production costs, but farmers do not always adopt beneficial practices. I examine whether social media use influences pasture management practices among smallholder cattle farmers in Rondônia, Brazil. This Amazonian state is heavily deforested for use as farmland, especially pasture for beef and dairy cattle. Traditional pasture management degrades soil over time, requiring pasture productivity interventions or deforestation for new land. Nontraditional practices can reduce degradation. Agricultural technology adoption literature explores the influence of risk, …

Ethics, Privacy And Data Collection: A Complex Intersection, Matthew S. Brown

Honors Theses

The technology around us enables incredible abilities such as high-resolution video calls and the ability to stay connected with everyone we care about through social media. This technology also comes with a hidden cost in the form of data collection.

This work explores what privacy means and how users understand what data social media companies collect and monetize. This thesis also proposes a more ethical business model that addresses privacy concerns from an individual perspective.

A Little Birdy Told Me: Analysis Of The Impact Of Public Tweet Sentiment On Stock Prices, Alexander Novitsky

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of the advent of the internet in 1983 with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ruling allowing firms the use of social media for public disclosures merged to create a wealth of user data that traders could quickly capitalize on to improve their own predictive stock return models. This thesis analyzes some of the impact that this new data may have on stock return models by comparing a model that uses the Index Price and Yesterday’s Stock Return to one that includes those two factors as well as average tweet Polarity and Subjectivity. This analysis is done with ten …

The Dark Tetrad, Social Dominance Orientation, And Online Political Discussion, Cory D. Taylor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Previous literature into online trolling behavior has focused upon the role of the Dark Tetrad and political measures separately. This study extended the existing body of research by examining the relationship between the Dark Tetrad personality traits, social dominance orientation (SDO) and online political trolling in the United States of America. The data was collected using an online questionnaire from American users of Facebook and Reddit in the summer of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter movement, and in the runup to a hotly contested national election. Positive correlations were found between all of the Dark Tetrad traits, …

Student's Perceptions Of Smartphone Use At Home And At A High School Regarding A New Smartphone Policy: A Case Study, Ana Zurita

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The new generation raised in the digital era continues to present unresolved challenges for both parents and teachers. The purpose of this case study is to analyze students' usage of their smartphones in their lives, and understand the success of a new school policy on smartphone use at an arts school in the U.S. For this qualitative research, I interviewed ten participants from the high school. The literary review informs us that smartphones are potentially addictive, with negative effects for healthy mental, emotional and social child development, as well as a source of misleading information. As a consequence, smartphones in …

Social Media's Impact On College Student Activism: Senior Student Affairs Professional's Perspectives, Louis Soltysiak

Masters Theses

Activism has been an ever present on college campuses throughout history. The student activist has been a part of some of the biggest movements in American history, such as, the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Kent State Massacre, and the #MeToo movement. This study seeks to understand student activism on college campuses and how activism has changed in our new digital era. The internet’s social media platforms have created new meeting places and areas for idea sharing for college activists. These social media platforms mean that students can remotely plan, organize, and execute their protests, demonstrations, or …

College Students' Social Media Uses And Affective Correlates, Jennifer L. Lippold

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Given the high prevalence of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety among college students, research on social media use, a salient feature of the modern college experience, is increasingly warranted. While research documents a link between negative psychological symptomology and social media use, few studies have examined what specific patterns of use may be more or less harmful than others. Therefore, the present study investigated whether specific types of social media use (socially oriented uses, information seeking uses, and entertainment uses) are more or less strongly associated with affective variables (depression, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect). Utilizing …