Digital Commons Network^™

Social Isolation, Fear Of Missing Out, And Social Media Use In Deaf And Hearing College Students, Conor Lake

Theses

This study investigated the relationships between social isolation, fear of missing out, self-esteem, and social media usage, and whether these relationships are different in deaf and hearing college students. Data were collected from 191 individuals (46 Deaf/Hard of Hearing, 145 hearing) via an online survey. Variables included number of social media accounts, time spent (in hours) on social media, number of times per day social media is accessed, FOMO, social media use, hearing status/identity, self-esteem, social isolation, and social media disorder. Correlational tests were conducted separately for hearing and for Deaf/HH participants. The groups had an unequal distribution of gender, …

Personal Branding Strategies Of Female Entertainment Influencers On Tiktok, Shaofu Wang

Theses

This thesis employs quantitative content analysis to investigate the strategies used by female entertainment influencers (FEI) on TikTok to attract followers. The study investigated the six FEIs with the most followers on the TikTok and Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok), three each from both platforms. This study focuses on the visual framework strategy as the theoretical basis to analyze female entertainment influencers’ videos (N=90). The results show that FEIs tend to wear casual clothes and shoot videos with simple backgrounds. Most shooting angles are half-length or full-body shots, which do not display multiple feminine movements in videos.

Regression analyses were …

Digime: An Interactive Experience To Ease The Education Of Social Information Sharing, Kexin 'Coco' Wang

Theses

Ever since digital and social media activities made their way into our day-to-day lives, things have become very different. People are continuously glued to their mobile devices, including children. Besides the tv screen time, mobile media time for 0-to-8 year-olds has tripled between 2013 and 2017, from an average of 15 minutes per day to 48 minutes per day1. As digital exposure is increasing at earlier ages, the danger of social information sharing increases as well.

Children do not often realize that they are giving out a vast quantity of their personal information, and even their parents' to the internet …

How Museum Utilize Social Media On Communication, Jiake Han

School of Professional Studies

With the development of Internet, social media became more and more popular among people. Many industries realize the importance of social media in business. Traditionally, museum concentrates more on personal visual experience, which is hard to be replaced by online media. However, museums now also put more concentrate on social media platform because it expands the way of engagement. Especially, for Coronavirus, many organizations including museums have to close. Therefore, museums have to depend more on social media platforms to communicate with audiences. This research aims at finding how different kind of social media help museum communicate and engage with …

Using Social Media To Assess The Impact Of Weather And Climate On Visitation To Outdoor Recreation Settings, Emily J. Wilkins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When people post photos on social media, these photos often contain information on the location, time, and date the photo was taken; all of this information is stored as metadata and is often never seen or used by the individuals posting the photos. This information can be used by researchers however, to understand the total number of visitors to parks and protected areas, as well as specific places people visit within those parks and protected areas. The first study in this dissertation reviews all the ways social media has been used to understand visitation and visitors’ experiences in parks. Researchers …

Potential Parallels Between Pro-Ana And Bodybuilding Content On Social Media, Katherine Ann Craig

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the relationship between pro-ana and bodybuilding social media content to understand the similarities between these populations’ identities and help inform social media content policies. Two interrelated studies were used to investigate this relationship: Study 1 used computational methods which compared the content through machine classification of pro-ana and bodybuilding social media posts on Twitter and Study 2 fielded an online survey experiment to compare the perceptions and human classification of content from these populations on Instagram. The findings from both studies broadly revealed that pro-ana and bodybuilding identities are similar, at least in social media content, which …

High School Athletic Administration’S Policies And Rights To Sanction Student-Athlete’S Social Media Use, Eric S. Peterson

Leadership Education Capstones

This qualitative survey investigated how much authority high school athletic directors have when monitoring student-athletes’ social media accounts while also determining whether athletic directors believe it is necessary to implement social media policies for student-athletes. An in-depth literature review supports evidence of the legality of athletic code of conducts based on previous court cases and a theoretical framework. Twenty-five athletic directors from the state of North Dakota participated in the study via an online survey. The study obtained basic demographics and determined how the administrators have implemented current social media policies, along with understand their views on policies for student-athletes’ …

"Don't Put An 'Or' Where God Puts An 'And'": Constitutive Rhetoric In Queer Appalachia., Brooke Elizabeth Boling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Appalachians who use the word “queer” to specifically refer to being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and/or asexual, are regularly faced with negotiating how these parts of their identity can exist simultaneously, as many both within and without the region believe it is impossible to be Appalachian and queer at the same time. Despite rampant homophobia in the region and external narratives suggesting that queer Appalachians do not exist, these folkx have carved out spaces for themselves to assert their identities and create community and belonging through rhetorical actions. Many of these spaces are online, taking place through digital …

Social Media And Fear: Social Media As A Catalyst For Political Fear In The United States., Shane R. White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: Using the American National Election Study data from the 2012 and 2016 surveys I explore how social media usage shapes fear. This is likely caused by the nature of social media leading to oversharing of sensationalized articles likely to elicit an emotional and fearful response. My findings suggest first that social media usage has a statistically significant effect on whether they would say they are afraid of a candidate (2012) and how afraid they say they are of the candidates (2016). Second, social media has little effect on economic fear, and may actually make people more hopeful about the …

Understanding The Significance Of Virtual Support During Global Pandemic In Young Adults Diagnosed With Hepatitis C, Veronika Arkhipova

Master's Projects and Capstones

Hepatitis C is a viral infection that attacks the liver and leads to inflammation. In recent years, the prevalence of hepatitis C infections among 20 and 30 years of age has increased by 300 percent, and between 30 and 39 years by 400 percent. Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, people diagnosed with Hepatitis C have lost access to mental health services and resources, including in-person meetings with support groups. Since most states enforced stay-at-home order, many community centers, non-profit organizations that work with Hepatitis C patients and the affected population provide limited to no access to support group meetings …

Barrier-Free Assistant, Jiajia Li

Theses

With the rapid development of the Internet in recent years, social media is also changing and influencing people's social ways. Become an indispensable part of people's social life. Social contact should belong to the whole people, and daily communication is the demand of everyone. However, some particular groups still need to face many obstacles when using social media. For Pre-lingually deaf people, sign language is their first language, and English is their second language. Sometimes when they read some information in the second language, they can't fully understand it, which leads to obstacles when they use social media. Secondly, in …

College Students Succeed With Basic Needs, Jarely Fraga-Lopez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Basic Needs Initiative at CSUMB advocates for overall wellness security and offers six programs to support their mission. Students facing food insecurity experienced lack of stability, mental health issues from past trauma, and lack of college readiness. Some consequences are poor health, worsen mental health and low academic standing. Prior to the shelter-in-place, Basic Needs offered food pantries, in-person CalFresh assistance and events which offered students hot foods. The quarantine caused a decrease in the services within Basic Needs while there was an increase of need within the student body. The internet barrier affected the services the organization offered …

Tweet Diffusion Over Space And Time: A Comparison Of A Winter-Weather And Tornado-Outbreak Case Study, Alyssa Margaret Cannistraci

Masters Theses

Social media allows people to receive, engage in, and share weather information. Users of the social media platform Twitter actively share weather content via tweets, which researchers can acquire through an Application Programming Interface (API). APIs return tweet content, as well as temporal and spatial characteristics (latitude and longitude coordinates). Tweets can then be mapped and studied spatiotemporally through Geographic Information System (GIS) software. For this work, I compared how tweets spread (“diffuse”) over space and time during two natural hazard events in the United States. The first case study is a winter weather event that The Weather Channel named …

Exploring Nursing Student Use Of Instagram: Selfies And Soliloquies And #Becominganurse With Evolving Digital Footprints, Kingsley Ks Au

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background: The availability and adoption of social media technologies suggests that nurses, nursing students, and patients simultaneously use the same digital platforms for all manners of everyday communication. An issue within nursing education pertains to how nursing students use this form of technology during their undergraduate education and its subsequent outward professional impact on the profession.

Purpose: This study explores the ways in which nursing students use social media technology within/for nursing education.

Methodology: This study employs Kozinet’s (2015) netnography, alongside elements of grounded theory and visual methodology.

Sample and setting: The study was conducted by examining pictures and …

A Cross-Cultural Study On The Relationship Between Environmental Awareness And Social Media Use: Saudi Arabia Vs United States, Mohammed Alsahafi

Theses

For many countries today, environmental sustainability is a subject of concern, and the world has witnessed the rise of environmental activism in recent years. Social media is increasingly being used by relevant stakeholders to raise environmental awareness. This study explores the relationship between social media use and environmental awareness from a cross-cultural perspective. Building upon previous research, this study compares social media use, environmental awareness, and their relationship between Saudi Arabian and American college students. Survey data was collected from a convenient sample of 266 Saudi Arabian and 290 American college students on their use of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram …

Market To Me: A Case Study On The Marketing Efforts Of Salesforce Software Company, Marissa Adrianna Spiess Espinola

Experience Industry Management

Social media platforms constitute outstanding channels for fostering relationships with consumers. Recently, there has been a drastic shift towards social media marketing and away from traditional marketing. Marketers are beginning to understand the importance of social media opportunity and are implementing social media marketing strategies and initiatives into companywide marketing practices. Companies cannot afford to lack presence on social media, as competitors could outpace them with marketing efforts of products and services to the public. Social media has become a necessary tool when marketing and advertising. The purpose of this study was to examine social media marketing practices of Salesforce …

A Hybrid Hypothesis For Understanding The Relation Between Adhd Symptoms, Facebook Use, And Social Distress And Loneliness, Shanna Deasley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emerging research has explored how ADHD is related to Facebook and social media use. This study explored whether a hybrid hypothesis of the social compensation and cross-situational continuity hypotheses would explain potential inconsistencies in the Facebook usage of people with higher levels of ADHD symptoms. Specifically, the hybrid hypothesis proposed that people with social deficits have social motivations for using Facebook; however, they may not benefit from online interactions due to enacting the same problematic social behaviors that they do in offline settings. This study compared 87 young adults with different levels of ADHD symptoms on their Facebook usage patterns, …

What Do You See When You Look At Me? Social Media, Socialized Gender Variables, And Disordered Eating Among Adolescent Girls, Annamaria Mcandrew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined sociocultural factors associated with disordered eating among adolescent girls. The objective of Part 1 of the study was to explore the associations between social media use, socialized gender variables, and eating pathology. Participants were 238 adolescent girls between 14 and 17 years of age. Participants completed online measures assessing eating pathology, objectified body consciousness, social media use, and self-esteem. Results of Part 1 indicated that girls used photo-based social media applications – in particular, Instagram and Snapchat – for between one and four hours per day. Time spent using and frequency of checking social media were …

Social Media Rumination: The Impact Of Materialistic Value Orientation, Keeley Hynes

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research demonstrates that ruminating on social media content is associated with greater mental distress (Yang, Holden, Carter, & Webb, 2018). However, it is unclear what factors are associated with rumination. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a theoretical framework, this study examined how materialistic value orientation (MVO) predicted social media rumination in a sample of racially and socioeconomically diverse high school students at two waves of time. Those who are more materialistic value the means by which to gain possessions, and extrinsic life-goals associated with MVO are aimed at garnering external reinforcers such as money and social status (Richins & …

Social Media Potentials In Supporting Women Entrepreneurship: The Case Of Egypt, Gehan Ahmed Aboutaleb

Theses and Dissertations

The number of women entrepreneurs in Egypt starting and running their business online has been remarkably rising in recent years. Thanks to social media’s ability to harness some of the obstacles women business-owned enterprises encounter, it has become an essential platform for providing women with entrepreneurial opportunities and facilitating their own business. Social media is becoming more of an indispensable instrument for the businesses' survival, especially in light of the implications posed by the recent outbreak of global pandemic COVID-19 in terms of movement restrictions and social distancing measures. However, a dearth in the literature on the impact of social …

Lightly Peaceful: Facilitating College Transition Through Instagram Delivered Mindfulness Experiences, Cheryl Lynn Kress

Mindfulness Studies Theses

This creative project is an investigation into the feasibility and efficacy of offering mindfulness experiences to college freshmen through Instagram, a popular social media platform. Research indicates that many college freshmen struggle with issues such as depression, social isolation, anxiety, substance abuse, poor academic performance, overeating, etc., all of which may increase the likelihood of dropping out of college or the establishment of long-term dysfunctional coping patterns. Mindfulness has been noted to mitigate many of the difficulties associated with making the transition from high school to college; however, very few studies investigate the effects of offering mindfulness experiences through social …

Building A Resilient Workforce: Programming For Commercial Content Moderation Staff, Miriah Steiger

Dissertations

Commercial content moderators (CCM) review and remove controversial content from social media platforms, leading to potentially adverse mental health effects through secondary trauma exposure. Due to the problematic nature of their work, a U.S. based company hired mental health clinicians to design and instruct a resiliency program, developed based upon the psychological resilience literature. Regrettably, there is scarce peer-reviewed literature providing guidelines for best practices in program development or evaluations specific to this population to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. Therefore, this study investigated whether the resiliency program provided to CCM workers predicted resilience and well-being outcomes by use of the …

#Fired: Survivor Reactions To Facebook Firing In Organizations, Rachel Omansky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Facebook firing (i.e. employee termination due to social media activity) is a novel type of termination that has developed in recent decades. Though Facebook firing is becoming increasingly common, almost no research has been conducted on this practice. Using a multi-step, multi-method approach, this dissertation attempted to better define the construct and examine its implications for inciting negative reactions from surviving employees, or those employed with the terminated employee at the time of termination, who knew or knew of the employee but were uninvolved in the incident. Study 1 details an effort to identify Facebook firing’s characteristics through a case …

How Student-Athletes’ Self-Esteem And Performance Are Influenced By Social Media Sports Fandom, Brooke Alexander

Theses - ALL

This study evaluates the role of positive and negative messages on social media from sports fans and its effect on student-athletes’ self-esteem and performance. Through a qualitative research process, this study examined what drives student-athletes to seek validation of their identities through messages in social media and how the messages they read online affect their self-esteem and performance in their sport. Public relations has become an integral part in college athletics in reputation management, brand attributes and social issues. It is essential that public relations specialists involved in athletics are aware of how their student-athletes are feeling regarding social media …

Sealds: A Quantitative Content Analysis Of #Donttrashyourvote On Twitter, Viviek Patel

Honors Theses

Public relations research has slowly integrated with the study of advocacy organizations, but little research has integrated this and social movements. Using the pyramid model of mobilization-driven relationship-building social media based advocacy, this study employed a quantitative content analysis to examine the prevalence of previously identified communicative functions in social media messages by SEALDs. Unlike previous research on advocacy and health organizations, action messages were the most common. This study also investigated the influence of message type on audience engagement through retweets. The results indicate that information tweets had the most retweets. This study also analyzed how social movements recruit …

Cyberbullying Victimization And Corresponding Distress In Women Of Color, Joanna Menendez

Counseling and Psychological Services Dissertations

Online discrimination towards women and people of color has reached epidemic levels (Fox, Cruz, & Young Lee, 2015). Any woman or person of color who uses the internet runs the risk of attracting online users who would engage them in demeaning ways. As such, it is important that researchers are able to assess and understand these experiences and the possible effects on their well-being. In Chapter 1, I conducted a systematic review of cyberbullying measures. Although studies have documented the link between cyberbullying experiences and stress (i.e., psychological distress or perceived stress), there is a need to explore factors, such …

Investigating The Use Of Social Media In Undergraduate And Graduate University Music Students' Practice Routines, Lindsay Heston Mccranie

Middle and Secondary Education Dissertations

This study was an exploratory qualitative case study designed to investigate the use of social media as a tool to promote self-regulatory skills in student practice with undergraduate and graduate university music students. In addition, this study explored participants’ experiences of sharing practice to an online community, viewing other students’ practice, and how their practice habits may have been affected by recording with the intention of sharing their practice online. The research questions included: (1) How do music students use a social media group to document and share their practice? (2) What is the experience of students who post clips …

Examining The Impact Of Social Media On Youth Self-Perceived Mental Health, Chantal Singh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background: The development of social media has altered the lives of individuals worldwide enabling people to connect and share opinions, content, and even life milestones with one another. Further, the use of social media platforms has significantly increased over the past decade, particularly popular among youth. To date, it is estimated that 86% of Ontario youth use social media on a daily, and more than half of today’s youth report utilizing social media platforms multiple times per day. With the rise of social media among youth, questions have begun to emerge whether the use of these communication technologies are …

An Exploration Of Health Misinformation In A Facebook-Delivered Health Education Intervention, Kelsey Arroyo

Master's Theses

Background: Health misinformation is commonly shared on social media but little research has examined how misinformation is communicated and what health messages are most likely to receive misinformed responses on social media. Purpose: The purpose of this work is to explore the extent to which health misinformation was shared by participants in a private Facebook-delivered health education intervention moderated by a health counselor. Methods: We used engagement data from a randomized controlled trial of a yearlong Facebook-delivered health education intervention. We conducted a content analysis of 6,016 participant comments (including original posts and replies) to examine the nature of comments …

Counterpublics, Abled Sex, And Crip Discourses On Twitter: A Discourse Analysis Of Conversations Of Sexuality And Disability, Claudia Garcia Mendoza

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

We live in an era in which essential conversations occur online. Social media has become the official voice of presidents and corporations. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, uses Twitter to address public issues and make policy announcements. Similarly, alternative voices have emerged from social media and evolved into public debates, social movements, and massive mobilizations (e.g., Gerbaudo, 2012; Tufeksi, 2017). The community gathering opportunities of social media (boyd, 2011; Parks, 2010; Chambers, 2013) and the possibilities to generate collective knowledge (Jenkins, 2004) stress the necessity to continue to expand the research in digital spaces.

It is important …