Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Power Of The “Like”: A Quantitative Study On The Facebook Emoji As Social Support, Lina Rawlings

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This quantitative study aimed to evaluate how receiving a Facebook “like” correlates to the perception of social support and how much this correlation is moderated by the age and gender of the users. The social information processing theory guided the study, providing a framework to explain how communicators adapt to the restriction of nonverbal cues by creating surrogates to maintain interpersonal relationships in computer-mediated communication circumstances. For the central research question, findings revealed that receiving a Facebook “like” positively correlates with perceptions of social support from Facebook friends and family. While no significant correlation was found between the gender of …

Comparative Analysis Of Covid-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Videos On Facebook: Insights From Nigeria And Benin Republic, Jimme Matyek, Sheba Umbule Tayo-Garbson, Philomena Effiong Umoren Phd, Benmun Paul, Emeka Williams Etumnu

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Facebook has been adopted by public health organisations for health promotion, psychoeducation and behaviour change campaigns. Studies have underscored the potential advantages of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in decelerating the transmission of COVID-19 and mitigating its severe health consequences. However, these studies did not content analyse these NPI messages especially on Facebook. This study sought to investigate the phenomenon of NPI COVID-19 videos on Facebook that were viewed by Nigerians and Beninese. This study used quantitative content analysis as the research design and analysed 56 Nigerian videos and 36 Beninese videos totalling 92 on Facebook with an inter-rater reliability of 96%. …

Utilization Of Facebook As A Media For Political Literacy In Building Political Awareness Of The Voters In The Regional Elections In The Province Of West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, Fathurrijal Fathurrijal

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract: This paper discusses the use of Facebook accounts as a media for political literacy by the Nahdlatul Wathan organization on the island of Lombok, in welcoming the regional head elections in the Province of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) Indonesia. The questions answered in this study are what is the strategy of the Nahdlatul Wathan organization in using a Facebook account as a media for political literacy. This study was conducted to describe the political literacy activities of the Nahdlatul Wathan organization in the 2018 regional head elections in West Nusa Tenggara Province. The Nahdlatul Wathan organization has an active …

Meta Social Technology And Religion: A Media Ritual Theory Critical Discourse, Maurice Emelu

2023 Faculty Bibliography

This paper explores the proposition that Meta social media and technology functions as a ritual platform and concludes affirmatively. It identifies and critically evaluates ritual elements on Meta’s platform. Employing media ritual theory in the context of religion, it analyzes the Meta for Faith homepage. Consequently, the investigation delves into Meta's role in enhancing or diminishing the sacred rituals integral to religion, one of society's oldest cultural institutions. The discussion expands by considering the implications of Meta for Faith offerings in religious rituals. Thus, this study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the increasing social technology mediatization in the rapidly …

Sharenting: A Phenomenological Study Of Sharenting Through The Lens Of The Presentation Of Self, Evie Simmons D'Amico

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe and interpret the sharenting of moms who post to Facebook. Sharenting is a term to describe the practice of parents sharing about their children on social media. The theory that guided this study was Erving Goffman’s presentation of self. More specifically, the phenomenon was analyzed to understand how moms use their appearance, setting, and mannerisms to construct motherhood with their performance team on social media. This study used a scroll back interview method to gather data to co-create the essence of sharenting and interpret its meaning. Twenty moms who had elementary-aged …

The Effectiveness Of Facebook As A Social Network Intervention To Increase Physical Activity In Chinese Young Adults, Patrick W.C. Lau, J. J. Wang, Lynda B. Ransdell, Lei Shi

Kinesiology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction: Facebook, one of the worlds' most popular online social networks, is easy to access and cost-effective. Its use to enhance individual's physical activity (PA) participation should be examined. This research reviews the effectiveness and successful features of Facebook for influencing PA behaviors in young adults (Study 1), and empirically examines the efficacy of the features purported in increase PA via a Facebook intervention (Study 2).

Methods: In Study 1, PubMed, Medline, SPORT Discus, ERIC, and Embase were searched for articles that identified successful features and effectiveness of Facebook PA interventions published between January 2005 and February 2022. In Study …

Breaking Things: Origins And Consequences Of Racialized Hate Speech On Facebook, Katherine Herrick

International Studies Honors Projects

This thesis seeks to bring attention to the ways in which the effects of hate speech--specifically racialized hate speech--transcends digital platforms. It will begin by connecting the phenomenon of racialized hate speech on Facebook to specific psychological tendencies that the company consciously amplifies for its own financial benefit. The first chapter interrogates the common narrative that violent rhetoric indicates a flaw in the platform’s design, instead arguing that proliferation of such content is encouraged by Facebook’s algorithm. From there, the second chapter examines what happens when a technology giant leverages human psychology for corporate greed. A true worst-case scenario, the …

Inspiration On Social Media: Applying An Entertainment Perspective To Longitudinally Explore Mental Health And Well-Being, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Arthur A. Raney, Mary Beth Oliver, Katherine R. Dale, Danyang Zhao, Dominik Neumann, Russell B. Clayton, Alysia A. Hendry

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The conditions under which social media use impacts well-being and mental health are complex. The current 10-day longitudinal quasi-experiment (student sample, N = 111) applied an entertainment theory lens to explore the effects of active posting and engaging with hedonic or inspiring Facebook content (vs. passive browsing) on young people’s eudaimonic well-being (levels of connectedness to humanity, love, compassion, presence of meaning) and mental health (anxiety and depressive symptoms). The results provide tentative evidence that finding and sharing inspiring content to a Facebook group increased love and compassion toward others over time. It also led to more compassion at the …

Distressing For People’S Lives When Lights Go Off During Facebook Outage, Ramaswami, S.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The rise of the super app has changed our lives – and livelihoods – as many of us depend on these social media sites to make a living. Are there alternatives or are we always going to be held hostage? SMU’s Seshan Ramaswami gives his take.

Recognizing Bias In Social Media News: Resources For Teaching Media Literacy In Special Education, Melinda S. Burchard Ph.D., Lori Konopasek, Betsy Layman, Sarah Myers, Linda Poston

Faculty Educator Scholarship

With the empowerment of social media news literacy, students in special education can interact with their world with deeper competencies of critical thinking skills and civic engagement. In exploring personal and news biases, online users will have the tools to effectively grapple with the content found in their newsfeeds.

The included lesson uses current social media news stories. Students will be able to identify vocabulary communicating possible bias, including absolute words or phrases, words or phrases communicating degree, and words or phrases that are positively or negatively charged.

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …

“With Facebook, You Have A Voice:” Neoliberalism And Activism In Mark Zuckerberg’S Georgetown Address, Calvin Coker, Ryan Corso-Gonzales

Faculty Scholarship

In October of 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg streamed a speech from Georgetown University defending the company’s practice of not regulating or rejecting blatantly false political advertisements placed on their site. The speech, part of his “transparency tour” to allay concerns about the growing social power and stunning irresponsibility of Facebook, presents a troubling articulation of “voice” along neoliberal lines that atomizes the individual, separates activism from communities, and conflates activity on Facebook with free expression. In this essay, we use rhetorical scholarship on voice to illuminate how Zuckerberg’s speech both relies on and retrenches neoliberal rationality to flatten difference …

Identifying And Characterizing Alternative News Media On Facebook, Samuel S. Guimaraes, Julia C. S. Reis, Lucas Lima, Filipe N. Ribeiro, Marisa Vasconcelos, Jisun An, Haewoon Kwak, Fabricio Benevenuto

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As Internet users increasingly rely on social media sites to receive news, they are faced with a bewildering number of news media choices. For example, thousands of Facebook pages today are registered and categorized as some form of news media outlets. This situation boosted the so-called independent journalism, also known as alternative news media. Identifying and characterizing all the news pages that play an important role in news dissemination is key for understanding the news ecosystems of a country. In this work, we propose a graph-based semi-supervised method to measure the political bias of pages on most countries and show …

What's On Job Seekers' Social Media Sites? A Content Analysis And Effects Of Structure On Recruiter Judgments And Predictive Validity, Liwen Zhang, Chad H. Van Iddekinge, John D. Arnold, Philip L. Roth, Filip Lievens, Stephen E. Lanivich, Samantha L. Jordan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many organizational representatives review social media (SM) information (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) when recruiting and assessing job applicants. Despite this, very little empirical data exist concerning the SM information available to organizations or whether assessments of such information are a valid predictor of work outcomes. This multi-study investigation examines several critical issues in this emerging area. In Study 1, we conducted a content analysis of job seekers’ Facebook sites (n = 266) and found that these sites often provide demographic variables that U.S. employment laws typically prohibit organizations from using when making personnel decisions (e.g., age, ethnicity, religion), as well as …

FacebookʼS Latest Attempt To Address Vaccine Misinformation — And Why ItʼS Not Enough, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

On October 13, 2020 Facebook announced the adoption of a series of measures to promote vaccine trust “while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.” In the post written by Kang-Xing Jin (head of health) and Rob Leathern (director of product management), the company explained that the new measures were designed with an emphasis on encouraging widespread use of this yearʼs flu vaccine, as well as in anticipation of potential COVID-19 vaccines becoming available in the near future.

The changes focus mainly on the establishment of a multiprong informational campaign about the seasonal flu vaccine, which includes …

An Experimental Investigation Into Promoting Mental Health Service Use On Social Media: Effects Of Source And Comments, Zhaomeng Niu, Lun Hu, David C. Jeong, Jared Brickman, Jerod L. Stapleton

Health, Behavior & Society Faculty Publications

Mental health is an increasingly prevalent topic of public interest, but remains a complex area requiring focused research that must account for negative perceptions surrounding mental health issues. The current work explores the roles of social media information source credibility and valence of social media comments on health outcomes in such a mental health context. We used a 2 (message source: professional vs. layperson) × 3 (valence of comments: positive vs. negative vs. mixed) online experiment to examine the effects of source and valence of comments on trust, attitudes and intentions related to mental health information and services among 422 …

Real-Time Tracking And Mining Of Users’ Actions Over Social Media, Ejub Kajan, Noura Faci, Zakaria Maamar, Mohamed Sellami, Emir Ugljanin, Hamamache Kheddouci, Dragan H. Stojanović, Djamal Benslimane

All Works

© 2020, ComSIS Consortium. All rights reserved. With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and social media, companies are actively looking for ways to know and understand what users think and say about their products and services. Indeed, it has become the practice that users go online using social media like Facebook to raise concerns, make comments, and share recommendations. All these actions can be tracked in real-time and then mined using advanced techniques like data analytics and sentiment analysis. This paper discusses such tracking and mining through a system called Social Miner that allows companies to make decisions about …

Cambridge Analytica: The Scandal On Data Privacy, Carissa Boerboom

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

Consumers need to understand the risks and consequences of sharing their lives with the world. For data analysts, even if you can create and implement a model, should you? This research paper discusses Cambridge Analytica’s methods using predictive analytics and Facebook to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election. Through examining the firm as a whole, key people involved in the scandal, methods of data collection, and Facebook’s role, the ethical boundaries of big data, predictive analytics, and data privacy are analyzed. Three perspectives were discussed in regards to ethical disparity: Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the consumers. Overall, this research exposes …

Mapping Misinformation In The Coronavirus Outbreak, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The coronavirus outbreak has sent ripples of fear and confusion across the world. These sentiments—and our collective responses to the outbreak—are made worse by rampant misinformation surrounding the new strain of the virus, COVID-2019. In this post, I survey some of the most pervasive areas of tentacular coronavirus-related misinformation that has proliferated online -- as well as the responses of social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok that may ultimately prove inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.

Surveillance And The Self: Understanding Privacy And Identity In Digital Environments, Alecea Ritter Standlee

Friday Forum

The widespread use of internet enabled devices among contemporary US adults has given rise to a series of questions about issues of identity, privacy and group behaviors. The increasing use of algorithmic systems in social media and the attendant privacy concerns among users may also contribute to increased levels of strategic management of identity among users. In order to contribute to this discussion, this project examines perceptions and practices of privacy and self-representation in digital spaces among college age adults 18-24. This project utilizes semi-structured interview data collected with college students in the Eastern United States and focuses on both …

Self-Transcendent Emotions And Social Media: Exploring The Content And Consumers Of Inspirational Facebook Posts, Katherine R. Dale, Arthur A. Raney, Qihao Ji, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Joshua Baldwin, Jerrica T. Rowlett, Cen Wang, Mary Beth Oliver

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Although a great deal of research has examined the potential negative effects of Facebook, studies also show that Facebook use can lead to various positive effects. This study builds on this positive effects scholarship: together, the two studies presented herein aim to provide an understanding of the inspirational content available on Facebook and the way social media users in the United States encounter, recall, and interact with this content. Results from the quantitative content analysis in Study 1 show that inspirational Facebook posts contain similar frequencies of hope and appreciation of beauty and excellent elicitors when compared with other forms …

Big Tech Surveillance Could Damage Democracy, Chase Johnson

University Author Recognition Bibliography: 2019

Data is often called the oil of the 21st century.

The more tech companies know about their users, the more effectively they can direct them to goods and services that they are likely to buy. The more companies know about their users, the more competitive they are in the market.

Custom-tailored capitalism is what has made Google, Facebook, Amazon and others the richest companies in the world. This profit incentive has turned big tech into a competitive field of mass intelligence gathering. The better and more comprehensive the data, the higher profits will be.

But this business model – what …

View, Like, Comment, Post: Analyzing User Engagement By Topic At 4 Levels Across 5 Social Media Platforms For 53 News Organizations, Kholoud K. Aldous, Jisun An, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We evaluate the effects of the topics of social media posts on audiences across five social media platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit) at four levels of user engagement. We collected 3,163,373 social posts from 53 news organizations across five platforms during an 8month period. We analyzed the differences in news organization platform strategies by focusing on topic variations by organization and the corresponding effect on user engagement at four levels. Findings show that topic distribution varies by platform, although there are some topics that are popular across most platforms. User engagement levels vary both by topics and …

Impact Of Smartphones On Young Generation, Mudasir Khazer Rather, Shabir Ahmad Rather

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Smartphones are very important and wonderful communicative tools used by all age group people especially Young generation. Without smartphones, one feels incomplete and it has become the need of hour. It has brought a plethora of information resources within the palm of ones hand and has bridged the communication gap via social networking sites. People remain in touch and come to know every development in all walks of life within no time on social Media. The impact of Smartphones is visible in all areas of life including business, education, health, marketing, social life etc. But it is not out of …

It's Not Raining Men: A Mixed-Methods Study Investigating Methods Of Improving Male Recruitment To Health Behaviour Research, Jillian Ryan, Luke Lopian, Brian Le, Sarah Edney, Gisela Van Kessel, Ronald Plotnikoff, Corneel Vandelanotte, Tim Olds, Carol Maher

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background Although gender is an important determinant of health behaviour with males less likely to perform health-protective behaviours, samples in health behaviour research are heavily biased towards females. This study investigated the use of online social network, Facebook, to reach and recruit inactive males to a team-based, social, and gamified physical activity randomised controlled trial. Methods Methodological techniques included a narrative literature review, survey of inactive males (n = 34) who rated advertisement images and text captions on scales of 1–10, and trial Facebook-delivered recruitment campaigns. Advertisement effectiveness was measured by cost-per-click to the study website, number of expressions of …

The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory Of Organised Social Media Manipulation, Samantha Bradshaw, Philip N. Howard

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Executive Summary

Over the past three years, we have monitored the global organization of social media manipulation by governments and political parties. Our 2019 report analyses the trends of computational propaganda and the evolving tools, capacities, strategies, and resources.

1. Evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017. In each country, there is at least one political party or government agency using social media to shape public attitudes domestically.

2.Social media has become co-opted by many authoritarian regimes. In 26 countries, computational propaganda …

Social Media Flooded With Rescue Requests During Hurricane Harvey, Alison Greenhalgh

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, social media was used in a new way during a natural disaster. Emergency phone lines were jammed, and people were in desperate need of rescuing. These people turned to social media, such as Facebook, to ask for help. At the same time, civilian rescuers turned to social media to find locations of people in need of rescuing. News articles published stories about the desperate cries for help on social media; however, these articles left some questions unanswered. How exactly did social media connect rescuers and victims, and how could it be more efficient? How did …

Diversity In Online Advertising: A Case Study Of 69 Brands On Social Media, Jisun An, Ingmar Weber

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Lack of diversity in advertising is a long-standing problem. Despite growing cultural awareness and missed business opportunities, many minorities remain under- or inappropriately represented in advertising. Previous research has studied how people react to culturally embedded ads, but such work focused mostly on print media or television using lab experiments. In this work, we look at diversity in content posted by 69 U.S. brands on two social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Using face detection technology, we infer the gender, race, and age of both the faces in the ads and of the users engaging with ads. Using this dataset, …

Building A Tag Library For The Cala’S Social Media Channels, Sai Deng, Min Tong

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) has created several social media channels since 2012 with CALA members and friends participating from around the world, including the CALA's Facebook public page, WeChat space, YouTube Channel, LinkedIn Group and the "CALA Members and Friends" Facebook private group. This poster will introduce these channels and discuss the CALA Social Media Group’s efforts in promoting them to better serve the users’ needs and connect its members and friends nationally and internationally. One big effort to be discussed is to build a tag library for the CALA’s social media channels for postings to be connected …

"Active Team" A Social And Gamified App-Based Physical Activity Intervention: Randomised Controlled Trial Study Protocol, Sarah Edney, Ronald Plotnikoff, Corneel Vandelanotte, Tim Olds, Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij, Jillian Ryan, Carol Maher

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background

Physical inactivity is a leading preventable cause of chronic disease and premature death globally, yet over half of the adult Australian population is inactive. To address this, web-based physical activity interventions, which have the potential to reach large numbers of users at low costs, have received considerable attention. To fully realise the potential of such interventions, there is a need to further increase their appeal to boost engagement and retention, and sustain intervention effects over longer periods of time. This randomised controlled trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of a gamified physical activity intervention that connects users to each …