Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Wisconsin Legislators' Use Of Social Media, Christian T. Moran

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis used quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the use of social media by legislative offices of the Wisconsin State Assembly. A survey of legislators and their staff documented the extent to which each office uses Facebook or Twitter. In addition, multivariate analysis of the survey data provided an understanding of which kinds of legislators are more likely to use Facebook or Twitter. There were three important findings. First, most Wisconsin legislators whose offices use Facebook or Twitter do not seem to be doing so to reach the news media. Second, overall, the characteristics of a Wisconsin legislator are …

All The Web's A Stage: The Dramaturgy Of Young Adult Social Media Use, Jaime R. Riccio

Theses - ALL

This study presents an in-depth, qualitative examination of dramaturgy in young adult interactions on the social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. The dramaturgical perspective introduced by Erving Goffman in the study of sociology and symbolic interactionism is applied to a new media setting, wherein the interpersonal interactions of users are influenced by a mass media context. The author ventures into the field of dramaturgy as part of a broader sphere of hyperdramatic acculturation that millennials are growing up in, with constant access to one another through social media and the prevalence of dramatic and attention-seeking behaviors in entertainment media. A …

A Christian Mega Church Strives For Relevance: Examining Social Media And Religiosity, Kenthea Albert-Leigh Joan Fogenay

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between Facebook and Twitter uses and gratifications and religiosity. Non-denominational Christian mega churches focus their outreach programs on a "come-as-you-are" attitude with the hopes of making people feel comfortable. The interactive technology in our daily lives also infiltrates our experience at church. The congregation now has the ability to worship through technologies endorsed by leadership (Watson & Scalen, 2008; Bogomilova, 2004; Thomas, 2009). In order for churches to engage in effective communication, they must understand how people use social networking. Through survey methodology, the researcher takes an account of how …

Information Vs Interaction: An Alternative User Ranking Model For Social Networks, Wei Xie, Ai Phuong Hoang, Feida Zhu, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The recent years have seen an unprecedented boom of social network services, such as Twitter, which boasts over 200 million users. In such big social platforms, the influential users are ideal targets for viral marketing to potentially reach an audience of maximal size. Most proposed algorithms rely on the linkage structure of the respective underlying network to determine the information flow and hence indicate a users influence. From social interaction perspective, we built a model based on the dynamic user interactions constantly taking place on top of these linkage structures. In particular, in the Twitter setting we supposed a principle …

Networking Young Citizens : Learning To Be Citizens In And With The Social Web, Suzanne Mellor, Terri Seddon

Suzanne Mellor

Many claims are made, both in the popular press and the professional education literature, about the significance of the social web in enabling civic participation. However empirical evidence supporting these claims is sparse and contested rather than strongly-indicative. The Monash University pilot research project, Networking Young Citizens, relates to the discussion about the ways in which the social web might support the civic participation, especially of young people, by examining the ways in which Web 2.0 was integrated into teaching and learning in the school, and any other processes of civic socialisation that were consciously adopted in three schools.

This …

Twitter In A Spanish Conversation Course (And Maybe In Yours), Pilar Munday

Languages Faculty Publications

Dr. Pilar Munday describes her use of twitter in teaching students Spanish language and culture at Sacred Heart University.

Twitter In A Spanish Conversation Course (And Maybe In Yours), Pilar Munday

Pilar Munday

Dr. Pilar Munday describes her use of twitter in teaching students Spanish language and culture at Sacred Heart University.

Networking Young Citizens : Learning To Be Citizens In And With The Social Web, Suzanne Mellor, Terri Seddon

Civics and Citizenship Assessment

Many claims are made, both in the popular press and the professional education literature, about the significance of the social web in enabling civic participation. However empirical evidence supporting these claims is sparse and contested rather than strongly-indicative. The Monash University pilot research project, Networking Young Citizens, relates to the discussion about the ways in which the social web might support the civic participation, especially of young people, by examining the ways in which Web 2.0 was integrated into teaching and learning in the school, and any other processes of civic socialisation that were consciously adopted in three schools.

This …

A Unified Model For Topics, Events And Users On Twitter, Qiming Diao, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid growth of social media, Twitter has become one of the most widely adopted platforms for people to post short and instant message. On the one hand, people tweets about their daily lives, and on the other hand, when major events happen, people also follow and tweet about them. Moreover, people’s posting behaviors on events are often closely tied to their personal interests. In this paper, we try to model topics, events and users on Twitter in a unified way. We propose a model which combines an LDA-like topic model and the Recurrent Chinese Restaurant Process to capture …

Social Media And Journalism: What Works Best And Why It Matters, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

As more Americans turn to social media sites for news and information, news organizations respond by using social networks as platforms to deliver content. This study examines how news outlets use social media platforms, the positive impact and concerns raised by social media use, and the best practices editors identify for effective social media use. The study aims to help editors understand which approaches to social media attract audiences and increase reader or audience interaction.

Public Relations Models And Dialogic Communication In The Twitterverse: An Analysis Of How Colleges And Universities Are Engaging Their Publics Through Twitter, Jason Antwuan Beverly

Dissertations

Colleges and universities throughout this world are realizing the importance of engaging in and building mutually-beneficial relationships with their key publics through social media. The introduction of the microblogging tool known as Twitter extends the use of social media in higher education, beyond the classroom, and into the realm of public relations where it can be just as effective. Now, colleges and universities are capitalizing off of its potential as a public relations tool. Twitter allows colleges and universities to better connect with their technology-consumed publics trough dialogic and interactive two-way communication. This study examines how 155 colleges and universities …

Hashtag Politics: The Polyphonic Revolution Of #Twitter, Bud Davis

Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research

Social media has revolutionized how citizens communicate and interact with each other. President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign notably demonstrated just how impactful online interconnectivity could be in reaching out to key demographics. More specifically, Twitter has become increasingly popular in achieving communication with constituents while enabling voters to become citizen journalists and active participants in the political process. This paper seeks to trace the evolution of Twitter as a political resource and determine what influence it has in enhancing and inhibiting political communication. By drawing on Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality, I argue that Twitter’s unique functionality contains the potential …

Professional Athlete Self-Presentation On Twitter, Katie Lebel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the digital self-presentation of professional athletes. Central to this purpose was the application of Goffman’s (1959) self-presentation theory to the social media landscape in order to further our understanding of online athlete behavior through a theoretical lens.

Study 1 established how professional athletes are presenting themselves on Twitter through the identification of ten focused self-presentation strategies and explored differences in athlete strategy based upon gender. Content analyses compared male and female athlete tweets relayed by all professional tennis players with a verified Twitter account. The analysis suggested that while athlete image construction …

A Quantitative Survey: Are Twitter Advertisements Effective For College Students?, Christia J. Brockman

Communication Studies

Social Media websites are rapidly being overrun by advertisements, but is this blitz of advertising destroying the social media experience? Twitter, one of today’s most popular social media sites, increased its revenues from $45,000,000 in 2010 to $259 million in 2013. This exponential growth is surprising given the large portion of Twitter users who are between the ages of 18 to 25 with lower annual incomes. In analyzing whether advertising on Twitter is effective on college students, statistical results from a survey conducted among college students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, reveal that Tweeters in this sample …

Real Time Event Detection In Twitter, Xun Wang, Feida Zhu, Jing Jiang, Sujian Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Event detection has been an important task for a long time. When it comes to Twitter, new problems are presented. Twitter data is a huge temporal data flow with much noise and various kinds of topics. Traditional sophisticated methods with a high computational complexity aren’t designed to handle such data flow efficiently. In this paper, we propose a mixture Gaussian model for bursty word extraction in Twitter and then employ a novel time-dependent HDP model for new topic detection. Our model can grasp new events, the location and the time an event becomes bursty promptly and accurately. Experiments show the …

Social Media And Medical Students: What Are They Thinking?, Alexandra Gomes, Gisela Butera, Terry Kind, Katherine C. Chretien

Himmelfarb Library Faculty Posters and Presentations

This poster provides a review of interim results from a qualitative study on first year medical students' attitudes and perceptions of their definition of medical professionalism in social media. Included in the study is an evaluation of changes in perspective since becoming a medical student and after participating in an E-Professionalism and Social Media instructional session.

140 Characters To Skinny: Social Support Provided By Commercial Weight-Loss Programs Via Twitter, Sarah Arbogast

All Theses

The state of healthcare in the United States is changing. Amidst this change, there is a debate as to whether health is a public good or if health is a private matter. This change and debate challenges health professionals to rethink the way we go about planning health interventions to better address the many public health issues looming the general population today. The recent rise of obesity and at-risk weight in the United States is a major epidemic that has yet to be resolved. There are many approaches to addressing weight management and for many, public health campaigns have not …

Social Media Strategy For The Hank Greenspun School Of Journalism And Media Studies, Irene Williams

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Within the past 10 years, communication online has evolved tremendously toward social media. This rapid change has been difficult for higher education institutions (HEI) to adapt to, leaving this important area underexplored. This strategic social media plan was developed to improve internal and external communication for the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS). By initiating social media platforms, relationships are cultivated with present and future students on Facebook and Twitter. This strategic social media plan develops and maintains Facebook and Twitter pages for JMS and interprets social media site visitation data. These data provide information on users, …

Twitter, Anthony Ronzio, Pattie Reeves

Center on Aging : Boomer Reporting Corps

Anthony Ronzio, former Executive Editor of the Bangor Daily News, and blogger Pattie Reeves explain what Twitter is and how to use it.

The Tweet's The Thing: Exploring The Intersection Of Social Media And Broadway, Hilary Sutton

Hilary Sutton

In 2009 the little known Broadway musical Next to Normal rose to fame through the aid of an unprecedented Twitter campaign conducted by Situation Interactive, a digital marketing agency. The Next to Normal Twitter account gathered over one million followers throughout a six-week campaign in which the Situation Interactive team joined forces with the book writer and lyricist of Next to Normal to recreate the plot in one hundred and forty-character snippets. By analyzing the data collected the researcher cultivates a collection of best practices for running a successful Twitter marketing campaign for a live experience. Key Terms: Twitter, Broadway, …

The Tweet's The Thing: Exploring The Intersection Of Social Media And Broadway, Hilary Sutton

Masters Theses

In 2009 the little known Broadway musical Next to Normal rose to fame through the aid of an unprecedented Twitter campaign conducted by Situation Interactive, a digital marketing agency. The Next to Normal Twitter account gathered over one million followers throughout a six-week campaign in which the Situation Interactive team joined forces with the book writer and lyricist of Next to Normal to recreate the plot in one hundred and forty-character snippets. By analyzing the data collected the researcher cultivates a collection of best practices for running a successful Twitter marketing campaign for a live experience.

Social Media And The Transformation Of The Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis Of Humanitarian Discourse In Libya 2011 And Bosnia 1994, Ellen Noble

Political Science Honors Projects

Within humanitarian discourse, there is a prevailing narrative: the powerful liberal heroes are saving the helpless, weak victims. However, the beginning of the 21^st century marks the expansion of the digital revolution throughout lesser-developed states. Growing access to the Internet has enabled aid recipients to communicate with the outside world, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to reshape discourses surrounding humanitarianism. Through a comparative discourse analysis of Libyan Tweets, 1994 newspaper reports on Bosnia, and 2011 newspaper reports on Libya, this paper analyzes whether aid recipient discourse can resist the dominant humanitarian narrative and if that resistance can influence dominant …

Building Collaboration Within The Quarter Horse Community: The Obstacles And Hurdles, Allison Grayson

Journalism

The following study investigates how to increase collaboration within the Quarter Horse community through Twitter. Twitter is increasingly one of the top social media tools for many organizations, including organizations within the Quarter Horse community. Twitter is an important tool in creating a dialogue between community members, and the organizations to which they are members. Research shows, “Users believe that using Twitter can improve their performance or their ability to achieve specific goals and, thus, they are more extrinsically motivated to continue to use it” (Agrifoglio, Black, Ferrara & Metallo, 2012, p. 38). That being said, it is important that …

Structures Of Broken Ties: Exploring Unfollow Behavior On Twitter, Bo Xu, Yun Huang, Haewoon Kwak

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study investigates unfollow behavior in Twitter, i.e. people removing others from their Twitter following lists. Considering the interdependency and dynamics of unfollow decisions, we use actor-oriented modeling (SIENA) to examine the impacts of reciprocity, status, embeddedness, homophily, and informativeness on tie dissolution. Focusing on ordinary users in tightly-knitted user groups, the results show that relational properties play key roles in the emergence of unfollow behavior: mutual following relations and common followees reduce the likelihood of unfollowing. And unfollow tends to be reciprocal: when a user is unfollowed by someone, he or she will unfollow back. However, there is no …

City Magazines And Social Media: Moving Beyond The Monthly, Susan Currie Sivek

Faculty Publications

City magazines have long been established in many American locales, but digital media of all types are now offering opportunities and challenges to this genre of magazine. Digital media have also complicated the rapidly changing ecosystems of local information in which urban citizens reside. The resources and popularity of newspapers and broadcast news have shifted, and other forms of print, digital, and mobile media are assuming important roles in informing the public. With all these factors at work, this may be a pivotal moment for city magazines as they explore innovative technology, creative business strategies, and the new possibilities for …

When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, And Responsibility In The Surveillance Of Celebrity Twitter, Megan M. Wood

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a textual analysis of stories in online celebrity news articles about celebrity women and their use of Twitter. It adds to the burgeoning discussion about gendered and racialized bodies online using scholarship from critical feminist, surveillance, and digital media studies. Throughout, my work attends to notions of authenticity and surveillance, examining how what I term a "call to authenticity"--the use of technologies of self-surveillance to verify "authentic" displays of the self--serves to animate contradictory post-feminist paradigms of femininity which function together to discipline and subjugate femininity. I ask: How do post-feminist questions of empowerment and responsibility become …

Short And Tweet, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

The goal is to help students learn to write clearly and concisely. It reinforces William Zinsser’s advice in “On Writing Well.” He said, “Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.” The exercise helps students learn to find the focus of stories. It helps editing students write concise, clear headlines that pull readers into stories. It also helps reporting students learn to summarize stories accurately and briefly — a skill they need as they craft their own ledes.

Corporate Use Of Social Media, Viktorya Mirzoyan

LSU Master's Theses

Despite significant and constantly increasing volume of social media use by both individuals and corporate entities, scarce scholastic attention has been paid to practices undertaken by companies and organizations in creating presence on social media, managing social media accounts and communicating with constituents on social media. New social media platforms appear regularly, attracting millions of daily visitors, however, this new type of communication media still lacks in-depth analysis, which would provide guidelines to be used by corporate entities to make their presence on social media most effective. This study makes the first step to analyze possible relationships between companies’ practices …

Twitter And #Television, Rachel M. Bellwoar

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

This essay discusses the significance of the hashtag phrases that now appear in the corner of television screens during shows. Television networks are trying to utilize Twitter to promote watching their programs live and generate discussion among fans, as well as potential new fans. Other uses for the social network that are being explored is the collection of feedback, for use in renewal and creative decisions, and viewer numbers, to entice advertisers.

Did You Watch #Thewalkingdead Last Night? An Examination Of Television Hashtags And Twitter Activity, Jessica Hutchinson

LSU Master's Theses

This study examined on-screen hashtags and Twitter activity associated with four television programs (The Walking Dead, Pretty Little Liars, Scandal and Hannibal). Twitter facilitates real time discussions, allowing “water cooler conversations” about television to occur while shows air live. Hashtags organize these conversations around topics of interest. Active viewers will migrate to new media sources, searching for additional content that interests them. The act of complementarity increases their level of media enjoyment. The desire for this additional content dictates the viewer’s behavior. Network producers also promote media convergence, utilizing websites and social media to build word of mouth advertising for …