Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Trust But Verify: The Influence Of Social Media And Core Values On Consumer Trust In Business, Zoie M. Lagoudis

Student Theses and Dissertations

This research will evaluate the relationship personal core values have with businesses we see on social media. Three different research questions will be considered: (a) How do companies' social media presence impact consumer trust in a company? (b) How do social media marketing and advertising campaigns influence consumer purchasing intentions? (c) How does the alignment or misalignment of values portrayed through CSR activities affect trust in a company's brand?

Social media has become an expansive e-commerce tool companies use for promotional purposes. Companies take many approaches to advertising campaigns, but a popular method is incorporating advocacy efforts into their marketing …

Problematic Social Media Use, Social Comparison, And Defeat: An Intensive Longitudinal Investigation, Natalia Macrynikola

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) have steadily risen over the past two decades. The simultaneous dramatic increase in social media use has fueled concerns that using social media may be contributing to suicide risk. Although an emerging body of evidence reveals associations between certain patterns of social media use and SITBs, most research studies have not been designed to assess the temporal order of these variables and have neglected to investigate mechanisms underlying such associations. As a result, whether and how social media use may be conferring suicide risk remains unclear. To address this gap, the present study examined a …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …