Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Preferential Politics, Cary Wolbers

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Preferential voting is a unique system of voting that, while enjoying popularity abroad, has yet to make a significant impact on American political culture. However, within that past few years, preferential voting has been adopted by a number of cities across the country and the state of Maine. This dissertation examines the growing role of preferential voting in the United States, the impact of preferential voting on the electoral process, and the public’s perception of preferential voting. This project uses survey data and data collected through Twitter to demonstrate that preferential voting is generally popular with the electorate and reduces …

Recommending Who To Follow In The Software Engineering Twitter Space, Abhabhisheksh Sharma, Yuan Tian, Agus Sulistya, Dinusha Wijedasa, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the advent of social media, developers are increasingly using it in their software development activities. Twitter is one of the popular social mediums used by developers. A recent study by Singer et al. found that software developers use Twitter to “keep up with the fast-paced development landscape.” Unfortunately, due to the general-purpose nature of Twitter, it’s challenging for developers to use Twitter for their development activities. Our survey with 36 developers who use Twitter in their development activities highlights that developers are interested in following specialized software gurus who share relevant technical tweets.To help developers perform this task, in …

Web 2.0 & Public Health, Ubaid Ullah Shah

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to know the awareness, usage, and impact of web 2.0 tools on the health of general public.

Design/methodology/approach: Questioners were prepared and distributed among the departments under applied sciences of the University of Kashmir. Simple random sampling technique was employed.

Findings: Although people are well aware of the term Web and Web 2.0 tools but least are these tools used for health purposes like self-diagnosis, self-medication, online doctor consultation etc. The study also reveals that usage of Web 2.0 tools helps in reducing the mental stress in common public.

Practical implications: Health …

Tweeting A Social Movement: Black Lives Matter And Its Use Of Twitter To Share Information, Build Community, And Promote Action, Candice Lashara Edrington, Nicole Lee

Faculty Publications

Public relations research has gradually incorporated the study of advocacy organizations. However, little research has focused on social movements in particular. Through a content analysis of all public tweets sent by Black Lives Matter (BLM) over a four-year period, this study examined the message strategies used on Twitter by the social movement as a means to share information, build community, and promote action. Consistent with research on other types of organizations, informational messages proved to be the most common. The study also analyzed the influence that these strategies had on audience engagement in terms of replies and retweets. Findings suggest …

Classifying Misogynistic Tweets Using A Blended Model: The Ami Shared Task In Ibereval 2018, John Cardiff, Elena Shushkevich

Conference Papers

This article describes a possible solution for Automatic Misogyny Identification (AMI) Shared Task at IBEREVAL-2018. The proposed technique is based on combining several simpler classifiers into one more complex blended model, which classified the data taking into account the probabilities of belonging to classes calculated by simpler models. We used the Logistic Regression, Naive Bayes, and SVM classifiers. The experimental results show that blended model works better than simpler models for all three type of classification, for both binomial classification (Misogyny Identifivation, Target Classification) and multinomial classification (Misogynistic Behavior).

Offline Versus Online: A Meaningful Categorization Of Ties For Retweets, Felicia Natali, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the recent proliferation of news being shared through online social networks, it is crucial to determine how news is spread and what drives people to share certain stories. In this paper, we focus on the social networking site Twitter and analyse user’s retweets. We study retweeting patterns between offline and online friends, particularly, how tweet novelty and tweet topic differ between tweets retweeted by offline friends and those retweeted by online friends.

21st Century Propaganda: The Age Of Twitter, Holly Thayer

Honors College Theses

Twitter is a new platform in which politics and social engagement has found a home. Due to this a new medium to propagate a message has emerged that is unlike traditional platforms of propaganda. I hypothesize that traditional tactics of analyzing propaganda are no longer sufficient. I conducted an 8 week study cataloguing tweets that contained either the hashtag #falseflag or #hoax that were based on current topics in the United States. In total I retrieved 128 tweets. I first analyzed these tweets through the seven traditional tactics of propaganda and found that they were only present in 51% of …

Analysis Of Tweets Mentioning Scholarly Works From An Institutional Repository, Ashley D.R. Sergiadis

ETSU Faculty Works

Altmetrics derived from Twitter have potential benefits for institutional repository (IR) stakeholders (faculty, students, administrators, and academic libraries) when metrics aggregators (Altmetric, Plum Analytics) are integrated with IRs. There is limited research on tweets mentioning works in IRs and how the results impact IR stakeholders, specifically libraries. In order to address this gap in the literature, the author conducted a content analysis of tweets tracked by a metrics aggregator (Plum X Metrics) in a Digital Commons IR. The study found that the majority of tweets were neutral in attitude, intended for a general audience, included no hashtags, and were written …

Assessing Relevance Of Tweets For Risk Communication, Xiaohui Liu, Bandana Kar, Chaoyang Zhang, David M. Cochran

Faculty Publications

Although Twitter is used for emergency management activities, the relevance of tweets during a hazard event is still open to debate. In this study, six different computational (i.e. Natural Language Processing) and spatiotemporal analytical approaches were implemented to assess the relevance of risk information extracted from tweets obtained during the 2013 Colorado flood event. Primarily, tweets containing information about the flooding events and its impacts were analysed. Examination of the relationships between tweet volume and its content with precipitation amount, damage extent, and official reports revealed that relevant tweets provided information about the event and its impacts rather than any …

Temporal And Spatiotemporal Investigation Of Tourist Attraction Visit Sentiment On Twitter, Jose J. Padilla, Hamdi Kavak, Christopher J. Lynch, Ross J. Gore, Saikou Y. Diallo

VMASC Publications

In this paper, we propose a sentiment-based approach to investigate the temporal and spatiotemporal effects on tourists' emotions when visiting a city's tourist destinations. Our approach consists of four steps: data collection and preprocessing from social media; visitor origin identification; visit sentiment identification; and temporal and spatiotemporal analysis. The temporal and spatiotemporal dimensions include day of the year, season of the year, day of the week, location sentiment progression, enjoyment measure, and multi-location sentiment progression. We apply this approach to the city of Chicago using over eight million tweets. Results show that seasonal weather, as well as special days and …

Coming Together Around Hashtags: Exploring The Formation Of Digital Emergent Citizen Groups, Andrew S. Pyle, Brandon Boatwright

Publications

It has been well established that during and after crisis or emergency events, groups of citizens come together to help one another, solve problems, and manage recovery or cleanup. These groups are called emergent citizen groups. They form organically and often disband when the emergency is managed. This study proposes that similar types of groups now form in digital spaces during and after crises. The authors studied conversation on Twitter that used the hashtag “#PrayforUSC” after the murder-suicide that took place at the University of South Carolina in 2015. Initial results indicate that hashtags can function as focal points or …

The Self And Other: Portraying Israeli And Palestinian Identities On Twitter, Jason Deegan, John Hogan, Sharon Feeney, Brendan Orourke

Articles

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has lasted over half a century, with both sides enduring military and political turmoil. This paper explores how Twitter is being used as a medium to portray identities in the conflict. We examine the tweets contained in the @IDFspokesperson and @ISMPalestine Twitter accounts between late 2015 and early 2016. Using textual analysis, we gain an insight into how these Twitter accounts, defined by the conflict, are used in portraying the self and the other.

From Slut Shaming To Cultural Commentary: What Live Tweeting Practices Of Viewers Of Abc’S The Bachelorette Reveal About Gender Policing And Digital Activism On Twitter, Melissa Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Tweets Of An Article And Its Citation: An Altmetric Study Of Most Prolific Authors, S S. Ravikumar, Baiakmenlang Khonglam

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The present study was carried to find out the association between twitter and citation pattern for scholarly articles. This study was carried out with the most prolific authors of 2014 from the four subject domain “Clinical medicine, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, and Neuroscience” and 4886 papers were identified to studied their tweets and citation counts. From the study, it was found that the articles of the most prolific authors have a strong correlation with the citation and its value ρ =.518**. The linear relationship for individual subjects was between .386** to .559**, significant at .01 level.

Does Stakeholder Engagement Pay Off On Social Media? A Social Capital Perspective, Weiai Xu, Gregory D. Saxton

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

Nonprofits use social media to pursue a broad range of mission-related outcomes. Given the centrality of user connections and social networks on these sites, attaining these outcomes is contingent on first generating a stock of online social capital through investing in online relationships. Yet, little is known empirically about this process. To better understand the return on social media, this study develops empirical measures of four key dimensions of social media–based social capital centering on the nature of nonprofits’ network positions and stakeholder ties. The study then tests a series of hypotheses relating the increase in social capital to different …

A Discourse Analysis Of Gender Perceptions, Twitter, The 2018 Progressive Convervative Leadership Race, And The 2018 Provincial Election, Mary E. Chamberlain

Social Justice and Community Engagement

The research seeks to bring awareness to how online discourse on Twitter can contribute to the reinforcement of unequal power relations against female electoral candidates. This project is a discourse analysis of gender perceptions of the 2018 Progressive Conservative Leadership Race and the 2018 provincial election as portrayed on Twitter. Using understandings of Liberal Feminism and Intersectionality, this project demonstrates the struggle of gender discrimination against women in political life and attempts to recognize the efforts of women attempting to shatter the glass ceiling. The findings suggest female candidates experienced Twitter as a gendered and bullying platform, while male candidates …

"Participant" Perceptions Of Twitter Research Ethics, Casey Fiesler, Nicholas Proferes

Information Science Faculty Publications

Social computing systems such as Twitter present new research sites that have provided billions of data points to researchers. However, the availability of public social media data has also presented ethical challenges. As the research community works to create ethical norms, we should be considering users’ concerns as well. With this in mind, we report on an exploratory survey of Twitter users’ perceptions of the use of tweets in research. Within our survey sample, few users were previously aware that their public tweets could be used by researchers, and the majority felt that researchers should not be able to use …

Stock Market Reactions To Presidential Statements: Evidence From Company-Specific Tweets, Qi Ge, Alexander Kurov, Marketa Halova Wolfe

Economics

When the President of the United States tweets, do investors respond? We analyze the impact of tweets from President Trump's official Twitter accounts from November 9, 2016 to July 31, 2017 that include the name of a publicly traded company. We find that these tweets move company stock prices and increase trading volume, volatility and institutional investor attention, with a stronger impact before the presidential inauguration. The initial impact of the presidential tweets on stock prices appears to dissipate over the next few trading days. Overall, the results show that investors pay attention to presidential company-specific statements even when such …

Utilising Social Media To Improve Relationship Quality: The Case Of The University Library, Melissa N. Clark, Scott Bacon

Library Faculty Publications

As the centre of academic life at a university, the university library plays an important role in how students perceive their relationship with the university. This study analyses the effect that participation in library social media has on student perception of relationship quality with the university. The hypotheses proposed in this study were found to be substantiated: following the library on social media is positively related to a student's perception of their relationship quality with the university; students interested in multiple library services are likely to report the perception of a higher quality relationship with the university.

Teacher Twitter Chats: Gender Differences In Participants’ Contributions, Stacey L. Kerr, Mardi J. Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Gender differences in participation were examined across four Twitter chats for social studies teachers. Analyses drawing on mixed methods revealed that while there was parity across most kinds of tweets, participants identified as men were more likely to use the examined Twitter chats to share resources, give advice, boast, promote their own blog/resource/website, and offer critique to another participants’ tweet. Participants identified as women were more likely to write tweets that included positive affirmations for other chat participants. These findings suggest that there are differences in the way that women and men tend to participate in teacher Twitter chat spaces.

Examining Twitter Content Of State Emergency Management During Hurricane Joaquin, Adam M. Rainear, Kenneth A. Lachlan, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, Christina Devoss

2018 Faculty Bibliography

Those tasked with disseminating life-protecting messages during crises have many factors to consider. Social media sites have become an information source for individuals during these times, and more research is needed examining the use of specific message strategies by emergency management agencies that may elicit attention and retransmission. This study examines Twitter content concerning Hurricane Joaquin. Content analysis of tweets from state emergency management accounts was performed to provide an overview of the content and stylistic elements used in tweets associated with the event. The findings are discussed in the context of both past research on the matter and implications …

Canadian Legal Professionals' Information Activities: What Do They Do, And How Do They Tweet, Hannah Steeves

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The use of social media in professional settings has increased significantly over the past decade. This article presents the results of a statistical analysis performed on a sampling of Canadian legal professionals’ Twitter accounts between 2015 and 2016. A series of tweets were reviewed and subsequently categorized to determine the most common types of information activities occurring on social media accounts, specifically Twitter, from legal professionals.

L’utilisation des médias sociaux dans les milieux professionnels a considérablement augmenté au cours de la dernière décennie. Cet article présente les résultats d’une analyse statistique réalisée sur un échantillon de comptes Twitter de professionnels …

Sentiment, Richness, Authority, And Relevance Model Of Information Sharing During Social Crises—The Case Of #Mh370 Tweets, Weiai Xu, Congcong Zhang

Communication Department Faculty Publication Series

The study introduces a model of crisis information sharing based on Twitter discussions of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the study tests four salient factors: Sentiment, Richness, Authority, and Relevance, which can be measured by peripheral cues in tweets and in user profiles. Findings suggest that information sharing is positively associated with the presence of peripheral cues indicative of a confident, self-revealing and positive emotional language style, and is negatively related to an angry and informal style. Additionally, information sharing is related to the presence of multimedia cues and cues indicating …

"The 100" And The Social Contract Of Social Tv, Myles Mcnutt

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

I explore how the controversy surrounding an LGBT storyline on The 100 (2014–) points to the shifting social contracts of social media engagement between fans and the TV industry, as well as the challenges faced by fans and critics who attempted to solidify that contract in the wake of said controversy.

Delving Into The Specificity Of Instructional Guidance In Social Media-Supported Learning Environments, Tian Luo

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Aim/Purpose: This study investigates the variations in student participation patterns across different types of instructional activities, learning modes, and with different instructional guidance approaches. In the current study, different variables, modes of learning (guided versus unguided), and types of guidance (social versus cognitive) were manipulated in a series of microblogging-supported collaborative learning tasks to examine to what extent and in which aspects instructional guidance affects the effectiveness and student perception of microblogging-supported learning.

Background: Despite the overwhelming agreement on the importance of instructional guidance in microblogging-supported learning environments, very few studies have been done to examine the specificity of guidance, …