Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Media Consumption Effect On Therapuetic Aesthetics, William Gracik

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This paper conceptualizes and proposes the current thesis topic: how does media consumption and screen time usage affect our therapeutic aesthetics? The thesis is a critical review of the literature that focalizes on highlighting key themes between both concepts. Literature findings convey an increase of screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature collected tentatively suggests four key findings: media multitasking serves an emotional and sensory gratification purpose and less of a cognitive functional one, an increased risk of psychiatric disorders with excessive media use, social media consumption as a behavior is highly associated with the hedonic pleasure system, and …

Public Discourse On Migration In Germany And The United States Before And After 2015: Racist Media Narratives In The Global Right, Amy Chang

Senior Theses

Within the past decade, migration has become an increasingly controversial subject in Western countries, producing a right-wing and nationalist backlash. In Europe, Germany became the core of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 and gained global attention for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy towards refugees. This substantial influx of refugees into the country caused a sharp discursive shift regarding migrants and refugees in the German media during and after 2015. At the same time, Donald Trump announced his eventually successful presidential campaign by cultivating a starkly anti-immigrant platform, which generated disproportionate media attention for his campaign and intensified anti-immigrant rhetoric …

Incorporating Social Media Into The Classroom: A Case Study On How Tiktok Can Be Immersed Into Classroom Pedagogy, Sara Solomon

Education | Master's Theses

My research project focuses on the use of TikTok embedded within classroom pedagogy and how it can be used as a tool to support academic and social emotional wellbeing. There is a lack of research investigating how social media can be incorporated into the classroom to make up for potential academic losses, including the inevitable social/emotional needs of adolescents that need to be addressed due to the ramifications of COVID-19. In my research, I question ways in which students see this tool as supporting their wellbeing, in what ways parents see this tool as supporting their child's wellbeing, and why …

Presidential Rhetoric And Media's Contribution To The Subjective Nature Of Truth In American Democracy, Bianca Miccolis

English Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of media on the subjectivity of truth in presidential rhetoric and its ethical implications. In my three case studies, I find that there is some form of deception by each president in their chosen form of media. I analyze Roosevelt’s use of the radio, which he uses to hide his disability and gain more executive power to combat the Great Depression. I examine Reagan’s use of television and how he fabricates an intimate relationship with the American people to enact tax reform. Finally, I investigate Trump’s use of Twitter to deflect negative publicity as he …

In Our Very Blood: The Use Of Social Media In The 2018 West Virginia Teachers' Strike, Everette Scott Sikes

Doctoral Dissertations

The 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike exemplifies the changing shape of social movements and events of dissent and protest in the digital age. The use of information communication technologies (ICT) and social media have changed the ways such events develop and unfold. These technologies offer new tools for organizing and strategizing, for generating large numbers of participants, and for communicating crucial information while reducing temporal and spatial barriers. The teachers’ strike presents an opportunity to increase our understandings of these issues and to widen the scope of research in the field of information sciences to include the impact of ICTs …

Nonprofit Social Media Internships: A Handbook, Allison Laroy

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines how nonprofits can best prepare their interns and how interns can best prepare themselves for a role in engaging audiences through social media. Through a literature review on nonprofit social media and internships, a series of qualitative interviews with interns and supervisors, and my own lived experiences as a social media intern, I develop a handbook for nonprofit social media internships. This guide is relevant to the specific experiences of nonprofit social media internships, includes advice on training, mentorship, and best practices, and finally, it incorporates further resources on nonprofit social media that interns and supervisors can …

The Use Of Narratives And Social Media In Arts & Culture Nonprofit Crisis Communication During Covid-19, Jordan Buuck

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted established communication practices for organizations across the globe. While much attention focused on the adaptability of large corporations, less attention has been paid to how nonprofit organizations have responded. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was creating ripple effects in social service needs, nonprofit organizations that did not directly address public health still fulfilled urgent missions and needed to communicate their legitimacy to assist with community resilience efforts. This study discovered the roles narratives and social media played in nonprofit organizational crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic through interviews with 12 participants. Using situational crisis …

Whatsapp In The Newsroom: Utilisation Of Whatsapp In Journalistic Practices In Kenya, Valerie R.A. Koga

Theses & Dissertations

Over the years, technological innovations have become useful in communication and influenced the way people work (UNCTAD, 2018), with social media applications becoming more acceptable for use at work (Agur, 2019; Azeema & Nazuk, 2017; McIntyre & Sobel, 2019). Many newsrooms in Kenya have integrated the use of social media applications in news production. As a result, the social media application WhatsApp has been domesticated by journalists and is widely used as a tool for news gathering and a channel for communication and for news production as a whole. Thus, the study sought to find out what motivates journalists to …

Associations Between Adolescent And Parent Media Connection And Perceptions Of Emotional Climate In The Home, Laura A. Woodland

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An overwhelming increase in technology and media use this past decade has been found to affect family relationships in various ways. Devices such as cell phones, tablets, and computers, have been found to both be the means of bringing family members closer together by communicating from a distance, while also disrupting and straining family connection, in particular the adolescent to parent relationship. Data from the Flourishing Families Project was used to analyze the varying perceptions of adolescent and parents regarding technology communication with one another and their personal perception of the emotional climate in the home. Results from this study …

What Were The Factors That Led To The Gamestop Short Squeeze?, Riley Burnette

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

The world of finance is rapidly evolving - for better or for worse. The introduction of social media in sentimental stock market trading, and new brokerage apps, combined with the new resurgence of retail investors, has led to some interesting results. These new factors in the stock market have challenged the status quo of the stock market. A group of retail investors has led this change on a Reddit forum known as /r/WallStreetBets

In early January 2021, a group of retail investors collaborated a short squeeze on GameStop stock, creating an attack against the hedge funds on a popular Reddit …

Still We Rise: A Black Feminist Qualitative Inquiry Exploring Black Women’S Experiences On Twitter, Yvonne C. Morris

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

#WOCAffirmation was a hashtag created by April Reign in October 2017 in response to how Black women do not have the same supports of solidarity from populations who are non-Black women. Serving as a counterpublic, #WOCAffirmation embodied how Black women created space to affirm and amplify each other while also highlighting the harassment and abuse they experience in form of misogynoir on Twitter. As Black women are already under-researched in academia and fields within digital humanities, this study centered Black women while also highlighting oppressive systems of power in both physical and digital spaces. Using Black feminist thought as the …

College Students’ Use Of Social Media And Its Effects On Well-Being During Covid-19, Virginia Pressly

Honors Theses

Beginning in the late 2000s, social media began its ascent into mainstream media. Today, it has become a part of our daily routines. Due to its prevalence and nature, social media has been directly linked to deteriorating mental health in teens and young adults for some time. Many of the studies previously conducted studied Millennials. However, today’s generation of young people, Gen-Z, has a very different relationship with social media and the internet. In 2020, when the world was hit with the COVID-19 pandemic and most work and school went virtual, social media became that much more prevalent in our …

Duality In Digital Discourse: The History And Future Of The American Public Forum, Nicholas Weaver

Honors Theses

From the onset of the republic, the liberty to speak freely and debate openly has stood guard and helped preserve all other American rights. While this concept has endured, the means by which it exists in society has changed immensely. As the public forum has evolved to fit the modern needs of the citizenry, political discourse has become less a defense against tyranny and more a chaotic space of conflicting opinions.

In the United States, privately-owned social media companies have grown at an unprecedented rate, yet lawmakers have been slow to exercise any authority to regulate these corporations. For public …

Applied Microeconomics And Business Intelligence In The Digital Age, Thomas J. Weinandy

Dissertations

The Digital Age is defined by advances in big data, low-cost computing, and modern analytical methods. In three chapters, I apply microeconomic thought to the influence these digital technologies have on business and consumer decision-making.

Chapter One considers how Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft impact the relationship between the quantity of car service trips and fuel prices. I find that a single day 1% increase in fuel prices is associated with a 0.367 to 0.486% decrease in the number of TNC trips and a 0.033 to 0.088% increase in the number of taxi trips, even though the …

The Karen Genre: Digital Memes As An Influencer Of Political And Social Discourse, Marc Wardle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Social Media platforms are a source of transformation within the democratic process. Digital memes, seemingly facile and frivolous, contain a collection of dense and broad meanings that have become creative forms of political and social expression. Many complex messages can be communicated to mass audiences through mediated interpersonal communication platforms on social media through the usage of memes. This phenomenon creates what Limor Shifman refers to as a memeplexe. The focus of this study is to explore the transformative nature of the democratic process within digital and internet culture and the formation of an emergent genre of memes called ‘Karen.’ …

Do Students Buy Attention-Grabbing Stocks? A Field Experiment, George Psaradakis

Business and Economics Honors Papers

In this paper, we look to find out whether or not student investors are drawn to “attention-grabbing” stocks. We define “attention-grabbing” stocks as those that are issued by companies with either large numbers of Twitter followers, large general marketing budgets, or both. Our theory is that the more followers that a publicly traded company has on Twitter and/or the more money the company spends on marketing and advertising, the more likely a student would be to invest in its stock.

A field experiment was conducted in which undergraduate students constructed their own virtual stock portfolios. A treatment group was given …

Best Practices For Voter Engagement Within Higher Education, Alyssa Tomins

Honors Projects

It is imperative that higher education institutions learn more about how to recruit members of younger generations to participate in future elections. Young people have historically voted at low rates, but that trend has started to change in recent years as more resources are being devoted to voter engagement among young people. This leads to the interest of understanding what best practices and strategies have academic institutions utilized to advance voter engagement on their campuses. This qualitative study analyzes these best practices and strategies at 84 colleges and universities, all of whom are members of The Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote …

The Impact Of Using Social Media To Understand The Pandemic: Does It Spread Conspiracy And Discourage Health-Protective Behaviours?, Kitara Patry

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

This study investigates the interplay between social media use for COVID-19 related information, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and the negative behaviours associated with these conspiracy theories that manifest in participants’ disregard of health-protective behaviours. Participants (N = 69) were recruited from an all-female undergraduate population and completed one online questionnaire. The questionnaire included demographic information and experience with the pandemic. Questions about COVID-19 conspiracy theories and health-protective behaviours were adapted from Allington et al.’s (2020) research. A Pearson correlation analysis for using social media or traditional news as a main source of COVID-19 information was not significant with measures …

Effects Of Actual And Perceived Air Pollution On U.S. Twitter Sentiment, George R. Garcia Iii

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Objective

This study examines the associations between actual and perceived air pollution (PM_2.5, AQI, and ground visibility), weather information, and expressed sentiment via US Twitter. Heterogeneity in the associations across date and county characteristics are also explored.

Methods

A sentiment index was constructed using 27,827,828 geotagged U.S. tweets posted between May 31 and November 30, 2015. Associations between AQI category changes and the sentiment index were estimated using multi-cutoff regression discontinuity models. Associations between same-day and lagged PM_2.5, ground visibility, and the sentiment index were estimated using weighted linear regression models. Models include weather variables and …

Professional Sport And Community Outreach: A Content Analysis Of Csr Messages Shared By Professional Team Sport Organizations On Twitter, Kelly E. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to understand the corporate social responsibility (CSR) topics shared by professional team sport organizations on their websites and on Twitter as well as fan responses to those CSR messages. A quantitative content analysis of individual tweets from 16 teams across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL posted from October 1-30, 2020 was conducted. Results indicate that CSR topic frequencies were significantly different both on webpages and on Twitter. Replies to CSR messages on Twitter were significantly different based on topic, and replies were largely neutral. There was no significant difference in reply valence to CSR tweets that …

Intimate Rhetorics Of Networked Motherhood, Katie Nelson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Fundamentally pregnant bodies are understood, similarly to women’s bodies, as necessitating discipline. However, new networked forums have emerged where pregnancy is understood as affirming and having the capacity to challenge a silenced subject position. Using three case studies, the #IHadAMiscarriage Instagram page, the #TakeBackPostpartum Instagram page, and mediatized discourses surrounding Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy, this dissertation writes intimate publicity into these mediatized transgressions of pregnancy and postpartum. I argue discourses about pregnancy and postpartum in these networked spaces constitute intimate publics through the cultivation of shared affected investments and divestments in embodied experiences. These investments in the embodied experiences are crafted …

Does Social Media Promote Disordered Eating?, Carly Feldstein

Dissertations and Theses

Hispanic people are the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. with a total of 18.5% of the U.S population being of Hispanic descent (United States Census Bureau, 2020). Although eating disorders (ED), particularly those involving binge eating, comprise a significant health concern, EDs are often overlooked in the Hispanic culture (Higgins et al., 2016; Opara & Santos, 2019). Hispanic individuals have comparable rates of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and an even higher rate of binge eating disorders compared to non- Hispanic (NH) White individuals (Higgins et al., 2016). Within Hispanic adults, the lifetime prevalence of EDs is higher …

Social Media As A Predictor Of Depression Rates Among Male Versus Female Adolescents During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kaylee A. Fishback

Undergraduate Honours Theses

Technology use has drastically and progressively increased as the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to unfold. Adolescents are now reliant on technology for their education, in addition to communication with friends and family (Pfefferbaum & North, 2020). With the recency of the pandemic, research on the effects of increased internet and social media use for adolescent mental health is decidedly underdeveloped. This study aimed to fill the research gap by examining how the frequency of male and female adolescents’ social media use is associated with depression rates during the pandemic by using a longitudinal design. Participants for this study included 351 …

Online Communication Wars: A Critical Recursive Frame Analysis Of Online Responses To The Article Entitled, “This Is Why Colin Kaepernick Took A Knee”, Rebecca Jean Arklie

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The World Wide Web provides us with a doorway to explore our world and access to social media; a “place” where we can keep in touch with family and friends and meet people from different cultures. Social media provides us with the ability to communicate using an Avatar, providing us with anonymity. Unfortunately, this anonymity gives people the freedom to unapologetically express their opinions, using any type of language they desire, without fear of repercussions. This study of the social and cultural implications from anonymous, unrestrained comments in a discussion thread will interest communications experts, psychologists, academics, and peacekeepers because …

The Efficacy Of A Novel Facebook-Based Psychosocial Intervention For Adults With Chronic Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial, Bethany Danielle Pester

Wayne State University Dissertations

Social networking-based groups such as Facebook groups have become increasingly popular among people with chronic conditions, and the affordances of such groups make them a promising platform for chronic disease intervention. Yet, there have been few controlled tests of the effects of social networking-based groups. Our team developed a Facebook-based intervention that focuses on enhancing social support by connecting adults with peers who also have chronic pain. Using a randomized controlled clinical trial, we aimed to understand the efficacy of this intervention and to explore whether a professional-led support group leads to greater effects than a support group alone. The …

Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying The Relationship Between Social Media Use And Depressive Symptoms, Mary Le

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Social media continues to grow in popularity but has been associated with diminished mental health in some users. Social media provides a platform for social comparison, which influences how individuals evaluate their traits, abilities, and successes in achieving life milestones and, in turn, may impact psychological functioning. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether social comparison and cognitive distortions mediated the relationship between social media use and depressive symptoms in younger adults. In total, 175 adults between the ages of 18 and 29 years were recruited online (64.6% male, 34.9% female; 45.7% Asian). Participants completed anonymous surveys …

The Impact Of Social Media On Teenage Females Self-Esteem, Amanda C. Perkovich

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Social media has become the way we connect with the world. Social networking sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and TikTok, allow users to share intimate details of their lives, upload photographs, initiate and maintain relationships, plan social gatherings, observe the lives of others and express beliefs, values and emotions. In the last ten years, numerous articles have focused on the relationship between social media use and mental health however, very few studies have concentrated on self-esteem, especially in teenage females. The purpose of this literature review is to explore the associations between increased social media activity (greater than 2 …

An Assessment Of The Impacts Of Social Media Inputs And Court Case Information On Mitigating Insider Threats, Robert Jones

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The insider threat is a global problem that impacts organizations and produces a gamut of undesired outcomes. Businesses often experience lost revenue and stolen trade secrets, which can leave a tarnished reputation. Insider threats can also cause harm to individuals and national security. Past efforts have not mitigated the problem in its entirety. Documented instances of insider threats are as recent as March 2020. Many researchers have focused on monitoring technologies and relying on human monitoring in a reactive posture. An ideal solution would scrutinize an individual’s character and ascertain whether unique traits associated with actors of insider threats are …

Donald Trump V. The Electorate: A Twitter Feud For The Ages, Natalie Gould

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis began as an exploration into Donald Trump’s Twitter use in the final year of his presidency, starting with his first (and at the time, only) impeachment and ending with the November 2020 election. As an incumbent running for re-election, Donald Trump broke from precedent by opting out of the traditional messaging strategy of expanding his base and promoting unity and instead focused on energizing his existing supporters. Throughout his campaign and presidency, his Trumpian-style of rhetoric which perpetuated an “us versus them” mentality resulted in threats and real violence by his supporters.

The role of social media has …

Terrorism And Social Media: Extremist Groups And College Student Recruitment, Marion Donald Bell Iii

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

College students are particularly vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist organizations. Social media is the primary tool used by extremist groups to target college students. This research was conducted to examine the extent to which college students are affected by extremist groups on social media. A qualitative research design was implemented to collect data from a diverse group of college students. Participants consisted of five experts in homeland security or law enforcement and 12 individuals who were students or recent graduates in fields related to law enforcement and homeland security. Social learning theory provided the theoretical foundation for this research. Results …