Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Resignation Or Resistance? Examining The Digital Privacy Attitudes And Behaviours Of East Yorkers, Kaitlyn Cavacas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Digital technologies have become enmeshed in everyday life causing the public to become exposed to potential privacy risks through data collection and aggregation practices. Further, the upsurge in use of social networking platforms has also created opportunities for privacy violations through institutional and social surveillance. Employing a qualitative thematic analysis, this study explores how adults (N=101) living in East York, Toronto, navigate privacy through their use of the internet and digital services. Participants expressed feelings of mistrust, loss of control, resignation, and perceived self-unimportance with regards to their digital data. Importantly, others noted their desire and attempts to …

Chatting Online: An Ethnographic Case Study Of Educator Discourse On Social Media, Lindsay J. Russell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study sought to examine the online discussions of teachers located in the Southwestern area of the United States regarding social justice issues on social media. Specifically, it looked to discover how educators in this region are attempting to assert agency when faced with socially inequitable situations. Teachers in this region are hired as public employees in a state that penalizes public workers for exhibiting opinions (SRS § 288.260, 1969).

The study utilized Cultural Historical Activity Theory along with Critical Multiculturalism to demonstrate that our present actions are culturally and historically situated while illuminating hegemonic forces. The study found that …

Social Media And Political Participation : A Case Study Of Facebook As A Plaftorm Of Communication, Mobilization And Action, Chun Ho Cheung

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

Social media is increasingly used for political conversations and debate. In Hong Kong, social media has provided a convenient and accessible platform for stakeholders in the political arena to publicize their ideas and for users to be engaged in political discourse. This study aims at investigating the effects of social media on political participation among Hong Kong youth, who are generally regarded as “digital natives” and “critical citizens”. This study focuses on Facebook, the most widely-used social networking site in Hong Kong, and examines how Facebook use, connection and interactivity with political actors on Facebook, exposure to political information on …

The Dynamics Of Online Shaming : A Sociological Study Of Hong Kong's Virtual World, Yui Fung Yip

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

This research studies the “dynamics” of online shaming in the context of Hong Kong society. The term “online shaming” is generally understood to refer to a form of stigmatization, in which people try to condemn “alleged-deviants”. By introducing Erving Goffman’s and Randall Collins’s discussions on the Interaction Ritual, this research offers a sociological explanation for the phenomenon of online shaming, and the interaction mechanism behind it. In particular, I argue that online shaming is not only a practice of condemning “deviant” actors as it has been usually conceptualized. Rather, it is a dynamic interactive process that revolves around different types …

Its Skin Is My Skin, Bryan Page

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text examines the complexity of attempting to empathize with bodies that are vastly othered from my own. This broad yet nuanced subject crosses epistemological boundaries and complicates the dualities between both the mind and body, and between the corporeal and the virtual. My desire to better understand the conditions of another’s experience originates from a painful traumatic loss which caused me to feel isolated and incomplete. In response to this suffering, I long to emotionally connect with other beings and create artwork that attempts to bridge the qualia of individual experience.

I am interested in the capacity (or lack …

Liable To Change, Jody Travis Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Liable to Change is a body of paintings in which I explore diverse approaches to the representation of visual space. Depictions of space and movement change throughout the pictures by combining various artistic conventions, such as trompe l’oeil realism and non-objective, geometric abstraction. Oil paint, resin, beeswax, and other materials create built-up surfaces which contain the history of their making. Interaction between various finishes and light on these surfaces changes based on the viewers' proximity to the painting. Images of monkey bars, lattice, golden ratio and flower of life patterns provide a structure through which line, form, and space are …

Social Media Usage And Its Effect On Quality Of Adolescent Social Relationships, Sadie Saltzman

Sociology Senior Seminar Papers

Does the number of social media platforms that an adolescent uses have an effect on the quality of their social relationships? As social media continues to grow and evolve, sociologists have begun to explore its effect on an individual’s everyday life. I propose that the more social media platforms that an adolescent uses, the more they will experience negative effects on their social relationships. Using survey data from 786 respondents living in the United States, ages 13 to 17 and collected by the Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2015, regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between social …

Advanced Statistics In Arkansas Sports Reporting, Andrew Lee Epperson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to analyze how Arkansas’ sports journalists are adapting to the recent surge in available advanced statistics that are being used by certain national news organizations. Using in-depth qualitative research that includes in-depth interviews with a number of individuals in the print, broadcast, and athletics side of sports coverage, we discover how journalists and coaches use these next-generation analytics, what they fundamentally mean for the evolution of each respective path, and why so few Arkansas reporters and writers use them at the time of this paper’s defense. We see how budgets and deadlines restrict the use of these …

Resisting Industrial Food Systems On The Web: How Non-Profit Organizations Use Digital Technology For Sustainability Education, Aleksandr Segal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the link between how community-based organizations use digital tools with the fundamentally resistance-based philosophy that these organizations have at the core of their mission. It aims to uncover how non-profit organizations (NPOs) that work in community development through food and agriculture use digital tools, and how their digital communication strategies relate to issues of resistance to neoliberalism and industrialization in the food and agriculture sectors.

Using a foundation of existing literature on food and agriculture, climate change and waste management, critical theory, and technology in pedagogy, this thesis will contextualize how non-profits resist neoliberal regimes of de-traditionalization …

Crisis Leadership And Management Of Superintendents During The 2017-18 California Wildfires, Dianna Kitamura

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed methods heuristic research study was to discover how school superintendents described their crisis leadership and management experiences during the 2017-2018 wildfires in California through the lens of the Five Critical Tasks of Strategic Crisis Leadership framework of sense making, meaning making, decision-making and coordination, learning, accounting (Boin, 't Hart, Stern, & Sundelius, 2017). Additionally, this study determined the extent to which school superintendents identify their use of the Five Critical Tasks of Strateby Dianna W. Kitamuragic Crisis Leadership framework.

Methodology: This explanatory, sequential mixed methods heuristic research study investigated a quantitative survey and qualitative …