Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Assessing The Threat Of Social Media To National Security: Information Operations In The 21st Century, Brendan M. Cullen

Senior Theses

The ubiquity of social media has enabled an unprecedented amount of personal data to be accessible to various entities. Social media platforms leverage this data to optimize algorithmic recommendation systems, persuade users to engage, and promote monetization. The social media ecosystem’s business model demands continuous engagement and the relentless collection of user data to grow and scale. Not only is social media massively popular around the world, but it has integrated heavily into users’ daily lives. This integration is driven by social platforms’ deliberate architectures and affordances. The intentionality of social media can be exploited by state and non-state actors …

Impact Of Social Media  On Public Perception Of Government Covid-19 Response Efforts, Taher Taher

Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to understand this phenomenon to provide insights into how governments can perform better in times of crisis regarding social media and its impact on public opinion. This research aims to understand how social media impacts public perception of government COVID-19 response efforts by studying Facebook comments, likes, and reactions (emoticons).

The study was based on data gathered from Facebook comments on the daily infographic COVID-19 statistics from the official site of the Ministry of Health and Population. The sampling frame is the 52 weeks of 2020, January to December, through random sampling resulting in 546 comments. The …

A New Era Of Policing: Uncovering Ways Officers Believe Community Relations Can Be Restored, Bradi Kai Kooyman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The present study qualitatively investigated law enforcement officers’ opinions on creating more positive relationships with community members and how news media can play a role in deteriorating community attitudes and perceptions of law enforcement officers. A total of six participants were selected to participate in a forty-five-minute interview. Participants were asked questions regarding positive and negative factors in their relationship with their communities, local and national law enforcement portrayals in news media, reforms needed within law enforcement, beliefs toward community policing, and factors that lead to success in their relationships with citizens. This study discovered that building trust, implementing community …

Presidents And Media During Initial Federal-Level Hurricane Relief: A Study Of Presidential Crisis Communication Efforts, Emily A. Ball

Honors College Theses

Public relations serves a huge role in almost every sector, including politics. Crisis communication, a subset of public relations, is very important in a setting that constantly undergoes crises. The response to these crises matters a great deal on the federal level because the outcomes can affect such a wide variety of policies and even elections. Because of this, I wanted to focus on one type of crisis that every president is almost guaranteed to face: hurricanes. To examine the effectiveness of federal-level crisis communication, I look at Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden’s responses to the worst hurricane during their …