Social Media Commons^™

"Why This Post Now?" : Dramaturging Politics And Social Media, Kennedy Kemmerer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Political events have always been influenced by the media, but social media has provided a much stronger influence than the typical newspaper or radio. Users of social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) have the opportunity to share whatever they want, to whoever they want, whenever they want. While social media has given immense opportunity for artists and creators alike, it has also given way for creators to participate in uninformed performance, whether intended or not, with their content. Are social media consumers considering whether content, specifically political content, is actually true or are they accepting it at face …

Hate Speech Spikes On Twitter After Elon Musk Acquires The Platform, Bond Benton, Jin-A Choi, Yi Luo, Keith Green

School of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

Unmoderated social media platforms frequently become a haven for misinformation, extremism, and hate. There are challenges unique to unmoderated social media platforms that make the removal of such content and the users who spread it particularly difficult (Artime et al., 2020). When a platform’s focus is unrestricted expression from users, those looking to share and spread antisocial content will presumably use such spaces to share perspectives that would likely be restricted on other platforms. Historically, examples of such “free speech absolutist” spaces suggest that this threat is very real. Specifically, 4chan serves as a space where online anonymity coupled with …

A Preview Of Post Amnesty Twitter: Analysis Of “Groomer” On Twitter After The Colorado Springs Shooting, Bond Benton, Yi Luo, Jin-A Choi, Keith Strudler, Keith Green

School of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

On November 24, 2022 Elon Musk stated that “general amnesty” would be given to Twitter accounts previously suspended for violent threats, harassment and misinformation. This appears to reflect Musk’s previously stated intent to run the platform as a “free speech absolutist.” The question in many people’s minds is what such an incarnation of Twitter will look like. The tragic shooting at an LGBTQIA+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado on Nov. 19-20 and the reaction the event generated on the platform provide a case that demonstrates the tensions that will come with reduced platform moderation. “Groomer,” a previously Twitter restricted slur …

Governmental Persuasion Strategies On Social Media During Covid-19: A Comparative Study Of The Us And China, Fan Wang

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This study compared persuasive strategies of the governments of the U.S. and China during a public health crisis using social media messages. Collecting data with R and Python from two national public health sectors' official accounts on Twitter (N = 1,630) and Sina Weibo (N = 3,554), the researcher investigated how the organizations' messages reflected Cialdini's seven principles of persuasion and whether other emergent messaging patterns occurred. According to the different phases that the two countries had gone through during the pandemic, the researcher also conducted a pooled times series analysis to investigate the relationship between the frequency of daily …

Which Police Departments Make Black Lives Matter, Which Don’T, And Why Don’T Most Social Scientists Care?, Robert Anthony Maranto, Wilfred Reilly, Patrick Wolf, Mattie Harris

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

In part via skillful use of social media, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has become among the most influential social movements of the past half century, with support across racial lines, and considerable financial backing (Fisher, 2019). Will this translate into public policy reforms which save Black lives? After all, higher education is a key institutional backer of BLM, and a considerable literature dating back decades (e.g., Lindblom & Cohen, 1979) casts doubt on the effectiveness of social science in solving social problems, for numerous reasons. Often, the best social science is simple counting. This paper makes two unique contributions. First, …

Girl-Next-Door To Girlboss: Taylor Swift’S Online Evolution From Puerile Pop Star To Poignant Political Influence, Clare G. Daly

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Of all society’s public figures, the social-media-savvy celebrity is arguably the most powerful. Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has amassed one of the largest followings on the internet. In recent years, she has inspired fans to act upon sociopolitical issues via voter registration, letter-writing campaigns, and music. Her digital footprint is not without contention from a slow arrival to politics to white feminist attributes present in her messaging. Through close reading across four social media platforms, I found a shift in Swift’s social media activity. In her transition from a young pop star to a global influence, I concluded that “Swifties” will …

Rise Of Social Media Influencers As A New Marketing Channel: Focusing On The Roles Of Psychological Well-Being And Perceived Social Responsibility Among Consumers, Jihye Kim, Minseong Kim

Integrated Strategic Communication Faculty Publications

This empirical research investigated the structural relationships between social media influencer attributes, perceived friendship, psychological well-being, loyalty, and perceived social responsibility of influencers, focusing on the perspective of social media users. More specifically, this study conceptually identified social media influencer attributes such as language similarity, interest similarity, interaction frequency, and self-disclosure and examined the respective effects of each dimension on perceived friendship and psychological well-being, consequently resulting in loyalty toward social media influencers. The authors collected and analyzed data from 388 social media users in the United States via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk with multivariate analyses to test the hypothesized associations …

The Impact Of Social Media Platforms On Societal Security “A Study On A Sample Of Facebook Users In The Emirati Society”, Adnan Aldhmour

Journal of Police and Legal Sciences

This study aims at identifying the impact of social networking websites on societal security. The study adopts the descriptive analytical approach, whereas the study population consisted of 280 Facebook users in UAE community , intentionally selected to serve the purpose of the study.

The most important results showed that the most basic motives for using social networking websites are to communicate and to keep in touch with family and friends, and to make sure that they are safe and sound. The most important risks involved include the individual’s isolation and introversion and rebellion against societal values, which may eventually lead …

Canceling Vs. #Cancel Culture: An Analysis On The Surveillance And Discipline Of Social Media Behavior Through Competing Discourses Of Power, Julia G. Bezio

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Canceling and #cancelculture have become the topic of many debates over free speech and accountability for oppressive behaviors in social media discourse. This thesis examines Twitter discourse from two recent racism-based cancel cases. Using Foss and Gill’s (1987) adapted epistemic rhetoric framework and emphasizing elements of Foucauldian surveillance and discipline in the discourse, I conduct a comparative qualitative examination of Gina Rodriguez’s and Chris Harrison’s cancel discourse. I contend that in the cancel process, Twitter users engage in surveillance to discipline one another on multiple levels: first, as cancelers use the practice to discipline oppressive behaviors on social media, and …