Social Media Commons^™

Comparing Western And South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies, Tara G. Siano

Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

In 2017, South Korean idol group, Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), became the first Korean pop group to win a Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist. This award is fan voted and indicates strong audience engagement and a skillful use of social media. K-Pop is becoming more and more popular due to an effective use of social media for global music distribution, and identifying the Twitter strategies of Korean idol groups has applications beyond the music industry. Comparing how Western and South Korean Artists use Twitter will bring to light new strategies for both organizations and businesses on the platform. This …

Advertisements’ Perpetuation Of Rape Culture: A Look At How Images Containing Objectification And Victimization Impact Consumers, Lauren Leedberg

Honors Projects in Marketing

The research I have conducted explores connections between images shown in advertisements and the perpetuation of rape culture and gendered stereotypes in society. It was guided by the Cultivation Theory which looks at how media, such as advertisements, can shape our reality. After an extensive literature review, data was gathered via an experimental design utilizing surveys. Within these surveys, respondents were randomly shown an advertisement I created containing the variables to be tested (i.e. images with objectification and victimization). After viewing the ad, they answered questions regarding their attitude toward the brand/product depicted, purchase intentions, a rape myth acceptance scale …

Assessing Psychophysiological Effects Of Malodorous Pollutants In Residents Of Leandrinho, Bahia, Brazil: A Pilot Study Using A Whatsapp-Based Questionnaire, Shanell Folger, Courtney Woods, Rita Franco Rego, Carlos Henrique Amaral, Washington Ramos, Amanda Northcross

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

Background: Leandrinho is located in the region that is home to the largest industrial chemical complex in the southern hemisphere that covers approximately 49 km². Leandrinho residents have reported experiencing adverse health effects that co-occur during periods of malodor emitted by the petrochemical industry. However, there is currently no tool for the residents to systematically record incidents of malodor. This pilot study assessed the feasibility of using a questionnaire designed through Whatsapp, a text-messaging application commonly used among residents.

Method: Leandrinho residents were randomly recruited to complete a daily questionnaire using either paper (n=24) or Whatsapp (n=24) over …

Who Is Saying What About Inflammatory Bowel Disease On Twitter?, Ali Khan, Anna Silverman, Anthony Rowe, Samantha Rowe, Matt Tick, Steve Testa, Keri Dodds, Bedoor Alabbas, Marie L. Borum

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

Background: With about 330 million active users and its growing media attention globally, Twitter is a powerful tool for conveying information to the general population. There is limited data on the utilization of Twitter for disseminating medical information. This study evaluated messages on Twitter regarding Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

Methods: Social Feed Manager (SFM; version 1.10.0; GW University, 2017), a software that mines social media platforms, was used to extract information regarding IBD-related tweets and their accounts over a 10-day period. We queried Twitter for terms related to IBD and categorized messages by geographic origin, type of user, and message …

Effectiveness Of Social Media Analytics On Detecting Service Quality Metrics In The U.S. Airline Industry, Xin Tian

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Theses & Dissertations

During the past few decades, social media has provided a number of online tools that allow people to discuss anything freely, with an increase in mobile connectivity. More and more consumers are sharing their opinions online with others. Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) is the virtual communication in use; it plays an important role in customers’ buying decisions. Customers can choose to complain or to compliment services or products on their social media platforms, rather than to complete the survey offered by the providers of those services. Compared with the traditional survey, or with the air travel customer report published …

What Is Gab: A Bastion Of Free Speech Or An Alt-Right Echo Chamber, Savvas Zannettou, Barry Bradlyn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Haewoon Kwak, Michael Sirivianos, Gianluca Stringhini, Jeremy Blackburn

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Over the past few years, a number of new "fringe" communities, like 4chan or certain subreddits, have gained traction on the Web at a rapid pace. However, more often than not, little is known about how they evolve or what kind of activities they attract, despite recent research has shown that they influence how false information reaches mainstream communities. This motivates the need to monitor these communities and analyze their impact on the Web's information ecosystem. In August 2016, a new social network called Gab was created as an alternative to Twitter. It positions itself as putting "people and free …

The Effects Of Smartphones On Social Lives: How They Affect Our Social Interactions And Attitudes, D'Juan Gladden

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

New technologies available with cellular devices and the introduction of smartphones have become a large part of individual’s lives in the past few decades. Smartphones have the ability to perform almost every operation necessary for individuals at any time or place. Smartphones are means for individuals to communicate quickly while interacting on other websites and social networking platforms at the same time. Each day the capabilities of smartphones continue to grow and allow users to establish more information through these mediums, without the extra work of using other devices and programs. The study investigated the daily usage of smartphones by …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Social Media Marketing On Individuals’ Attitudes And Perceptions At Nova Community College, Nya Gibson

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

Social media has become prominent in the 21st century. Companies are persistently looking for ways to utilize this new platform within their marketing strategies to increase business growth. Since social media is a networking and communication platform, it is important for companies to create a voice to humanize the business and maintain foot traffic. Although there are studies on how to use social media marketing within a business, there is minimal corroboration available of how social media marketing activities influence a consumer’s buying behavior. This study investigated the effects of social media on consumer attitudes of social media marketing and …

17 Days: Cross-Country With Social Media, Zachary Alvarado

Senior Theses

"Austin Prescott and Zach Alvarado travel from South Carolina to California using social media to find and communicate with hosts throughout the country..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8k6EQnW5D4

Costs of investment were weighed against capital contributions throughout our campaign. While the film serves to inspire, entertain, and inform, the paper dives deeper into the brand-building, cost-savings, and logistics of the trip. In the end, we more than doubled our initial investment and had an awesome time while doing it.

Fake News, Political Narrative, & Social Media: A Structuration Approach, Adam M. Housh

Capstone Collection

This research aims to unveil a connection between fake news distribution, readership demand, and social media networks, in this case, Facebook. In this research, fake news is defined as “content that is deliberately false and published on websites that mimic traditional news websites (Johnson and Kelling 2017, p3)”. It is argued that fake news content is not produced at random, but is tailored to particular political demographics and narratives. Exposure to such media not only validates ideological positions, it polarizes political beliefs. Furthermore, Facebook not only acts as an effective distribution medium, but allows individual users to skip structural filters …

Chasing Success: A Cultivated Reality, Anastasia Bevillard

Honors Projects in Communication

George Gerbner’s cultivation theory claims that people who consume heavy amounts of media are more likely to be influenced by those messages to believe the media reality as opposed to actual reality. Using cultivation theory as the basis for study, I performed a cultivation analysis examining the intersection of mass media and perceptions of success among college-aged young adults living in the United States. The analysis focused on three main points: (1) How mass media perceives and subsequently demonstrates success. (2) The impact of mass media on young adults living in America. (3) What reality of success is cultivated by …

Detect Rumor And Stance Jointly By Neural Multi-Task Learning, Jing Ma, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, an unhealthy phenomenon characterized as the massive spread of fake news or unverified information (i.e., rumors) has become increasingly a daunting issue in human society. The rumors commonly originate from social media outlets, primarily microblogging platforms, being viral afterwards by the wild, willful propagation via a large number of participants. It is observed that rumorous posts often trigger versatile, mostly controversial stances among participating users. Thus, determining the stances on the posts in question can be pertinent to the successful detection of rumors, and vice versa. Existing studies, however, mainly regard rumor detection and stance classification as …

Exploiting User And Venue Characteristics For Fine-Grained Tweet Geolocation, Wen Haw Chong, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Which venue is a tweet posted from? We call this a fine-grained geolocation problem. Given an observed tweet, the task is to infer its discrete posting venue, e.g., a specific restaurant. This recovers the venue context and differs from prior work, which geolocats tweets to location coordinates or cities/neighborhoods. First, we conduct empirical analysis to uncover venue and user characteristics for improving geolocation. For venues, we observe spatial homophily, in which venues near each other have more similar tweet content (i.e., text representations) compared to venues further apart. For users, we observe that they are spatially focused and more likely …

Marketing Analysis Of Scholarly Journals In A Social World, Hunter Watson

Discovery Day - Prescott

The next methodology to the Airline Quality Rating (AQR) Social Media metrics is to determine if scholarly platforms for future use can benefit the AQR. The AQR authored by Dr. Brent Bowen and Dr. Dean Headley introduced the Airline Quality Rating (AQR) in 1993 as an objective method for comparing and scoring airline performance in areas deemed to be important for consumers. The quantitative metrics from utilizing new marketing techniques have increased the audience members attracted to this report. With a digitalized driven society, social media has been the main benefactor in gaining new attention. Continuing on the process to …

Exploring Screen Time Habits And The Life Empowerment Divide At An Hbcu, Kim Smith, Tobin Walton, Alvin Keyes

Faculty Publications

College students at a historically black university used their social media accounts to recruit 1,232 of their peers to take an online survey that explored digital screen time and social media habits at this HBCU. The study revealed that 51% devoted daily screen time to academic empowerment, 31% devoted it to leisure, and 11% devoted it to life empowerment. Sixty-six percent said they spent too much screen time on leisure and not enough on life empowerment, i.e., using resources in the digital world to improve their lives. The paper explored the divide, its implications, and how to narrow it.

Information Disorder And The Need For News Literacy Education In The Digital Era, Lauren Brown-Hulme

Honors Theses

This paper serves as a comprehensive report on the need for and barriers to news literacy education in the United States. Current misinformation issues in the U.S. are introduced and the importance of news literacy among citizens of a democracy. Answers to these questions are sought: What are the current challenges regarding news literacy in the digital age and what are the implications? Further, can news literacy be taught? Based on measured practices, what are the best methods for news literacy education? Existing literature covers the topics of information disorder and news literacy, highlighting the importance of news literacy in …

#Transformffa: An Analysis Of Social Media Content During The 2016 National Ffa Convention, Tiffany M. Rogers-Randolph, Lisa K. Lundy, Jessica L. Harsh, Raychel Rabon

Journal of Applied Communications

The proliferation of social media has the ability to considerably impact stakeholders’ perspective of an organization’s brand. Due to this relationship, social media analysis is crucial to executing informed brand communication strategies. In October 2016, the brand communication strategies of the National FFA Organization were focused on promoting the 89^th National FFA Convention. A large portion of these efforts and resources were dedicated towards the utilization of social media. This study was designed as a content analysis of the National FFA Organization’s social media presence during the dates of the convention. The goal was to identify the prominent themes …

G3 Facebook Campaign, Virginia Rose Lee

Agricultural Education and Communication

G3 Enterprises, started by the third generation of the Gallo family, provides packing and supply chain services within the wine industry. The transportation department focuses and specializes in transporting wine grapes from vineyards to the wineries for Gallo and external companies. In some ways, marketing a service as business-to-business can be more complex than marketing a business-to-consumer product according to B2B International (Hague, Harrison, 2017). Therefore, G3 needs to branch out of its traditional marketing and keep up with current trends by creating a greater social media presence. If G3 Transportation can successfully showcase its trucking service through social media, …

Malene Wines: The Beginning Of A Brand, Tyler Menane

Agricultural Education and Communication

Malene Wines is the most recently developing brand under the Crimson Wine Group. Currently, the brand is being produced and managed under Chamisal Vineyards. Malene Wines started off with one brand of rosé wine, that has only been available for purchase in the Chamisal tasting room or wholesale. This has caused confusion for the consumer in differentiating the two brands. To help begin the separation of the two brands, Malene Wines has recently received a modified Airstream trailer to serve as a mobile tasting room.

Whereas Chamisal Vineyards is a brand focused on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with small production …

Egg Awareness, Hailee J. French

Agricultural Education and Communication

In 2008, Proposition 2 passed, forcing all egg producers in California to provide more room inside of cages to their laying hens. The Humane Society of the United States [HSUS] initiated this battle and won but, less than a decade later decided that still wasn’t enough room for the birds. HSUS is now pushing to have a new measure on the ballot in November 2018 forcing all egg producers in California to produce their eggs cage free.

This project will survey the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo campus to gauge the campus’s understanding of egg production in California. …