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New And Transferable Digital Skills In The Era Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Mobilizing Social Support, Molly-Gloria Harper, Anabel Quan-Haase, William Hollingshead May 2022

New And Transferable Digital Skills In The Era Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Mobilizing Social Support, Molly-Gloria Harper, Anabel Quan-Haase, William Hollingshead

Sociology Presentations

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis that has had profound impacts on people’s lives. Under these circumstances, social support can buffer against pandemic-related stress. Yet, the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic with its stringent health guidelines have created unique challenges to the mobilization of social support. These challenges particularly affect vulnerable groups with limited digital life skills. Based on a qualitative study of 101 semi-structured interviews with East York residents in Toronto, Canada conducted in 2013–2014, we investigate what new and transferable digital life skills are needed in the pre- and post-pandemic era to mobilize social support. Our …


Jihad And Hashtags: Women's Roles In The Islamic State And Pro-Jihadist Social Networks, Rachel K. Inch Sep 2017

Jihad And Hashtags: Women's Roles In The Islamic State And Pro-Jihadist Social Networks, Rachel K. Inch

MA Research Paper

Over a one-year period from January 2015 to January 2016, a team of researchers collected nearly 100,000 Tweets from female operated Twitter accounts that exhibited pro-Islamic State (IS) affiliations. The following exploratory research paper aims to address two questions: (1) will identifiable patterns of engagement be revealed through a thematic analysis of Tweets posted by pro-IS women?, and (2) do these patterns illuminate the roles pro-IS women occupy online and in real-time social networks? This research paper intends to challenge the gendered assumption that women play strictly supportive roles within the boundaries of the IS, and demonstrate that IS female …


“Follow Me So I Can Dm You Back”: An Exploratory Analysis Of A Female Pro- Isis Twitter Network, Joseph A. Varanese Nov 2016

“Follow Me So I Can Dm You Back”: An Exploratory Analysis Of A Female Pro- Isis Twitter Network, Joseph A. Varanese

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study is to explore a network of female pro-Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) supporters on Twitter. To do so, I identified twenty Twitter accounts (n=20) through snowball sampling, and analyzed their network comprising 5,861 vertices and 12,034 edges. I studied the network using three social network analysis metrics—Freeman’s normalized betweenness centrality, average geodesic distance, and tie strength. Females in the sample were more influential than males, and as a result, had a greater ability to radicalize other females within their network. Further, I observed that it took females longer than expected to …


"Support For Sisters Please": Comparing The Online Roles Of Al-Qaeda Women And Their Islamic State Counterparts, Hillary Peladeau Aug 2016

"Support For Sisters Please": Comparing The Online Roles Of Al-Qaeda Women And Their Islamic State Counterparts, Hillary Peladeau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study evaluates female roles in pro-jihadist terrorism by examining online content. Data was collected from 36 Twitter accounts of women associated with al-Qaeda (AQ) affiliated groups for a period of six months. The purpose for collecting this data was to: 1) compare how traditional female roles, as constructed within a jihadi-Salafist ideology, are reproduced and challenged on social media; 2) and determine the extent that AQ-affiliated women conform to roles outlined in Huey’s classification of females in pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter networks. The results of this study reveal that women’s traditional roles in pro-jihadist activities are reproduced on Twitter. …


Terror On Twitter: A Comparative Analysis Of Gender And The Involvement In Pro-Jihadist Communities On Twitter, Eric W. Witmer Aug 2016

Terror On Twitter: A Comparative Analysis Of Gender And The Involvement In Pro-Jihadist Communities On Twitter, Eric W. Witmer

MA Research Paper

Social media has become the milieu of choice to radicalize young impressionable minds by terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. While a plethora of research exists on the recruitment and propaganda efforts by terrorist organizations there is limited number of quantitative studies that observe the relationship of gender and the involvement in online radical milieus. This current research will build upon prior studies through the comparative analysis of 750 unique Twitter accounts supporting the IS and the affiliates of al-Qaeda that were non-randomly sampled between January and September of 2015. The research aimed to address the …


Navigating The Social Landscape: An Exploration Of Social Networking Site Usage Among Emerging Adults, Kristen Colbeck Apr 2015

Navigating The Social Landscape: An Exploration Of Social Networking Site Usage Among Emerging Adults, Kristen Colbeck

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study explores how emerging adults (Arnett, 2000) in their first- and second-year of undergraduate study make use of social networking sites (SNSs) for their day-to-day sociality. This study compares emerging adults’ use of Facebook, which is the most popular and widely used SNS among this particular demographic, to increasingly popular SNSs Twitter and Instagram. This project seeks to discover how the use of different SNSs supplements, changes, or replaces the use of Facebook, considering social capital exists on each platform, and if and how each sites’ uses and gratifications differ. This study employs face-to-face semi-structured interviews to pursue the …