Digital Commons Network^™

A Collaborative Solution: Online Safety And Adolescent Trends, Loni L. Whiteman

IPS/BAS 495 Undergraduate Capstone Projects

This professional action project focused on addressing the risks and needs facing local adolescents in my community. I partnered with several professionals and community members to host a parent night presentation at Timberlake High School. The presentation included an overview of risks and trends affecting our local youth, as well as statewide statistics on social media, mental health, vaping, substance use, and other risky behaviors. At the conclusion of the presentation, attendees were invited to ask questions, network with professionals, peruse the “paraphernalia” table, and collect resource handouts from several different supporting agencies in the local area. The presentation was …

The Acceleration Of The Fashion Trend Cycle Through Social Media, Katelin M. Callery

Selected Honors Theses

Fashion is known for its cyclical nature, but this cycle has been careening out of control in recent years. To deduce the cause of this acceleration of the fashion trend cycle, research was conducted to determine social media’s role in the trend cycle. Since coming into prominence in the last 20 years, social media has monumentally impacted countless different areas of modern culture, this paper analyzes its impact on the diffusion of fashion objects into societal relevance. This analysis is conducted through Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation curve and an in depth look into both short and long term fashion trends …

The Faces Of Crime: How Municipal Police Department Presence On Social Media Influences The Lives Of Incarcerated Americans, Carley Frost

Honors Theses

This photographic exposé and the complimentary research was designed to highlight the impact of municipal police department presence on social media and the consequences it has on those who are featured on the pages. As social media became a centerpoint of social life, police departments sought to utilize social media in a way that uplifted the department; however, in doing so, incarcerated members of the community were simultaneously being publicly humiliated. Their mugshots and alleged charges were published onto the department social media pages, allowing their family and peers to comment and share freely. These individuals report difficulty finding a …

Beyond News Values On Twitter: Predicting Factors That Drive User Engagement In News, Zhiyan Zhong

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

When deciding on what news stories to cover, traditional journalism determines news values by following several elements of newsworthiness, such as impact, timeliness, and prominence. However, these guidelines do not always seem to correspond with the success of content on social media. As people are increasingly turning to social media for news, our research aims to understand and predict factors that drive user engagement for news on social media. In this study, we analyze news content published on Twitter, and examine a diverse set of characteristics like metrics retrieved from the Twitter API and semantics by natural language processing, including …

Fake News And The Tax Law, Kathleen Delaney Thomas, Erin Scharff

Washington and Lee Law Review

The public misunderstands many aspects of the tax system. For example, people frequently misunderstand how marginal tax rates work, misperceive their own average tax rates, and believe they benefit from tax deductions for which they are ineligible. Such confusion is understandable given the complexity of our tax laws. Unfortunately, research suggests these misconceptions shape voter preferences about tax policy which, in turn, impact the policies themselves.

That people are easily confused by taxes is nothing new. With the rise of social media platforms, however, the speed at which misinformation campaigns can now move to shape public opinion is far faster. …

And The Oscar Goes To... Tiktok, Dawson Bley

Senior Honors Theses

Companies have been forced to take note of the emerging social media app, TikTok, which has attracted more than a billion users to its platform and invited businesses into an uncharted market ready to be exploited. By seeking to understand and employ the unique features which have led to TikTok’s far-reaching success, many companies can similarly improve their position. In particular, traditional movie companies, which have recently suffered blows at the box office due to factors such as competition with online streaming, could benefit from an analysis of this tech to restore lost engagement and revenue. Specifically, how can the …

China's Strategic Devaluing Of American Social Capital, Garrett Martin

Journal of Strategic Security

The information technology era has opened a myriad of new battlespaces through which nations engage each other. China has advanced their “three warfares” doctrine – political warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare – behind a robust and aggressive economic agenda. Direct financial investment and tightly controlled access to both their large consumer market and cheap labor force has given them considerable leverage in key sectors of American industry, particularly those in the communication sphere. The narrative crafting capabilities increasingly acquired by China are beginning to appear as genuine cultural hegemony. This indicates an ability to shape the American collective …

Toxic Positivity And Perceptions Of Mental Health, Madeline E. Feltner

Senior Theses

My thesis concerns how toxic positivity, especially the type we commonly see on social media, can affect perceptions and stigma around mental health issues on college campuses. Toxic positivity is the belief that a person should always maintain a positive mindset, no matter what situation they are in, and invalidates negative emotions. Previous research shows that toxic positivity can have a negative effect on mental health, but in this thesis, I study how toxic positivity affects perceptions about others with mental health issues, willingness to interact with those with mental health issues, and self-perception. It is important to research this …

Making Music Social: Creating A Spotify-Based Social Media Platform, Dalton J. Craven

Senior Theses

DKMS is a new type of social media platform for music lovers and groups of friends. It integrates tightly with Spotify, one of the largest music streaming services in the world. Users of DKMS can see what their friends are listening to, receive recommendations of new songs to listen to, and analyze their several key numerical metrics (happiness, danceability, loudness, and energy) of their top songs.

DKMS was built as part of the year-long Capstone senior design course at the University of South Carolina. A deployed app is visible at https://dkms.vercel.app, and the open-source code is visible at https://github.com/SCCapstone/DKMS.

The Impact Of Follower-Influencer Relationship Stages On Consumers’ Perceptions And Behavioral Intentions In The Context Of Influencer Marketing, Khalid Obaid Alharbi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the impacts of the relationship between social media influencers and followers on consumers trusting influencers, being inspired by them, and perceiving mutual benefits in this relationship, which could increase how consumers value and respond to influencers' endorsement. Using an online panel (N = 559), the survey results indicate a stronger relationship between an influencer and a follower increases the likelihood that the follower will view the influencer as trustworthy, draw inspiration from the influencer, and perceive that they share reciprocal benefits in this relationship. The trustworthiness and inspirational value of an influencer, as well as their …

The Effect Of Social Skills On Analyst Performance, Cong Cong Li, An-Ping Lin, Hai Lu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Social skills are important but difficult to measure. So far, few empirical studies have examined the effect of social skills on the performance of professionals. Using the number of LinkedIn connections as a proxy for social skills, we investigate the effect of financial analysts' social skills on their performance. We use multiple ways to validate the measure of social skills and show that analysts with better social skills produce more accurate earnings forecasts and that their stock recommendations elicit stronger market reactions. Furthermore, these socially skilled analysts are more likely to be voted as All-Star Analysts. This study provides the …

Debtor Embezzlement Of Collateral, Jonathon S. Byington

Faculty Law Review Articles

This Article is about collateral and the “embezzlement” exception to
/="/">discharge under § 523(a)(4) of the Bankruptcy Code. Under the Uniform
/="/">Commercial Code, collateral is property subject to a security interest. The
/="/">“embezzlement” exception to discharge requires a debtor fraudulently
/="/">appropriate entrusted property. A debtor fraudulently appropriates a
/="/">security interest when the debtor, in conjunction with circumstances
/="/">indicating fraud, transfers collateral or proceeds of collateral to a transferee
/="/">who takes free of the security interest. A secured party “entrusts” its
/="/">security interest to a debtor in situations where a debtor has power …

Dear Pandemic: A Topic Modeling Analysis Of Covid-19 Information Needs Among Readers Of An Online Science Communication Campaign., Aleksandra M Golos, Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Rachael Piltch-Loeb, Lindsey J Leininger, Amanda M Simanek, Aparna Kumar, Sandra S Albrecht, Jennifer Beam Dowd, Malia Jones, Alison M Buttenheim

College of Nursing Faculty Papers & Presentations

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an "infodemic"-an overwhelming excess of accurate, inaccurate, and uncertain information. The social media-based science communication campaign Dear Pandemic was established to address the COVID-19 infodemic, in part by soliciting submissions from readers to an online question box. Our study characterized the information needs of Dear Pandemic's readers by identifying themes and longitudinal trends among question box submissions.

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of questions submitted from August 24, 2020, to August 24, 2021. We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to identify 25 topics among the submissions, then used thematic analysis to …

Appearance-Related Messages In Youtube Workout Videos: A Content Analysis, Ha Gyoung Chung, Caroline Joo, Jennifer A. Harriger

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals exercised in gyms or attended in-person workout classes. As the pandemic led to shutdowns, many turned to online workout programs to maintain activity levels. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the prevalence of appearance-related messages in 297 popular workout videos on YouTube. Among these videos, 64.3% of the main instructors were women. Instructors were likely to promote beauty ideals, as 100% of the instructors had features consistent with cultural beauty ideals (e.g., clear skin, white teeth, straight hair) and 90.3% had thin or athletic bodies. Additionally, 68.4% of the videos were …

A Matter Of Motive: Malice In The Law Of Torts In The Age Of Connectivity, Greg Bowley

Dalhousie Law Journal

To meet the challenges posed by the novel modes of interpersonal relationships of contemporary society, Canadian tort law must develop a general principle of liability for the intentional infliction of harm. This principle would recognize the normatively-significant common thread of the wrongdoer’s intention to cause harm to another person in phenomena as varied as doxing, swatting, revenge porn, cyberstalking, impersonation, trolling, and harassment. The recent development of discrete, context-specific torts in response to problematic social media conduct is an inherently limited approach to novel interpersonal conduct. However, it also offers an opportunity for the enunciation of a general principle of …

Influencer Marketing In Data-Driven World, Rekha Attri, Jagdish Bhagwat

Management Dynamics

Despite the increasing popularity of influencer marketing, the knowledge related to the parameters of influencer marketing affecting the brand knowledge and development of customer attitudes is scarce and not sufficiently explored. This research uses the tri-component attitude model to identify the impact of the credibility of mega influencer, content of the post and the congruence of the influencer with the brand on brand knowledge, affection and purchase intention of youth representing Gen Z for personal care products. We shortlisted the influencers to represent the Mega, Macro and Micro Influencer categories for our study. The survey instrument was a questionnaire developed …

Silencing Students: How Courts Have Failed To Protect Professional Students’ First Amendment Speech Rights, Shanelle Doher

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Over the past two decades, social media has dramatically changed the way people communicate. With the increased popularity of virtual communication, online speech has, in many ways, blurred the boundaries for where and when speech begins and ends. The distinction between on campus and off campus student speech has become particularly murky given the normalization of virtual learning environments as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court clarified that students retain their First Amendment rights on campus but that schools may sanction speech that materially and substantially …

Beyond Section 230 Liability For Facebook, Nancy S. Kim

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In October 2021, a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, publicly revealed that the company's internal research documented harms that its products caused some of its users. The company’s response was sadly predictable. It questioned the reliability of Haugen’s testimony, asserted its commitment to doing the right thing, and then diverted the public’s attention by changing its name to Meta. The company’s deny-and-distract tactics were, by now, all too familiar and provided few answers.

More than any other platform company, Facebook has found itself at the center of controversy. Its advertisement-supported business model relies upon user engagement which means that …

Why Facebook？ — On The Relevance Of Metaverse To Contemporary Social Media, Xing Zheng

Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art

This paper starts with the debate over “real-virtual” social media， and explores the underlying reasons why contemporary social media such as Facebook actively involve in the metaverse. Social media， in essence， cannot be viewed as a “virtual” cyberspace， nor could the “status” on someone’s social media be regarded as a beguiling “performance.” Social media are actually reliant on constantly drawing raw material from real liferesource， and this act itself is operated by blending “the real” and “the virtual.” Although advocates of metaverse advertise its innovative potential， metaverse also operates on the convergence of “the real” and “the virtual.” It is …

Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones, But Will Comments Ever Hurt Me? : A Burkean Analysis Of Cancel Culture In Social Media Spaces, Kaylin Lane

Theses and Dissertations

In the modern social media era, “cancel culture” is a growing phenomenon used to hold public figures accountable for perceived wrongdoings. But who gets to cancel these celebrities? And how does someone get canceled? The concept of “cancel culture” has often been discussed in the past in the sense that the United States is a culture that is prone to want to cancel others. In my study, I am looking at the fact that there is a desire to cancel a perceived wrongdoer from an online space that is functioning as its own individual culture. The terms used to describe …

Analyzing Online Media Platforms For Hacktivist Group Organization And Proliferation, Quincy Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The anonymity and lack of censorship online provides the perfect environment for hacker activists to pursue social change. The expansive reach and democratic access to social media has empowered groups to organize and develop messaging to specifically fit an online audience. As social media become ubiquitous, the reputation and use of messaging application have become mainstream. Due to a self-professed focus on privacy, platforms like Telegram have become the norm for hosting the hacktivist communities. The purpose of this research was to understand the features in Telegram messages that correlate with the most engagement from their audience. As expected, the …

“Born For A Storm”: Hard-Right Social Media And Civil Unrest, Daniel Karell, Andrew Linke, Edward Holland, Edward Hendrickson

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Does activity on hard-right social media lead to hard-right civil unrest? If so, why? We created a spatial panel dataset comprising hard-right social media use and incidents of unrest across the United States from January 2020 through January 2021. Using spatial regression analyses with core-based statistical area (CBSA) and month fixed effects, we find that greater CBSA-level hard-right social media activity in a given month is associated with an increase in subsequent unrest. The results of robustness checks, placebo tests, alternative analytical approaches, and sensitivity analyses support this finding. To examine why hard-right social media activity predicts unrest, we draw …

Extra, Extra, Read All About It: An Analysis Of News Platform Preferences, Gabrielle Shiozawa

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the correlation between age, political leaning, and the way people interact with news media by examining data from a sample survey of 254 news consumers. Results indicate that older and/or more conservative people are more likely to get their news from print newspapers, cable news, broadcast, and radio, while younger and/or more progressive individuals are more likely to get their news from social media. Younger and/or more progressive people are also more likely to trust the news than their older and/or more conservative counterparts. Subjects across the board preferred reading articles to watching the news, with no …

Freedom Of Algorithmic Expression, Inyoung Cheong

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Can content moderation on social media be considered a form of speech? If so, would government regulation of content moderation violate the First Amendment? These are the main arguments of social media companies after Florida and Texas legislators attempted to restrict social media platforms’ authority to de-platform objectionable content.

This article examines whether social media companies’ arguments have valid legal grounds. To this end, the article proposes three elements to determine that algorithms classify as “speech:” (1) the algorithms are designed to communicate messages; (2) the relevant messages reflect cognitive or emotive ideas beyond mere operational matters; and (3) they …

Diversity In Morris With Social Media, Trey Rockey, Breckin Silvain

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

This work is about how the media can affect the college process, which can let schools have more of a diverse school. Also this work discusses how the media has its positive and negative side effects.

Effects Of Social Media On Students’ Academic Performance In Nigerian Universities: A Case Study Of University Of Jos, Joyce Siman Mangden, Rhoda Danladi Diyoshak Cln

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The Internet, and in particular, social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApps, YouTube and many others, are obviously “overtaking the world” and could be regarded as “a global consumer phenomenon”. Social media usage is one of the most common activities among children, adolescents, and emerging adults nowadays. It offers today’s youth a portal for entertainment and communication and it is becoming one of the main platforms for accessing information and news. This aggressive adoption of social media among the younger generation could be attributed to their up to date knowledge of the latest technology and convenient accessibility to these social …

Platform Accountability: Gonzalez And Reform, Eric Schnapper

Presentations

Section 230(c)(1) was adopted for the purpose of distinguishing between conduct of third parties and conduct of internet companies themselves. Its familiar language provides that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The last four words are central to the limitation on the defense created by the statute; it is only regarding information created by “another” that the defense may be available. Section 230(e)(3) makes clear that even a partial role played by an internet company in the creation of harmful …

Could The Altmetrics Wave Bring A Flood Of Confusion For Anatomists?, Jessica N Byram, Michelle D Lazarus, Adam B Wilson, Kirsten M. Brown

Health Sciences Education Research

Altmetrics are non-traditional metrics that can capture downloads, social media shares, and other modern measures of research impact and reach. Despite most of the altmetrics literature focusing on evaluating the relationship between research outputs and academic impact/influence, the perceived and actual value of altmetrics among academicians remains nebulous and inconsistent. This work proposes that ambiguities surrounding the value and use of altmetrics may be explained by a multiplicity of altmetrics definitions communicated by journal publishers. A root cause analysis was initiated to compare altmetrics definitions between anatomy and medical education journal publishers' websites and to determine the comparability of the …

Role Of Social Media On Travel Destination Decision-Making: Young American’S Motivation, Attitude, And Behavioral Intention, Wooyang Kim, Dale A. Cake, Hyun Sang An

AMTP Proceedings 2023

This study aims to examine how social media influences American Millennials’ and Gen Zers’ travel destination decision-making process in an integrative theoretical framework of the Uses and Gratification Theory and Theory of Reasoned Action. Young generations, who desire escapism and entertainment in order to relax through their everyday lives, are looking for value brought to their lives from vicarious out-of-routine experiences through social media, which engenders process gratification. This process evokes the desire to experience and explore the destination they viewed on social media, inducing vicarious pleasure that leads to affective responses toward the travel destination. Notably, a positive …

Social Media Perceptions Of Academic Performance And Self-Esteem As Defined By Female Adolescents, Michele T. Miller

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The essential need for developing social interaction and relationships through participation on social media has begun to have an influence on academic performance and self-esteem in adolescents. This study examined the perceptions of adolescent females on the effect social media has had on both academic success and self-esteem. The literature reviewed the effects social media has on this population as it relates to these two areas. This was a qualitative study with 10 participants ages 11-15. A convenience group of participants were interviewed through in-person discussion whenever possible or through Google Meet/Zoom meetings. Questions were posed from an interview guide …