Digital Commons Network^™

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …

The Varieties Of Counterspeech And Censorship On Social Media, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The year 2020 was without a doubt a remarkable and unprecedented one, on many accounts and for many reasons. Among other reasons, it was a year in which the major social media platforms extensively experimented with the adoption of a variety of new tools and practices to address grave problems resulting from harmful speech on their platforms — notably, the vast amounts of misinformation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and with the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath. By and large — consistent with First Amendment values of combatting bad speech with good speech — the platforms sought to respond …

Understanding The Role That The Internet And Social Media Plays In Suicide Survivor Bereavement, Catherine Merle Perusse

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Every year more than 47,000 individuals die by suicide in the United States, leaving behind numerous family and friends who become suicide survivors. While there are prodigious amounts of research on suicidal behavior, little research has focused on what the surviving family members, friends, and community members need after the loss. Many suicide survivors use social media to address their grief and pain in a very public manner. A constructionist social theory of grief and existential phenomenology provided the framework for this qualitative study to examine the use of the Internet and social media as a forum for those grieving …

Social Media Marketing Strategies To Gain And Retain Customers, Brandy A. Mcneil

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The inability of small business owners to gain and retain customers adversely impacts a company’s customer base. Small business owners who fail to attract and retain a customer base risk financial failure. Grounded in Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore social media strategies small business owners use to gain and retain customers. Participants were five small business owners in the New York City area who successfully used social media strategies to gain and retain customers. Data were collected from semistructured interviews, sales reports, social media, and public social media posts. …

Faculty Experiences Of Social Media Implementation In Online Classrooms, Ashley Lynn George

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Social media has become an integral part of the education process, with educators incorporating social media platforms both actively and passively within the learning environment. Yet, the implementation and usefulness of social media in the online learning environment as an educational assistance tool have not been adequately investigated. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how the incorporation of social media into the online learning environment is experienced by university faculty and if their experiences of use or required changes in pedagogy for implementation are affecting their ability or desire to implement the new technology. Individual virtual interviews …

Perceptions Of Nurse's Personal Smartphone Use At Work, Esperanza Criscuolo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Distracted nurses who use their personal smartphone at work has resulted in the diversion of attention from patient care. The specific problem is the personal smartphone use by nurses in the hospital settings has resulted in distracted patient care, leading to wrongful release of patient’s information, medical errors, injury or preventable patient death. The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the perceptions of nurses regarding distracted patient care in their clinical workplace due to personal smartphone use by nurses. The study was grounded in the distraction-conflict theory conceptual framework. The key research question examined the perceptions of nurses …

Social Media Marketing Strategies For Increasing Customer Engagement, Joe Nwachukwu Umunna

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some business leaders are not using social media to improve customer engagement resulting in a potential loss of profit. Ineffective social media marketing strategies can negatively impact customer engagement. Grounded in the networking, representation, engagement theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore social media marketing strategies business leaders use to increase customer engagement. The participants comprised of six business leaders located in the northeast region of the United States who effectively used social media marketing strategies to increase customer engagement. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: marketing …

Twitter Content Analysis Of The Australian Bushfires Disaster 2019-2020: Futures Implications, Gregory Willson, Violetta Wilk, Ruth Sibson, Ashlee Morgan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the themes and nature of sentiment of Twitter content that discussed the Australian bushfire disaster 2019–2020 and its associated wildlife devastation, with considerations for the future of Australia’s tourism industry. Design/methodology/approach: A large, qualitative data set consisting of all publicly available Twitter posts during the period of the Australian bushfires from December 2019 to March 2020 that mentioned the bushfires and wildlife are explored. Findings: The devastation of wildlife through the Australian bushfire disaster elicited emotionally charged Twitter content from both Australian and overseas users. Positive sentiment focused on offering support to areas impacted …

Taking Exception To Assessments Of American Exceptionalism: Why The United States Isn't Such An Outlier On Free Speech, Evelyn Aswad

Faculty Articles

One of the most significant challenges to human freedom in the digital age involves the sheer power of private companies over speech and the fact that power is untethered to existing free speech principles. Heated debates are ongoing about what standards social media companies should adopt to regulate speech on their platforms. Some have argued that global social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, should align their speech codes with the international human rights law standards of the United Nations (“U.N.”). Others have countered that U.S.-based companies should apply First Amendment standards. Much of this debate is premised on …

Deplatformed: Social Network Censorship, The First Amendment, And The Argument To Amend Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act, John A. Lonigro

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fixing What’S Broken: The Outdated Guidelines Of The Sca And Its Application To Modern Information Platforms, Lutfi Barakat

Touro Law Review

In 1986, Congress enacted the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to afford privacy protections to electronic communications and it has not changed since its inception. The ECPA has proven problematic as technology has advanced, but Congress has not modified the law to reflect this change. Courts have struggled to apply the law to both old technologies that have been updated and new technologies that have emerged. The ECPA needs to be revised to reflect the new advances in technology or be repealed and replaced with a new approach. This will ensure that consumer data will be safeguarded while in the …

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Doctors Can’T Be Doctors All Of The Time’: A Qualitative Study Of How General Practitioners And Medical Students Negotiate Public-Professional And Private-Personal Realms Using Social Media, Megan Marshal

Articles

Objective The objective of this study is to explore the experiences and perspectives of general practitioners’ and medical students’ use of, and behaviour on, social media and to understand how they negotiate threats to professional and personal life on social media. Design A two-phase qualitative design was used, consisting of semistructured interviews and follow-up vignettes, where participants were asked to respond to vignettes that involved varying degrees of unprofessional behaviour. Data were analysed using template analysis. Setting and participants Participants were general practitioner tutors and third year medical students who had just completed placement on the University of Limerick longitudinal …

Using Social Media In Health Literacy Research: A Promising Example Involving Facebook With Young Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Males From The Top End Of The Northern Territory, James A. Smith, Anthony Merlino, Ben Christie, Mick Adams, Jason Bonson, Richard H. Osborne, Murray Drummond, Barry Judd, David Aanundsen, Jesse Fleay, Himanshu Gupta

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This brief report describes three key lessons learned during a health literacy research project with young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males from the Top End of the Northern Territory (NT), Australia. More specifically, it is a methodologically focused paper that discusses processes associated with using a combination of yarning sessions and social media content as tools to unpack conceptualisations of health and well‐being among this marginalised population. The lessons discussed include (a) the utility of using social media in providing an authentic window into the lives of a hard‐to‐reach populations; (b) the need to carefully consider ethical implications; and …

An Empirical Analysis Of Video Games And Social Media On Learning In An Information Systems University Class, Heber C. Brau, James C. Brau, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Prior research by Brau, et al. (2016, 2017) identifies factors that correlate with university student course grades. We employ the same research structure as the Brau, et al. papers with the innovation of adding dozens of questions that deal with video game and social media usage. Extant research argues that time spent on video gaming and using social media can: 1) hurt student grades, 2) help student grades, or 3) have no impact on student grades. We test the video game and social media impact hypotheses using a survey of over 500 college students in an Introduction to Information Systems …

The Value Of Humanization In Customer Service, Yang Gao, Huaxia Rui, Shujing Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As algorithm-based agents become increasingly capable of handling customer service queries, customers are often uncertain whether they are served by humans or algorithms, and managers are left to question the value of human agents once the technology matures. The current paper studies this question by quantifying the impact of customers' enhanced perception of being served by human agents on customer service interactions. Our identification strategy hinges on the abrupt implementation by Southwest Airlines of a signature policy, which requires the inclusion of an agent's first name in responses on Twitter, thereby making the agent more humanized in the eyes of …

Chronic Customers Or Increased Awareness? The Dynamics Of Social Media Customer Service, Shujing Sun, Yang Gao, Huaxia Rui

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Despite that social media has become a promising alternative to traditional call centers, managers hesitate to fully harness its power because they worry that active service intervention may encourage excessive use of the channel by disgruntled customers. This paper sheds light on such a concern by examining the dynamics between brand-level customer complaints and service interventions on social media. Using details of customer-brand interactions of 40 airlines on Twitter, we find that more service interventions indeed cause more customer complaints, accounting for the online customer population and service quality. However, the increased complaints are primarily driven by the awareness enhancement …

The New Skill On The Block: Using Social Media In The Law School Classroom To Facilitate Learning, Rosa Castello

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The emergence and rapid growth of technology has dramatically changed society, including the way we communicate and interact. People are gravitating toward shorter forms of written communication, like blogs and tweets. And it seems everyone interacts with others in some way on an online social media platform, exchanging ideas, connecting with friends and colleagues, and offering support.

As a Legal Writing professor, I wonder how this change in written communication will impact legal education and the profession and how I can better prepare my students for a professional environment that embraces these changes. Communication is an essential lawyering skill. …

Social Media As A Collaborative Tool For Research Among Library And Information Science (Lis) Professionals In Nigeria, Azeez Adebamgbola Adeoye, Charis Onuoha Mrs, Doris C. Obiano Dr., Olayode Motunrayo Librarian I

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The penetrating influence of the internet and information communication technology tools has brought about a boost in communication and interaction of people. Collaborative research is now seen as a key factor in achieving a set goal in any field including the field of library and information science. This study is focused on exploring the use of social media as a tool for collaborative research among librarians in Nigeria. A descriptive survey design was adopted for this study and an electronic questionnaire was used to elicit responses from one hundred and one (101) library and information science (LIS) professionals based on …

Free Mo Robinson: Citizen Engagement In Response To A Crime Event On Social Media, Andrea Mayr, Simon Statham

All Works

The growth of digital culture has opened up new spaces of engagement where interactive users discuss social issues, including crime. Given crime’s ubiquity in popular culture, cultural criminologists argue that diverse emotional involvement with crime in popular cultural texts, such as social media, provides important insights into how citizens comprehend issues related to crime. Here, an analysis of emotion should be placed into the foreground (Hayward, K., and J. Young. 2004. “Cultural Criminology: Some Notes on the Script.” Theoretical Criminology 8 (3): 259–273). Taking this as a cue to explore these often neglected popular moral and emotional aspects of crime, …

What Can Mental Health Teach Us About Social Media Screen Time Misestimation?, Mark Keith, Parker Nokes, Alexandra Spruill

Faculty Publications

Mobile platform providers have provided the ability to measure the time consumers spend on each app. This provides the opportunity to measure a consumer’s misestimation of their screentime which is a concept relevant to several mental health attributes such as depression, anxiety, and addiction. We provide additional evidence about the effect of objective screentime on mental health, but add a unique perspective on how screentime misestimation is determined by various mental health attributes. We collected data from a student sample (n=1005) who are from the demographic who most commonly use social media apps (18-29 yr olds). We measured our model …

Park Agency Social Media Communication During The Covid-19 Crisis, Raluca Oprean

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all industries and organizations, including park agencies. There is a lack of research on how park agencies utilize Twitter during times of crisis, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. How park agencies communicate with the public and how they use their social media has not been extensively studied. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic is a novel management issue for these agencies, and there has been no empirical analysis in the ways in which information is being communicated to the public or how that information is being perceived.

This study aims to better understand park agency response …

A Tale Of Two Tweets: What Factors Predict Forgiveness Of Past Transgressions On Social Media?, Andrew Dawson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As more and more of our lives take place online, we are developing a very public and permanent record of our past views and actions. It is increasingly common for public figures to have their current image tarnished by their mistakes and transgressions in what is often the distant past. Although factors such as the passage of time and age of the actor are typically given consideration in moral judgement, they may be swept away by identity and politics when the transgressions are viewed along partisan lines. Three experiments (N = 2,018) found that judgements of a public figure …

The Impact Of Social Media Body Challenges On Youths' Body Image, Kerrie Caitlin Leonard

Human Development and Family Science

Body challenges are an unresearched trend where an individual checks if their body can look a certain way to pass the specific challenge (e.g., the A4 paper challenge; seeing if one’s waist is smaller than an 8x11 vertical piece of paper). We asked 147 girls and gender-expansive youth open-ended questions about trying a body challenge, opinions, and feelings towards their body as a result of these challenges. Qualitative analyses revealed that 79.59% of youth have never tried a body challenge. Youth thought body challenges were negative, with themes of toxic, ridiculous, unhealthy, anti-feminist/social commentary, and the need for body positivity. …

It’S Not The Facebook Access, But The Partisan Bias Which Predict Belief In Misinformation: The Case Of 2019 Indonesia Presidential Election, Rizka Halida

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

This study aims to understand the role of Facebook access and partisan bias on the belief in misinformation in the political context of the 2019 Presidential Election. Frequent use of Facebook and partisan bias for presidential candidates were predicted to influence belief in misinformation about illegal migrant workers from China in Indonesia. Using a structured questionnaire, a total of 1,818 participants who were representative of the Indonesian voter population were interviewed using a structured questionnaire asking about their frequency of Facebook use, political support, awareness, and belief in misinformation about thousands of illegal migrant workers from China, as well as …

Sports Under Quarantine: A Case Study Of Major League Baseball In 2020, Kari L.J. Goold, Reynafe N. Aniga, Peter B. Gray

Anthropology Faculty Research

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This case study entailed a Twitter content analysis to address the pandemic-delayed start to Major League Baseball (MLB) in the shortened 2020 season. This case study helps address the overarching objective to investigate how the sports world, especially fans, responded to MLB played during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The methods investigated the common themes and determined who used predetermined Twitter hashtags. We recorded how many times external links, photos, emojis, and the 30 MLB teams were mentioned in the 779 tweets obtained during 39 days of data retrieval. Results showed that …

Unity Starts With U: A Case Study Of A Counter-Hate Campaign Through The Use Of Social Media Platforms, Candace Leung, Richard Frank

Journal of Hate Studies

Hate has been a growing concern with hate-groups and individuals using the Internet, or more specifically, social media platforms, to globalize hate. Since these social media platforms can connect users around the world, hate-organizations are using these connections as opportunities to recruit candidates and spread their propaganda. Without opposing views, these extreme viewpoints can establish themselves as legitimate and then be used to incite hate in individuals. Thus, these extreme viewpoints must be countered by similar messages to discourage this online hate, and one such way is to use the same platforms through grassroots movements. This paper presents a case …

The Evolving Information Needs And Behaviors Of Undergraduates, Brianna Limas

School of Information Student Research Journal

Undergraduates comprise a highly complex information community, composed of many identities and with a range of interests and skills. Emerging technologies continue to play a critical role in undergraduates’ information behaviors. While prior literature has focused on the academic information needs of students, emerging technologies have brought to light the considerable role of their everyday life information behaviors. This paper seeks to explore the information needs and behaviors of undergraduates, in particular the current and incoming graduating classes. With increased focus on meeting everyday life information needs and continued appreciation and understanding of the versatility of emerging technologies in the …

Social Isolation, Fear Of Missing Out, And Social Media Use In Deaf And Hearing College Students, Conor Lake

Theses

This study investigated the relationships between social isolation, fear of missing out, self-esteem, and social media usage, and whether these relationships are different in deaf and hearing college students. Data were collected from 191 individuals (46 Deaf/Hard of Hearing, 145 hearing) via an online survey. Variables included number of social media accounts, time spent (in hours) on social media, number of times per day social media is accessed, FOMO, social media use, hearing status/identity, self-esteem, social isolation, and social media disorder. Correlational tests were conducted separately for hearing and for Deaf/HH participants. The groups had an unequal distribution of gender, …

Perception And Use Of Whatsapp Among Library Professionals: A Study Of Pakistan, Anwar Muhammad, Tang Zhiwei Dr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: the aim of the research is to investigate the use and perception of WhatsApp among LIS professionals in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach: quantitative research was adopted for this study and data have been collected using an online Google doc survey. A total of 115 participants have taken part in this study. All the participants were using WhatsApp and joined the LIS professionals group. The collected data has been analyzed using SPSS and MS excel.

Findings of the study: the findings of the study revealed the majority of the respondents were male with 92(80%) and most of them have a degree …