Digital Commons Network^™

Southwest Border Food Safety And Defense Center: Creative Ideas For Promoting Food Safety And Food Protection, Sonja Koukel

Journal of Extension

Foodborne illness has a significant impact on public health and consumer confidence in the U.S. The Southwest Border Food Safety and Defense Center was established to provide educational programs, trainings, and workshops to address the health and well-being of consumers as it relates to food safety and food protection. A partnership between New Mexico Cooperative Extension, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, and the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security, the Center is the only facility of its kind in the U.S. This article describes its role and highlights the methods used to reach residents in a largely rural state.

#Doineedsocialmedia: Social Media In Local Political Elections, Brittany K. Karzen

Theses and Dissertations

More research is needed to be able to fully understand the role that social media plays in elections, specifically in local elections. Candidates need to understand how it works and how they can effectively use this new communication medium. By exploring Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Social Information Processing Theory, and the Two-Way Symmetrical Model of communications this study sought to answer one overarching question: how should a candidate employ social media in a local election? This qualitative, single case study explores the 2014 recall and general election in Yorba Linda, California. Councilman Tom Lindsey and candidate Matt Palmer are the …

Self-Presentation And Social Media: A Qualitative Examination Of The Use Of Instagram By Amateur Npc Female Figure Competitors, Victoria Michelle Lupinetti

Master's Theses

Mainstream media representations of women have shaped the concepts of femininity and have influenced the way women view and present themselves in various contexts. Erving Goffman’s (1959) Theory on Self-Presentation described how individuals perform roles to project a desired impression to others. Currently, social media platforms allow women to share their lives and interests with a wide-reaching audience. Within this historic context, the purpose of this study was to examine the lives and experiences of amateur female figure competitors who represented themselves and their interests in fitness via photographs on Instagram.

Eight women who shared their fitness journeys on social …

Legal And Ethical Considerations For Social Media Hiring Practices In The Workplace, Andrew S. Hazelton, Ashley Terhorst

The Hilltop Review

Social media has certainly evolved and continues to do so with each new day. Social media in its infancy was not as widespread in the personal lives of people, let alone in the workplace. In the following years since its inception, social media has captured a significant amount of time of individuals in every aspect of their lives. However, with this advancement also comes possible conflict in how companies and departments within a university or college setting conduct background checks. Social media makes public profiles an easy click away and many potential job seekers may not see the problems that …

Adolescents, Social Media, And The Use Of Self-Portraiture In Identity Formation, Sharee Nicole Allen

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Adolescence is a time of maturation, integration of selves, and, in the modern age, digital performance on social media. Conflicts in the identity vs. role confusion stage of Eriksonian development are addressed throughout this research, although the existing literature rarely connects them to online trends. A qualitative survey, sent to high school students, explores the tension between self-doubt and the desire to be seen. Responses indicate that teens who post on social media are attempting to make sense of their formative years via the reactions of this networked world. Certain participants show resistance to the phenomenon of the Selfie, implying …

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us: Defining The Line Between Personal And Professional Context On Social Media, Raizel Liebler, Keidra Chaney

Pace Law Review

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow individuals and companies to connect directly and regularly with an audience of peers or with the public at large. These websites combine the audience-building platforms of mass media with the personal data and relationships of in-person social networks. Due to a combination of evolving user activity and frequent updates to functionality and user features, social media tools blur the line of whether a speaker is perceived as speaking to a specific and presumed private audience, a public expression of one’s own personal views, or a representative viewpoint of an entire …

Social Media Thoughtcrimes, Daniel S. Harawa

Pace Law Review

As people live out their lives online, what is protected expression and what is criminal speech? This article begins to explore this fine distinction, and advocates for a shift in the way online speech is protected vis-à-vis the First Amendment. Part I provides examples of criminalized social media activity and explores why people seemingly treat online speech as private communications. Part II looks at existing jurisprudence regarding the criminalization of speech and First Amendment protections. And Part III attempts to determine where to draw the line by advocating for a return to simpler times in First Amendment jurisprudence.

Death By Bullying: A Comparative Culpability Proposal, Audrey Rogers

Pace Law Review

This article explores the possibility and advisability of imposing homicide charges against bullies, a controversial approach because of the serious causation questions it poses. Nonetheless, there is precedent for holding a person criminally culpable for a victim’s suicide. A notorious case involved the head of the Ku Klux Klan who was convicted of murder after the woman he raped killed herself by swallowing poison, “distracted by pain and shame so inflicted upon her.” Some may see her shame as analogous to gay teens who commit suicide after being bullied about their sexual orientation. But perhaps the law should not demand …

Social Media And The Internet: A Story Of Privatization, Victoria D. Baranetsky

Pace Law Review

This article will question what role private and public actors assume in the current structure of data collection and what potential rights are violated. To tease out the relationship between the private and government sectors, this article, for sake of argument, accepts as fact that surveillance is a core government function and that data is a public resource collected by private organizations. While those assumptions may be challenged by different definitions of what constitutes a public function, public resource, or mode of collection, this article does not take on those challenges. It also does not ask the normative question of …

Investigating Jurors On Social Media, Caren Myers Morrison

Pace Law Review

This essay proceeds in three parts. First, it examines the current state of jury investigations, and how they differ from those conducted in the past. Then, it describes the evolving legal and ethical positions that are combining to encourage such investigations. Finally, it offers a note of caution–condoning such investigations while keeping them hidden from jurors may be perceived as unfair and exploitative, risking a possible backlash from outraged jurors. Instead, I propose a modest measure to provide notice and explanation to jurors that their online information is likely to be searched, and why.

Copyright And Social Media: A Tale Of Legislative Abdication, Diane Leenheer Zimmerman

Pace Law Review

The focus of this article will be on what I call DMCA 2.0. It will begin by discussing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and why that statute, passed in 1998 to shore up the enforceability of copyright online by protecting content providers’ ability to engage in forms of technological self-help against online copyright infringers, has been problematic. Part II describes largely unsuccessful efforts in the form of statutes and trade agreements to shore up the DMCA. Part III turns to the latest salvo, the adoption of “voluntary agreements” whereby content owners and ISPs, in particular social media platforms, join …

The Constitution And Revenge Porn, John A. Humbach

Pace Law Review

While the Supreme Court has recognized a number of circumstances that justify government impingements on free expression, the Court has been extremely reluctant to permit speech restrictions that discriminate based on a message’s content, its viewpoint, or the speaker. It has nearly always refused to tolerate such discrimination unless the case falls within one of the several historically established exceptions to First Amendment protection. Because of the special place that the modern First Amendment cases accord to content discrimination (and the allied discriminations based on viewpoint and speaker), any statutes designed specifically to outlaw revenge porn as such would seem …

#Snitches Get Stitches: Witness Intimidation In The Age Of Facebook And Twitter, John Browning

Pace Law Review

In order to better understand witness intimidation in the age of social media, one must examine both the forms it has taken as well as the response by law enforcement and the criminal justice system. As this article points out, the digital age has brought with it a host of new ways in which witnesses may be subjected to online harassment and intimidation across multiple platforms, and those means have been used to target not only victims and fact witnesses but even prosecutors and expert witnesses as well. The article will also examine potential responses to the problem of witness …

Social Justice, Social Norms And The Governance Of Social Media, Tal Z. Zarsky

Pace Law Review

This article proceeds as follows: Part II briefly addresses the theoretical arguments regarding the pros and cons of various governance strategies, focusing on the advantages, disadvantages and pitfalls of reliance on private parties. In Part III, the article describes, in general terms, the above-mentioned empirical study, explaining its methodology, the specific challenges to its design and implementation, and how these were met. The discussion specifically centers on a survey taken to establish the nature of social norms. Part IV presents a specific test case: whether pseudonymity should be permitted in social media or should “real names” be mandatory. Part V …

Anarchy, Status Updates, And Utopia, James Grimmelmann

Pace Law Review

Social software has a power problem. Actually, it has two. The first is technical. Unlike the rule of law, the rule of software is simple and brutal: whoever controls the software makes the rules. And if power corrupts, then automatic power corrupts automatically. Facebook can drop you down the memory hole; PayPal can garnish your pay. These sovereigns of software have absolute and dictatorial control over their domains.

Is it possible to create online spaces without technical power? It is not, because of social software’s second power problem. Behind technical power, there is also social power. Whenever people come together …

The Challenges Of Preventing And Prosecuting Social Media Crimes, Thaddeus Hoffmeister

Pace Law Review

The adoption and use of social media by a broad spectrum of criminal defendants has raised some significant challenges for those tasked with crime prevention. This article will look at those challenges through the lens of three cases involving social media: United States v. Drew, United States v. Sayer, and United States v. Cassidy. However, prior to beginning that examination, this article will briefly discuss and categorize the various ways criminal defendants employ social media.

Friends Of Justice: Does Social Media Impact The Public Perception Of The Justice System?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Pace Law Review

This article will demonstrate how the unregulated use of social media by participants in the justice system (judges, attorneys and jurors specifically) affects the public perception and subsequently the integrity of our justice system. The article will provide a holistic review of social media use by judges, attorneys and jurors, and demonstrate why their use of social media should be harnessed in a manner to ensure compliance with ethical rules and reduce potential negative effects to the social contract between law and society.

Social media is like a culvert. It catches pictures, novelties, personal profiles, gossip, news, unfiltered opinions, and …

Tinkering With Success: College Athletes, Social Media And The First Amendment, Mary Margaret Meg Penrose

Pace Law Review

Good law does not always make good policy. This article seeks to provide a legal assessment, not a policy directive. The policy choices made by individual institutions and athletic departments should be guided by law, but absolutely left to institutional discretion. Many articles written on college student-athletes’ social media usage attempt to urge policy directives clothed in constitutional analysis.

In this author’s opinion, these articles have lost perspective – constitutional perspective. This article seeks primarily to provide a legal and constitutional assessment so that schools and their athletic departments will have ample information to then make their own policy choices.

Abuse And Harassment Diminish Free Speech, Anita Bernstein

Pace Law Review

Owen Fiss focused on “the robustness of public debate” to conclude on his last page: “The autonomy protected by the First Amendment and rightly enjoyed by individuals and the press is not an end in itself, as it might be in some moral code, but is rather a means to further the democratic values underlying the Bill of Rights.”

This article embraces the same values but more conservatively. Whereas Fiss defended state-sponsored coercion, I leave the government mostly outside the descriptions and arguments presented here. Scholars have sought to apply the law—of crimes, torts, intellectual property, and statutory allotments and …

Educators And Twitter: Infographic, Danielle Meloney

Teacher infographics

How and why are educators using Twitter? New research from the US provides some interesting insights.

"All The World's A Stage:" A Social Media Project For The American Shakespeare Center, Lauren D. Ambrose

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As the nation’s only original re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theater, The American Shakespeare Center plays a lead role in its local area of Staunton, Virginia. The organization boasts a prominent following in the theatre and on Facebook; however, its remaining social media accounts have been stuck in the Renaissance. In November 2014, the ASC got an update in the form of a new cast member—the “What’s Your Shakespeare Personality?” quiz and web based application. Using extensive research into local demographics, audience and arts trends and social media usage, this project sought to assist the organization in the application’s launch and …

Social Media, Privacy, And The Academic Classroom, Julia Frankosky

LACUNY Institute 2015

We live in a world full of social media and portable technology that allows for the effortless access to, and sharing of, information. While this constant connection can be viewed as a benefit by some, there have been recent, sometimes embarrassing, instances throughout the world that show just how quickly any expectation of privacy can be destroyed. From pictures of poorly dressed shoppers at a grocery store to customers recording interactions with their servers at restaurants, the internet is full of media (all with the potential to go viral) created and posted without consent of all parties captured.

This risk …

Librarians As Advocates For Social Media Privacy, Sarah Lamdan

LACUNY Institute 2015

Librarians must continue their traditional roles as privacy rights activists and intellectual freedom upholders into the digital age, and across electronic information sources, including social media fora. Social media is quickly becoming a major source of information and center for information seeking, and librarians have an opportunity to promote and help shape social media policies that protect users’ privacy and assure that users can seek information without inhibition. One way librarians can be involved in the promotion of online privacy is by joining the social media user rights movement and advocating terms of use agreements that protect information seekers that …

From The Web Into The World: An Analysis Of Millennial Environmentalism, Cherokee Mcanelly

Student Theses 2015-Present

Environmentalism and sustainable lifestyles have steadily increased in popularity in recent years in the United States, especially among the 18-33 year old age group “Millennials, ” also known as Generation Y. Vegetarianism and veganism, involvement in environmental advocacy groups, and the popularity of green products are at record highs. However, research shows that the prevalence of young people living and promoting a sustainable lifestyle online rarely translates into tangible action, a phenomenon known as ‘slacktivism,’ and Generation Y also shows reluctance to identify as environmentalists or activists due to a perceived stigma associated with the term. Through the use of …

Reputational Privacy And The Internet: A Matter For Law?, Elizabeth Anne Kirley

PhD Dissertations

Reputation - we all have one. We do not completely comprehend its workings and are mostly unaware of its import until it is gone. When we lose it, our traditional laws of defamation, privacy, and breach of confidence rarely deliver the vindication and respite we seek due, primarily, to legal systems that cobble new media methods of personal injury onto pre-Internet laws. This dissertation conducts an exploratory study of the relevance of law to loss of individual reputation perpetuated on the Internet. It deals with three interrelated concepts: reputation, privacy, and memory. They are related in that the increasing lack …

Analysis Of Real-World Passwords For Social Media Sites, Mark J. Quinn

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Textual passwords have dominated all other entity authentication mechanisms since they were introduced in the early 1960’s. Despite an inherent weakness against social engineering, keylogging, shoulder surfing, dictionary, and brute-force attacks, password authentication continues to grow as the Internet expands. Existing research on password authentication proves that dictionary attacks are successful because users make poor choices when creating passwords. To make passwords easier to remember, users select character strings that are shorter in length and contain memorable content, like personal identity information, common words found in a dictionary, backward spellings of common words, recognizable sequences, and easily guessed mnemonic phrases. …

Rebranding Hillel At Syracuse University, Marisa Bunis

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My rebranding of Hillel at Syracuse University was a multi-step process. First, I had to understand what rebranding truly meant – what made a successful rebranding, what to avoid during a rebranding, etc. I gained this critical knowledge by reflecting on my education as an advertising major and consulting credible online sources on the topic. The next step was to gain a deeper understanding of my client, Hillel at Syracuse University. I again drew insights from my own experience as a student highly involved in the organization, and I also learned critical information from resources provided to me by Brian …

On Sexual Violence: Indian Artists And Public Enagement, Hannah M. Kennedy

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Does Power Make Us Mean? An Investigation Of Empowerment And Revenge Behaviors In The Cyberspace, Zongchao Li

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigated consumer response mechanism in a service failure context. A social-media-based Service Failure Response Model was introduced that incorporated emotive antecedents, behavioral outcomes, a mediation process, and moderating factors. The model integrated the framework of psychological empowerment, and explored how social media usage empowered users and whether this power transferred into unique behavioral patterns. It was argued that perception of power increased an action orientation in the power holder, which transferred into a revenge behavior when users complained about the failure on social media to publicly shame the company. The study proposed 16 hypotheses and two research questions …

External Organizational Identification, Parasocial Relationships, And Social Media Use, Lindsey Webb Dancy

Dissertations

The pervasive use of the Internet for social purposes has led to organizational and social change, as well as social movements online throughout the world. Of particular interest in this study is commitment to organizations by patrons and stakeholders showcased via social media outlets. This research includes a review of organizational identification, parasocial relationships and social media research followed by a detailed description of the method, which included the creation and testing of a questionnaire examining the organizational identification and parasocial relationships of external publics, and their social media use. A hypothesis is put forth suggesting that there is a …