Business Commons^™

Online Fan Communities: Welcoming Behavior, Brand Community Markers, And Multiple Identities In Sports Fandom, Blaine R. Huber

Doctoral Dissertations

Online fan communities have revolutionized the way sport consumers engage with fellow fans and the sports product. The traditional regional boundaries that once characterized sports fandom have been mitigated by the emergence of new media, social media platforms, and online fan communities. This dissertation explores the non-geographically bound nature of contemporary sports fan communities, examining the evolving dynamics of fan behavior in the digital age. In Study 1, an interactional perspective is employed to explore online fan socialization. The focus is on how new fans' self-presentation influences acceptance within NFL team-specific Reddit communities. Utilizing data mining, textual analysis, and qualitative …

Medical Tourism & Communication, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

Medical tourism (MT), sometimes referred to as health tourism or medical travel, involves both the treatment of illness and the facilitation of wellness, with travel. Medical tourism is a multifaceted and multiphase process involving many agents and actors that requires careful planning and execution. The coordinated process involves the biomedical, transportation, tourism, and leisure industries. From the communication perspective, the process can be viewed as a 5-stage model consisting of the: (a) orientation, (b) preparation, (c) experiential and treatment, (d) convalescence, and (e) reflection phases. Medical tourism is uniquely situated in a nexus of academic literature related to communication, business …

Understanding The Business Model Of Content Creation, Taylor Vahey

Honors Projects in Communication

Individuals who post niched consistent content to social media platforms have grown audiences, which presents an opportunity for content creators to monetize the attention their posts receive. Both content creators and marketing practitioners are using trial and error processes to learn how to utilize the newest online promotion strategy; influencer marketing. This research aims to outline the business operations from the perspective of the influencer. Research on all aspects of this industry is insufficient, with only a few hundred published peer-reviewed articles on the topic available. Most of the research focuses on the perspective of the audience or the marketing …

If You Can't Take The Tweet: Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility Through The Lens Of Social Media Marketing, Julia Winterhalter

Honors Projects in Communication

Companies are increasingly taking action on societal issues and are aware of the impact that their corporate voice has on impressionable publics. Existing research focuses greatly on corporate social responsibility and the moral standards that set up companies to market themselves authentically to the values they build themselves on. The current study explores how three companies utilize their platform to share their values in relation to ethical issues arising in the modern world. Through the Twitter accounts of Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia, and Starbucks, a content analysis was conducted on their use of language related to their ethical standpoints on …

Social Media By Providers And Patients In Healthcare, Madison K. Howell, Jirakamon Silapabanleng

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Introduction: Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have been used in various industries to create direct-to-consumer interactive opportunities. 74% of the US population were social media active users. Around 40% of adults gather their health information from Facebook, a free social networking site, which has been available on various devices and can help many organizations advertise their services as well as communicate with their patients. Social networks had a powerful influence in making health decisions because it could be used as a means to spread either positive or negative health information.

Purpose of study: The …

A Uniquely Jesuit Approach To Engagement Through Social Media, Karl F. Kozlowski, Shawn M. O'Rourke

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Social media is a relevant and powerful instrument of communication in higher education, especially in the college age population. The use of social media in and out of the classroom on the college campus allows faculty to meet students where they are. Content shared by faculty on social media is a means to continue to educate our students and alumni outside of the classroom and build relationships regardless of geographic boundaries. Through the use of social media platforms, we can also continue to relay and demonstrate our Jesuit ideals. This engagement can help build a relationship between faculty and students …

"Airbnb Go Home:" Tourism Frictions And Short-Term Rentals In New Orleans, Madeline R. Fussell

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the concerns and conflicts around short-term rental (STR) properties in New Orleans neighborhoods. Using data from collected from critical discourse analysis, semi-structured interviews and social media posts, this paper analyzes the ways the city of New Orleans, residents of the city, STR hosts, and platforms like Airbnb discuss issues of safety, displacement, rising costs of living, as well as responsible STR practices. To understand the complexities of the issues people, have with short-term rental properties, this project approaches STRs from a housing and gentrification lens to understand the role these properties play within in the daily atmospheres …

How Museum Utilize Social Media On Communication, Jiake Han

School of Professional Studies

With the development of Internet, social media became more and more popular among people. Many industries realize the importance of social media in business. Traditionally, museum concentrates more on personal visual experience, which is hard to be replaced by online media. However, museums now also put more concentrate on social media platform because it expands the way of engagement. Especially, for Coronavirus, many organizations including museums have to close. Therefore, museums have to depend more on social media platforms to communicate with audiences. This research aims at finding how different kind of social media help museum communicate and engage with …

An Analysis Of The Skill Sets Needed To Be Successful In Nonprofit Public Relations, Hannah Williamson

Honors Theses

The public relations industry is ever-changing, as it evolves to adapt to societal changes. Technological advancements and social media have largely contributed to changes in the way public relations professionals attempt to reach their target publics. In fact, research shows many public relations professionals do not think the term “public relations” will accurately define the work they will be doing in the near future. As the industry changes, the job duties of public relations professionals adapt as well.

This study researched the public relations industry to understand what skill sets professionals should possess in order to be successful. The study’s …

Budweiser In The 2017 Super Bowl: Dialectic Values Advocacy And The Rhetorical Stakeholder, Benjamin P. Windholz

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Organizational-public relations discourse is changing given the advent of social media, and corporate statements are evaluated under different criteria in the digital age. Grounding Budweiser’s response to controversy over their 2017 Super Bowl advertisement in terms of consumer expectations for corporate social responsibility provides a new perspective for approaching Bostdorff and Vibbert’s (1994) conceptualization of values advocacy. This study recognizes the power of the rhetorical stakeholder, a discursively created public, and demands re-evaluation of the values common to society from a co-creational OPR perspective. Conceptualizing dialectic values advocacy outlines the changing values among contemporary, common stakeholders as well as the …

Social Media Influence: Metrics Matter, Juliana Houldcroft

Honors Projects in Marketing

It is imperative for companies to engage in social media marketing as consumers are often dependent on online information and electronic word-of-mouth. Past literature claims that consumers evaluate the influence of communications differently on social media than they would in a traditional environment because of the nature of the internet. This study aims to analyze user’s perceptions of social media marketing influence and determines if user’s perception of influence changes based on the number of social media metrics (likes, comments, and shares) that accompany a Facebook post. The study also investigates if perceptions of influence vary depending on a user’s …

Communication Through Social Technologies: A Study Of Israeli Women, Jeretta Horn Nord 405-747-0320, Dafni Biran Achituv, Joanna Paliszkiewicz

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Social technologies have changed the way we communicate allowing users to interact, share knowledge, reach out to friends and family, keep up with the news, and even promote and support a business. A study of Israeli women was conducted to determine how social technologies platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ — are used and the benefits realized. Women worldwide face challenges including economic, educational, health, and political. Israel women, like women in every other country in the world, are challenged with gender inequity. Do women who use social technologies believe that these platforms provide empowerment leading to greater …

The Future Of Advertising: What You Should Know, Valerie K. Jones, Rishad Tobaccowala

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

We live in an empowered age with empowered consumers. Technology has become a slingshot enabling each of us consumers to defeat Goliath, the big companies and marketers. Consumers have god-like power, able to see, hear, discover, and uncover almost anything through all of the devices available today. Digitization, globalization and demographic shifts are requiring us to replace old models of thinking about communication and advertising. The chapter introduces new models of thinking about about the future of advertising, guided by a few fundamental principles: delivering utilities and services, as opposed to a message; reaggregating audiences, as opposed to segmenting them; …

Consumer Perceptions Of A Brand's Social Media Marketing, Taylor Michelle Smith

Masters Theses

This project seeks to inform corporate marketing efforts, as well as add to the growing body of literature on social media marketing. The purpose of this project is to assess consumer perceptions of a brand’s social media marketing. Participants were obtained from the PetSafe® brand Facebook fan page, and a total of 195 respondents completed all measures and were included in the study. The results show that brands must be actively engaging their consumers via social media in order to compete in a competitive marketplace. Engagement can be promoted through entertaining and interactive posts, useful and relevant content, word of …

The Personal, Political, And The Virtual? Redefining Female Success And Empowerment In A Post-Feminist Landscape, Linda Elizabeth Chardon

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.