Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Gatekeeping The Social Games In A Post-Broadcasting World: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Nbc And User-Generated Olympic Twitter Coverage During The 2012 London Games, Daniel Anthony Sipocz

Dissertations

This study examined the Twitter use of both traditional gatekeepers, such as NBC, and audience members during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The exploratory study examined NBC and audience members as gatekeepers with a particular interest in the audience’s role as a gatekeeper through social media use. NBC used Twitter, a social media platform, in ways that supported traditional gatekeeping models. The network aimed to drive audiences back to the traditional television broadcast while providing the audience with the illusion of having an influence on Olympic coverage. Most significantly, this study argues that the audience became a gatekeeper of Olympic …

Moody Blues: The Social Web, Tagging, And Nontextual Discovery Tools For Music, Susannah Cleveland, Gwen Evans

Susannah Cleveland

A common thread in discussions about the Next Generation Catalog is that it should incorporate features beyond the mere textual, one-way presentation of data. At the same time, traditional textual description of music materials often prohibits effective use of the catalog by specialists and nonspecialists alike. Librarians at Bowling Green State University have developed the HueTunes project to explore already established connections between music, color, and emotion, and incorporate those connections into a nontextual discovery tool that could enhance interdisciplinary as well as specialist use of the catalog.

Social Media’S Impact On Listening And Loneliness, Charles Veenstra

Pro Rege

This paper was presented at the International Listening Association Convention in Montreal, Canada, June 22, 2013.

Fouling The First Amendment: Why Colleges Can't, And Shouldn't, Control Student Athletes' Speech On Social Media, Frank D. Lomonte

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

University Of Maine Social Media Policy, University Of Maine Division Of Marketing And Communications

General University of Maine Publications

Screenshot of the University of Maine's Social Media Policy.

A Christian Mega Church Strives For Relevance: Examining Social Media And Religiosity, Kenthea Albert-Leigh Joan Fogenay

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between Facebook and Twitter uses and gratifications and religiosity. Non-denominational Christian mega churches focus their outreach programs on a "come-as-you-are" attitude with the hopes of making people feel comfortable. The interactive technology in our daily lives also infiltrates our experience at church. The congregation now has the ability to worship through technologies endorsed by leadership (Watson & Scalen, 2008; Bogomilova, 2004; Thomas, 2009). In order for churches to engage in effective communication, they must understand how people use social networking. Through survey methodology, the researcher takes an account of how …

Performing And Interpreting Identity, Lee Farquhar

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This one-year cyber-ethnography examines identity presentations and interpretations of 346 Facebook users. The social–psychological theoretical framework used drew specifically from symbolic interaction, Goffman’s performance of self, and schema theory. Generally, Facebookers sought social acceptance with their presentations. Primary findings indicate that the Facebookers present over-simplified imagery to reduce ambiguity and align with specific social groups. This study asked Facebookers to respond to strangers’ Facebook profiles, and the responses showed that due to the glut of identity-related information on the site, interpretations are heavily reliant on schemas. Online interview participants indicated several basic categories of identity performance that were used to …

Performing And Interpreting Identity, Lee Farquhar

Lee Farquhar

Political Twittoric : The Rhetorical Use Of Twitter By The Obama 2012 Presidential Campaign, Kainat Najmi Abidi

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

With the entrance of the digital age, the Presidential campaign has begun accommodating the growing trend of new technologies. A campaign can reach an audience in person, on the radio, through the newspaper, on television, and on the Internet. In 2008, President Barack Obama broke the limitations of campaigning by going social, which he continued in his run for reelection in 2012. Obama tapped into the popular social network of Twitter to run a portion his 2012 campaign. By utilizing this new network, Obama’s campaign accessed the multimodal quality of Twitter to benefit their goal of winning the 2012 election …

Social Media And The Transformation Of The Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis Of Humanitarian Discourse In Libya 2011 And Bosnia 1994, Ellen Noble

Political Science Honors Projects

Within humanitarian discourse, there is a prevailing narrative: the powerful liberal heroes are saving the helpless, weak victims. However, the beginning of the 21^st century marks the expansion of the digital revolution throughout lesser-developed states. Growing access to the Internet has enabled aid recipients to communicate with the outside world, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to reshape discourses surrounding humanitarianism. Through a comparative discourse analysis of Libyan Tweets, 1994 newspaper reports on Bosnia, and 2011 newspaper reports on Libya, this paper analyzes whether aid recipient discourse can resist the dominant humanitarian narrative and if that resistance can influence dominant …

Why Don't I Look Like Her? The Impact Of Social Media On Female Body Image, Kendyl M. Klein

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to understand and criticize the role of social media in the development and/or encouragement of eating disorders, disordered eating, and body dissatisfaction in college-aged women. College women are exceptionally vulnerable to the impact that social media can have on their body image as they develop an outlook on their bodies and accept the developmental changes that occurred during puberty. This paper provides evidence that there is a relationship between the recent surge in disordered eating and high consumption of social media. I examine the ways in which traditional advertising has portrayed women throughout history, …

Write For Your Life: Developing Digital Literacies And Writing Pedagogy In Teacher Education, Shartriya Collier, Brian Foley, David Moguel, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

The need for the effective development of digital literacies pervades every aspect of instruction in contemporary classrooms. As a result, teacher candidates must be equipped to draw upon a variety of literacies in order to tap into the complex social worlds of their future pupils. The Write for Your Life Project was designed to strengthen teacher candidates’ skills in both traditional and digital writing literacies through the use of social networks, blogging, texting, online modules and other social media. The project, to a large degree, was structured according to Calkins’ (1994) Writing Workshop Approach. This process encourages teacher candidates to …

When Celebrity Women Tweet: Examining Authenticity, Empowerment, And Responsibility In The Surveillance Of Celebrity Twitter, Megan M. Wood

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a textual analysis of stories in online celebrity news articles about celebrity women and their use of Twitter. It adds to the burgeoning discussion about gendered and racialized bodies online using scholarship from critical feminist, surveillance, and digital media studies. Throughout, my work attends to notions of authenticity and surveillance, examining how what I term a "call to authenticity"--the use of technologies of self-surveillance to verify "authentic" displays of the self--serves to animate contradictory post-feminist paradigms of femininity which function together to discipline and subjugate femininity. I ask: How do post-feminist questions of empowerment and responsibility become …

The Virtual Watercooler: Influences Of Political Comedy On Social Media Discussion, Andrew Abad

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

With the emergence of social media activity as a daily phenomenon for most Americans, online users are becoming greater consumers of political information, and are choosing to share that information through social media outlets. A virtual "watercooler effect" is created, in the form of online political debates and arguments. This study examines the connection between viewers of political comedy programmings (television shows like The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report) and political discussion on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Using a survey of EMU undergraduate students that measures political efficacy and media habits, …

Blogging Chronic Illness And Negotiating Patient-Hood: Online Narratives Of Women With Ms, Collette Sosnowy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Personal narratives about women's everyday lives with chronic illness are mapped onto the landscape of social media through blogging. Social media is facilitating an already-existing shift in patients' roles as they are increasingly enabled and expected to self-educate themselves about their illness, collaborate with providers, self-manage their care, and engage in health activism. The health care industry has seized on the widespread use of social media to bolster rhetoric that the accelerated knowledge development made possible through social media has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Critics, however, argue that responsibility and activism via digital technologies has become …

Social Media And Political Changes In Al-Alam Al-Arabi, Jabbar Al-Obaidi

Bridgewater Review

The Arab countries are typically described as lacking democratic traditions, freedom of the press, human rights and civil liberties. The utilization of social media for political purposes became crucial to the widespread expression of pent-up social discontent that precipitated the Arab Spring. Uploaded videos, photos, and Twitter feeds served to outrage people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. This volatile combination of a young population, authoritarian rule, corruption and poverty is prompting youth to spearhead political demonstrations and the demand for regime change.

The Rise Of Transparency And The Decline Of Secrecy In The Age Of Global And Social Media, P.J. Crowley

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

News reporting of a wide range of sensitive government policies, operations, and internal deliberations has raised understandable concerns that U.S. national security is being compromised. In response, there is an increase in investigations and prosecutions and proposed legislation to plug government leaks. But a broader reality may be at work. In the increasingly interconnected and transparent world of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, satellite television, WikiLeaks, omniscient cellphones and technology-enhanced revolutions such as the Arab Awakening, governments have lost their ability to control the flow of information. More people have access to more information, with the ability to communicate anything from …

Cultural Influences Impact Social Networking On Chinese Students Studying In The United States, Alethea Schepperly

Honors Theses

China continues to impose limitations upon their citizen’s access to the World Wide Web, and censors their ability to readily communicate on an international basis. Further, these countries impose restrictions on the information that can be posted and shared online, including social network sites and companies such as RenRen in China, which operate under restrictions and monitoring imposed by the Government. Social networking has become an important method for communication and information sharing, because it enables information to easily be shared and made available to millions of online users.

Media Convergence Of Newspapers: A Content Analysis Of The Houston Chronicle's Print- And Web-Based Content, Amanda Sullivan

Masters Theses

The channels of news media have changed. The traditional route of receiving news via a newspaper has evolved into a more digital path, leaving many to question the future of the print publication. This study evaluates the print- and Web-based content of the Houston Chronicle. The researcher adds to the field of research on news media by analyzing the online and print content of the publication, creating a new way to categorize and evaluate the subject matter by placing it into four categories: repetition, adaptation, representation, and unique. The researcher seeks to answer three research questions, discovering how each medium …

Review: The Potential Of Google+ As A Media Literacy Tool, James N. Cohen Ma

Faculty Works: DH & NM (2010-2019)

Civic engagement is rarely the initial intent of a social media user. According to a 2011 Pew Internet Life study, nearly two-thirds of social media users are online to keep in touch with friends and family while only a very small percentage (near 5%) utilize it for learning.1 The results of these studies have inspired media literacy scholars and educators to empower social media users to approach the online tools with a mind toward information sharing. The potential in social media is limitless, but many users have to be made aware of the possibilities. Educators in particular should informed of …

"Friend" Is A Verb, Dylan E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

An argument against the Aristotelian emphasis on formal and final causes in understanding friendship, and in favor of efficient and material causes. Attempts to establish that social media communications constitute a secondary literacy in the context of a shared asynchronous experience at a distance, and addresses "the sandwich problem:" how we can charitably account for the practice of photographing and sharing one's lunch.

Using Textual Features To Predict Popular Content On Digg, Paul H. Miller

Paul H Miller

Over the past few years, collaborative rating sites, such as Netflix, Digg and Stumble, have become increasingly prevalent sites for users to find trending content. I used various data mining techniques to study Digg, a social news site, to examine the influence of content on popularity. What influence does content have on popularity, and what influence does content have on users’ decisions? Overwhelmingly, prior studies have consistently shown that predicting popularity based on content is difficult and maybe even inherently impossible. The same submission can have multiple outcomes and content neither determines popularity, nor individual user decisions. My results show …

Using Textual Features To Predict Popular Content On Digg, Paul H. Miller

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Over the past few years, collaborative rating sites, such as Netflix, Digg and Stumble, have become increasingly prevalent sites for users to find trending content. I used various data mining techniques to study Digg, a social news site, to examine the influence of content on popularity. What influence does content have on popularity, and what influence does content have on users’ decisions? Overwhelmingly, prior studies have consistently shown that predicting popularity based on content is difficult and maybe even inherently impossible. The same submission can have multiple outcomes and content neither determines popularity, nor individual user decisions. My results show …

Moody Blues: The Social Web, Tagging, And Nontextual Discovery Tools For Music, Susannah Cleveland, Gwen Evans

University Libraries Faculty Publications

A common thread in discussions about the Next Generation Catalog is that it should incorporate features beyond the mere textual, one-way presentation of data. At the same time, traditional textual description of music materials often prohibits effective use of the catalog by specialists and nonspecialists alike. Librarians at Bowling Green State University have developed the HueTunes project to explore already established connections between music, color, and emotion, and incorporate those connections into a nontextual discovery tool that could enhance interdisciplinary as well as specialist use of the catalog.