Communication Commons^™

First Acm Sigmm International Workshop On Social Media (Wsm'09), Suzanne Boll, Steven C. H. Hoi, Jiebo Luo, Rong Jin, Dong Xu, Irwin King

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ACM SIGMM International Workshop on Social Media(WSM’09) is the first workshop held in conjunction withthe ACM International Multimedia Conference (MM’09) atBejing, P.R. China, 2009. This workshop provides a forumfor researchers and practitioners from all over the world toshare information on their latest investigations on social mediaanalysis, exploration, search, mining, and emerging newsocial media applications.

Anas, Mias And Wannas: Authenticity And Embodiment In Pro-Anorexia Discussion Groups, Natalie Boero, C. Pascoe

Faculty Publications, Sociology

This paper details the making of community and bodies in online environments, specifically the online pro-anorexia community. Building community among members of these groups is particularly fraught because tensions over claims to authenticity permeate these groups. Because these are embodied practices and online spaces are presumably disembodied, participants constantly grapple with authenticity, largely through the threat of the "wannarexic." This paper documents the way in which tensions around authenticity and embodied practices are managed through treatment of the wannarexic, participating in group rituals, and deployment of individual tools. Participants grapple with these tensions through engaging in offline bodily rituals that …

August Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

The Two Faces of Twitter: Revolution in a Digital Age. By Darrell West. The Huffington Post. July 30, 2009.

Twitter And Youtube: Positive Developments For Human Rights Protection?, Nicola Colbran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A number of statements have been made regarding the benefit to human rights protection of advances in technology. However, can these advances also have a negative impact?

Focusing on instant messaging and social network services such as Twitter and YouTube, the positives are quickly apparent. They can draw immediate attention to human rights violations that may otherwise go unnoticed, allow interested parties to stay abreast of developments in the protection of human rights, and create strength and courage in numbers for action that may not be anticipated by the perpetrator. These services also enable human rights activists to tweet their …

Stop The Revolution, Michael Jackson Is Dead!, William Paul Simmons

Human Rights & Human Welfare

We won’t soon forget the rapid fire pace of “tweets” and Facebook posts direct from the streets of Tehran. The haunting images of Neda Agha Soltan shocked the consciences of hundreds of thousands around the globe as it went “viral.”

Protest, Iranian Style: A Two-Way Conversation?, Shareen Hertel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Darrell West gets it right when he argues that despite their promise, digital technologies alone “cannot produce revolutions. To generate fundamental change, it still takes strong leadership, powerful ideas, and people willing to risk detention and imprisonment.” West is writing about Iran—and the critical role that social networking has played in fostering social protest in the wake of a disputed election in that country. He also warns that oppressive regimes may turn the very same tool of protest against those fighting for freedom, by using digital technology to track protesters. Yet West underplays the importance of social networking for cracking …

Iran: Who Is Quicker - The Hacker Or The Twitter?, Anja Mihr

Human Rights & Human Welfare

For a moment we believed that we had entered into a new era of democratic movement. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google—chat have given proof that regardless where people live, what background they have, what system they adhere to or what religion they practice: they want to share the injustice and violence that happens to them with the world. They seek awareness, help and support and moreover they look for an end to the unfair and violent treatment. So have thousands of people in Iran—and still they do. They use what is the most widely available, quickest and the cheapest way …

Embedding An Im [Instant Messaging] Widget In Research Databases: Helping Users At Their Point-Of-Need, Kwabena Sekyere

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Introduction

The rapid growth of internet users has made libraries eager to introduce online services for this new community, in addition to their traditional reference services. Virtual reference service has become a convenient and easily accessible option for the online community, particularly with increasing amounts of libraries resources now available electronically as well (Lou, 2007).

Virtual reference began in many libraries as email reference service (Janes, 2002) with a move to live chat reference as technology advanced. These live reference services were offered through chat software developed in-house or by vendors. Due to the high cost of purchasing and maintaining …

The Digitally Born Identity: The Influence Of Social Networking Sites On Teen Identity, Alexis Lynn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Based on in-depth interviews, this thesis examines how teens use Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to negotiate their identities. The thesis concludes that SNSs, such as MySpace and Facebook, facilitate a social connectivity that influences how teens portray themselves online. The process of constructing a self-presentation, receiving input from peers, and then modifying one's self-presentation in response is not new, but the speed at which it occurs and the very public way it is displayed on an SNS constitutes a change in how teens understand the ways in which they make and constantly remake their identities. The findings suggest that, as …

What Do We Expect From Our Friends?, Stephen Leider, Markus M. Mobius, Tanya S. Rosenblat, Quoc-Anh Do

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. Although recipients’ beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e., directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity toward named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no …

Intimate Strangers And Estranged Intimates: An Investigation Of The Impact Of Instant Messaging And Short Message Service On The Size And Strength Of Social Networks In Kuwait, Bashaiar Al-Sanaa

Dissertations

Information and communication technologies (ICT) have revolutionized how people experience spatial proximity, reality, and connectivity. These technologies provide inexpensive access to anything and anyone in the world. They also replicate face-to-face interaction in cyber-space and allow for participation in numerous modes of social exchange.

People use Information and communication technologies to write web logs (blogs), send electronic mail (email), socialize through networking sites (such as Facebook and MySpace), text each other through mobile phone Short Message Service (SMS) and chat via online instant messaging (IM).With all these applications, a debate has ignited that actual physical communication is decreasing in favor …

Vodcasting, Itunes U, And Faculty Collaboration, Jason Paul Michel, Susan Hurst, Andrew Revelle

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Introduction

In the summer of 2008, the Miami University Libraries began a pilot project to integrate Web video tutorials (vodcasts) into a multiplicity of access points to enhance and extend library services. By the end of the project, Web video tutorials had been embedded in specific course sites in the course management system Blackboard, as well as in our institution's iTunes U site. The libraries were, in fact, the first entity on campus to feature publicly-available content on iTunes U. This brief article will delineate the project and explain why we believe this effort has helped position the library within …

Patrons Cataloging? The Role And Quality Of Patron Tagging In Item Description, William Lund, Allyson Washburn

Faculty Publications

With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, user participation in the description and evaluation of content has come to the library. User tagging is almost a given in applications such as Del.icio.us, Flickr, and LibraryThing. The question is whether tagging provided by users with their own motivations is better in some sense then descriptions provided by professionals. Is the tagging provided by the wisdom of the crowd a better description of an item?

Facebook : Friend Or Foe, Angela Draeger

Graduate Research Papers

Facebook is an online social networking site that is growing with popularity daily. Due to the current lack of research on this social network the researcher has proposed the following study. This study would survey three populations: high school students, college students, and community members. Areas of interest are: communication, miscommunication, self-esteem, introversion, extroversion, friendships, long distance relationships, and closure.

Consumer Generated Media: Evolving Marketing Opportunity For Consumer Engagement, Irene J. Dickey, William F. Lewis

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

This paper examines consumer-generated media (CGM), also called user-generated Web sites or social media, and the evolving and broad consumer behaviors associated with it. CGM websites have evolved rapidly during the last few years, but so have consumer behaviors and subsequently marketing tactics and future potential opportunities. Marketers should be aware of the characteristics of this type of website and understand how they are being used by consumers and other practitioners. CGM sites are primarily used by consumers to connect with others for many reasons. This connectivity, also called engagement, appears to be an opportunity for marketers to connect with …

Take Two Tablets And Do Not Call For Judicial Review Until Our Heads Clear: The Supreme Court Prepares To Demolish The 'Wall Of Separation' Between Church And State, Terence Lau, William Wines

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

In this article, we examine the issues that bring First Amendment jurisprudence to the grant of certiorari in Pleasant Grove v. Summum, scheduled for oral argument in the Supreme Court of the United States in November. We examine the historical basis for America’s religious heritage, the historical judicial treatment of the religious clauses, and the erosion of the wall of separation between church and state. We examine the Ten Commandments, finding inherent discrimination present in modern-day attempts to advance a particular version of the Ten Commandments as secular. By drawing upon Rousseau’s civic religion, we suggest alternative routes for the …

You Can Take It With You? Student Library Employees, Eportfolios, And “Edentity” Construction, Gabriella Reznowski, Brian Mcmanus

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Abstract

ePortfolios have become an important tool for assessing and tracking employee development. In 2008, the Washington State University Libraries became involved in the institution’s ePortfolio initiative. Library supervisors hoped that as a dynamic online tool, the ePortfolio concept would provide an effective method for assessing the library’s body of student employees. Collaborating with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTLT), the Center for Advising & Career Development (CACD), and Student Computing Services (SCS), the WSU Libraries explored the possibility of using ePortfolios to drive employee assessment. The Access Services unit, with the assistance of the Library Instruction, Library Systems, …

Cyberbullying, Phyllis I. Schoenholz, Deborah J. Weitzenkamp, Jennifer S. Nixon

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Faculty and Staff Publications

Technology now allows people — often children — to bully online. Social messaging sites can open up the user to a variety of bullying techniques outside of the playground. How parents and other adults can help reduce bullying over the Internet is examined in this NebGuide. ...

What can a parent do about cyberbullying? First, it’s important that parents and youth not reply or respond in any way to cyberbullies. Research indicates that being responsive may, in fact, escalate the activity. Instead, parents will need to think like a detective or lawyer. Document the activity with dates and times and …

Social Software Programs: Student Preferences Of Librarian Use, Annie Epperson, Jennifer Leffler

University Libraries Publications

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to present findings of an electronic survey to determine the extent of use of social software programs.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The study was conducted to discover the extent to which students use social software programs, namely Facebook, MySpace, Instant Messaging and Second Life, and to determine their level of desire for having a librarian or library presence within those settings. A web survey was developed and distributed using convenience sampling. The survey was distributed to students at two college campuses located in the state of Colorado in the USA.

FINDINGS: The majority of respondents use …

The Impact Of Mobile Phones On A Student’S Life In Various Cities Of Pakistan, Khair-Uz Zaman, M. Imran Khan

Business Review

This paper examines the impact of mobile phone on the personal, financial, psychological, physical, educational and also the social life of a student. We have taken a sample of hundred students from the various cities of Pakistan, such as, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, and Dera Ismail Khan. Mostly their educational level is from Matric to PhD, considering both males and females equally and their age group is from teenager to adulthood. The results of this study show that 65% students have their own mobile phones, while 35% do not have their own. Mostly 28% students are using U-fone, while 23% …

What Do We Expect From Our Friends?, Stephen Leider, Markus M. Mobius, Tanya S. Rosenblat, Quoc-Anh Do

Research Collection School Of Economics

We conduct a field experiment in a large real-world social network to examine how subjects expect to be treated by their friends and by strangers who make allocation decisions in modified dictator games. While recipients’ beliefs accurately account for the extent to which friends will choose more generous allocations than strangers (i.e. directed altruism), recipients are not able to anticipate individual differences in the baseline altruism of allocators (measured by giving to an unnamed recipient, which is predictive of generosity towards named recipients). Recipients who are direct friends with the allocator, or even recipients with many common friends, are no …

The Purpose Of Facebook: The Value Of Facebook Friends In Increasing Self-Perceived Popularity, Michael J. Cronin

Honors Program Theses

A survey of 407 students was conducted at a medium-sized Midwestern university to examine what motivates college students to have friends on Facebook. The goal of the study was to see if people interact with more Facebook friends than they do offline friends on a regular basis and to see if the primary reason students become friends with others on Facebook is to increase their popularity. The results suggest that students do not become Facebook friends with others to increase their popularity, which is in contrast to previous research. Results were inconclusive in determining if people regularly interact with more …

Leveraging Social Context For Searching Social Media, Marc Smith, Vladimir Barash, Lise Getoor, Hady W. Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ability to utilize and benefit from today's explosion of social media sites depends on providing tools that allow users to productively participate. In order to participate, users must be able to find resources (both people and information) that they find valuable. Here, we argue that in order to do this effectively, we should make use of a user's "social context". A user's social context includes both their personal social context (their friends and the communities to which they belong) and their community social context (their role and identity in different communities).

Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role Of Reviewer Characteristics And Temporal Effects, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Jennifer Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online product reviews provided by consumers who previously purchased products have become a major information source for consumers and marketers regarding product quality. This study extends previous research by conducting a more compelling test of the effect of online reviews on sales. In particular, we consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of online reviews, such as reviewer quality, reviewer exposure, product coverage, and temporal effects. Using transaction cost economics and uncertainty reduction theories, this study adopts a portfolio approach to assess the effectiveness of the online review market. We show that consumers understand the value difference between favorable news and …

Library 2.0 And The Problem Of Hate Speech, Margaret Brown-Sica, Jeffrey Beall

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

[First paragraph]

Library 2.0 applications benefit library users by providing rich, peer-generated content that adds value to online library databases and systems. However, not all of this shared content is beneficial, for it’s possible for library users to abuse library 2.0 applications by uploading words, pictures, or other content that constitutes hate speech. Internet lawyer Christopher Wolf warns of, “ … the sudden and rapidly increasing deployment of Web 2.0 technologies to spread messages, sounds and images of hate across the Internet and around the world” [1]. As academic libraries make available Web 2.0 systems that allow user-generated content, they …

Protecting Children Online, Deborah J. Weitzenkamp Dr.

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Faculty and Staff Publications

This publication explains potential Internet hazards and how to protect children from them.

In an age where children are using the Internet on a daily basis, parents need to be aware of how children use it, potential online hazards, how to recognize signs that their children might be at risk, and steps that they can take to safeguard their children. While it is important that parents be proactive regarding their children’s use of the Internet, it also is important that parents not overreact to potential threats. Instead, parents need to take a proactive approach toward protecting their children in a …

On Profiling Blogs With Representative Entries, Jinfeng Zhuang, Steven C. H. Hoi, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With an explosive growth of blogs, information seeking in blogosphere becomes more and more challenging. One example task is to find the most relevant topical blogs against a given query or an existing blog. Such a task requires concise representation of blogs for effective and efficient searching and matching. In this paper, we investigate a new problem of profiling a blog by choosing a set of m most representative entries from the blog, where m is a predefined number that is application-dependent. With the set of selected representative entries, applications on blogs avoid handling hundreds or even thousands of entries …

Uses And Gratifications Of Webloggers In Egypt, Mona Munir El-Hefnawi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Since its entrance in Egypt, blogs have had a powerful effect on the political, social, and economic aspects in Egypt. To be able to measure those effects, it is important to know the intentions of those Egyptian bloggers. This study applies the uses and gratifications theoretical framework to this notion of blogging. As it is based on a survey which attempts to examine and explore the different uses and gratifications of blogging in Egypt. This involves why different people with different demographic characteristics actually decide to blog and what needs they seek to gratify. Independent variables studied were age, gender, …

Online Forums As An Arena For Political Discussions: What Politicians And Activists Can Learn From Teachers, Kevin Y. Wang

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This paper discusses the use of online discussion forums in various “e-democratic” practices in light of the lessons learned from the field of education. Informed by a conceptual framework drawn from the role of public sphere in electronic democracy and the ideal learning conditions of a computer-mediated communication environment, the author analyzed two discussion forums maintained by a government and a civil society group. Results suggest that, in both cases, online discussion forums only reflect a few elements of effective online learning and therefore, have yet to reach their full potentials. Implications for future research are discussed.

Photography After The Incidents: We're Not Afraid, Panizza Allmark

Research outputs pre 2011

This article will look at the use of personal photographs that attempt to convey a sense of social activism as a reaction against global terrorism. Moreover, I argue that the photographs uploaded to the site “We’re Not Afraid”, which began after the London bombings in 2005, presents a forum to promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defence against the anxiety of terror. What is compelling are the ways in which the Website promotes, seemingly, everyday modalities through what may be deemed as the domestic snapshot. Nevertheless, the aura from the context of these images operates to arouse …