Communication Commons^™

Social Media Use And The Effects On Wellbeing In Young Adults, Tyler Dietz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Social media has found its way into almost everyone’s cellphone. Being a primary source for news, connection, and inspiration, it only continues to gain popularity. Social media, however, is not good 100% of the time. The dominant explanation for the effect of social media on wellbeing varies from digital stress, compromised sleep, and body image disturbances. This paper explores the correlation between daily time spent on social media, number of platforms used, and overall sense of wellbeing. Sleepiness is also assessed, and a correlation is explored using the previous variables. Previous research primarily focuses on the amount of time spent …

Social Media Usage For Social Comparison And Its Relationship To Identity Development, Lillie C. Del Real

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Yang and colleagues (2018) found that social media comparison was related to identity distress. The purpose of the current study was to expand on their design, by examining multiple comparison factors (i.e., Ability, Opinion, Popularity, Likeness, Physical Appearance, Academic Status/Achievements, Work Status/Achievements, Relationship Status, Family Status, and Socioeconomic Status) and multiple identity development factors (i.e., Ruminative Exploration, Exploration in Breadth, Exploration in Depth, Commitment Making, and Identification with Commitment) on their ability to predict Identity Distress. College students (N= 407) in psychology courses participated in an anonymous online survey for course credit. The results were consistent with the …

The Effects Of The Communication Techniques Of Concern Elicitation And Mutual Agenda Setting On The Satisfaction, Self-Efficacy, And Understanding Of A Patient After A Provider Encounter, Ajay Bharathan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The goal of this investigation is to explore the relationship of health provider communication techniques and their impact on patient understanding, satisfaction, and self-efficacy. This investigation looked at the two specific communication techniques of concern elicitation and mutual agenda setting which occur during the beginning of a medical visit. Encounters were recorded with patient knowledge and transcribed to be analyzed. Following a coding manual created from both previous research and original input, the transcripts were organized and read through to process data. Focusing on the two communication techniques—concern elicitation and mutual agenda setting—I looked at the beginning of the encounter …

A New Form Of Catfishing: An Analysis Of The Inauthentic Racial And Ethnic Self-Presentation On Social Media, Britney R. Raymond

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Trends in self-presentation in social media (i.e., Twitter and Instagram) constantly fluctuate as fads come and go, especially when one’s image is being commodified. Specifically, numerous instances of celebrities and social media influencers altering their images to fit popular online trends and “aesthetics” contribute to increased blackfishing, Asianfishing, and Hispanicfishing. Some celebrities and influencers accused of “-fishing” in the presentation of ethnicity include the Kardashians, Ariana Grande, Addison Rae, Iggy Azalea, Selena Gomez, and Gigi Hadid. The present study (N = 685) investigated gender, personality, fame appeal, self-esteem, and need to belong in relation to attitudes towards the “-fishing” culture. …

Identifying Challenges And Opportunities For Designing Social Media Nudges For Adolescents, Oluwatomisin Obajemu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

With the prevalence of online risks encountered by youth online, strength-based approaches such as nudges have been recommended as a potential solution to subtly guide teens toward safer decisions. However, most nudging interventions to date have not been designed to cater to teens’ unique needs and online safety concerns. To address this gap, this study aimed to better understand adolescents’ perceptions and feedback on online safety nudges to inform the design of more effective online safety interventions. We conducted 12 semi-structured interviews and 3 focus group sessions with 21 teens (13 – 17 years old) to get their feedback on …

D&D&U&G: Uses And Gratifications Theory And Dungeons & Dragons, Ariana Ferrante

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Given the growing popularity of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, this thesis study applied the Uses and Gratifications theory to determine what players of the game get from engagement with this particular, previously overlooked form of entertainment media. Additionally, this research sought to determine whether these discovered gratifications overlapped at all with perceived similar media, specifically massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, MMORPGs, and social media. A series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews designed to elicit relevant responses were conducted with 14 respondents, followed by a thematic analysis to determine gratifications. The qualitative analysis determined a set of …

Not All Influence Is Born Equal: On The Effects Of Various Types Of Behavioral Influence Relationships On Social Media, Chathurani Senevirathna

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Typically, online social influence is analyzed using a single metric approach. However, social influence is not monolithic; different users exercise different influences in different ways, and influence is correlated with the user and content-specific attributes. One such attribute could be whether the action is an initiation of a new post, a contribution to a post, or a sharing of an existing post. Thus, this dissertation uses this platform-independent action classification and models the influence as multiple entities and examines social networks through the perspective of behavioral influence propagation. Two empirical studies are present in this dissertation. The first study presents …

A Human-Centered Approach To Improving Adolescent Online Sexual Risk Detection Algorithms, Afsaneh Razi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Computational risk detection has the potential to protect especially vulnerable populations from online victimization. Conducting a comprehensive literature review on computational approaches for online sexual risk detection led to the identification that the majority of this work has focused on identifying sexual predators after-the-fact. Also, many studies rely on public datasets and third-party annotators to establish ground truth and train their algorithms, which do not accurately represent young social media users and their perspectives to prevent victimization. To address these gaps, this dissertation integrated human-centered approaches to both creating representative datasets and developing sexual risk detection machine learning models to …

Learning And Decision Making In Social Media Networks, Zhecheng Qiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Social media is a virtual community where users share news, ideas, interests, and information. Learning the information diffusion dynamics and making decisions correspondingly, e.g., selecting the seed nodes to maximize the influence, have been widely applied to the areas of viral marketing and cyber security. In this dissertation, we study the problem of learning diffusion process, i.e., infection prediction, in social media networks utilizing both feature-based machine learning methods and mathematical model-based methods. For feature-based machine learning methods, the neighborhood information is treated as an important feature together with user profile and content similarity features. For model-based methods, two distinctive …

Transformations Of Hanbok In The Age Of Hallyu: Fashion, Cultural Hybridization, And The Construction Of Vernacular Korean Nationalism, Katharine V. Smith

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Hanbok is the traditional fashion of South Korea, and literally translates to “Korean clothing.” Once worn every day, today hanbok is reserved for special occasions and holidays; however new “modern” versions of the attire are becoming more and more popular for everyday wear. This new iteration of the traditional clothing created a new vernacular of Korean nationalism and “Koreanness” through the incorporation of modern fashion trends and traditional Korean aesthetics. Modern hanbok represents the unique relationship between nationalism, globalization, and fashion, and can be seen as an example of cultural hybridization. Looking at modern hanbok through the lens of Hallyu, …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Hospital Nurses' Experiences During The Covid-19 Pandemic Through The Lens Of The Demand-Control-Support Model, Alisha Garner

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Positive social support, realistic job demand, and appropriate levels of control over their responsibilities can mitigate empathy fatigue and burnout among nurses, increase quality care for patients, and lay the foundation for teams to embrace challenges during crises. The COVID-19 pandemic stretched nurses in all these areas, leading many nurses to contemplate changing fields. Failure to address and embrace the difficulties that nurses face during such crises can result in loss of nurses and impact the entire healthcare industry.

The present study used one-to-one interviews to glean insider perspectives of changes in job demand, control, and support nurses experienced as …

Investigating The Effects Of Negative Influence Gradients And Emotion Contagion On The Information Processing Capacity Of Social Media Users: Information Diffusion Modeling Approach, Nisha Baral

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

With the growing use of Online social media (OSM), users are observing a substantial amount of information in their social feeds. Moreover, people often use multiple OSM platforms because of each platform's unique features. Because of the huge volume of information present in social feeds, it restricts a user's ability to process the relevant information since the most important information may be overwhelmed by unimportant information. For information to diffuse in OSM, the receiver's attention is the most important condition. Cognition plays an important role in determining a user's attention/responsiveness. If OSM users receive the information above their cognition limits …

Post-Crisis Organizational Learning Thresholds, Pitfalls And The Risk Of Repeated Crises: Clarifying The Discourse Of Renewal Theory, Rodrigo Soares

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Through a case study analysis of repeated crises that impacted the same organization in Brazil, this dissertation aimed to solve an applied problem: the potential for unresolved or amplified risk for organizations and their stakeholders facing repeated crises due to incomplete post-crisis learning. This research expands and clarifies the understanding of organizational learning, particularly in the Discourse of Renewal theory, by exploring the potential for organizations to ascertain vital lessons for a crisis but fail to communicatively constitute them as central features of a renewed organization. The study investigated an organization's failure to avoid repeating a crisis within a relatively …

Circulating Suburbia: Locating A Transnational Suburban Imagination In Post-War Periodicals, 1945-1970, Tyler Dick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

In this thesis I argue that a suburban cultural imagination developed transnationally during the post-war period (roughly 1945-1970) rather than as a cultural phenomenon largely associated with the 1950s United States. I situate the suburbs—in both their physical and cultural constructions—as my primary focus and discuss the suburb's influence on hegemonic culture by performing an in-depth comparison of the U.S. with another country with a long history of suburbanization—Australia. Given that the suburbs structure several social, cultural, economic, political, and historical vectors—which all in turn inform issues of gender, race, class, sexuality, and nationality—I focus on how the suburbs inform …

Igniting Interest?: Female Perceptions Of Communication Effectiveness In Public Safety Recruitment Campaigns, Ashley Papagni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Despite the potential for positive impacts resulting from a diverse workforce, fire departments across the country have struggled with the recruitment and hiring of minorities for decades, with women accounting for only 4.7% of its workforce (NFPA, 2020). Due in part to the limited diversity, the fire service tends to perpetuate the stereotypes of masculinity. There are three identified issues that are leading to the lack of female applicants in public safety positions, including the lack of diversity and inclusivity in Public Safety Organizations (PSOs), the absence of women in the role as firefighters, and the absence of recruitment strategies …

2022 International Crisis And Risk Communication Conference Proceedings Table Of Contents, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Table of Contents to the to the proceedings of the 11th Annual International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference sponsored by the Nicholson School of Communication and Media.

Promoting Covid-19 Vaccines Among Communities Of Color: An Analysis Of U.S. Minority Serving Higher Education Institutions’ Message Framing Strategies, Najma Akhther, Khairul Islam

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

This study examined how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States used framing as an issue management strategy in promoting COVID-19 vaccine. A content analysis of HBCUs’ (N = 268) COVID-19 vaccine-related messages showed that institutional leaders primarily used thematic frames over episodic frames. In other words, the COVID-19 vaccination was promoted as a community issue by emphasizing safety and well-being of the community. Black leaders’ vaccine communication mostly focused on background information, research data, and statistics related to vaccination and vaccine effectiveness. Such use of framing strategies may indicate black leaders’ trust and openness in vaccine …

Evolution And Effectiveness Of The Governmental Risk And Crisis Communication On Twitter In The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Case Of Switzerland, Albena Björck, Audra Diers-Lawson, Felix Dücrey

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged the risk and crisis communication capabilities of governmental authorities: A new global phenomenon had to be managed and explained on a national and local level to protect public health. In the form of a single case study, the current research investigates this complex event as a cumulative crisis, the evolution of the communication strategies, and the effectiveness of messaging using Twitter in the context of Switzerland. The study identifies improvement potential in existing theoretical frameworks and provides a method for governmental authorities to track and assess their communication efforts.

Covid-19 News Frames In Sports Headlines In England: A Content Analysis, Yazeed Aljasser

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

This study examined the nature of sports reporting of COVID19 in England by employing framing analysis on a sample of five newspapers. Through a quantitative content analysis, this study revealed how sports news coverage framed the COVID19 virus in these newspapers: The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Mail, and the Sun. The findings revealed that Competition and Players and Staff frames were the Major frames in the headlines media news organizations reported on COVID19. Implications and future research needs are discussed.

The Perils Of The Boomerang Effect: White House Messaging To Deter Border Crossing Backfires, Mariely Valentin-Llopis, Jessica Delgado

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

The Boomerang Effect explains how a given persuasive message produces attitude change in the direction opposite to that intended. We seek to explain how the convergence of Central American migrants at the southwest border since 2014 is, in part, produced by the United States (U.S.) White House messaging misstep. We propose a bottom-up persuasive approach to effectively spread awareness of the dangers of unauthorized border crossing. Instead of state authority voices, local native voices can effectually convey the message. The bottom-up approach of persuasion is a foundational strategy to effectively design a public awareness campaign focusing on ethos. The objective …

Public Opinion In A Pandemic: Four Surveys Conducted With Americans Throughout The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lauri M. Baker, Chen-Xian Yang, Angela B. Lindsey, Ashley Mcleod-Morin, Ricky W. Telg, Anissa Zagonel, Sydney Honeycutt, Naik Wali, Shelli Rampold

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

The UF/IFAS Center for Public Issues Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (PIE Center) conducted a series of national public opinion surveys to examine the perceptions of Americans related to COVID-19. The PIE Center conducted four surveys with ~1,500 Americans per survey from mid-March 2020 to January 2021. The surveys sought to understand Americans’ perceptions of a range of topics including health and communication concerns, vaccination perceptions and acceptance, mask understanding and willingness, and compound disasters and stress. Presentations in this panel highlight key areas of research from this survey series and share how communicators can use this research to …

Spillover And Cascading Crises In Public Health And Water Systems: The Orlando Liquid Oxygen Shortage, Ronisha Sheppard, Shawn P. Mcelmurry, Matt W. Seeger

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

In August 2021, COVID cases spiked in Florida with over 24,000 breakthrough cases per day making Florida the state with the highest increase at the time. Florida saw an increase in hospitalized COVID-19 patients during the last two weeks of August and became the 3rd state in the U.S. to exceed 3 million COVID cases. Not only did this impact public health, but it also created an unforeseen impact on the municipal water system. The surge in COVID cases created a surge in demand for treatment, one in which included liquid oxygen, used for respiratory therapy. Without liquid oxygen, ozone …

The Role Of Emotions On Stakeholders’ Perceptions During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Lisa Bergson, Thomasena Shaw

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Using Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM) model, the researchers explored the role of emotions on respondents' perceptions of a university during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining the perceived level of engagement by the organization, the primary coping strategies of the stakeholders and the type of crisis and level of responsibility of the organization. This qualitative, phenomenological study explored how emotions experienced by faculty during the pandemic impacted their perception of the university. This study fills a gap in the crisis communication literature by focusing on stakeholder perspectives and proposes the addition of several emotions to the ICM model. It also details …

2022 International Crisis And Risk Communication Conference Program, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

Program to the to the 11th Annual International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference sponsored by the Nicholson School of Communication and Media.

When Doubt Comes In: Framing Of Sexual Trauma Experiences In R/Sexualassault, Alison Kubala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

At age 23 I began acknowledging and healing from my experiences with sexual trauma. Although my trauma occurred from ages twelve to eighteen, my doubt and preconceived notions about what abuse was kept me from believing that I deserved help. Due to an incessant belief that abuse looked one particular way, I found ways to minimize and frame my experiences as "not abuse". Fueled by encouragement from my therapist and my interest in Communication research, I began to wonder how others who experience shame and doubt surrounding sexual abuse frame their experiences. To better understand, I conducted a critical discourse …

Postpartum Depression Symptoms In New Mothers And The Disclosure Process, Kelsey Lunsford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Using a qualitative approach, this study examined disclosure patterns of women who have experienced symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD). Postpartum depression is a mental illness that new parents are at risk of developing. If left unresolved, PPD can have severe, negative impacts on the development of the baby and the well-being of the parent. Unfortunately, due to the stigmatized nature of the illness, parents are sometimes reluctant to bring up their struggles with this illness and seek help. Eighteen women who had experienced PPD within the past five years were recruited and participated in an interview where they were asked …

Studying Users Interactions And Behavior In Social Media Using Natural Language Processing, Sultan Alshamrani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Social media platforms have been growing at a rapid pace, attracting users' engagement with the online content due to their convenience facilitated by many useful features. Such platforms provide users with interactive options such as likes, dislikes as well as a way of expressing their opinions in the form of text (i.e., comments). As more people engage in different social media platforms, such platforms will increase in both size and importance. This growth in social media data is becoming a vital new area for scholars and researchers to explore this new form of communication. The huge data from social media …

Communities Of Play And Practice: Collaborating With Audiences And Coworkers In Performative Online Spaces, Paul Oppold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This study describes an ethnographic investigation of Communities of Play within Communities of Practice. As professional 'content creators', whose 'work' is 'play', are increasingly interacting with non-professional content consumers, whose 'play' is a kind of 'work', the barriers between 'work' and 'play' are increasingly dissolving. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and frequency of the professionals' interactions with coworkers in an office and with the content consumers while working from home. Data were collected in the form of gameplay videos uploaded by the professional streamers from January of 2017 to March of 2018, downloaded by the …

Using Expectation Violation Theory To Evaluate Dialectal Bias In Courtroom Contexts, Christina Joseph

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

There is much evidence to indicate the role of speaker accent expectations and its impacts on the subsequent rating of the speaker. Additionally, examples including the Central Park Five as well as Rachel Jeantel of the Trayvon Martin case indicate the impacts of this speaker rating particularly in the context of the courtroom. This necessitates the further evaluation of the impact of dialectal bias on speaker ratings especially in the context of a courtroom due to the severity of the impacts. Utilizing a 4x2 between subjects experimental design manipulating on the basis of both dialect and speaker expectation, this study …

Bringing Instagram Posts Into Being: A Study Of Fyc Students' Self-Sponsored Posting Practices And Transfer Opportunities, Jessica Kester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Social media platforms have offered students—and all of us—more opportunities for self-sponsored writing. In response to calls from researchers to explore students' 21st-century writing practices and their relevance to college writing instruction, this dissertation articulated and applied a feminist teacher research methodology and a mixed-methods research design to explore first-year composition (FYC) students' self-sponsored writing practices, attitudes, and transfer opportunities on a popular, albeit under-examined, social media application: Instagram. This study found that students have developed elaborate, rhetorical, multimodal composing processes that include planning, drafting, evaluating, selecting, and styling images as well as planning, drafting/revising, and styling captions. Additionally, though …