Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

The Effect Of Relational And Interactive Aspects Of Parasocial Experiences On Attitudes And Message Resistance, Riva Tukachinsky, Angeline Sangalang

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

This study examines direct and interaction effects of parasocial interactions (PSIs) and relationships (PSRs) on message resistance (reactance and counterarguing) and message-consistent attitudes. PSI involves the give-and-take within the media encounter, whereas PSR entails the relational bonding with the media figure that continues to exist outside the context of any particular media exposure. A 2 (high/low PSI) × 2 (high/low PSR) experiment revealed that PSI (but not PSR) can increase message resistance, particularly when PSR is low. No significant effects of PSR/PSI on attitudes were found. The study suggests that, contrary to past theorization, PSIs may facilitate, rather than reduce, …

The Big Short, Elizabeth Armon

Communication Studies

The Big Short (McKay, 2015), adapted from the non-fiction novel The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (2010), follows three separate but parallel stories leading up to the United States housing crisis of 2008. On a macro-level, the film brilliantly depicted the creation, and the ultimate burst, of the credit and housing market bubble. However, on a micro-level the audience is given an opportunity to realize and empathize with the internal struggle that many of the main characters faced as they grappled with the fact that their financial gain from shorting the market came with the caveat …

Layer-Switching Cost And Optimality In Information Spreading On Multiplex Networks, Byungjoon Min, Sang-Hwan Gwak, Nanoom Lee, K. I. Goh

Publications and Research

We study a model of information spreading on multiplex networks, in which agents interact through multiple interaction channels (layers), say online vs. offline communication layers, subject to layerswitching cost for transmissions across different interaction layers. The model is characterized by the layer-wise path-dependent transmissibility over a contact, that is dynamically determined dependently on both incoming and outgoing transmission layers. We formulate an analytical framework to deal with such path-dependent transmissibility and demonstrate the nontrivial interplay between the multiplexity and spreading dynamics, including optimality. It is shown that the epidemic threshold and prevalence respond to the layer-switching cost non-monotonically and that …

Alternative Media And Normative Theory: A Case Of Ferguson, Missouri, Mark Anthony Poepsel, Chad Painter

Communication Faculty Publications

This paper, based on in-depth interviews with journalists at alternative and advocacy papers in St. Louis as well as interviews with live streaming protestors, a new breed of citizen journalist, applies six characteristics commonly associated with the alternative press to coverage of the protests and police crackdown in Ferguson, Missouri, between August 9, 2014, and March 2015.

Journalists from the alternative newspaper in St. Louis focused on progressive or radical values less than the literature predicted. The African-American newspaper in St. Louis found itself influencing the national and global agenda regarding Ferguson and the ongoing oppression of blacks in the …

Informational Efficiency And The Reaction To Terrorism: A Financial Perspective, Nicholas Roland

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure the message terror organizations hope to convey using the financial markets as a proxy of measurement to determine patterns within the marketplace and the effects on the terrorists’ ability to deliver a desired message due to the increased use of digital devices and access to instantaneous news, seen over the past decade. Using death count, geographic location, and event type, this study identified 109 attacks between 1985 and 2015 to be analyzed against 5 market indices and 5 securities. Measuring the effects within a 10-day sample window from the time of the …

Towards A Requirement Framework For Online Participation Platforms, Astrid Hellsmanns, Claudia Niemeyer, Margeret A. Hall, Tom Zentek, Christof Weinhardt

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Online participation platforms (OPPs) are frequently used by public institutions to involve citizens in political opinion forming and decision making. A literature re-view reveals different approaches to evaluate these OPPs. These approaches focus only on partial requirements of participation processes. In this research in progress, we develop and pretest an interdisciplinary literature-based requirement frame-work. It includes the categories usability, security, information, transparency, inte-gration, and mobilisation. Our aim is to close the research gap of a context-specific analysis and evaluation of OPPs.

The Islamic State’S Use Of Online Social Media, Lisa Blaker

Military Cyber Affairs

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has made great use of the Internet and online social media to spread its message and encourage others, particularly young people, to support the organization, to travel to the Middle East to engage in combat or to join the group by playing a supporting role—a role often carved out for young women persuaded to join ISIS. Social media has proven to be an extremely valuable tool for the organization and is perfectly suited for ISIS’ target audience—the “Millennial generation,” and now more often, those from Western countries. What messages from jihadists convince …

Analysis Of Bloggers’ Usage Of The Web Space In Kyrgyzstan To Engage Civically And Politically, Bahtiyar Kurambayev

Dissertations

This dissertation work seeks to assess the implications of the internet (blogging) in non-democratic Kyrgyz Republic for engaging civically and politically. Existing literature offers contradictory findings about the role of internet in non-democratic countries and Kyrgyz Republic is one of those non-western countries that have been overlooked. To understand how the internet may relate to engagement civically and politically, the author applies survey approach and in-depth interviews to examine the relationship between the internet and engagement by specifically looking at how Kyrgyz bloggers use the web space.

The sample is drawn from student population. The author collected online 132 responses …

Private Military Contractors, Security Forces, And Mercenaries, Naomi Pearson

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Life Beyond The Like: Uses And Gratifications Of Sharing Business Facebook Page Content, Sara M. Nash

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

One of the main reasons businesses create a Facebook Page is to solidify relationships with existing customers who are Facebook users and to leverage those relationships to gain new customers. Many studies have asked Facebook users to articulate the gratifications they receive when “liking” a business Facebook Page. These studies help explain what gratifications users gain by connecting to businesses via Facebook. To expand on these findings, the current pilot study applied the uses and gratifications theory to identify Facebook users’ motivations to “share” business Facebook content within their own personal network. Understanding users’ reasons for “sharing” will help businesses …

Inspiring Action: Measuring The Effect Of Motivational Frames On Social Movement Mobilization, Rebecca Louise Smith

Dissertations and Theses

In order to probe how social movement messages foster participant mobilization, this study utilized an experimental design to investigate collective action frames, core messaging tasks that define problems, assign blame, convey a plan of action, and inspire participation. The study compared the effects of climate change messages that contain motivational frames with those that do not, incorporating the influence of resonance, and exposure to competing and counter frames. Results revealed that motivational frames contributed to mobilization, especially intention to act, under conditions of resonance and with exposure to counter frames. Salience primed participants to respond to motivational frames, however for …

Eco-Nostalgia In Popular Turkish Cinema, Ekin Gündüz Özdemirci, Salma Monani

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. [From the publisher]

Ecomedia: Key Issues, Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. [From the publisher]

Occupy Judaism: Religion, Digital Media, And The Public Sphere, Ayala Fader, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides an analysis of Occupy Judaism, an explicitly religious expression of Jewish protest, which occurred simultaneously with Occupy Wall Street, the direct-democracy movement of 2011. Occupy Judaism, like Occupy Wall Street, took place both in physical spaces of protest in New York City and digitally, through mobilizing and circulating debate. The article focuses on the words and actions of Daniel Sieradski, the public face and one of the key founders of Occupy Judaism, supplemented by the experiences of others in Occupy Judaism, Occupy Wall Street, and Occupy Faith (a Protestant clergy-led initiative). We investigate what qualified as religion …

Perceptions Of Social Norms Surrounding Digital Piracy: The Effect Of Social Projection And Communication Exposure On Injunctive And Descriptive Norms, Hichang Cho, Siyoung Chung, Anna Filippova

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using a national sample of 620 Internet users in the US, this study examined the extent to which social projection, communication exposure, and an interaction between the two, influenced individuals’ perceptions about two subordinate types of social norms surrounding digital piracy: injunctive norms and descriptive norms. In line with the social projection model, individuals made social estimates about others’ piracy attitudes and behaviors anchoring on their own personal attitudes and behavior. However, frequent communication exposure reduced the degree to which they relied on this egocentric thought process. In addition, the two-way interaction was contingent on another condition (perceiver’s own piracy …

Confirmation Of Prophecy By Proxy: Audience Anticipation And Reception Of The 2014 Movie Left Behind And Its Relevance To The Dispensational Premillennialist Worldview, Andrew R. Burns

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Media has the potential to legitimize or spread a belief system to the general public. The 2014 movie Left Behind is an example of a deliberate attempt at promoting the belief system referred to as dispensational premillennialism (DPM), or belief in the imminent rapture of Christians. Producers of Left Behind (2014) sought to promote DPM to the general public, hoping for a mass conversion. Online discussion and interviews were gathered and interpreted qualitatively. Content analysis of audience anticipation and reception show believers were as concerned with the conversion of the general public via this movie than the movie itself. Differences …

Approaching Ideals Through Innovation: Twentieth And Twenty-First Century Mass Media Technology And American Democracy, Elizabeth Brand Cermak

Senior Theses

From the moment our First Amendment was adopted, America’s ideal of democracy has been firmly intertwined with media communications between the President and the citizenry. Over time, technological advancements have altered the way this communication is facilitated, increasing the public’s access to the Office of the Presidency, and visa versa, via new forms of media. Through an examination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s use of the radio, the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, and Barack Obama’s use of Social Media and the Internet, this thesis will seek to answer the question of whether the …

Media Literacy For The 21st Century. A Response To "The Need For Media Education In Democratic Education", Peter Levine

Democracy & Education

We cannot pretend to educate young people for citizenship and political participation without teaching them to understand and use the new media, which are essential means of expressing ideas, forming public opinions, and building institutions and movements. But the challenge of media literacy education is serious. Students need advanced and constantly changing skills to be effective online. They must understand the relationship between the new media and social and political institutions, a topic that is little understood by even the most advanced social theorists. And they must develop motivations to use digital media for civic purposes, when no major institutions …

La Radio Comunitaria: Hacia Un Futuro Más Democrático Para Bolivia, Katharine Norris

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Radio has been a companion of and crucial partner in democratic social change in Bolivia since its arrival to the country. Many of its inherent characteristics make it an ideal medium for communication of messages made for and by marginalized groups that are otherwise excluded from the production of and access to information. Historically, radio has been implemented in processes of progressive resistance to authority, in response to the oppression of the groups that community radio seeks to represent. This investigation attempts to understand the role of community radio in Bolivian society, with a view towards the democratic participation and …

The Paradox Of Public Diplomacy On The Web: An Empirical Analysis On Interactivity And Narratives Of Nation-States' Ministry Of Foreign Affairs Web Sites, Hyung Min Lee, Kevin Y. Wang, Yejin Hong

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

Against the backdrop of Habermas’ theory of communicative action, we empirically analyzed the level of interactivity and narratives offered in nation-states’ ministry of foreign affairs Web sites. A multiple regression analysis was performed in an attempt to identify factors affecting the level of interactivity in such Web sites. Findings revealed that the level of economic development is the sole significant factor in regards to the level of interactivity. Further, self-interested, goal-directed, and strategic purposes behind the allegedly transparent, engaging, and interactive public diplomacy were evidenced through a critical analysis of the objectives, key issues, and target publics addressed and highlighted …

Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, …

College Students’ Use Of Social Media To Communicate About Alcohol And Drinking Behaviors, Jenna E. Reno

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an increasingly popular channel for communication among college students. Often students disclose more freely via social networking sites than they would in other situations. These disclosures commonly include information about engaging in risky health behaviors (e.g., binge drinking). Study 1 examined students’ impression management goals and self-presentation tactics specifically related to self-disclosures of drinking behavior on SNSs. Findings suggest that students use differing self-presentation tactics across various SNSs in order to achieve their impression management goals and to avoid consequences associated with disclosing about risky health behaviors to certain audiences. Study 2 sought to develop …

Jihad In The Global Village: Al-Qaeda's Digital Radicalization And Recruitment Campaign, Katie Cannata

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Following America’s “War on Terror,” al-Qaeda and its affiliates became highly decentralized in terms of organizational and media operations. Though mass media outlets continue to play a significant role in drawing attention to al-Qaeda’s transnational campaign, Salafi Jihadists have recently begun to rely on new media for purposes of legitimization and promotion. The Internet serves as a suitable platform for these groups’ media objectives since it is inherently anonymous and absent of censorship. Most importantly, the Internet facilitates al-Qaeda in reaching a global audience, which is made evident by the growing amount of Salafi Jihadist media that is translated or …

The Power Of Creativity: How Web-Based Parody Encourages Chinese Civil Participation, Amber Boczar

International ResearchScape Journal

This article investigates that relationship between e’gao (parody using web-based media) and Chinese civil participation. E’gao (恶搞 EUH-gow) uses videos, images, and text based campaigns that use humor to remove fear of political commentary and action. By detailing the development of China’s internet use, and the creation of the e’gao movement, I argue that e’gao removes the fear of participating in campaigns and movements, which criticize government policy and actions on both local and state levels, by using humor and anonymity of large online numbers. E’gao can provide a way for the common citizens to mold policy, and hold authority …

A Digital Dud? New Media, Participation, And Voting In The 2004 And 2008 United States Presidential Elections, Jeremy D. Hickman

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This dissertation analyzes the linkages between new media and the possible emergence of the youngest members of the voting population (the “digital native” generation, who have grown up concurrently with the rise of the internet as a means of communication). The main question is whether this digital native generation will have more civic and political participation due to their use of online news sources and social media communication on news media websites and elsewhere on the internet. Regression analyses are used to explain civic and political participation, using American National Election Studies (ANES) from the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. …

Beyond The Digital Divide: Language Factors, Resource Wealth, And Post-Communism In Mongolia, Undrah Baasanjav

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This chapter explores the interplay between society and Internet technology in the context of the developing former socialist country of Mongolia. This chapter goes beyond questions of access to the Internet and explores three factors of the global digital divide. First, this chapter explores how language factors such as non-Roman domain names and the use of the Cyrillic alphabet exacerbate the digital divide in the impoverished country of Mongolia. ICANN’s initiation of international domain names is an initial development toward achieving linguistic diversity on the Internet. Second, this chapter explores how post-communist settings and foreign investment and aid dependency afflict …

Jiahd In The Global Village: Al-Qaeda's Digital Radicalization And Recruitment Campaign, Katie Cannata

Honors College Theses

Following America’s “War on Terror,” al-Qaeda and its affiliates became highly decentralized in terms of organizational and media operations. Though mass media outlets continue to play a significant role in drawing attention to al-Qaeda’s transnational campaign, Salafi Jihadists have recently begun to rely on new media for purposes of legitimization and promotion. The Internet serves as a suitable platform for these groups’ media objectives since it is inherently anonymous and absent of censorship. Most importantly, the Internet facilitates al-Qaeda in reaching a global audience, which is made evident by the growing amount of Salafi Jihadist media that is translated or …

Social Media & Revolution: The Importance Of The Internet In Tunisia’S Uprising, Aamna Dhillon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Our world has entered a digital age, where technology has made leaps and bounds and is accelerating in development. With this digital age came the widespread use of the internet and the emergence of “social media”—online platforms for communicating with others. Though the initial use of these social media platforms was to stay connected with friends and family, a sect of users have used the platforms to share news and important information. In the past few years, people have come together to demand change in their countries by protest and eventually even revolution, all of which is said to have …

On Air With The Community An Exploration Of Five Community Radio Stations In The Western Cape, Kelsey Warren

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The closing of apartheid in South Africa was brought by new measures for democracy in 1994. Community radio stations were seen as measures for local communication and involvement in giving different communities voices that has formerly been lost. This paper attempts to discover the relevance of community radio stations twenty years after democracy and just how citizens are participating.

The paper begins with a review of history of community radio on different levels around the world through the use of literature. The arguments made centralize around the necessity of specialized community stations, the effect of community engagement, the lack of …

A New Look At Nonprofit Online Fundraising: Persuasion Through The Means Of Credibility And Psychological Consistency, Kaytlin Lemier

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

A study was conducted to examine how the persuasive elements of a message contribute to non-profit organizations’ potential to gain financial support. The purpose of the study was to apply theories of persuasion to advance an understanding of the underlying elements relevant to successful fundraising appeals. The two main constructs examined were credibility and psychological consistency. Applied to the context of non-profit fundraising, credibility refers to the judgments granting institutions and/or donors make about the believability of the non-profit organization or its individual representatives, and psychological consistency refers to donors’ internal drive to reduce inconsistencies between their behavior and their …