Social Media Commons^™

Fbwatch: Extracting, Analyzing And Visualizing Public Facebook Profiles, Lukas Brückner, Simon Caton, Margeret A. Hall

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

An ever-increasing volume of social media data facilitates studies into behavior patterns, consumption habits, and B2B exchanges, so called Big Data. Whilst many tools exist for platforms such as Twitter, there is a noticeable absence of tools for Facebook-based studies that are both scalable and accessible to social scientists. In this paper, we present FBWatch, an open source web application providing the core functionality to fetch public Facebook profiles en masse in their entirety and analyse relationships between profiles both online and offline. We argue that FBWatch is a robust interface for social researchers and business analysts to identify analyze …

The Impact Of Video Chatting On Idealization And Disillusionment For Long Distance Dating Couples, Laura Kusisto

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

Previous research indicates a high rate of long distance relationships, especially among young adults. Yet, research in this area is lacking, particularly regarding the role of video chatting. Through the lens of the media richness theory and the hyperpersonal model, this qualitative study explores how video chatting impacts idealization and disillusionment in young adults’ long distance dating relationships. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with both partners of six heterosexual couples. Data was analyzed using the constant comparative approach and following the basic framework of open, axial, and selective coding used in grounded theory research. Results indicate that video chatting …

Unfriend?: An Analysis Of Friendship Comparing Subjects’ Perceptions Of Face-To-Face Versus Internet-Mediated Relationships, Matthew S. Harp

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this study was to find out how similar or different peoples’ perceptions are of friendships which are primarily face-to-face and those which are primarily internet mediated. It was hypothesized that, based on qualities which are shared by each respective medium, individuals would not find perceptions of face-to-face and Internet-mediated friendships to be significantly different. One hundred fifty-one undergraduate students at The University of Akron were given a survey developed from a literature review to test how important certain general friendship qualities were to their concept of each type of friendship. It was found that, while all of …

Social Media & Audience Participation In Regard To Television, Jean Marie Mcbride

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Jean McBride

Major: Communications: Radio/TV Broadcasting & Mass Media Production

Project Sponsor: Dr. Sylvia White

Number of Project Credits: 3

Social Media & Audience Participation in Regard to Television

The purpose of my honors project was seeing if social media had an influence on television show ratings and popularity by incorporating audience participation. Especially in regards to television shows that have been around for years, I was interested to see if television ratings went up when using Twitter compared to when they did not use Twitter to increase viewers and audience participation. I surveyed forty-nine collegiate women between the ages …

Re-Examining Resistance: Fan-Produced Queer Readings And Teen Wolf, Joshua J. Espinoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

MTV's popular television series, Teen Wolf (2011), has amassed a large online following of fans that create their own queer narratives through fan-fiction, subverting the show's hegemonic heteronormativity. Through a textual thematic analysis of Teen Wolf, this case study illustrates how online fandoms can subvert hegemony through queer readings of literary characters, resisting the dominant heteronormativity on network television. This article argues that rearticulating the showâ??s narratives into queer readings functions as a form of LGBT resistance, effectively counteracting the heteronormativity and hegemony portrayed on screen. This study examines how Teen Wolf approaches queer content, including homoeroticism and LGBT themes …

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Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

From The Desk Of The Editor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

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Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

From The Desk Of The Editor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

From The Desk Of The Editor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

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, …

The Internet Grows Up?, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Danielle Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace is one of the most important publications to date in the emerging fields of privacy and cyberlaw. In her thoughtful and insightful book, Citron explains the uneven playing field and frequently shocking acts of abuse that women face online, and demonstrates practical steps that we can take to remedy the problem of online hate through law, education, and the development of better, more inclusive norms. Other contributors to this Symposium have examined these contributions in great detail, pointing out important nuances of Citron’s argument, urging her in at least one case to be even …

Exploring How Social Media Can Be Used To Promote Space Awareness: A Case Study Of The Yuri's Night Web 2.0, Alan Steinberg, Jeffrey Alles, Ryan L. Kobrick

Publications

Despite the importance of social media as an inexpensive and efficient means of communication, it is not clear to what degree space advocacy groups are making a strong organized effort to use the resources available to them. Moreover, there is no previous literature that specifically examines the use of social media tools by space organizations. This study seeks to start a larger dialog regarding how the space advocacy community can make use of these tools to promote their mission. Using a case study approach, this article focuses specifically on the organization of Yuri’s Night to explore how this group is …

Participatory Democracy In The Chinese Cyber World: Case Studies From Weibo, Duyi Li

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses features of citizen communication on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, and its relationship to participatory democracy in China. Weibo is a complex social space due to the interplay of different forces and social actors. On the one hand, Weibo provides the space for bottom-up political participation: it expands the horizontal discursive space where plural discourses coexist and interact; provides a social sphere where counter-discourses are created; a space where the culture of resistance is formed; and serves as an alternative source for information. On the other hand, the vertical political control of the state, and the …

Is The Smartphone Smart In Kathmandu?, Seth Bird

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This is the extensive study of the smartphone in the developing country of Nepal, specifically the Kathmandu valley. Throughout my research I conducted various interviews with businesses, Tibetan refugees, and Nepali millennials (18yrs-33yrs) with the goal of identifying how the smartphone is used and understood. I chose the Kathmandu valley as my main area of research because the usage of smartphones in rural Nepal is extremely limited, and the valley represents the economic hub where progressive thinking flourishes. As a main objective I sought to understand how, if at all, the smartphone is used differently between Nepal and America. All …

Web 2.0 Use And Knowledge Transfer: How Social Media Technologies Can Lead To Organizational Innovation, Namjoo Choi, Kuang-Yuan Huang, Aaron Palmer, Lenore Horowitz

Information Science Faculty Publications

The concept of Web 2.0 has gained widespread prominence in recent years. The use of Web 2.0 applications on an individual level is currently extensive, and such applications have begun to be implemented by organizations in hopes of boosting collaboration and driving innovation. Despite this growing trend, only a small number of theoretical perspectives are available in the literature that discuss how such applications could be utilized to assist in innovation. In this paper, we propose a theoretical model explicating this phenomenon. We argue that organizational Web 2.0 use fosters the emergence and enhancement of informal networks, weak ties, boundary …

Book Review: Twitter: Social Communication In The Twitter Age, By Dhiraj Murthy, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Twitter has helped to shape social communication in today’s world. In his book, Dhiraj Murthy recognizes Twitter’s impact as a communication medium and puts it in context.

Improving The Efficacy Of Web-Based Educational Outreach In Ecology, Gregory R. Goldsmith, Andrew D. Fulton, Colin D. Witherill, Javier F. Espeleta

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Scientists are increasingly engaging the web to provide formal and informal science education opportunities. Despite the prolific growth of web-based resources, systematic evaluation and assessment of their efficacy remains limited. We used clickstream analytics, a widely available method for tracking website visitors and their behavior, to evaluate 60,000 visits over three years to an educational website focused on ecology. Visits originating from search engine queries were a small proportion of the traffic, suggesting the need to actively promote websites to drive visitation. However, the number of visits referred to the website per social media post varied depending on the social …

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 …

Effect Of Convergence Culture On Spectatorship, Amanda Marcus

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

Media convergence has changed how we receive and process information. No longer are we passive spectators, but we are part of the media we consume. Because of the explosion of technology since the turn of the century and a new definition of spectatorship, producers of media can no longer control how their messages are received; they have to engage their audience and listen to feedback in order to remain functioning. Fellow peers serve as informants or as a new source of media. This also affects our individual identities, which shapes our cultural identity. Social media enables us to present ourselves …

A Crowdsourcing Approach To Identify Common Method Bias And Self-Representation, Margeret A. Hall, Simon Caton

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Pertinent questions on the measurement of social indicators are: the verification of data gained online (e.g., controlling for self-representation on social networks), and appropriate uses in community management and policy-making. Across platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogging services, users (sub)consciously represent themselves in a way which is appropriate for their intended audience (Qui et al., 2012; Zhao et al., 2008). However, scholars in the social sciences and computer science have not yet adequately addressed controlling for self-representation, or the propensity to display or censor oneself, in their analyses (Zhao et al., 2008; Das and Kramer, 2013). As such researchers …

Refusing A Spoiled Identity: How The Swinger Community Represents On The Web, Barbara Kreston

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines whether and how Websites provide a way for the unique community of swingers, also called Lifestylers, to represent a new (and revise an old) deviant identity without risk to their social and employment standing. Unlike many marginalized social groups who publically rally, swingers have had to take advantage of virtual space to safely appeal to their audiences. The time period studied includes the history of the swingers "spoiled" identity via academy articles, newspaper headlines, and moral turpitude clauses from the 1950s to the current use of the Web to showcase swingers and their clubs. The study used …

"Warning: This Is A Must Read": Participation And Disruption In Social Artifacts And Spaces, Angela M. Harrison Eng

English Theses & Dissertations

As I show in three separate case studies, content, technology, and participant relationships are key components in the design of social artifacts and spaces. One study highlights the invention and evolution of content across multiple spaces. The second shows content used as leverage for authority. The last case study examines the relationship between content and technological interfaces and how disruption may not always be successful.

All of these components make up what I refer to as disruption. Disruption describes participant acts that are executed to change existing power-based structures of information sharing. Using the insights gained from this research, I …

How Not To Get Lost In The Shuffle: Producing The Most Effective And Eye-Catching Press Release, Erica Derrico

Journalism

The following study investigates how to produce the most effective and eye-catching press release on a national level for Summit Outdoor Supply (S.O.S). Winter quarter of 2014, my partner and I worked on a local campaign for S.O.S., using traditional text-based press releases to get media coverage. Although we did see some success with the traditional press release, there were often times our releases would get lost in the shuffle of the many releases that media outlets received each day. My goal with this project is to learn how to produce a press release that will get noticed out of …

Blogging In The Fashion Industry: A Descriptive Study Of The Use Of The Two-Step Flow Communications Theory By Professional And Citizen Bloggers To Become Opinion Leaders, Mia Alexandra Mendola

Journalism

This study analyzes the differences between professional and citizen bloggers in the fashion industry, and their use of the two-step flow communications theory and certain tactics to become opinion leaders in the industry. With the rise of blogging as a popular medium for consumption of fashion news, thousands of bloggers have begun blogs hoping to become part of the fashion industry. With this rise comes bloggers with different levels of expertise and experience. With this comes a blurring of lines between a professional blogger with credible knowledge of the fashion industry, and a citizen blogger with no formal training or …

Qr Codes For The Dead, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Graveyards are becoming smart spaces, but will today's technology last for eternity?

Public Interest In Climate Change Over The Past Decade And The Effects Of The ‘Climategate’ Media Event, William R. L. Anderegg, Gregory R. Goldsmith

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Despite overwhelming scientific consensus concerning anthropogenic climate change, many in the non-expert public perceive climate change as debated and contentious. There is concern that two recent high-profile media events—the hacking of the University of East Anglia emails and the Himalayan glacier melt rate presented in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—may have altered public opinion of climate change. While survey data is valuable for tracking public perception and opinion over time, including in response to climate-related media events, emerging methods that facilitate rapid assessment of spatial and temporal patterns in public interest and opinion could …