Social Media Commons^™

The Curious Cases Of Cancel Culture, Loydie Solange Burmah

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Cancel culture is a complex phenomenon that challenges our notions of civic practices, perpetuates surveillance practices amongst individuals who encourage digital public shaming and obscures communal ideas regarding accountability. Hence, it is imperative to complicate and nuance “cancel culture” to understand the different meanings derived from its diverse mechanizations. Other matrices such as power, platform governance, decoloniality, and more bolster ideas about the phenomenon’s extensive sociocultural reach. Using a critical digital ethnographic approach, I exemplify with the analysis two cancel culture cases uncovering themes such as selective cancelations, cancelation effectiveness, performative activism, performative wokeness, hypocrisy, victimization, and empathy. This study …

Media And Social Media Best Practices For Feminist Activist Groups And Organizations, Arien Rozelle

The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal

Feminist organizations and activist groups from the Women’s Suffrage movement to the Women’s March have utilized media relations tactics and techniques to share organizational messages. Over time, the art of media relations has evolved from a tactical role to a strategic necessity, one that is vital to the success of any activist organization or group as they seek to inform, educate and/or persuade their intended audience through the use of media and social media.

This essay identifies best practices for feminist activist groups and organizations to help begin or improve their media relations efforts, ranging from initial hiring, to media …

The New Editors: Refining First Amendment Protections For Internet Platforms, Mailyn Fidler

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

This Article envisions what it would look like to tailor the First Amendment editorial privilege to the multifaceted nature of the internet, just as courts have done with media in the offline world. It reviews the law of editorial judgment offline, where protections for editorial judgment are strong but not absolute, and its nascent application online. It then analyzes whether the diversity of internet platforms and their functions alter how the Constitution should be applied in this new setting. First Amendment editorial privilege, as applied to internet platforms, is often treated by courts and platforms themselves as monolithic and equally …

Building A Leader's Identity On Social Media, Morningstar Dickson

University Honors Theses

How can leaders use social media effectively to shape their identity as a leader? Based on previous scholarship, this paper argues that using an authentic leadership approach to social media usage, would balance a leader’s true identity as well as maintaining their relationship with their followers. Which would allow the leaders’ influence to be more effective. This paper consists of a literature review on authentic leadership, and trust, and then builds a conceptual model that will break down how a leader should build and present their identity on online formats. The model shows how identity on social media is a …

Testing Social Media Water Conservation Messages That Convey Extension Evaluation Results, Laura A. Warner, Colby Silvert, Jamie Loizzo, Jarred A. Shellhouse

Journal of Extension

In this study, we tested frames Extension professionals could use to promote residential water conservation through social media. We randomly assigned Florida residents to view one of six visual messages with water conservation facts or stories and then measured willingness to engage with education programs and conservation behaviors. There were clear differences in message frame performance, but better performance was highly dependent on outcome metrics used. Therefore, we were unable to identify a preferred frame. These findings need to be further examined in an authentic social media environment to inform best practices in social media message framing for Extension professionals.

How Should We Regulate The Internet? A Proposal, Natalie Petruzelli

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

With the invention of the internet providing newfangled methods of spreading information around the world, misinformation has also found home in these pathways, disrupting the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction and creating divides in society. Regulation must be enacted to stop the effects of misinformation, but the efforts of technology companies and the general public have been insufficient thus far. Regulatory control of the internet and its content should be the responsibility of the government, based on their constitutional right to intervene under certain circumstances and the fact that previous efforts by other parties to mitigate misinformation …

On Predicting Personal Values Of Social Media Users Using Community-Specific Language Features And Personal Value Correlation, Amila Silva, Pei Chi Lo, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Personal values have significant influence on individuals’ behaviors, preferences, and decision making. It is therefore not a surprise that personal values of a person could influence his or her social media content and activities. Instead of getting users to complete personal value questionnaire, researchers have looked into a non-intrusive and highly scalable approach to predict personal values using user-generated social media data. Nevertheless, geographical differences in word usage and profile information are issues to be addressed when designing such prediction models. In this work, we focus on analyzing Singapore users’ personal values, and developing effective models to predict their personal …

Social Media, Stress And Sleep Deprivation: A Triple “S” Among Adolescents, Micajah Daniels, Manoj Sharma, Kavita Batra

Environmental & Global Health Faculty Research

This commentary is aimed to discuss the impact of social media or the internet and engagement on youth development and comprehend these complex interrelationships. The discussion will serve as an important basis for designing targeted interventions to promote the judicious use of social media and meaningful engagement among youth. Problematic social media use (SMU) among adolescents may be associated with sleep deprivation, emotional distress, and adoption of maladaptive behaviors. Depression and stress are most notably connected to online harassment from SMU or cyberbullying. Degradation, threats, fake profiles, cyberstalking and unwanted comments are some examples of cyberbullying. Given the critical developmental …

Lawyers Response To Covid-19 Infodemic On Social Media, Jibran Jamshed

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to examine and analyze the skills and practices of lawyers in response to the misinformation/Infodemic of COVID-19 on Social Media platforms.

Research Methodology: In this quantitative study an online survey was conducted among lawyers in Pakistan. The population of the study was made up of practicing lawyers from different District Bar Associations in Pakistan. A questionnaire was distributed to collect data regarding demographic information, use of social media, response to misinformation about COVID-19 on social media and to identify the methods employed by lawyers to check the authenticity of such …

Presidential Rhetoric And Media's Contribution To The Subjective Nature Of Truth In American Democracy, Bianca Miccolis

English Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of media on the subjectivity of truth in presidential rhetoric and its ethical implications. In my three case studies, I find that there is some form of deception by each president in their chosen form of media. I analyze Roosevelt’s use of the radio, which he uses to hide his disability and gain more executive power to combat the Great Depression. I examine Reagan’s use of television and how he fabricates an intimate relationship with the American people to enact tax reform. Finally, I investigate Trump’s use of Twitter to deflect negative publicity as he …

Missional Social Media: Content And Strategies For Missions Organizations, Kathryn Larson

Senior Honors Theses

Technology can be used in amazing and creative ways to spread the gospel and create community across borders. The Apostle Paul used the communication tool of his time, letters, to communicate with churches from a distance. Today’s tools include social media which, when used properly and with intent, can positively influence an organization in the name of the gospel. Missions organizations have an incredible opportunity to use strategies and content to create a viable social media ministry. Theories such as the Community Development Theory and various reception theories contribute to an understanding of two-way communication and engagement between organization and …

Social Media As A Tool For Evangelism Among Youth And Young Adults, Trisney Bocala

Student Research

This research aims to answer the question of which social media platforms youth prefer and what types of content they prefer. Using data collected from a quantitative survey, this research seeks to identify the most-used social media platforms and most appealing formats of content so that Seventh-day Adventist churches, media organizations, and digital missionaries can more effectively utilize social media as a tool for evangelism among youth, defined as 15 to 24 years of age.

Nonprofit Social Media Internships: A Handbook, Allison Laroy

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This thesis examines how nonprofits can best prepare their interns and how interns can best prepare themselves for a role in engaging audiences through social media. Through a literature review on nonprofit social media and internships, a series of qualitative interviews with interns and supervisors, and my own lived experiences as a social media intern, I develop a handbook for nonprofit social media internships. This guide is relevant to the specific experiences of nonprofit social media internships, includes advice on training, mentorship, and best practices, and finally, it incorporates further resources on nonprofit social media that interns and supervisors can …

Kobe Influencer Marketing: Using Social Media To Promote A Herbal Tea Brand, Patricia Lui, Lipika Bhattacharya

Asian Management Insights

In July 2019, Evangeline Leong, co-founder and CEO of Kobe, a Singapore-based start-up providing influencer marketing services, had a challenging task ahead of her.

College Students’ Use Of Social Media And Its Effects On Well-Being During Covid-19, Virginia Pressly

Honors Theses

Beginning in the late 2000s, social media began its ascent into mainstream media. Today, it has become a part of our daily routines. Due to its prevalence and nature, social media has been directly linked to deteriorating mental health in teens and young adults for some time. Many of the studies previously conducted studied Millennials. However, today’s generation of young people, Gen-Z, has a very different relationship with social media and the internet. In 2020, when the world was hit with the COVID-19 pandemic and most work and school went virtual, social media became that much more prevalent in our …

More Kawaii Than A Real-Person Live Streamer: Understanding How The Otaku Community Engages With And Perceives Virtual Youtubers, Zhicong Lu, Chenxinran Shen, Jiannan Li, Hong Shen, Daniel Wigdor

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Live streaming has become increasingly popular, with most streamers presenting their real-life appearance. However, Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), virtual 2D or 3D avatars that are voiced by humans, are emerging as live streamers and attracting a growing viewership in East Asia. Although prior research has found that many viewers seek real-life interpersonal interactions with real-person streamers, it is currently unknown what makes VTuber live streams engaging or how they are perceived differently than real-person streamers. We conducted an interview study to understand how viewers engage with VTubers and perceive the identities of the voice actors behind the avatars (i.e., Nakanohito). The …

Angrybert: Joint Learning Target And Emotion For Hate Speech Detection, Md Rabiul Awal, Rui Cao, Roy Ka-Wei Lee, Sandra Mitrović

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Automated hate speech detection in social media is a challenging task that has recently gained significant traction in the data mining and Natural Language Processing community. However, most of the existing methods adopt a supervised approach that depended heavily on the annotated hate speech datasets, which are imbalanced and often lack training samples for hateful content. This paper addresses the research gaps by proposing a novel multitask learning-based model, AngryBERT, which jointly learns hate speech detection with sentiment classification and target identification as secondary relevant tasks. We conduct extensive experiments to augment three commonly-used hate speech detection datasets. Our experiment …

How Risk-Related Statistics, As Reported In News And Social Media, Are Linked To The Use Of The Public Transit System, Prashiddhi Pokhrel

Thinking Matters Symposium

Due to the pandemic, people have started relying more on televisions, news, social media, and other news outlets for guidance. Moreover, with the increasing amount of news, data, and information there is also an increase in the amount of misleading statistics. People’s opinions and decisions significantly depend on the data, statistics, and information that they are exposed to, as well as their sources. For this project, we want to look at how information and its sources are affecting the decision made by the general public for the usage of the Portland Transit System. It is very important to know why …

The Impacts Of Social Media Sites Such As Instagram And Facebook On Emerging Adult’S Perceptions Of Self-Esteem And Body Satisfaction, Wynne Cushing, Samantha Shandorf, Courtney Piccirillo, Abby Frazier

Thinking Matters Symposium

This study investigated the impacts of social media use, specifically Facebook and Instagram, on emerging adults’ perceptions of self-esteem and body satisfaction. Limited research exists regarding the influence of demographic variables, such as gender, race, and geographic location, on the relationship between social media use and negative outcome variables. The researchers utilized a cross-sectional survey design with a target population of University of Southern Maine students. Researchers hypothesize that emerging adults who spend more time on Facebook and Instagram are more likely to have lower self-esteem and body satisfaction than emerging adults who spend little to no time on Facebook …

Social Media Usage And Self-Esteem Of College Students In Los Angeles Vs. Other American Cities, Emily Tortora

Global Tides

This study examines self-esteem levels of college students in accordance with their social media behaviors and residential cities. An online survey was used to compare Instagram behaviors and their Heatherton Self-Esteem scores between 51 college students from the Los Angeles area and 148 students from alternate American cities. It was hypothesized that college students from the Los Angeles area would report higher levels of social media activity and lower levels of self-esteem. Results did not show any significant trend in one’s residential location dictating social media behaviors, nor did one’s social media usage predict their levels of self-esteem. The study …

Best Practices For Voter Engagement Within Higher Education, Alyssa Tomins

Honors Projects

It is imperative that higher education institutions learn more about how to recruit members of younger generations to participate in future elections. Young people have historically voted at low rates, but that trend has started to change in recent years as more resources are being devoted to voter engagement among young people. This leads to the interest of understanding what best practices and strategies have academic institutions utilized to advance voter engagement on their campuses. This qualitative study analyzes these best practices and strategies at 84 colleges and universities, all of whom are members of The Andrew Goodman Foundation Vote …

Communication Ethics Of “Sharenting” : A Content Analysis Of Instagram Mom Meso-Influencers, Maddy Mctigue

Student Research

Among the many concerns of social media, “sharenting,” or parents oversharing about their children online, is becoming increasingly prevalent. Millions of children are growing up on the internet with little-to-no control of their digital narrative, instead becoming fashionable or even lucrative props on their parent’s social media platforms. The purpose of the study was to explore how much and what type of sharenting parents post on social media. This study explores five key elements of sharenting through a content analysis. Researchers coded 10 Instagram mom meso-influencer accounts within a 30-day timeframe and determined how many posts were embarrassing, intrusive, revealing, …

Reimagining Non-Profit Communications: The Importance Of A Digital Media Plan For Rhody Outpost, Madeline Burtt

Senior Honors Projects

Ever since social media went viral in the early 2000s with the platform MySpace, the theory of what media is, and how to spread one’s ideas, has never been the same. The emergence of digital media, specifically, social media, has reimagined what it is to market products, organizations, and ideas. With the ever-growing population of social media users, it is important now more than ever to develop a strong, consistent social media presence, no matter how big or small an organization might be, and the findings of my Honors Project prove just that.

In this Honors Project, I will be …

The Evolution Of Women's Opportunities In The Workplace: A Look At The Past To Interpret The Present, Emily Milich

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

You And I: Parasocial Relationships, Social Media, And Fan Labor In The One Direction Fandom, Kathryn Meese

Honors College Theses

This study aims to analyze the ways in which fans of the band One Direction developed parasocial relationships, or one-sided, non-reciprocal relationships with media personae, through social media marketing, and to explore the economic implications of these relationships in terms of fans’ free promotional labor. At the heart of social media marketing is relationship marketing, or attracting and maintaining customer relationships, a strategy we explore here within the context of the music industry. Previous studies have explored the dynamics of online fan communities, or fandoms, and the free labor they carry out on the part of an artist, such as …

Pornography: Social, Emotional And Mental Implications Among Adolescents, William Kelly Canady

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation will explain the historical development of pornography. It will highlight four segments: 1- Porn’s impact on brain development of reward pathways, ultimately increasing the appetite for more porn. 2- Porn can be a false substitute for real intimacy, resulting in decreased sexual satisfaction with a real person and increased verbal and physical aggression. 3- Porn promotes sex trafficking, promotes multiple sex partners and reduced STD prevention. 4- A review of interventions available to assist clients in navigating a lifestyle away from pornography.

Social Media Engagement For Global Influencers, Kara Bentley, Charlene Chu, Cristina Nistor, Ekin Pehlivan, Taylan Yalcin

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Consumers use social media to create content, generate online word-of-mouth, and communicate with brands and other consumers. Consumers engage with influencers who deliver content that is timely, entertaining, and interesting to them. Many influencers have a truly global following across the world. However, there is little research on international aspects of social media influencers. Our paper leverages Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to study consumer engagement using a novel dataset of global sustainability influencers. Our results indicate that the cultural distance between the influencer and the followers is an important driver of engagement in a nuanced way. While the level of superficial, …

Does Social Media Use Increase Depressive Symptoms? A Reverse Causation Perspective, Andree Hartanto, Frosch Yi Xuan Quek, Yue Qi Germaine Tng, Jose C. Yong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

According to the World Health Organization (1), 264 million individuals worldwide suffer from depression—a condition characterized by feelings of low self-worth, impaired concentration, and disturbed sleep, among various other maladaptive symptoms (2). Adolescents between 13 and 18 years of age are also vulnerable (3), with a 52% increase in the prevalence of depression among adolescents from 2005 to 2017 (4). Depression is tied to many serious problems including failure to complete education, higher unplanned parenthood rates, poorer interpersonal relations, and heightened risk of substance abuse and suicidality (5–7).

Social Media User Relationship Framework (Smurf), Anne David, Sarah Morris, Gareth Appleby-Thomas

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The use of social media has spread through many aspects of society, allowing millions of individuals, corporate as well as government entities to leverage the opportunities it affords. These opportunities often end up being exploited by a small percentage of the user community who use it for objectionable or unlawful activities; for example, trolling, cyber bullying, grooming, luring. In some cases, these unlawful activities result in investigations where swift retrieval of critical evidence required in order to save a life.

This paper presents a proof of concept (PoC) framework for social media user attribution. The framework aims to provide digital …

The Effects Of Engaging In Digital Photo Modifications And Receiving Favorable Comments On Women’S Selfies Shared On Social Media, Megan A. Vendemia, David C. Deandrea

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The present study explores how the construction and distribution of selfies might interact with features of newer media to affect women who share selfies on social media. In particular, this study focuses on how specific types of photo modification and the nature of favorable audience feedback received on one’s images might exert influence on women’s state self-objectification and body image concerns. A 3 × 2 between-subjects lab experiment was conducted to explore how the type of photo modification (appearance modifications, nonappearance modifications, or no modifications [control]) and nature of positive feedback (appearance comments vs. nonappearance comments) affect state self-objectification, state …