Social Media Commons^™

Terror Management And The News: An Exploration Into The Effects Of Framing On Mortality Salience, Peter Montwill

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The present study explores the link between Terror Management Theory and the use of its principles within news media. Political news media in the digital age undergoes a variety of framing effects, more specifically episodic and thematic frames of stories. To induce mortality salience, college-aged participants were presented with stories framed from the perspective of an individual’s experience or a general theme of experiences regarding the controversial pro-life topic and a non-controversial hiking topic. These stories are presented in the style of Instagram posts to mirror how college-aged people consume news media. The stories also contain wording designed to induce …

Museums, Covid-19 And The Pivot To Social Media, Jamie Larkin, Andrea Ballatore, Ekaterina Mityrova

CCI Articles and Research

This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted in this area is based on small-scale studies and examples of best practice from large, well-resourced museums. By contrast, this study utilizes a comprehensive database of over 3300 active UK museums to understand the use of Facebook and Twitter across the sector. Specifically, the paper examines the frequency with which museums posted to these digital platforms as …

Social Media Skills And Safety Education Program For Adolescents With Idds: An Occupational Therapy Approach, Janelle A. Rodriguez, Monica Watford, Nooreen Khalid, Kate Lundgren

Summer 2023 Virtual OTD Capstone Symposium

Adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities are interested in using the internet and social media to maintain friendships. There is a gap in the literature exploring social media skills training programs to educate this population to safely use social media and the internet.

#Disruptjmm: Online Social Justice Advocacy And Community Building In Mathematics, Rachel Roca, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Drew Lewis, Joseph Hibdon, Stefanie Marshall

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In 2019, \#DisruptJMM, a Twitter hashtag, began circulating after an Inclusion/Exclusion blog by Dr. Piper H pointing to the need to make commonplace conversations about human suffering in the Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM). While the \#DisruptJMM hashtag has been used since 2019, the vast majority of use was in the JMM 2020 meetings. Twitter hashtags are used by activists to push forward conversations, join communities around a single idea, and create change. In this article, we draw on frameworks from community building seen in other equity and inclusion advocacy hashtags such as \#GirlsLikeUs [7] to qualitatively code and analyze tweets …

Screen Ruptures: Disrupted Content For The Prosumer Generation, Kelsey Clark

Postgraduate

Television content has faced various forms of interruption to the viewing experience since the very beginning with the location of the television set and interruptive nature of advertising breaks. Irani et al. (2010) note that television has always been “a fixed temporal structure” and that the physical location of the television set has always had a place in the home where the opportunities for distraction and disengagement form a part of the viewing experience (p. 621). Similarly, the presence of advertising intermittently interrupting episodes of television programs quickly became a norm, which further characterises television viewing as a disrupted practice. …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

User-Generated Content, Satisfaction, And Wom In The Context Of Cultural/Heritage Site, Mahlagha Darvishmotevali, Hu Qian

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Research remains scant and ambiguous despite the need to understand better user-generated content (UGC) and its relationship with behavioral outcomes. In this regard, the influence of UGC on two types of visitors' word of mouth (WOM) was examined. In addition, satisfaction as a mediator was tested to gain more insight into the UGC and WOM relationships. Using a sample of 260 visitors (tourists & excursionists) who visited the historical site in China, SmartPLS was used to evaluate the study model and hypotheses. Findings demonstrate that UGC directly and positively affects two types of WOM. The results also show the full …

Online Gastronomy Image: Content Analysis Of Tripadvisor Reviews Of Restaurants In Istanbul, Rana Sat

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Nowadays, where technology forms a large part of our lives, with the increase of comment sites, consumers benefit from these comment pages at the stage of purchasing decision. In this way, they get information about the destination region by reading more reviews or sharing their experiences in the social environment. Evaluations on social networking sites affect individuals’ decision-making and purchasing behaviors, as well as positively or negatively in the mentioned restaurants. Based on this situation, user comments on restaurants in Istanbul on TripAdvisor.com were analyzed in this study. For this purpose, 17921 user comments made in various languages between 01.10.2022 …

The Effect Of Viewing Different Modalities Of Alcohol-Related Social Media Content Shared By Friends On Alcohol Outcomes: A Longitudinal Examination, Megan E. Strowger

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Social influences have robust associations with problematic alcohol use among emerging adult college students. Examinations of social influences increasingly focus on social media influences via alcohol-related content (ARC) sharing and viewing. Limited longitudinal research suggests that increased exposure to ARC is associated with increased alcohol consumption among college students over time. Most research examining exposure has not focused on who (e.g., specific friends) is sharing this content, the modality (e.g., photos) or the qualities of those sharing content and their relationship (e.g., closeness) to the viewer. The current study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between alcohol consumption/consequences and: 1) sharing …

The Antagonistic Anatomy Of Anti-Shippers: A Thematic Analysis, Adrian A. Stone

Student Theses

Within the transformative fandom community is an ideologically-affiliated group known as anti-shippers, whose rhetoric contends that fictional interests are an indication of those held in reality. Anti-shippers focus solely on fictional material perceived to be sexual in nature and make frequent references to pedophilia. This rhetoric is used to justify harassment against individuals who do not share in their beliefs. As this population primarily operates on social media, this study was designed to conduct an exploratory investigation into themes gleaned from posts authored by anti-shippers on Twitter. Utilizing latent content analysis, a total of 187 posts from 222 unique users …

Social Distortion: Disinformation, Polarization, And The Politics Of Identity In An Online World, Jennifer Duck Brown

All Dissertations

This dissertation addresses three issues that intertwine: Disinformation, polarization, and the politics of identity. Social media currently dominates how we receive our news and information. This coincides with a disinformation pandemic full of false news and propaganda running rampant online. What often ensues is a social distortion that poses as reality. Seventy-two percent of all Americans use some type of social media according to Pew Research. Not all social media is nefarious, but the design of the social platforms further aggravate how people learn and communicate. Through original and peer-reviewed mixed methods research on topics including the conspiracy theories of …

Deconstructing Beauty Standards: Unpad Geulis Instagram Account, Muhammad Wisnu Danang At Thariq, Aditya Candra Lesmana, Wahyu Gunawan

Masyarakat: Jurnal Sosiologi

This study aims to deconstruct the discourse of beauty standards represented by Unpad Geulis' Instagram account. Using Derrida's framework of deconstruction, the authors dismantle the text structure on Unpad Geulis' beauty standards, in the form of a slim body, clean, smooth face, white skin color and healthy hair as a dominative, hegemonic, and discriminative. Furthermore, the authors employ the reading of différance, to explore the possibility that Unpad Geulis' beauty standards would not exist without the marginalized beauty standards. Such a reading is done by reading horizontally the text structure of Unpad Geulis, to find a new meaning that was …

Reactions To The U.S. Surgeon General’S Advisory On Social Media & Youth Mental Health, Susannah Stern

Communication: Faculty Scholarship

The United States Surgeon General issued an Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health on May 23 2023. Warnings by the Surgeon General are infrequent, but have the potential to influence the course of history. This survey captures awareness of and reaction to the Advisory. The survey finds that respondents are already convinced that social media influences young people, mostly negatively. The Surgeon General remains a meaningful public health communicator, with substantial reach and some power to influence both beliefs and behaviors. There is widespread agreement that more research is needed to better understand how social media impact youth …

Online Media Literacy Intervention In Indonesia Reduces Misinformation Sharing Intention, Trenton Ford, Michael Yankoski, Matthew Facciani, Tim Weninger

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Media literacy is widely viewed as an important tool in the fight against the spread of misinformation online. However, efforts to boost media literacy have primarily focused on Western-media and Western-oriented social media platforms, which are substantively different from the media and platforms used widely in the Global South. In the present work, we focus on the media ecosystem of Indonesia and report the results of an online media literacy intervention consisting of short-videos that were targeted specifically to social media users in Indonesia (N= 656). We found that participants in our media literacy intervention were 64% more …

Improving Indonesian Seniors’ Digital Resilience And Quality Of Life Through The Digital Academy For Seniors Program, Mite Setiansah, Nuryanti Nuryanti, Edi Santoso, Agus Ganjar Runtiko, Wiwik Novianti

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Digital literacy education is essential for everyone, including seniors to sustain their quality of life. The Digital Academy for Seniors aims to instill digital skills among seniors through a non-formal learning program. This qualitative research aimed to provide a comprehensive description of how the program can develop digital resilience and improve the quality of life of seniors. This study concluded that the program can improve the knowledge and attitudes of seniors in using digital media safely. Both of these are important assets for seniors to develop their digital resilience so that they can take advantage of digital media to support …

Twitter Trends During The 82nd Session Of The Nevada Legislature, 2023, Annie Vong, Zachary Billot, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Elections & Governance

This fact sheet examines Twitter trends during the 82nd Session of the Nevada Legislature (2023). Data are comprised of tweets posted on Twitter by users located in Nevada addressing the most discussed topics during the session.

Triggered By Socialbots: Communicative Anthropomorphization Of Bots In Online Conversations, Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, Kaisa Laitinen, Minna Koivula, Tanja Sihvonen

Human-Machine Communication

This article examines communicative anthropomorphization, that is, assigning of humanlike features, of socialbots in communication between humans and bots. Situated in the field of human-machine communication, the article asks how socialbots are devised as anthropomorphized communication companions and explores the ways in which human users anthropomorphize bots through communication. Through an analysis of two datasets of bots interacting with humans on social media, we find that bots are communicatively anthropomorphized by directly addressing them, assigning agency to them, drawing parallels between humans and bots, and assigning emotions and opinions to bots. We suggest that socialbots inherently have anthropomorphized characteristics and …

From Archive To Anarchive: How Bereal Challenges Traditional Archival Concepts And Transforms Social Media Archival Practices, Mandi Li

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

BeReal, an “anti-Instagram” photo-sharing app, not only challenges the performative culture of social media but also revolutionizes the very concept of ‘archives.’ By employing the technical walkthrough method grounded in software studies, this research found that BeReal can be conceptualized as an anarchive that consists of diverse storytellers, decentralized micro-narratives, and interdependent contexts. More specifically, although some classical archival elements can be found in BeReal, the platform challenges the traditional archival industry in two ways: one, its ordinary record subjects and high level of accessibility shatter the centralization of traditional archives; two, it challenges the humanist value of archivists by …

Impact Of Difficult Negatives On Twitter Crisis Detection, Yuhao Zhang, Siaw Ling Lo, Phyo Yi Win Myint

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Twitter has become an alternative information source during a crisis. However, the short, noisy nature of tweets hinders information extraction. While models trained with standard Twitter crisis datasets accomplished decent performance, it remained a challenge to generalize to unseen crisis events. Thus, we proposed adding “difficult” negative examples during training to improve model generalization for Twitter crisis detection. Although adding random noise is a common practice, the impact of difficult negatives, i.e., negative data semantically similar to true examples, was never examined in NLP. Most of existing research focuses on the classification task, without considering the primary information need of …

Beyond A 'Like': Building Parasocial Relationships With Baby Boomers On Facebook, Yunying (Susan) Zhong, Valeriya Shapoval, James Busser

Rosen Research Review

Baby boomers are a crucial cohort for hospitality marketing as they have more money to spend and more time on their hands than younger cohorts. However, reaching them on social media is harder. There is one social media platform popular with baby boomers: Facebook. Dr. YunYing Zhong and Dr. Valeriya Shapoval at UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, together with their collaborator, have combined their different areas of expertise to analyze the effectiveness of social media marketing directed at baby boomers from an unusual angle: the illusionary and imaginary relationships we build with fictional characters.

Aktivitas Cross Promotion Dalam Program Youtube Live ! Milik Folkative Studi Kasus The Changcuters, Muhamad Heychael, Hardika Widi Satria, Andrew Christoper Prawira Purba

Jurnal Sosial Humaniora Terapan

Folkative is a new media platform that focuses on engaging the young audience in Indonesia. Folkative utilizes social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube to publish its content. One of the programs initiated by Folkative is "Live! At Folkative," a music-based entertainment content that started in mid-2021, with subscribers reaching 39,700. This program features both local and international musicians to promote their latest albums or singles through cross-promotion value or exchanging exposure. The aim of this research is to understand the extent to which Folkative's cross-promotion process has an impact on both collaborating parties. To achieve this, the study …

The Zionist Organizations’ Recruitment Of Propaganda Techniques On Facebook: An Analytical Study Of ‘Stand With Us’ Arabic Page, Mueen Fathi Al-Koua, Heba Hussein

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

The study aimed at identifying the extent to which the Zionist organization ‘Stand with Us’ recruited propaganda techniques through its communication on Facebook to persuade Arabic-speaking audiences to accept the occupation entity presence as an “original” part of the Arab World. It also aimed at identifying the most important topics the organization posits and the way it frames its messages through the Facebook platform. The study used content analysis method to analyze the Arabic Facebook page of the organization from the 1st of May to the end of June 2020, which is the period when Israel announced its annexation plan …

The Power Of The Virtual Platform: A Look Into Fandom Interactions Via Twitter (X), Samantha Hacker

Undergraduate Theses

Using social media to communicate has become increasingly popular since the medium was created. Twitter has been a popular breeding ground for fan communities to form social spaces. Parasocial relationship theory, as well as face negotiation theory, tie heavily into the discussion of fandoms and the creation of safe spaces on the platform. How people present themselves online is entirely dependent on the user and their level of comfort on the app. One fandom in particular that utilizes this app the most is the fan base for the seven-member South Korean boy band, BTS, who in reference to the band, …

The Role Of Online Discursive Action In Subjects' Emancipatory Repositioning In Egypt: Assault Police Case Study, Christine Saad Guirguis Ma

Theses and Dissertations

The current study's central question is how social change is discursively constructed. I studied an online feminist social movement that sparked in Egypt on Instagram in July 2020 and labeled "Assault Police." Within the critical social theory and feminism framework, I reviewed the literature on (critical) discourse, social change, and social movements. I tried to unravel the complexity around emancipation as a vital concept in the current study. I located and discussed areas of tension and identified a conceptualization that loosens the theoretical entanglement around it. The research problem sought to specify how the online discursive action facilitated desired …

It's A Mean, Mean World: Social Media And Mean World Syndrome, Samantha Kemp

University Honors Theses

Born from cultivation theory, which suggests that media has a profound effect on viewers' perceptions of the world around them, Mean World Syndrome is a psychosocial phenomenon that describes increased levels of fear, anxiety, and pessimism, as well as an overall perception of the world as "meaner" than it actually is, as a result of heavy viewership of violence-related mass media. Mean World Syndrome has primarily been associated with television consumption, but a major societal shift towards consumption of social media instead of television over the last two decades necessitates investigation into how social media affects its users. Through an …

Understanding The Consumption Of Antimicrobial Resistance–Related Content On Social Media: Twitter Analysis, Hyunuk Kim, Chris R. Proctor, Dylan Walker, Ronan R. Mccarthy

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing concerns in our society. Today, social media can function as an important channel to disseminate information about AMR. The way in which this information is engaged with depends on a number of factors, including the target audience and the content of the social media post.

Objective: The aim of this study is to better understand how AMR-related content is consumed on the social media platform Twitter and to understand some of the drivers of engagement. This is essential to designing effective public health strategies, raising awareness about antimicrobial …

Gender And Socio-Economic Differencesin South African Consumers’ Sentimentstoward Marketing Practices, Thérèse Roux

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

Studies on modern consumers’ sentiments toward marketing in an emerging market context are vital. This paper compares demographic diff erences in South African consumers’ sentiment toward marketing. Data were collected via a survey with 444 diverse consumers residing in the Tshwane metropolitan area. The fi ndings revealed that South African males are signifi cantly less satisfi ed with marketing communication practices compared to females. Consumers earning lower income were signifi cantly less positive towards marketing in general as well as product quality, price, and selling practices. Afrikaans-speaking consumers’ attitudes were less positive towards marketing communication. The fi nding can guide …

Digital Health Technologies For Peripartum Depression Management Among Low-Socioeconomic Populations: Perspectives From Patients, Providers, And Social Media Channels, Alexandra Zingg, Tavleen Singh, Amy Franklin, Angela Ross, Sudhakar Selvaraj, Jerrie Refuerzo, Sahiti Myneni

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Peripartum Depression (PPD) affects approximately 10-15% of perinatal women in the U.S., with those of low socioeconomic status (low-SES) more likely to develop symptoms. Multilevel treatment barriers including social stigma and not having appropriate access to mental health resources have played a major role in PPD-related disparities. Emerging advances in digital technologies and analytics provide opportunities to identify and address access barriers, knowledge gaps, and engagement issues. However, most market solutions for PPD prevention and management are produced generically without considering the specialized needs of low-SES populations. In this study, we examine and portray the information and technology needs …

“Omg, I Think You May Have Just Changed My Life”: Binge Eating Disorder Recovery In Instagram Comment Sections, Caitlin Roe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the internet and social media have become a more ingrained part of everyday life, online eating disorder pro-recovery communities have become a common topic of examination in the psychological sciences. However, there has been little focus on online binge eating disorder (BED) pro-recovery communities specifically. Additionally, there has not been much exploration into the use of comment sections as a part of pro-recovery communities. The current study used codebook thematic analysis to code ten BED pro-recovery Instagram comment sections to examine the interactive data present within this recovery community. Four themes were developed during analysis: detailed self-disclosure, sharing experiences …

Social Media In The Corporate World, Linelle C. Lestrade

Student Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the rise of corporate brands on social media and the resulting identity issues. Four marketing and PR professionals were interviewed for this study utilizing oral history as qualitative research method. People were selected for membership based on their networks and reputations as authorities in their respective fields. All the discussions were recorded on Zoom with everyone's consent. All four participants brought varied expertise and experience in social media marketing and management to the discussion. They were picked because their backgrounds fit the study's goals best. Open-ended questions were used to elicit responses to personal experiences, issues, …