Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

The Role Of Ethics Online And Among Social Media Designers, Meredith James

Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design Faculty Publications and Presentations

As communication designers, our roles have changed greatly with the technological advancements of the Internet and social media. With these vastly changing roles are equal (and often problematic) demands on designers to act as ethical interventionists. In specific, designers are more and more frequently finding themselves in roles of arbitration and decision-making surrounding ethical concerns. Such decisions span everything from what is to be considered “allowable content” (breastfeeding, for example) to deciding how our devices respond to crisis (Miner, et al., 2016). I intend to present several case studies of designers placed in authority positions centered around ethics and new …

Technological Fetishism And Us Foreign Policy: The Mediating Role Of Digital Icts, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet freedom and discusses US responses to anti-American extremism involving digital communications technologies. It does this by using Marx’s concept of the fetish to argue that technological fetishism played a constitutive and mediating role in policymaking. Through this analysis – relating international relations with political economy and Marxist theory – the empowering implications of these technologies for American state interests are shown to be also disempowering. Most US officials were likely to be aware that digital communications technologies did not have the inherent powers that their policies implied …

A Retrospective On State Of The Art Social Media Research Methods: Ethical Decisions, Big-Small Data Rivalries And The Spectre Of The 6vs, Anabel Quan-Haase, Luke Sloan

FIMS Publications

This concluding chapter offers critical reflections on some of the key themes covered in the Handbook. Ethics emerged as a concern for many scholars, both for those engaging in quantitative and qualitative approaches. Scholars agree in that there is no overarching set of rules that can be applied to all projects blindly, rather they see ethical decisions as being grounded in the specifics of the data being collected, the social group under study, and the potential repercussions for subjects. A second central theme was the value of qualitative approaches for understanding ‘anomalies’ within larger data sets. Qualitative approaches are seen …

Theatre Marketing: Using Websites To Attract Young Target Audience, Mirna Leko Šimić, Dr. Antun Biloš

Irish Business Journal

Classic theatres worldwide are faced with the trend of aging of loyal audiences and general decrease of the audience size. It indicates that attracting young audiences to classic theatre is the key issue of its existence. Since the quality of communication is one of the major elements of marketing efficiency, the aim of this research is to identify Croatian classic theatre website characteristics and usability elements which are connected with website experience of young target audiences. Altogether 7 Croatian national theatres and three commercial theatres’ official websites were tested. The in-depth analysis of websites of sample theatres implies that website …

An Investigation Into How Degree Of Distraction With Mobile Device Users Influences Attention To Detail, Jeffery Craig Allen

ETD Archive

Previous research has indicated that the overuse of mobile devices by youths, especially at work or in class, can be disruptive to others, and be detrimental to the individual engaged in this activity in regards to task performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between distraction due to use of mobile devices, while engaged in a task, and subsequent recall of details being presented during exposure to a stimulus.

Due to the ubiquitous and pervasive nature of mobile devices in today's youth culture, and in our society as a whole, understanding and explaining what personality types …

Internal Strategies For Assessing Organizational Communication Channel Effectiveness, Melvin E. Murphy, Douglas G. Campbell

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

Evolving communication technology, the increased volume of information needed by businesses and the intensified competitive environment have made internal company communication more critical to business success. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies for assessing the effectiveness of internal communication channels used by managers and leaders of three law firms in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The participating firms were recognized by their peers as being exceptionally well managed. Data from interviews and company documents were analyzed through the conceptual lens of channel expansion theory and the use of software coding to identify patterns and themes. Three …

What Can Libraries Learn From The Future Of Public Media?, Chris Kretz

Urban Library Journal

The world of public media has much in common with the world of libraries. Both are made up of outward-facing, civic-minded people and systems, mission-driven to educate, serve, and engage a diverse community of users. This paper examines the current state of public media, both radio and television, to outline the problems being faced, the debates within the profession, and the strategies being pursued to ensure relevance and effectiveness for the industry. Understanding how public media is adapting and innovating in response to changing user behaviors and technological disruption can help inform decision-making in libraries of all types. This paper …

Memes: The Interaction Between Imagery And Subculture: An Analysis Of Situation, Race, And Gender On The Pi Kappa Delta Social Media App, Veronica Scott, Timothy Bill

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Collegiate speech and debate participants are committed to performance excellence and organizational unity. Pi Kappa Delta, a central organization for this subculture, annually hosts a national competition, during which competitors can create and post memes via the tournament phone app. While it is well-known that memes are a function of participatory culture, no analysis has yet examined memes exclusively consumed by the same subculture which created them. In this study, we examine the implicit messaging of this memetic imagery, and by doing so, gain insight into both the collegiate forensics subculture, and the function of memes in a small group.

Media Choice Proliferation And Shifting Orientations Towards News In The United States And Norway, 1995-2012, Eiri Elvestad, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Around the world, rapid media choice proliferation is empowering audiences and allowing individuals to more precisely tailor personal media use. From a democratic perspective, the relationship between the changing media environment and news use is of particular interest. This article presents a comparative exploration of citizens’ changing orientations towards local, national and international news in two very different countries, Norway and the United States, between 1995 and 2012. Prior research suggests that more media choice correlates with a decrease in news consumption. Our analysis shows a pattern of increasing specialization in news orientation in both countries. We also find that …

A Novel Approach For Classifying Gene Expression Data Using Topic Modeling, Soon Jye Kho, Himi Yalamanchili, Michael L. Raymer, Amit Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Understanding the role of differential gene expression in cancer etiology and cellular process is a complex problem that continues to pose a challenge due to sheer number of genes and inter-related biological processes involved. In this paper, we employ an unsupervised topic model, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to mitigate overfitting of high-dimensionality gene expression data and to facilitate understanding of the associated pathways. LDA has been recently applied for clustering and exploring genomic data but not for classification and prediction. Here, we proposed to use LDA inclustering as well as in classification of cancer and healthy tissues using lung cancer …

การสร้างสรรค์หนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อสื่อสารประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศ, สุทธิอาภา คุ้มครอง

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

งานวิจัยครั้งนี้ มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาคุณลักษณะสำคัญของหนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อสื่อสารประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศ, เพื่อศึกษากระบวนการสร้างสรรค์หนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อสื่อสารประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศในบริบทสังคมไทย และเพื่อศึกษาความเข้าใจในประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศของผู้รับสารที่ได้รับจากหนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อความหลากหลายทางเพศในบริบทสังคมไทย จากผลการวิจัยพบว่าคุณลักษณะสำคัญของหนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อสื่อสารประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศ คือ การสอดแทรกประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศลงไปในรูปแบบการเล่าเรื่องด้วยคุณลักษณะพื้นฐานที่เรียบง่ายและคุ้นเคยดีของหนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กโดยทั่วไป ด้วยกลวิธีการใช้สัญญะ และ/หรือการลดทอนความสมจริง โดยมีจุดประสงค์เพื่อสะท้อนการเห็นคุณค่าของบุคคล, เพื่อการให้อิสระในการเลือกและแสดงตัวตน และเพื่อการสร้างการยอมรับ คุณลักษณะสำคัญในข้างต้น ถูกนำมาเป็นฐานคิดเพื่อเข้าสู่ขั้นตอนการสร้างสรรค์หนังสือภาพสำหรับเด็กเพื่อสื่อสารประเด็นความหลากหลายทางเพศในบริบทสังคมไทย เรื่อง ชุดใหม่ของลูกหมี ซึ่งมีกระบวนการทั้งสิ้น 5 ขั้นตอน โดยในแต่ละขั้นตอนได้ทำการออกแบบและสอดแทรกแนวคิดความหลากหลายทางเพศในรูปแบบของสัญญะลงไปในองค์ประกอบของหนังสือภาพ อาทิ ตัวละคร เสื้อผ้าของตัวละคร และเนื้อหาคำบรรยาย เพื่อการสื่อสารในประเด็นการให้อิสระในการเลือกและการแสดงตัวตน และการเห็นคุณค่าและยอมรับบุคคลจากภายใน ผลการประเมินพบว่า ผู้รับสารสามารถเข้าใจประเด็นการให้อิสระในการเลือกและการแสดงตัวตนจากหนังสือภาพเรื่อง ชุดใหม่ของลูกหมี ได้ แต่ต้องอาศัยการทำความเข้าใจร่วมกับคำอธิบายเพิ่มเติมในท้ายเล่มเพื่อให้สามารถเข้าใจสารได้ชัดเจนขึ้น ผู้รับสารสามารถเข้าใจสัญญะของ "กระโปรง" และ "กางเกง" ได้ชัดเจนที่สุด โดยประเด็นการเห็นคุณค่าและยอมรับบุคคลจากภายในเกิดจากกลุ่มตัวอย่างทั้งหมดให้การยอมรับความหลากหลายทางเพศโดยภูมิหลังอยู่แล้ว แต่ยังมีบางส่วนที่ปฏิเสธการเลือกหนังสือภาพเรื่อง ชุดใหม่ของลูกหมี ให้บุตร-หลานอ่าน เนื่องจากมองว่ายังไม่จำเป็นสำหรับครอบครัวตน

U.S. Newspaper Editors’ Ratings Of Social Media As Influential News Sources, Masahiro Yamamoto, Seungahn Nah, Deborah S. Chung

Information Science Faculty Publications

Social media, as one key platform for citizen journalism, are becoming a useful news-gathering tool for journalists. Based on data from a nationwide probability sample of newspaper editors in the United States, this study investigates the extent to which newspaper editors consider social media an influential news source. Results show that variations in editors’ ratings of social media as a news source were related to multiple levels of influence, including professional journalistic experience, organization size, community structural pluralism, and citizen journalism credibility. Implications are discussed for the roles of social media in news production.

Political Success And The Media, Connor J. Haaland

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

How have different media affected the linguistic performativity of the most prominent American politicians throughout history? How have different types of media allowed certain linguistic features to flourish, and others to fail? I address these question’s through a diachronic analysis of three different periods of American history as well as an investigation into effective linguistic features that manifest over the radio, through television, and on social media. In addition, I confront the myth that there is a relationship between reading level of speech determined by the Flesch-Kincaid algorithm and success as an orator. I find relationships between linguistic features unique …

Exploring Metacognition, Multitasking And Test Performance In A Lecture Context, Fatma Arslantas

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Multitasking has become more prevalent with recent advancements in technology (Judd, 2014; Junco & Cotten, 2012). Many self-report studies, and the few available experimental manipulations, consistently indicate that media multitasking is related to decrements in learning. The present study extends the current literature by explicitly documenting students’ responses to media-based interruptions to learning. The current study also documents other behaviours students engage in that may or may not be related to multitasking when technology is available during lectures. In addition, the study explores the role of metacognition as a contributor to learning in a media-rich educational setting. In total, 118 …

How China Is Preparing For An Ai-Powered Future, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) research and development (R&D) may be challenged by China’s recent and centralized policy planning aimed at rapidly developing AI-related technologies. The Chinese government supports AI as a strategic area supported by high-level policies with ambitious and quantifiable targets, inter-ministry coordination, government funding for research and development, support for workforce development, and suggestions for international collaboration and expansion. Still, as a relative latecomer in the global AI race, China faces numerous challenges to implement its policy planning, including short-term skills gap and long-term institutional constraints.

Dialogic Praxes In Gabriel Marcel’S Philosophy: Hope For Being In A Technological World, Margaret M. Mullan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In a technological age, communicators report conflicting experiences of presence and absence, connection and isolation. Dislocation, distraction, and disconnection present challenges for dialogue and reveal a world broken by technology. A world broken by technology invites a response. Philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) offers insightful reflections on ways of being in a broken world. Marcel’s philosophical reflections on body, reflection, intersubjectivity, and technology form the primary content for this dissertation.

In Chapter One, Gabriel Marcel, philosopher, playwright, and international speaker, is introduced as participant in twentieth-century Paris, France. Marcel’s philosophy emerged in response to his societal, technological, and cultural contexts. Chapter …

A Semantics-Based Measure Of Emoji Similarity, Sanjaya Wijeratne, Lakshika Balasuriya, Amit Sheth, Derek Doran

Kno.e.sis Publications

Emoji have grown to become one of the most important forms of communication on the web. With its widespread use, measuring the similarity of emoji has become an important problem for contemporary text processing since it lies at the heart of sentiment analysis, search, and interface design tasks. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the semantic similarity of emoji through embedding models that are learned over machine-readable emoji meanings in the EmojiNet knowledge base. Using emoji descriptions, emoji sense labels and emoji sense definitions, and with different training corpora obtained from Twitter and Google News, we develop and test …

Identifying Depressive Disorder In The Twitter Population, Goonmeet Bajaj, Amir Hossein Yazdavar, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Depression is a highly prevalent public health challenge and a major cause of disability across the globe.

• Annually 6.7% of Americans (that is, more than 16 million).
• Traditional approaches to curb depression involve survey·based methods via phone or online questionnaires.
• Large temporal gaps and cognitive bias.

Social media provides a method for learning users' feelings, emotions, behaviors, and decisions in real-time.

Othering Others: Right-Wing Populism In Uk Media Discourse On “New” Immigration, Grace E. Fielder, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Right wing populism is on the rise. Through the use of othering, right-wing groups delimit their own identities while excluding others. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on how European mediated public spheres (such as reader responses to media discourse) constitute an important domain of identity articulation and struggle through the discursive construction of the ‘Other’. In this case, the others come from the Central and Eastern European countries that are perceived as newcomers to Western Europe due to the consecutive enlargements of the European Union. Specifically, this chapter provides an in-depth analysis of 236 reader comments …

Internet Safe Harbors And The Transformation Of Copyright Law, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

This Article explores the potential displacement of substantive copyright law in the increasingly important online environment. In 1998, Congress enacted a system of intermediary safe harbors as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The internet safe harbors and the associated system of notice-and-takedown fundamentally changed the incentives of platforms, users, and rightsholders in relation to claims of copyright infringement. These different incentives interact to yield a functional balance of copyright online that diverges markedly from the experience of copyright law in traditional media environments. More recently, private agreements between rightsholders and large commercial internet platforms have been made …