Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

A Christian Mega Church Strives For Relevance: Examining Social Media And Religiosity, Kenthea Albert-Leigh Joan Fogenay

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between Facebook and Twitter uses and gratifications and religiosity. Non-denominational Christian mega churches focus their outreach programs on a "come-as-you-are" attitude with the hopes of making people feel comfortable. The interactive technology in our daily lives also infiltrates our experience at church. The congregation now has the ability to worship through technologies endorsed by leadership (Watson & Scalen, 2008; Bogomilova, 2004; Thomas, 2009). In order for churches to engage in effective communication, they must understand how people use social networking. Through survey methodology, the researcher takes an account of how …

Technology Use In Rural Appalachia: A Pilot Study Of The Implications For Pediatric Behavioral Health, Courtney E. Lilly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Technology is a promising means for increasing rural individuals’ access to behavioral healthcare. However, the range of technology use in rural areas is currently unknown. The aims of this study were to examine the use of technology in rural areas, the relationship between technology use and willingness to access pediatric mental health services via videoconferencing, and this relationship within the context of other critical variables linked to service uptake. Data were collected at 2 pediatric primary care clinics. While no significant relationship was found between technology use and willingness to use videoconferencing, a significant relationship emerged between previous service seeking …

Two Formulas For Success In Social Media: Social Learning And Network Effects, Liangfei Qiu, Qian Tang, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper examines social learning and network effects that are particularly important for online videos, considering the limited marketing campaigns of user-generated content. Rather than combining both social learning and network effects under the umbrella of social contagion or peer influence, we develop a theoretical model and empirically identify social learning and network effects separately. Using a unique data set from YouTube, we find that both mechanisms have statistically and economically significant effects on video views, and which mechanism dominates depends on the specific video type.

Platform Selection And Strategic Alignment – Fall 2013 Symposium Presentation, Roger Skalbeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Whether providing services or resources, every library is faced with questions of selecting the right resource for the right reason. You need a website, a process for updating content, a way to manage operations, and a system for responding to constant change. Increasingly, new service opportunities are found in cloud and virtual platforms. This presentation looks at opportunities in selecting the right tools for the right job. The presentation will explore some unique aspects of law libraries and legal subject content many libraries rely on, including the strategic value of content from law libraries in metropolitan areas.

Automatic Domain Identification For Linked Open Data, Sarasi Lalithsena, Pascal Hitzler, Amit P. Sheth, Prateek Jain

Kno.e.sis Publications

Linked Open Data (LOD) has emerged as one of the largest collections of interlinked structured datasets on the Web. Although the adoption of such datasets for applications is increasing, identifying relevant datasets for a specific task or topic is still challenging. As an initial step to make such identification easier, we provide an approach to automatically identify the topic domains of given datasets. Our method utilizes existing knowledge sources, more specifically Freebase, and we present an evaluation which validates the topic domains we can identify with our system. Furthermore, we evaluate the effectiveness of identified topic domains for the purpose …

Semantics-Empowered Big Data Processing With Applications, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

We discuss the nature of Big Data and address the role of semantics in analyzing and processing Big Data that arises in the context of Physical-Cyber-Social Systems. We organize our research around the Five Vs of Big Data, where four of the Vs are harnessed to produce the fifth V - value. To handle the challenge of Volume, we advocate semantic perception that can convert low-level observational data to higher-level abstractions more suitable for decision-making. To handle the challenge of Variety, we resort to the use of semantic models and annotations of data so that much of the intelligent processing …

Performing And Interpreting Identity, Lee Farquhar

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This one-year cyber-ethnography examines  identity presentations and interpretations  of 346 Facebook users. The social–psychological theoretical framework used drew specifically from symbolic interaction, Goffman’s performance of self, and schema theory. Generally, Facebookers sought social acceptance with their presentations. Primary findings indicate that the Facebookers present over-simplified imagery to reduce ambiguity and align with specific social groups. This study asked Facebookers to respond to strangers’ Facebook profiles, and the responses showed that due to the glut of identity-related information on the site, interpretations are heavily reliant on schemas. Online interview participants indicated several basic categories of identity performance that were used to …

Center For Civic Engagement: An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan, Libelle Advertising, Matt Hartman, Amy Welniak, Heather Czaplewski, Liz Bachman, Sophie Beyer, Navannah Slezak, Jasmine Rogers

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

The purpose of this campaign is to increase participation in the Center for Civic Engagement programs and raise awareness for the Center for Civic Engagement within the University of Nebraska– Lincoln student body, faculty, and advisors. We also wanted to determine the most effective and efficient way to distribute the Center for Civic Engagement information to the UNL student body, staff and local employers.

For this campaign, we collected various data through both secondary and primary sources. Our secondary research consisted mainly of information found online which covered trends on civic engagement, employment issues and other areas associated with civic …

Predicting Best Answerers For New Questions: An Approach Leveraging Topic Modeling And Collaborative Voting, Yuan Tian, Pavneet Singh Kochhar, Ee Peng Lim, Feida Zhu, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Community Question Answering (CQA) sites are becoming increasingly important source of information where users can share knowledge on various topics. Although these platforms bring new opportunities for users to seek help or provide solutions, they also pose many challenges with the ever growing size of the community. The sheer number of questions posted everyday motivates the problem of routing questions to the appropriate users who can answer them. In this paper, we propose an approach to predict the best answerer for a new question on CQA site. Our approach considers both user interest and user expertise relevant to the topics …

The Influence Of Mobile Website Quality On Consumer Satisfaction And Behavior, Xiuyuan Gao

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mobile shopping has grown into a huge market and an increasing number of consumers have begun to use mobile websites to shop. Therefore, how mobile shopping websites provide good shopping to customers is significant. The object of this study is to relate factors of website quality to college students’ satisfaction with mobile shopping experiences, which in turn influence their intentions to return to the website and/or to purchase on the website. Five dimensions of website quality, which were information quality, navigation, visual appeal, response time and interactivity, were selected in this study. The model of self-regulatory process (Bagozzi, 1992) has …

Ehearsay, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

User Preferences For Accessing Online Content Through Desktop, Laptop, And Handheld Devices, Abel B. Rondon Lopez

Theses

This study determined which devices, hand held or desktop and laptop computers, users preferred to access specific types of Internet content and why they chose mobile apps or mobile websites. Significant differences were found in favor of using handheld devices for social networking, looking up directions, programing reminders, global positioning systems, playing games, and listening to music. Activities showed a significant difference in favor of using desktop and laptop computers to investigate topics of interest, watch videos, and manage finances. Users preferred the way mobile apps are presented over mobile websites, but no significant differences between devices were found for …

Authenticity At The Right Price: The Development And Implications Of Commodified Sports Memorabilia, Stephen P. Andon

College of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Search, Share, & Embed: Multimedia Resources For Popular Culture Research, Julie Decesare Cicilline

Library Faculty and Staff papers

The Internet has provided a wealth of multimedia and video content to teachers, students, and researchers. It is saturated by user-created materials (YouTube, Vimeo), digitized or born digital special collections by non-profit institutions (ArtBabble, Arkive, Duke AdViews), educational distributors and producers (Learner.org, WGBH), for-fee providers of on-demand streaming media (NetFlix, HuluPlus, Amazon Instant), and library database vendors (Swank Digital, Alexander St. Press) -- and more. Educators are often challenged by searching for and access to digitized feature film content. Copyright is always a consideration, but also just the ability to find the materials in the format they need, can be …

Frontiers Of The New Social Marketing, R. Craig Lefebvre

GW Health Communication and Marketing Symposium Series

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Technology On Family Dynamics, Alessondra Villegas

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

A powerful tool, that contemporary society uses not only to entertain but also to communicate and educate, there is an ever-present availability to media access. However, there is an ongoing debate over whether or not the power of this influence and its ubiquitous availability yields positive or negative consequences in different aspects of our lives. One area of concern, in particular, is the dynamics of the American family. With the rapid progression of technological advances it is difficult to observe the influence that these devices are having on the ways in which a family interacts. There is research to support …

City Notifications As A Data Source For Traffic Management, Pramod Anantharam, Biplav Srivastava

Kno.e.sis Publications

A common problem for cities of developing countries like India in managing traffic is the lack of basic automated instrumentation to track road conditions or vehicle locations. Still, to help their citizens make informed travel decisions based on changing city dynamics; many cities have an authorized, city-initiated, notification service in place to alert subscribing commuters about road conditions. Here, alternative means may be used to create informal textual notifications e.g., inputs from field personnel, citizen updates, and pre-authorized events from city calendar. In this paper, we show that collections of such notifications, when processed with information extraction techniques, can turn …

Grief Lives Online: An Empirical Study Of Kübler-Ross' Categories Of Bereavement On Myspace Profiles, Ilona Yurivna Malenkovich

Dissertations and Theses

With the widespread use of the Internet, grief has been extended in its representation. Specifically, social networking sites, like MySpace, have turned grief presentation from private expressions into public displays of mourning. This study utilizes the theoretical foundations of the grief presentation process of Kübler-Ross' (1969) five categories of bereavement (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) to determine whether the grief presentation process is present in an online setting. In this study, the researcher conducted an empirical investigation of 4,931 comments, resulting in 22,263 bereavement themes outlined by Kübler-Ross, which were condensed into 2,288 time-point comparisons posted to 140 MySpace …

Headlines In Rhyme: A Case Study On Le Journal Rappé As An Agent Of Senegalese Sociopolitical Change, Jessica Hackel

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Le Journal Rappé is a weekly Senegalese television segment presented and created by “old-school” rappers Cheikh “Keyti” Sene and Makhtar “Xuman” Fall. Each Friday on the Senegalese television station 2S, the rappers take on the personas of broadcast journalists, delivering the week’s top headlines in rhyme—they literally rap the news. Since its initial inception on April 11^th, 2013 as a YouTube venture, Le Journal Rappé has garnered both national and international praise. The program superficially serves as an alternative source of media, one that deviates from the mainstream in its format, entertainment value, and appeal to …

Digital Fluency : Skills Necessary For Learning In The Digital Age, Gerald K. White

Digital learning research

This article examines the skills that will be required for the 21st century that will need to be embedded in educational curricula in order achieve them. It begins by considering how communicating between people has changed and current educational responses. A view of 21st century skills follows with an argument for some core subjects that will be necessary. Learning and teaching are then discussed leading to a view about what is needed in order to develop digital fluency in education, for now and the future.