Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Governmental Persuasion Strategies On Social Media During Covid-19: A Comparative Study Of The Us And China, Fan Wang

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This study compared persuasive strategies of the governments of the U.S. and China during a public health crisis using social media messages. Collecting data with R and Python from two national public health sectors' official accounts on Twitter (N = 1,630) and Sina Weibo (N = 3,554), the researcher investigated how the organizations' messages reflected Cialdini's seven principles of persuasion and whether other emergent messaging patterns occurred. According to the different phases that the two countries had gone through during the pandemic, the researcher also conducted a pooled times series analysis to investigate the relationship between the frequency of daily …

How Do Information Specialists Keep Up To Date?, Aaron Tay

Research Collection Library

The working environment of information specialists is undergoing profound changes. This is primarily due to rapid advances in digitalization and automation. New databases are being set up or new functions added to established databases. At the same time, data processing and analysis have reached a new level (e.g. through machine learning). In addition, many new software tools to support daily work are being developed. But how do information specialists find out about new developments and assess the practical suitability of new tools?

Nowadays, an abundance of information on new developments in information retrieval can be found on the Internet. In …

Annual Report, 2021-2022, University Of Mississippi. School Of Journalism And New Media

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Look At All Those Big Knobs! Online Audio Technology Discourse And Sexy Gear Fetishes, Eliot Bates, Samantha Bennett

Publications and Research

Despite a predominantly digital, 21st century music production landscape, analogue hardware professional audio technologies persist. In the discoursal throes of the leading online audio technology message forum Gearslutz, such technologies are routinely objectified, sexualized, fetishized and socialized into gear. Situated in a contemporary critical, interdisciplinary framework of fetish, masculinity and sexuality studies, this research interrogates how audio technologies manufactured and intended for music production contexts become sexy. Applying a mixed-mode methodology, including an intensive discourse, image and material-semiotic analysis of an ‘epic’ sexy gear thread, we collated extensive data about technological fetishization. Sexy gear discourse articulates themes of voyeurism, acquisition, …

Data For Power: A Visual Tool For Organizing Unions, Shay Culpepper

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The strength of a labor union comes from the participation and engagement of its members. In her book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane McAlevey says, “Since organizing’s primary purpose is to change the power structure away from the 1% to more like the 90%, majorities are always the goal: the more people, the more power. The first test of this strength for a budding union is for the workers to declare that they want to be unionized. Over fifty percent support is required for the union to be recognized. To even hold an election, …

The “End” Of Neutrality: Tumultuous Times Require A Deeper Value, Carol Pauli

Faculty Scholarship

This essay has observed that, when times are tumultuous, third parties who intend to be neutral may need some mooring beyond the norms that are shifting. It argues that neutrality is an unsatisfying value in such times and suggests that neutrals look to the deeper values of their field. It proposes human dignity as a good place to begin, and it invites others to explore whether an initial commitment to the inherent worth of every person would make a helpful difference in practice.

Balancing Learning And Enjoyment In Serious Games: Kerbal Space Program And The Communication Mediation Model, Sonny Rosenthal, Rabindra A. Ratan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

When designed well, serious games can support effective learning. This study used the communication mediation model to examine the process and outcomes of playing serious games, in this case, the science-themed game, Kerbal Space Program. During a 4-h research session, 241 undergraduate students played through the game's tutorial missions and completed surveys to measure variables of interest. Results of structural equation modeling showed that game progress was positively related to self-efficacy in computer gaming (β = 0.26) and ordinary science intelligence (β = 0.13). Knowledge acquisition was positively related to game progress (β = 0.21) and positively predicted experiential attitude …

Communicative Strategies For Building Public Confidence In Data Governance: Analyzing Singapore's Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Initiatives, Gordon Kuo Siong Tan, Sun Sun Lim

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Effective social data governance rests on a bedrock of social support. Without securing trust from the populace whose information is being collected, analyzed, and deployed, policies on which such data are based will be undermined by a lack of public confidence. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and datafication by governments for the purposes of contact tracing and epidemiological investigation. However, concerns about surveillance and data privacy have stunted the adoption of such contact-tracing initiatives. This commentary analyzes Singapore's contact-tracing initiative to uncover the reasons for public resistance and efforts by the state to address them. The government's contact-tracing program …

Summoning Laplace’S Demon: The Erosion Of Meaningful Voter Choice In An Era Of Algorithms?, Stephen Bork

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Precise individual microtargeting threatens to remake the political landscape as thoroughly as it has remade marketing. This paper explores the observed uses to date of political microtargeting as well as the many difficulties, some inherent to politics, of measuring its effects. Considering the philosophical difficulties of predictively removing human choice, it then assesses the observed risks of and some potential remedies to the current trajectory and finds that free electoral choice is not doomed to be written out of the system.

Georgia Southern University's Communication During Covid-19 Analyzed Using The Discourse Of Renewal Theory, Jessica Hickman

Honors College Theses

This research aims to analyze how Georgia Southern University handled COVID-19 through a public relations perspective using the discourse of renewal theory. In order to do this, this research looks at the communication sent from the University to the faculty, staff, and students during the time periods of March to April of 2020 and July to August of 2020. The three research questions this research will examine are: how did the University apply the discourse of renewal theory to speak to the students, faculty, and staff regarding COVID-19, how did the University use its email system to communicate with the …

Muslim Fashion Influencers Shaping Modesty In The Twenty-First Century On Social Media, Awa Sanno

Student Theses and Dissertations

The depiction of Muslim women in Western media has been a long-running joke, as they are framed to be oppressed by the burdens of their religion and the hijab. However, Muslim women have used the power of social media to counter that narrative through their large followings as fashion influencers, digital creators, food bloggers, makeup artists, lifestyle bloggers, musicians, and so much more. Specifically, Muslim fashion influencers are changing and redefining the notion of modesty throughout their posted content on social media. Many people in Muslim communities see this redefinition of modesty as a conflict with the "proper" ways of …

An Ethical Discussion About The Responsibility For Protection Of Minors In The Digital Environment: A State-Of-The-Art Review, Charles Alves De Castro, Aiden Carthy, Isobel Oreilly Dr

Articles

Many ethical questions have been raised regarding the use of social media and the internet, mainly related to the protection of young people in the digital environment. In order to critically address the research question "who is responsible for ethically protecting minors in the digital environment?", this paper will review the main literature available to understand the role of parents, the government, and companies in protecting young people within the digital environment. We employed a holistic process that covers a state-of-the-art review and desk research. The article is divided into four sessions; (1) Government Policies from the European Union (EU) …

Lindenwood Digest, May 25, 2022, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

Lindenwood Digest, May 18, 2022, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

The Problem Of The "Virtual": Virtual Reality, Digital Dualism, And Religious Experience, Jordan Brady Loewen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation uses resources from religious studies to critique the problem of digital dualism haunting notions of the "virtual" in the discourse of contemporary virtual reality technologies (VR). Digital dualism is the idea that digital or "virtual" worlds are fundamentally distinct from the "real" or physical world. Digital dualism is a problem because it mischaracterizes how we experience the spatial and temporal connections to our body in digital-virtual worlds and contributes to a false sense of subjective singularity rather than multiplicity that destabilizes how we relate to ourselves and others. Using the study of religion, philosophy, and aesthetics, we can …

Digital Equity: Difficulties Of Implementing The 1:1 Computing Initiative In Low-Income Areas, Demetric D. Williams

Dissertations

Successful One-to-One Computing Initiative implementation requires educators to communicate and collaborate effectively with everyone in the learning community. However, other factors such as teacher’s professional development, student’s perception, and parent’s perception often affect the implementation of the One-to-One Computing Initiative. School districts, which serve low-income areas in Mississippi, have difficulties ensuring students and communities have access to the information technology they need to participate outside the school setting. The concept is often called digital equity. However, when officials do not address the capacity, there is a vital threat to the participants’ civic, cultural, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential …

Lindenwood Digest, May 11, 2022, Lindenwood University

Lindenwood Digest

The Lindenwood Digest has been a digital employee newsletter since 2009.

Artificial Intelligence As A Content Creator In The Publishing Industry, John Huston

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Several methods were used in my research. A literature review was used to define artificial intelligence (AI) in general and in relation to how it’s used in literature today. I also relied heavily on Dr Leah Henrickson’s work on Natural Language Generation (NLG), which discusses authorship and roles between authors and readers.

Several case studies were used in my research. Liam Porr’s Guardian Op-ed was reviewed as his team used humans to edit GPT-3 output for a coherent article, much like I used it in a focus group. The Kimagure Artificial Intelligence Writer’s Project was also evaluated. The writing for …

Untangling Media Literacy, Information Literacy, And Digital Literacy: A Systematic Meta-Review Of Core Concepts In Media Education, Géraldine Wuyckens, Normand Landry, Pierre Fastrez

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article presents a systematic meta-review of the scientific literature discussing the concepts of information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy. While carrying out a cross analysis of the way in which literature reviews specifically address these three concepts, this article identifies, and articulates a critical analysis of, the main findings from the reviewed texts regarding the conceptual landscape that they cover. This work highlights confusion between the constitutive dimensions of literacies, recurrent difficulties in establishing theoretical articulations between contributions, and operationalization problems in observing and assessing these literacies. These issues are the subject of a discussion grounded in the …