Social Media Commons^™

Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek

All NMU Master's Theses

The Internet has given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the arena for sharing official information. Information can be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. This study examined the ease of locating county governmental information, such as contact information for public officials and financial reports, and surveyed elected county officials for purposes of identifying how information is …

Sensors Everywhere: Using Satellites And Mobile Phones To Reduce Information Uncertainty In Human Rights Crisis Research, Christoph Koettl

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article critically reviews the use of ICTs for human rights crisis research. While focusing on two specific technologies—satellite imagery and mobile phone technology—it proposes a general framework for analyzing the added value of ICTs. The author suggests that their added value in mass atrocities research arises from their ability to reduce information uncertainty, a challenge that is exacerbated in the digital age. This is different from delivering “truth”, an inaccurate description that only leads to unfulfilled expectations and hopes. The article is written from a practitioner’s perspective, drawing from the work of a global human rights watchdog, thus avoiding …

Dialogic Communication And Public Relations Websites: A Content Analysis Of The Global Top 250 Pr Agencies, Charles C. Akwari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Past research has shown that dialogic communication has essential characteristics that foster two-way communication between organizations and their stakeholders. This study investigates how public relations firms incorporate the principles of dialogic communication on their websites. The top and bottom 50 websites from the Holmes report on Top 250 Global PR agency rankings were content analyzed. Kent and Taylor’s (1998, 2003) five principles of dialogic communication were applied to find out if public relations firms incorporate the principle of dialogic communication effectively on their websites, provide relevant information for stakeholders and prospective clients, and if there are differences between PR rankings …

(Social) Media Priming: The Role Of Social Media In Priming Biases And Aggression In Online News Readership, Thomas Stallbaumer Ii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is aimed at better understanding the role of media priming in biases and aggression while using social media platforms to consume news. Priming theory holds that exposure to media can have short-term impacts on people’s subsequent behaviors or judgments. (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2009)

Research in priming theory has shown that there are primes for aggressive behavior, the information and criteria we use in making judgments of the president, and various stereotypes. (Chang and Hitchon, 2004; Dixon and Maddox, 2005; Josephson, 1987; Valentino, 1999; )

This study will discuss the ways in which biases and aggression can be more …

"To Share Or Not To Share:" A Study Of An Individual's Self-Representation On Instagram In Accordance With Impression Management Theory, Breyanna Marie Blackwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study examined what the motivations and consequences of self-disclosure on Instagram were as well as its correlation with Impression Management Theory. The research used a 37 question survey which was distributed on social media, through the Department of Media and Communication at ETSU as well as a public speaking class. There were 232 participants in this study who were 18 or older and used Instagram. Research found that individuals’ self disclose using levels of relationship management, showing off, information sharing and habitual behavior. Future research includes the opportunity to incorporate a sample of participants across different cultures to …

Messaging Without A Message: Executive Value And Social Media Activity, Ru Gao, Gilles Hilary, Rencheng Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We show that executives who start tweeting benefit from better career options. We motivate this finding using the well-established theory of limited attention. Consistent with this explanation, we find that content is irrelevant. Comparative statics are also consistent with our framework. In particular, the effect of Twitter is greater for executives who were largely unrecognized and who were underpaid before they started tweeting, who garner greater public attention from their social media activity, who enjoy higher professional mobility, and who operate in environments where compensation setting is less structured.

Discovering Your Selling Points: Personalized Social Influential Tags Exploration, Yuchen Li, Kian-Lee Tan, Ju Fan, Dongxiang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social influence has attracted significant attention owing to the prevalence of social networks (SNs). In this paper, we study a new social influence problem, called personalized social influential tags exploration (PITEX), to help any user in the SN explore how she influences the network. Given a target user, it finds a size-k tag set that maximizes this user’s social influence. We prove the problem is NP-hard to be approximated within any constant ratio. To solve it, we introduce a sampling-based framework, which has an approximation ratio of 1−ǫ 1+ǫ with high probabilistic guarantee. To speedup the computation, we devise more …

Exploiting Contextual Information For Fine-Grained Tweet Geolocation, Wen Haw Chong, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The problem of fine-grained tweet geolocation is to link tweets to their posting venues. We solve this in a learning to rank framework by ranking candidate venues given a test tweet. The problem is challenging as tweets are short and the vast majority are non-geocoded, meaning information is sparse for building models. Nonetheless, although only a small fraction of tweets are geocoded, we find that they are posted by a substantial proportion of users. Essentially, such users have location history data. Along with tweet posting time, these serve as additional contextual information for geolocation. In designing our geolocation models, we …

Fusing Social Media And Mobile Analytics For Urban Sense-Making, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The project was motivated by the observation that urban environments are increasingly characterized by a variety of non-traditional “sensors”, whose data streams can be harnessed to infer a variety of latent events and urban context. For example, users spontaneously generate huge amounts of content (text, images and video) on social network channels, whereas GPS & other sensors on taxis and buses increasingly provide near-real time traces of their movement throughout the city. Similarly, advances in Wi-Fi based sensing allow us to passively capture the individual and collective movement of visitors across various public spaces, such as college campuses, museums and …

Gender Differences In Participation In And Motivations For Sexting: The Effects Of Gender Role Attitudes, Masculinity, And Femininity, Katie M. Springston

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Sexting, the exchange of sexually explicit messages, images, and videos through mobile phones, has in recent years become an increasingly publicized and common occurrence in our technologically advanced society (Strassberg, Rullo, & Mackaronis, 2014). The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of gender, gender role attitudes, and self-perceptions of masculinity and femininity on participation in and motivations for sexting. Using a cross-sectional design, a self-administered questionnaire was given to 222 Butler students during the early part of the spring 2016 academic semester. This questionnaire included items regarding demographics, the activity of sexting, personal participation in sexting, self-perceptions …

How Facebook Is Being Used In Saudi Arabia As A News Source, Maha Ahmad Alshareef

Student Theses and Dissertations

Facebook has become a significant platform in Saudi Arabia as a news source. This study was designed to examine how Facebook is being used in Saudi Arabia as a news source. The aim of the study is to identify whether they believe Facebook, is a credible source of information compared to other social media platforms and whether Facebook is seen as a tool for citizen journalists. This research conducted an online survey and distributed it among users. A total of 550 Saudi Facebook users completed all questions in the survey. The results showed that Saudi users read the news on …

Ways To Market Without Social Media: Where Are They When They Aren’T Online?, April Miller

Faculty Articles & Research

Workshop presentation by SWOSU Librarian April Miller.

How Facebook Has Transformed Journalism, Sarah E. Rodriguez

Senior Honors Theses

Journalists use Facebook as a tool to distribute information to the public. Over recent years, Facebook with its updated features has changed the way journalists interact with readers and sources. Facebook Live and Instant Articles have increased reader engagement. Journalists use crowdsourcing and conversationally-toned posts to gather information and connect with readers on a personal level. The journalistic process has accelerated since the addition of Facebook because news is disseminated almost instantaneously. Yet the rise in fake news challenges journalists to effectively use Facebook as a platform for news dissemination. Facebook is using fact checkers and increased awareness to fight …

Reifying Digital Histories, Ed Ryan

Honors Theses

The use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat is rooted in nowness. Most users rarely think about the long-term aspects of their relationship with the networks to which they belong, instead focusing on an ever-refreshing interface filled with fresh content. But what happens to this content when it is removed from its familiar digital context? Do the archived interactions, updates, tweets, and other pieces of our digital histories take on new meaning when placed onto a physical substrate? Using the form of the book and my personal Twitter archive, I have addressed my own digital history, looking specifically …

Fostering Parasocial Relationships With Celebrities On Social Media: Implications For Celebrity Endorsement, Siyoung Chung, Hichang Cho

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

The purpose of this study was to explore the underlying mechanisms through which the use of social media affects endorser effectiveness. Based on theories related to parasocial relationships,self-disclosure, and celebrity endorsement, this study proposed a theoretical research model and empirically tested the model using online survey data collected from 400 Korean Wave fans in Singapore. The results showed that consumers’ parasocial interactions with celebrities though social media have a positive impact on celebrity endorsement. Specifically, we found that: (1) parasocial relationships mediated the relationships between social media interactions and source trustworthiness, (2) social media interactions influenced parasocial relationships via self-disclosure;and …

Challenging The Stereotype – Greek Life In The Media, Briana Trifiro

Honors Projects in Communication

Stereotypes are an undeniable aspect of today’s society. As demonstrated through a variety of mass communication theories, stereotypes are often formed as a result of exposure to mass media images. This concept is especially important today, as media messages permeate daily life in a variety of ways. From the news, to social media, to movies and television – media messaging is everywhere and impacts people on a daily basis. The purpose of this study is to produce a documentary video which demonstrates how negative media portrayals of Greek life lead to the formulation of stereotypes about college students affiliated with …

Self-Presentation Of Male And Female Athletes On Instagram: A Continuation Of Gender Roles Found In Advertisements?, Kelsey Gainor

Honors Projects in Communication

Social media has brought with it a closing of the relational distance between players and fans; athletes have an important decision to make about the way they want to be viewed, not only as athletes, but also in the many other facets of their lives, such as being a parent, friend or role model. By applying the differing gender expectations for males versus females to an athletic context, this research study aims to gain a better understanding of how these gender expectations for male versus female professional athletes are exhibited through self-presentation on social media, specifically Instagram. The athletes’ own …

Composing Focus: Shaping Temporal, Social, Media, Social Media, And Attentional Environments, Jane Fife

English Faculty Publications

Writers must learn to control factors that influence the ability to focus, especially in what some call a culture of distraction. In our efforts to promote metacognition and flexible writing processes, writing teachers need to engage students in study and discussion of factors in our temporal, social, media, social media, and attentional environments that influence focus while composing. This article examines these facets of our contemporary scenes of writing by reviewing recent research in composition studies and psychology about writing and attention, discussing the results of a survey of undergraduate writers’ composing practices, and sharing insights from assignments that help …

Ua12/2/2 2017 Talisman: Well Being, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

2017 Talisman yearbook.

• Kaetzel, Kylee. Editor’s Note
• Upton, Jordan. His Hands
• Watkins, Abby. The Meal Plan – Recipes
• Eastham, Lillie. New Hieghts – Reed Mattison, Rock Climbing
• Robb, Hayley. A Life Transformed – Annabeth Welborn
• Robb, Hayley. 6:00 AM Bright & Early – Exercise
• Doyel, Rachael. Redifining Ability – Jacob Holt
• Upton, Jordan. Yom Kippur at Happy Hills Buddhist Temple
• Wegert, Sally. Inner Peace – Allison Adams, Yoga
• Mattingly, Evan. The Future’s in Your Hands – Bianca Williams, Psychics
• Frint, Hunter. Too Often Silenced – Unity Walk
• Doyel, Rachael. Changing Tides
• Wells, Spencer. Struggle & Rebirth – Trey Farlee, Musicians …

We Don't Hope That Helps: Satirical Facebook Pages As Counter-Institutional Resistance, Gavin Lawrence Kirkwood

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Through the examination of a satirical Facebook page called Hope that Helps (HTH) this study filled a gap in communication research on humor and resistance within online communities. The qualitative content analysis of the HTH page showcased satire’s role in acts of resistance. Using jokes, impersonation, and ridicule HTH resisted large corporations, government institutions, messages from public figures, and entitled American consumers. HTH also used humor to resist social constructs including Whiteness, transphobia, and American nationalism. Along with page creators, HTH followers were active participants in the humor and resistance acts on the page. HTH served as a space for …