Social Media Commons^™

Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, …

Speaking Their Language: Integrating Social Media Into Childbirth Education Practice, Deborah Weatherspoon, Christopher Weatherspoon, C. Ristau

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

With the advancement of modern technology, the internet has become a standard platform for many forms of communication and education. The majority of pregnant females fall into the cohort known as Millenials and have experienced technology since early in life. Millenials consider technology as part of their everyday life and use it for personal interaction or a source of information. The established comfort with the use of technology combined with busy lifestyles, multiple commitments, transportation costs or logistics, childcare, or a desire for privacy, support the use of perinatal online learning. This article examines options that childbirth educators may consider …

From The Desk Of The Editor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Peers Social Structure In Healthcare Social Networking Websites, Mohammad Al-Ramahi, Insu Park

Research & Publications

Although the demand for online patients to look for online health information is in high, few of them seems to demonstrate effective use of the health Social Network Sites (SNSs). Exploring the design features that can motivate individuals to actively participate in the health SNSs is crucial to develop platforms that can support sustainable online social structure. This study seeks to investigate the influence of the peers structure capacity as an important feature of health SNSs on two individuals’ behaviors, effective SNSs use and willingness to share Personal Health Information (PHI). Accordingly, our goals in this research are in twofold: …

Facebook Addiction And Impulsive Decision-Making, Daniel Delaney

Masters Theses

This study examined the relationship between Facebook "addiction" and impulsive decision-making. Impulsive decision-making as measured by the delay discounting task is associated with a number of addictions and other problem behaviors. We gave 152 students a paper-based packet including the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale to measure problematic Facebook use and a delay discounting task to assess impulsivity. 16 Facebook "addicted" participants were matched to 16 control participants on demographic data to compare differences in impulsivity. Likewise, we explored whether a correlational relationship between Facebook addiction scores and impulsivity existed. We found that Facebook "addicts" discounted delayed rewards more quickly than …

Relax And Log On Facebook: Examining Students’ Use Of Facebook To Relieve Academic Stress Through Perceived Social Support, Tamika Tompoulidis

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

College students often times experience academic stress, whether it is due to homework, exams, GPA requirement, or even adapting to the college environment. Social support has been known to reduce stress levels and affect psychological well-being. Social support can also be prevalent on social media sites, such as Facebook. Facebook users can communicate with friends near and far and find the needed support during times of stress. While college students are active Facebook users, little research has examined whether Facebook affects academic stress levels. This study examined if college students use Facebook to gain social support for stress above and …

College Students’ Use Of Social Media To Communicate About Alcohol And Drinking Behaviors, Jenna E. Reno

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an increasingly popular channel for communication among college students. Often students disclose more freely via social networking sites than they would in other situations. These disclosures commonly include information about engaging in risky health behaviors (e.g., binge drinking). Study 1 examined students’ impression management goals and self-presentation tactics specifically related to self-disclosures of drinking behavior on SNSs. Findings suggest that students use differing self-presentation tactics across various SNSs in order to achieve their impression management goals and to avoid consequences associated with disclosing about risky health behaviors to certain audiences. Study 2 sought to develop …

Relationship Management On Facebook: Male College Students, Kathleen M. Aikin

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Facebook as a social media technology is prominent in a variety of scenarios, including interpersonal relationship management. There have been numerous studies on how social dynamics are informed by social media, especially in regards to young adults. Within this group, female social dynamics have garnered much attention; however, there is a dearth of research, which explicitly examines how males utilize the technology. Thus, this study collected data via an online survey of college students that examined various aspects of online interpersonal relationship dynamics. The theoretical framework of this study was based on Petronio’s (1991) communication privacy management theory, Baxter and …

Social Media And Symbolic Action: Exploring Participation In The Facebook Red Equal Sign Profile Picture Campaign, Joel Penney

College of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

This study investigates symbolic action on popular social media platforms by empirically exploring the subjective experiences and motivations of participants in an exemplary campaign. Previous debates regarding the relationship between symbolic action and more traditional forms of political participation suggest a binary between up‐the‐ladder “civic culture” engagement and down‐the‐ladder “slacktivism.” Interviews with participants in the Facebook red equal sign profile picture campaign for marriage equality provide some evidence to support the former (particularly in terms of building an identity‐focused political movement), and comparatively little to support the latter. However, a third model suggests how sympathetic citizens who would not otherwise …

International Management: Strategic Opportunities And Cultural Challenges, Paul B. Sweeney, Dean B. Mcfarlin

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

As the economies of many countries become more interrelated, international managers are facing huge challenges and unique opportunities associated with their roles. Now in its fifth edition, Sweeney and McFarlin's International Management embodies a balanced and integrated approach to the subject, emphasizing the strategic opportunities available to firms on a global playing field, as well as exploring the challenges of managing an international workforce.

Integrating theory and practice across all chapter topics, this book helps students to learn, grasp, and apply the underlying principles of successful international management:

• Understanding the broad context of international business, including the critical trends impacting …

Ecological Perspectives And Children’S Use Of The Internet: Exploring Micro To Macro Level Analysis, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Age-old debates on children’s encounters with media technologies reveal a long, fractured and contentious tradition within communication and media studies. Despite the fact there have been studies of e ects of media use by children since the earliest days of broadcasting, the subject remains under-theorised, poorly represented in the literature and not widely understood in media policy debates. Old debates have intensi ed in relation to the study of children and the internet. Pitted between alarmist accounts of risks, excessive use and harmful e ects on the one hand and the many accounts about „digital natives” and the transformational power …

Fast, Beautiful, And Fun: Instagram And Motives For Its Use, Katie Bryant

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Social Media And The Organization Man, Dylan E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

On new dynamics in organizational psychology, self- and group-identity, character, and integrity in an age of social media, "Organizations may then have a similar relation to our integrity as does our character. Our character is formed by a history of actions and interactions, but we may not identify with the actions that it brings us to habitually perform. When we recognize our vices—e.g., intemperance—and seek to act in accordance with our values and beliefs, we act against our character and contribute thereby to reforming our habits and character to better align with the version of ourselves with which we identify. …

Characteristics Of Social Media Stories, Yasmin Ainoamany, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

An emerging trend in social media is for users to create and publish "stories", or curated lists of web resources with the purpose of creating a particular narrative of interest to the user. While some stories on the web are automatically generated, such as Facebook’s "Year in Review", one of the most popular storytelling services is "Storify", which provides users with curation tools to select, arrange, and annotate stories with content from social media and the web at large. We would like to use tools like Storify to present automatically created summaries of archival collections. To support automatic story creation, …

More Than, Joslyn Maenner, Katie Knobbe, Joel Girouard, Desiree Botica, Molly Deaver, Alex Vasey, Ramon Diaz De Leon, Lucy Grant, Kyle Thompson, Adam Weisenberger

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Advertising Projects

This project was developed in response to the following challenge: create messaging to promote a more welcoming and inclusive climate on campus while branding the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center.

Community Discovery From Social Media By Low-Rank Matrix Recovery, Jinfeng Zhuang, Mei Tao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Xian-Sheng Hua, Yongdong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The pervasive usage and reach of social media have attracted a surge of attention in the multimedia research community. Community discovery from social media has therefore become an important yet challenging issue. However, due to the subjective generating process, the explicitly observed communities (e.g., group-user and user-user relationship) are often noisy and incomplete in nature. This paper presents a novel approach to discovering communities from social media, including the group membership and user friend structure, by exploring a low-rank matrix recovery technique. In particular, we take Flickr as one exemplary social media platform. We first model the observed indicator matrix …

Brand Obama: How Barack Obama Revolutionized Political Campaign Marketing In The 2008 Presidential Election, Abigail Michaelsen

CMC Senior Theses

In 2008, President Barack Obama was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year, the first time a politician won such an award. While presidential candidates have always employed marketing tactics in order to communicate their platform and persuade voters to support them, candidate Obama’s marketing campaign completely revolutionized the field. Through an innovative marketing strategy, candidate Barack Obama transformed himself from a mere political unknown in 2004 to a worldwide sensation by the time the general election started in 2008. His calls for “hope and change” and “post-partisanship” captured the hearts of Americans frustrated with failed Bush policy and constant …

Twitter Use And Its Effects On Student Perception Of Instructor Credibility, Jocelyn M. Degroot, Valerie J. Young, Sarah H. Vanslette

Applied Communication Studies Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This study investigates college student perceptions of instructor credibility based on the content of an instructor’s Twitterfeed and student beliefs about Twitter as a communication tool. Quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to explore the effects of three manipulated Twitter feeds (e.g., tweeting social topics, professional topics, or a blend) on student perceptions of instructor credibility and examine how students perceive Twitter as a teaching tool. Quantitative results suggest that the profile with professional content was most credible. Credibility ratings were also associated with other Twitter use variables, including positive student attitudes about instructors who use Twitter and Tweet frequency. …

Tweeting Away Our Blues: An Interpretative Phenomenological Approach To Exploring Black Women's Use Of Social Media To Combat Misogynoir, Kelly Macias

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

In the age of social media, many Black women use online platforms and social networks as a means of connecting with other Black women and to share their experiences of social oppression and misogynoir, anti-Black misogyny. Examining the ways that Black women use technology as a tool to actively wage resistance to racial, gender and class oppression is critical for understanding their role in the human struggle for greater peace, beauty, freedom and justice. This study explored the experiences of 12 Black women in the United States and Britain who use social media for storytelling and testimony about their lives …

The Power Of Creativity: How Web-Based Parody Encourages Chinese Civil Participation, Amber Boczar

International ResearchScape Journal

This article investigates that relationship between e’gao (parody using web-based media) and Chinese civil participation. E’gao (恶搞 EUH-gow) uses videos, images, and text based campaigns that use humor to remove fear of political commentary and action. By detailing the development of China’s internet use, and the creation of the e’gao movement, I argue that e’gao removes the fear of participating in campaigns and movements, which criticize government policy and actions on both local and state levels, by using humor and anonymity of large online numbers. E’gao can provide a way for the common citizens to mold policy, and hold authority …