Social Media Commons^™

Information Literacy: How Students Search For & Verfiy Health-Related Information On Social Media, Isabel Sousa

Honors Projects in Communication and Language Studies

Today, younger generations utilize social media to access what they perceive to be reliable and accurate information, yet there are some concerns regarding validity and the ease of which students share information. This thesis evaluates how undergraduate students search for and verify information seen on popular social media platforms and analyzes the proficiency of their information literacy skills. The data collected will be used in determining which social media platforms are most frequently used and trusted by students, which types of sources are used in verification of this information if verified at all, and their perception of information literacy. The …

Smart Strategies: The Impact Of Social Media And Ai In Modern Marketing, Waverly O. Smith

Student Publications

In recent times, social media and artificial intelligence (AI) have become increasingly popular in the world of marketing. With these technologies, companies can more efficiently and effectively find consumers and create tailored product advertisements. AI has helped companies segment consumers, identify trends, and predict consumer needs. Social media has created a platform in which companies can connect with consumers and gain direct feedback. Additionally, it has created a space in which anyone can become an influencer or market a product. With the evolution of technology and digital marketing, it has also become increasingly important for companies to use high quality …

It Ends With Us: How Social Media Algorithms Shape Recommendations In Online Reading Communities, Alana Nicole Whitley

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

My thesis explores social media algorithms and their influence on recommendations of authors for people who engage with reading communities online. During a three-week research period, I examined algorithmic behaviors in online book communities using an alias. Findings revealed that BookTube, BookTok, and Bookstagram facilitate book discovery but offer weak algorithmic recommendations and suggestions. While social media algorithms excel at providing opportunities for creators and authors, they fail to promote trending and diverse books. These insights indicate that algorithms shape literary consumption by limiting readers’ choices. This research contributes to discussions of online reading communities and the role of algorithmic …

Gatekeeping Girlhood: Tiktok As An Agent Of Gender And Racial Socialization, Kennedy Elyza Davis

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis uses qualitative methods to study and analyze how TikTok users and the platform’s algorithm work together to redefine girlhood. By examining individual posts and the origins of the trends that they belong to, I will show why some users reject this new definition, as others have embraced it, and what this means for the future of girlhood. This research will complicate the question of what it means to be a girl on the Internet and the challenges that accompany this experience. Ultimately, I expand on the study of gender roles and the impact of social media as an …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Emasculation Of Men Through Televised Forums Of Entertainment, Skylar G. Sexton

Senior Honors Theses

What constitutes manliness stands on the brink of collapse. Society wages war on the idea of biological men and women. This simultaneously blurs the lines of the distinctive characteristics that define a man such as initiative, protective instincts, self-control, and leadership. Media forums act as a reflection as well as an influencing medium for a cultural body. Films have fundamentally changed their depiction of men in television since the 1960s and 1970s. Manliness is being redefined through films' depictions of a man, as well as by societal movements such as feminism. Men are being emasculated in society today, which is …

Analyzing Social Media Trends In Cosmeceuticals: Insights From Google Trends And Tiktok Analytics, E. Correia, Jenna Mandel, Stephanie R. Jackson Cullison

Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Biology Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVE: Social media usage has surged, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Dermatology invokes intense interest on social media, and cosmeceuticals are among the most trending topics, offering a unique space for dermatologists to share their expertise. By using tools like Google Trends and TikTok viewership, we aim to capture cosmeceutical trends to guide dermatologists' educational efforts.

METHODS: A Google Trends search from January 2004 to December 2023 was performed on retinol, bakuchiol, salicylic acid, glycolic acid, azelaic acid, hydroquinone, niacinamide, vitamin C serum, and hyaluronic acid. Trend lines were created for each term, and yearly percent differences in relative search …

The Role Of Platform Design In Excessive Short Form Video Use And The Resulting Impacts On Cognitive Processes, Katherine Levey

Senior Theses

Short form video (SFV) platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels have rapidly reshaped global media consumption. This thesis investigates how the defining technological elements of SFV platforms contribute to prolonged viewing behavior by inducing flow, a psychological state characterized by deep immersion and diminished self-awareness. Through a review of nineteen scholarly articles, this study examines how features like infinite scroll, auto-play, and algorithmic personalization create a low-effort, high-reward user experience that sustains attention and facilitates continuous engagement. Once immersed, users often fall into a cycle of passive, prolonged scrolling, consuming more content and spending more time than intended. Findings …

Evaluating The Role Of Traditional And Nontraditional Educational Resources In Point-Of-Care Ultrasound Training: A Cross-Sectional Survey Of Educator Preferences And Practices, Arthur Broadstock, Annahieta Kalantari, Almaz S. Dessie, Al'ai Alvarez, Resa E. Lewiss, Josie Acuna, Anthony Weekes, Kaylah Maloney, Uwe Stolz, Lori Stolz, Aalap Shah

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Recently, nontraditional educational resources like podcasts, blogs, and online media have gained prominence in medical education and are abundant within the field of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS). However, the extent to which POCUS educators utilize online resources compared to traditional resources, like textbooks, journal articles, and in-person workshops, is unknown. We aim to define which types of educational resources are used and preferred by POCUS educators to teach trainees.

METHODS: An expert working group developed a survey aimed to characterize the types of materials used by POCUS educators and their perceived importance on a 6-point forced ranking scale. We administered …

The Psychological And Clinical Implications Of Digital Media Consumption, Julianna Carpenetti M.Ed.

Great Lakes Regional Counseling Psychology Conference

With digital media, technology, and the Internet becoming staples of daily life, it is critical for counseling psychologists to better understand problematic digital media usage and “Internet addiction.” I investigated the psychological implications of digital media usage, provided recommendations for clinical practice, and identified future directions for empirical study.

Social Media's Impact On Eating Disorders In Minority Groups, Amber Michon Ma, Nina Michon Ma

Great Lakes Regional Counseling Psychology Conference

This roundtable explores how social media exacerbates eating disorders (EDs) in marginalized communities, including racial minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals. Focused on systemic change, the discussion will explore strategies to promote inclusive media representations, media literacy, and culturally competent ED treatment aiming to foster equitable, supportive digital spaces through collective action.

Exploring Emotion Classification Of Indonesian Tweets Using Large Scale Transfer Learning Via Indobert, Connor Shaw, Phillip M. Lacasse, Lance E. Champagne

Faculty Publications

Business, political, and other social structures create strong motivation to understand the attitudes, motivations, feelings, and emotions of a population of interest. Social media is a rich source of self-disclosed information by individuals from all walks of life about virtually every domain of the human experience, but the vast quantity of data is impossible to effectively analyze without advanced natural language processing algorithms. This research creates a transfer learning based emotion classification model for Indonesian language Twitter data. Transfer learning consists of two steps: pre-training and fine tuning. Three variations of Indonesian Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (IndoBERT) are tested …

Do Universities Choose The Right Strategies For X Engagement? The Case Of Six Universities In Thailand, Mathupayas Thongmak

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand how Thai public universities engage their stakeholders on X (the social media platform previously known as Twitter). This article answers the following research questions: 1) What are the X message strategies of six public universities? 2) Do they choose the most effective strategies to drive X engagement in terms of favorites and reposts?

Method: Data was automatically collected using anX analytic tool, and the potential variables were extracted semi-automatically using tools appropriate to text mining, sentiment analysis, word cloud, and so on. Posts from six universities in Thailand were investigated.

Results: …

La Intensificación En Los Comentarios De Noticias: La Prensa Deportiva Digital, David Sanchez-Jimenez

Publications and Research

Las plataformas digitales de los periódicos permiten una comunicación más fluida y dinámica con y entre la audiencia, que refleja algunos patrones de la comunicación oral (Briz, 1997, 1998; Yus, 2001, 2010; Albelda, 2004; Albelda y Estellés, 2021). Entre ellos, se encuentran los recursos lingüísticos de intensificación que refuerzan la fuerza ilocutiva de los comentarios emitidos, en una clara apuesta por dotar al texto de una mayor interactividad con sus potenciales receptores. El objetivo de esta investigación consiste en conocer cómo se relacionan entre sí los participantes de estas plataformas en la prensa deportiva. En particular, se prestó especial atención …

تأثير منصات التواصل الاجتماعي على المشاركة السياسية لدى الشباب الجامعي الأردني, عثمان منصور الطاهات, تيسير سلمان فلاحات, عامر خالد أحمد, أمجد عمر صفوري, عبدالله سلطان الجلابنة

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

سعت الدراسة إلى معرفة تأثير منصتيْ فيسبوك وتويتر على المشاركة السياسية لدى الشباب الجامعي الأردني في ضوء متغيراتهم وسماتهم الشخصية، وبيان العلاقة بين درجة تعرضهم لموضوعات المشاركة السياسية عبر تلك المنصات، ومشاركتهم السياسية في الحياة العامة في الأردن عبر استخدام منهج مسح جمهور وسائل الإعلام بالتطبيق على عينة قوامها (600) مفردة من الشباب الجامعي في الأردن. وتوصلت الدراسة إلى أن الشباب الجامعي الأردني يتعرضون لموضوعات المشاركة السياسية من خلال منصة فيسبوك أكثر من منصة إكس، وتمثلت أكثر الموضوعات متابعةً في "الاحتجاجات والاعتصامات التي تنظم على الصعيد المحلي"، كما تمثلت أبرز أدوار المنصتين في تعزيز المشاركة السياسية في "تزودني بمواعيد الانتخابات …

The Ethical Dilemma Of Social Media, Janet H. Southerland

New Orleans Dental Association News

Social media has transformed dentistry, enhancing communication, education, and patient engagement. However, ethical challenges, including privacy concerns and misinformation, pose risks. This article explores the benefits and challenges of social media in dentistry, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines to uphold professional standards while leveraging digital advancements for improved care and education.

Ethics In Digital Marketing: A Gen-Z’S Perspective, Suruchi Bhatt

School of Business

Almost 72% of Americans report they have a sense of being tracked online through their cellphones, by their advertisers or companies they follow, around 20% think their activities across their days are tracked, with almost 47% reporting the government tracks their cellphones, behaviors, and everything they do online. (Atske, 2019) It is no secret that when people say privacy is a myth, it is upon the behaviors of the companies to inform the customers of what, where, and why their activity is being tracked. Answering how the activity is tracked and when it will be tracked are key factors that …

Only Skin Deep Ai Lifestyle Accounts Influencing Political Discourse, Leland Fecher, Patrick Warren, Kylie Gilbert, Ella Murray, Miles Rockow, Jonathan Joon-Hyung Yoo

Media Forensics Hub Creative Inquiry Reports

Inauthentic political influence in American politics has been a prominent topic since the 2016 presidential election, and its features have shifted over time in response to platform countermeasures, feature adoption, and technological change. In this report we explore a small network of AI-empowered accounts posing as models, jewelry sellers, and artists that are espousing a particular partisan view, likely in an effort to engage specific online communities. This report includes a detailed description of the network and the topics in which the network regularly engages. We then discuss the possible effects this has on the American zeitgeist in the moments …

Are Emojis The New Words? A Sentiment Analysis Of Social Media Brand Conversations, Yashodhan Karulkar, Dev T. Vora, Siddharth Vaddepalli, Yash Thakur

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Emojis have become an increasingly important aspect of consumer-brand interactions in the Indian subcontinent. However, the impact of emoji use on brand image and mental health remains underexplored, particularly in emerging economies like India, where structured research on this topic is limited. To address this gap, the present study analyzes over 4,600 consumer tweets related to 19 prominent brands across eleven industries. Using VADER sentiment analysis, the research develops a metric to assess consumer sentiment and brand engagement in relation to emoji usage. The findings indicate that effective integration of emojis contributes to positive consumer sentiment and enhanced brand engagement. …

Investigating The Effect Of Full And Partial Social Media Abstinence On Fear Of Missing Out And Well-Being Outcomes: A Daily Diary Experimental Approach, Andree Hartanto, K Tennakoon Appuhamillage Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Meenakshi Kothari, A. Y. H. Goh, Frosch Yi Xuan Quek, Nadyanna M. Majeed

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

With social media deeply embedded in our daily lives, there is an ongoing debate about its potential negative impact on well-being outcomes. Several lines of correlational research suggest that social media use is associated with reduced well-being. However, these findings are preliminary, heavily relying on cross-sectional data. To address this limitation, our study implemented an experimental paradigm that manipulated varying degrees of social media abstinence and assessed fear of missing out, as well as multiple well-being outcomes, including anxiety, depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, perceived stress, affective states, loneliness, sleep quality, and cognitive failures. A total of 280 regular social media …

Developing A Successful Pr Campaign With Crisis Management And Competitive Positioning, Anna V. Gutierrez

Marketing

This senior project examines the key elements that contribute to the success of a public relations campaign and how these elements can be leveraged to help a company effectively respond to and recover from a crisis. By analyzing high-profile campaigns like Spotify to Wicked, the project identifies best practices in brand communication, audience connection, and narrative control. Marketing research and a professional interview provide additional insight into real-world applications of PR strategies, offering a deeper understanding of how brands maintain trust and visibility during challenging times. Ultimately it provides a framework for how businesses can craft compelling PR campaigns that …