Social Media Commons^™

The Impact Of Social Media On Improving English Learning Skills: A Case Study Of Uae, Sameer O. A Baniyassen

Dissertations

Social media are one of the current forms of media that have diverse qualities and characteristics. Today, the use of social media is growing day by day at a significant rate. It is in this domain that students can virtually meet with their classmates and their teachers. They can communicate issues that are of significance and are related to their learning process. This study aimed to explore how social media platforms could affect English learning skills and to find whether social media could improve English language skills. The current study used mixed methods involving quantitative and qualitative approaches, such as …

Preferred Learning Methods Of Generation Z, Arlene J. Nicholas

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

Generation Z, born 1996-2010 (McNeil, 2018) or iGeneration has always had instant access to the internet, Ipods, and iphones to retrieve and transmit information that could have a strong influence on their learning style. This paper will review Generation Z learning preferences from the literature and report on a study of Generation Z business students (N = 91) in a liberal arts university. Some comparisons are made to a 2008 study of Millennials (N = 102). For example, long term papers that were rated as unimportant by 17% Millennials regarded as even less important to Gen Z by 29%.

Presented …

Appendix A: Interview Guide With Privacy-Related Questions (Full Version), Anabel Quan-Haase, Dennis Ho

FIMS Publications

Interview Guide: Networked individualism, East York Project

Expectations Of Artificial Intelligence And The Performativity Of Ethics: Implications For Communication Governance, Aphra Kerr, Marguerite Barry, John D. Kelleher

Articles

This article draws on the sociology of expectations to examine the construction of expectations of ‘ethical AI’ and considers the implications of these expectations for communication governance. We first analyse a range of public documents to identify the key actors, mechanisms and issues which structure societal expectations around artificial intelligence (AI) and an emerging discourse on ethics. We then explore expectations of AI and ethics through a survey of members of the public. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the role of AI in communication gover- nance. We find that, despite societal expectations that we can design …

Let’S Get Personal: The Influence Of Personality Type Assessments On Team Communication And Structure, Kylee Baldwin, Selena Moua, Taylor Perryman, Alyssa Hayden

Concordia Journal of Communication Research

The balance of understanding and discussing personality types is a potential advantage to the effectiveness of a team’s work ethic and communication. Working in a team with members of different personality types that know how to work well with other personality types will achieve team effectiveness more efficiently than a team with a lack of understanding on their own and others’ personality types. It is predicted that the Truity's Type Finder Personality Test on personality types will have a strong, positive impact on overall team performance and team effectiveness. In addition, it can also be predicted that the team that …

@Gretathunberg: Navigating Critique And Identity Within Youth Climate Activism On Twitter, Carina Robin Weadock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg sat alone on the steps of the Swedish Parliament building in September of 2018, holding a bold black and white sign and demanding action be taken in the face of the climate crisis. Ever since, her activism and Twitter presence have sparked media attention, catalyzed youth activists globally to organize marches and strike from school, and have drawn critique. This thesis employs McKerrow’s (1989) critical rhetoric to uncover dominant discourses within tweets that undermine Thunberg based on identity and to explore the potential that Thunberg’s Twitter presence might or might not hold for future youth …

Measuring The Connective Action Of Black Lives Matter Activists: A Psychometric Investigation Into Twitter Data, Paige Alfonzo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many protest movements from the last twenty-first century have become increasingly networked and personalized. Several scholars have tapped into this change coining terms such as participatory action, digitally mediated action, computer-mediated communication, issue-based organization, and what I focus on in this project, connective action. Building on the ideas percolating across the literary landscape at the time, Bennett and Segerberg (2012) introduced the logic of connective action based on emergent characteristics they observed in post-2010 large-scale social movements. Both the logic of connective action and related work have become deeply ingrained in today's social movement scholarship. As such, I felt it …

Audience Engagement Strategies In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Rachel Halle

Masters Theses

Audience engagement research examines the strategies content creators use to enhance audience involvement beyond simply watching the content. This analysis applies audience engagement strategies generated from television, branding, and social media research to video blogs (vlogs), specifically in the context of the narrative of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries. As part of that analysis, this effort also identifies ways in which those strategies integrated into the vlog format. The strategies included addressing the audience directly, mentioning the vlog within the narrative, mentions of YouTube or the internet, asking the audience for input, and mentioning audience input with the vlog. All strategies …

Romantic Rejection In Gay Potential Relationships: A Gay Blog Analysis, Rebecca Ferlotti

Masters Theses

Little research has been done on gay potential relationships (when two daters had gone on five or fewer dates or would-be dates), and there was no existing research available on romantic rejection in gay potential relationships. Most existing literature on romantic rejection focused on heterosexual relationships and long-term homosexual relationships. This thesis analyzed 48 blog entries from four publicly-accessible gay dating blogs ( The Guyliner ; It Gets Worse ; Gay Dating Stories ; and 100 Guys, 100 Storie s) that described romantic rejections. This thesis concluded romantic rejections for the four gay bloggers overall were most frequently implicit, due …

The Sociological Imagination In Studies Of Communication, Information Technologies, And Media: Citams As An Invisible College, Anabel Quan-Haase, Molly-Gloria Harper, Shelley Boulianne

FIMS Publications

In this 2020 CITAMS special issue of Information, Communication & Society, we bring together an important body of work that draws on the sociological imagination to ask critical questions of our times. We selected nine papers that represent both the breadth of sociological work taking place within CITAMS as well as the diversity of its members. CITAMS is welcoming of a range of perspectives in more than one way. We welcome studies of a range of tools and practices. For example, Kadylak and Cotten (this volume) study the willingness of older adults to use six different emerging technologies in …

Covid-19 In Indigenous Communities: Five Protective Factors Of “Exercising” Sovereignty, Kelsey Leonard, Natalie Welch, Alisse Ali-Joseph

Faculty Publications

Indigenous Peoples have an inherent responsibility and right to “exercising” sovereignty - the practice of sport and physical activity in performance of our cultural, political, and spiritual citizenship (Ali-Joseph 2018). During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to and equity (inequity) in sport and physical activity has been felt (physically, spiritually, politically) within Indigenous communities. We implement an abundance-based Indigenous approach to understanding Indigenous Peoples’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic through sport and its far-reaching ramifications in Indian Country. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen Indigenous Peoples utilize social media such as Facebook and TikTok to reimagine Indigenous sport …

Mapping Misinformation In The Coronavirus Outbreak, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The coronavirus outbreak has sent ripples of fear and confusion across the world. These sentiments—and our collective responses to the outbreak—are made worse by rampant misinformation surrounding the new strain of the virus, COVID-2019. In this post, I survey some of the most pervasive areas of tentacular coronavirus-related misinformation that has proliferated online -- as well as the responses of social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok that may ultimately prove inadequate given the magnitude of the problem.

Exploring Crisis Communication And Information Dissemination On Social Media: Social Network Analysis Of Hurricane Irma Tweets, Xianlin Jin

Communication Graduate Research

This study utilized social network analysis to identify the top 10 Twitter influentials during the Hurricane Irma crisis period and examined the relationship between social media attributes and the bridge influence of controlling information flow. The number of a user’s followers and tweets significantly predicted one’s control of information. Crisis information tended to be shared in scattered subgroups. Social network boundaries impeded information diffusion, and the communication pattern was largely one-way. The findings partially supported the opinion leader argument while indicating that influentials can directly generate information, which is consistent with the social-mediated crisis communication model. Such findings will contribute …

[email protected]: Using The Tech Start-Up Concept To Train, Engage, And Inform Students, Stephanie J. Coopman, Ted Coopman

Faculty Publications

Undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in an upper-division online experiential learning course organized as a technology company start up at a public university in the US. Students participated in an academic department’s social media team, publishing a weekly newsletter and producing and curating content for multiple social media outlets designed for public and university audiences, a website for the department’s students, and a career portal. Responses to survey questions provided support for Experiential Learning Theory’s cyclical learning model. In addition, students viewed the entrepreneurial approach to the team as both liberating and challenging as they engaged with each other …

Determinants Of Startup Funding: The Interaction Between Web Attention And Culture, Jie Ren, Viju Raghupathi, Wullianallur Raghupathi

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Technology empowers entrepreneurs to pursue alternative funding through platforms like crowdfunding. This research explores significant startup funding factors using Crunchbase. Controlling for common factors (acquisition/funding-rounds/IPO), the research uniquely focuses on web attention - the visibility on social media - and its impact on funding. It also examines the moderating influence of startup’s home country culture (individualism/collectivism). Findings show stronger positive impact of web attention on startup funding for collectivist countries. While individualistic investors value personal goals, collectivists value collaborative goals - inclinations that align with crowdfunding behavior. Therefore while increasing web attention, crowdfunding efforts can be targeted towards collectivist countries.

Evaluating Students Information System Success Using Delone And Mclean’S Model: Student’S Perspective, Majaliwa Mkinga, Herman Mandari

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

System success is considered to be an important element in accomplishing the goals of the organization; therefore evaluation of system success needs to be done in order to ensure that investment in Information System is successful. Most of Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania have adopted the use of IS in providing service to their customers. Nevertheless, there is less evidence that system success evaluation has been done in order to identify the desired characteristics which could make IS more effective. Due to that, this study evaluates the effectiveness of Student Information System (SIS) used at the Institute of Finance …

Iran, Diane M. Zorri

Publications

Internet access in Iran is characterized by strong censorship, limited access, surveillance, and widespread state-sanctioned propaganda. The regime in Tehran views internet freedom as a critical threat to its national security (Henry, Pettyjohn, and York 2014). Using an index of variables such as obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights, the nongovernmental organization Freedom House rates Iran’s internet access as “not free” (Freedom House 2018). On a scale of zero to one hundred, where zero is “free” and one hundred is “not free,” Freedom House scores Iran at an eighty-five, making it the least free nation …

The Delocalization Of The Local Election, Caleb T. Carr

Faculty Publications - Communications

Local elections are no longer just influenced by, marketed toward, or relevant to only a small, geographically constrained electorate. Social media increasingly connect politics to publics that may extend beyond politicians’ or issues’ local constituencies. Every election—from Senator to alderperson—has been rendered accessible and relevant to broad individuals, organizations, and interests. Now, campaigns—particularly in close races or battleground areas—can canvas beyond the local level to seek donations, campaign volunteers, or to encourage local residents to vote. Social media have become venues to demonstrate a candidate’s likability with users, which are parlayed into local goodwill and electability. And foreign nationals and …

Critical Media Literacy And Cultural Autonomy In A Mediated World, Bill Yousman, Lori Bindig Yousman

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

We live in mediated worlds. Every waking hour of our lives finds us close, physically and mentally, to some sort of media content: Television, radio, movies, magazines, billboards, blogs, YouTube videos, websites, and social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest. Media scholars have been researching the ubiquitous role that media play in our lives for decades, but the current media environment is unlike any seen in history, as developments in digital technologies have produced a veritable onslaught of words, images, and sounds that can be accessed anywhere, at any time; all from a device that most of …

Can Instagram Be Used To Deliver An Evidence-Based Exercise Program For Young Women A Process Evaluation, Rachel G. Curtis, Jillian C. Ryan, Sarah M. Edney, Carol A. Maher

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background Instagram provides an opportunity to deliver low cost, accessible and appealing physical activity content. This study evaluated the feasibility of delivering an exercise program for young women using Instagram. Methods A single-group pre- and post-intervention trial examined the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a 12-week Instagram-delivered program with young inactive women (n = 16; M = 23 years), which prescribed running and body weight exercises to complete three times per week. Daily Instagram posts delivered the exercises, video demonstrations and motivational content. Feasibility was evaluated by examining exposure (Instagram posts viewed per week), engagement (likes, comments and tags on …