Browsing by Subject "Facebook"
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Item Analyzing content deviance in American community journalism websites and social media(2013-12) Funk, Marcus James; Sylvie, GeorgeThis dissertation explores deviance, operationalized through news factors, among American community weekly, community daily, large daily, and national daily newspaper websites and social media posts. Computerized quantitative analysis indicates that circulation size makes little to no significant difference concerning the publication of deviant news factors; smaller circulation sizes are significantly related to the publication of news concerning local communities, but not egalitarian news factors generally. Qualitative, structured interviews of community newspaper editors and publishers illustrate a different agenda - a clear focus for news on "regular people and routine events," arguably egalitarianism, over news on "unusual people or extraordinary events," arguably deviance. This indicates a need for further evaluation and development of computerized content analysis, gatekeeping theory, and the community newspaper industry. Results also suggest a need to reconsider and re-evaluate normative deviance as a concept and point to two potential theoretical developments: considering a Deviant-Egalitarian Spectrum and drastically broadening the current fringe focus of deviance research.Item Changes in use and perception of privacy : exploring differences between heavy and light users of Facebook(2012-08) Oz, Mustafa, Ph. D.; Johnson, Thomas J., 1960-; Alves, Rosental C.Information privacy is a paradoxical issue. Especially after Facebook, information privacy has become more important than before. College student Facebook users share a great deal of information on Facebook, and Facebook collects users’personal information. Users’ personal information on Facebook is linked to their identity; therefore negative consequences (privacy problems) have become possible on Facebook. This study focused on college students’ privacy concerns and awareness of privacy issues and settings. Moreover, heavy and light users’ privacy concerns were compared in this study. According to the survey results, privacy is still important to Facebook users and different privacy concerns exist among heavy and light users. Results also show that privacy on Facebook is not a simple thing. It is related to identity construction, users’ experience, and awareness of privacy implications.Item Characteristics of content and social spread strategy on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform(2013-12) Stern, Joseph S., active 2013; Burns, Neal M, 1933-As the marketplace for crowdfunding grows to an estimated $5 billion dollars in 2013, academic research exploring the second largest platform Indiegogo has been largely overlooked. This research identifies causal characteristics that differentiate content and social spread strategies across ten technology campaigns on Indiegogo, covering a wide pledge fundraising range from $13,417 to $1,960,503. The researcher’s central hypothesis that better content and spread strategy executions would generate more campaign activity and higher pledges was proven to be generally true, but also an oversimplification of complex variables. Successful campaigns can be defined by both the pledge amount raised and the percent of goal reached, whereas all campaigns surveyed reached over 100% of their set goal. All campaigns selected met three key criteria in that they: launched by April 1st, 2013 and ended before October 15th, 2013, lasted between 31 and 51 days and used a Vimeo video player with open statistics. A five tier framework was designed to classify Blockbuster, Intermediate and Base level performance. Close watch was given to mainly the campaign pitch video followed by page content and social media channels. The pitch video content analysis examines narrative content tactics, technical triggers and pledge participation prompts and found that higher performing campaigns generally aligned with the optimized content analysis units, with some exceptions. There was a strong connection between more video views, especially at the frontend of the campaign, raising greater pledge amounts. Campaigns with more page content comments leveraged higher audience participation and pledges. Social media activity mainly through Facebook Likes had the most impact on pledge participation across campaigns. Video source traffic arrived mostly to the Indiegogo page from social media, email marketing and to a lesser extent from referral blogs and website links. In summary, the characteristics that defined better content and spread strategy executions were certainly related to increased campaign activity and higher pledges, but exhibited complex behaviors requiring more data to comprehensively understand the direct impact on a campaign’s performance.Item Data Privacy Standards in the United States: A Case Study of Facebook(2020-05) Blend, Michael Pearce; Beasley, AngelaWith approximately 2.45 billion monthly active users as of early 2019, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. Facebook collects roughly one million data points of sensitive information every minute and utilizes this personal data for targeted advertisements. The majority of American users are unaware, or simply unconcerned, about the infringement of their privacy rights. Furthermore, the United States federal government has no comprehensive legislation protecting citizens’ data privacy, and only twenty-five states have enforceable laws. This thesis first discusses the potential dangers of Facebook’s collection of its users’ personal data, including data breaches. Then, it analyzes data privacy standards in the United States and compares those standards to privacy legislation in other countries in order to make a well- informed suggestion about how our nation might protect personal data. In doing so, this thesis aims to explore fair policy solutions for the United States that keep both consumers and businesses in mind. Although the imposition of legal restraints for Facebook and others is necessary to protect individual data privacy, industry indicators reveal that placing burdensome limits on data collection capabilities could have significant repercussions for companies that provide free social media platforms, which could potentially force them to become paid services. While American policymakers must formulate and update legal measures to address data protection rights in an ever-growing data-driven economy, it is critical that reforms do not overly penalize social networking services.Item Digital demise : preservation of Facebook legacies post mortem(2017-12-01) Guzman, Elizabeth Grace; Doty, Philip; Barber, Suzanne; Blaha, CraigPersonal Information Management includes the practice of creating, maintaining, retrieving, and sharing information. In this report, I will evaluate personal information management in the context of the social media service Facebook to illustrate the importance of managing our digital identities. Most research on our growing dependence on digital institutions to preserve our digital assets focuses on how an individual can manage their digital assets to prevent fraud, create filing systems, and secure a legacy. This body of literature can help an individual curate, archive, and secure their information in life, but little research explores managing and preserving digital assets after an individual passes away. In this report, I will explore the role of Facebook in Personal Information Management, managing digital legacies post mortem, and the impact of our Facebook assets on death and grieving. More than a quarter of the world's population uses Facebook to make connections, stay in touch with friends and relatives, and to create timelines of their digital histories (Facebook, 2017) User content on Facebook includes photos, the written word, and videos, and builds on a user's individual human experience. It has changed the way we interact both online and offline. Social media and changes in technology contribute to what some claim is a seismic shift in our culture and has significantly increased the content we produce and maintain. As information management processes shift from physical to digital, demanding different tools, it may be difficult for individuals and their loved ones to navigate new requirements to protect and access their information in life and post mortem. The ubiquitous presence of smartphones and connected devices makes people feel connected wherever they go. It enables us to create and publish content anytime, and anywhere, often faster than traditional journalists. To consider the question of how we might think about our digital legacies post mortem looking at Facebook in particular, this report first considers challenges to such legacies, potential solutions offered by Facebook, and the importance of addressing these challenges and questions. The report concludes with a look at how a Facebook user's enduring presence online affects the grief process. The entwining of our online and offline experiences highlights the importance of thinking about our post mortem digital assets and the artifacts we leave behind after death. This report will address these issues and offer solutions and challenges to securing our post mortem digital legacies on Facebook.Item Digital DREAM : the DREAMer identity, struggle, and political engagement on Facebook(2016-12) Iglesias, Gabino José; De Uriarte, Mercedes Lynn; Todd, Russell; Chyi, Iris; Biggs, Melissa; Burd, GeneThis dissertation seeks to understand the role Facebook plays in the (re)creation of online identities of members of the DREAMer community, the way their undocumented status impacts their usage of the social networking site, and how code switching is used. Through in-depth interviews, this study gathered non-identifying data in order to try to understand the motivations and actions of DREAMers while on Facebook, how they define themselves, and whether the battle for citizenship and the DREAM Act play a role in the way they behave on the social networking sites. The data gathered was analyzed using discourse analysis and the results were evaluated using Social Identity Theory, Uses and Gratifications Theory, and Chicana Theory. Furthermore, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was used to explore the way in which limited access to the opportunities that citizens of the United States have, as well as economic and personal issues, have an effect on the way DREAMers behave on Facebook. Lastly, this study questions whether a popular image of the DREAMers as a group actively seeking citizenship applied to all participants or if another experience merited attention.Item Digital Dystopia: Analyzing Facebook Data Permissions and Regulations from 2014-2018(2018) Sathaye, Maanas; Saha, OishikThis investigation looks to analyze Facebook’s data privacy regulations from 2014-2018; the Cambridge Analytica scandal is used as a case study to show how Facebook acted unethically in ensuring the privacy of user data. Facebook’s inability to regulate whose data was being shared and how third parties were using this data was unethical and directly resulted in third-parties, like Cambridge Analytica, misusing the data. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Computer Science and Association for Computing Machinery joint task force ethical code for software engineers is used to judge Facebook’s malpractice. This same code, and the knowledge of Facebook’s previous failure, is used to recommend an ethical solution to prevent user data from being compromised; the proposed solution is to explicitly ask users for permission for their data to be shared. The report concludes that Facebook was unable to control how data was being used once it was shared, compromising the privacy of millions of individuals. The report also concludes that users should be actively monitoring their online presence when using Facebook as an alternative to completely abandoning the platform.Item Digital Dystopia: Analyzing Facebook Data Permissions from 2014-2018(2018) Sathaye, Maanas; Saha, OishikThis investigation looks to analyze Facebook’s data privacy regulations from 2014-2018; the Cambridge Analytica scandal is used as a case study to show how Facebook acted unethically in ensuring the privacy of user data. Facebook’s inability to regulate whose data was being shared and how third parties were using this data was unethical and directly resulted in third-parties, like Cambridge Analytica, misusing the data. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Computer Science and Association for Computing Machinery joint task force ethical code for software engineers is used to judge Facebook’s malpractice. This same code, and the knowledge of Facebook’s previous failure, is used to recommend an ethical solution to prevent user data from being compromised; the proposed solution is to explicitly ask users for permission for their data to be shared. The report concludes that Facebook was unable to control how data was being used once it was shared, compromising the privacy of millions of individuals. The report also concludes that users should be actively monitoring their online presence when using Facebook as an alternative to completely abandoning the platform.Item Digital engagement in social media : likes as a predictor of brand value(2018-05) Lim, HyunJoo; Wilcox, Gary B.This study suggests indicators of consumers’ digital engagement with brand-related social media contents as a contemporary measure of brand equity and examines its relationship with brand value. The study analyzes this relationship based on the data collected from January 2016 to December 2017 on US brand performances, advertising spending, and Facebook interaction devices including “Likes” as well as “the number of users talking about this brand”. The results show that the total number of “Likes” a brand’s official fan page receives on Facebook has a statistically significant positive impact on the brand’s value. These findings not only support the consensus on brand equity as a driver of brand value, but also successfully denote consumer engagement measures as indicators of brand equity.Item Digital intifada : a discourse analysis of the Palestine solidarity groups in social media(2016-08) Almahmoud, Meshaal Abdullah; Atkinson, Lucinda; Love, BradfordThis thesis investigates the discourse adopted by Palestine solidarity groups utilizing Facebook. Three pro-Palestine groups were highlighted as a case study for this thesis: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, International Solidarity Movement and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. The research questions address the methods of discourse Palestinian solidarity groups' employ, utilization of different contents and themes, level of engagement, selection of format, news resources, and impact of 2014 Gaza war. This study analyzes variations among the three groups and components influencing differentiations. The literature review highlights transformation in both individual and collective communication and social media's changing social and political structures. Research includes the usage of social media to frame social movements’ platform and social media benefits for collective action and how framing is achieved and collective identity developed. Lastly, it illuminates the trend of connective action and personalization. The discourse analysis approach was applied to investigate the set of selected Facebook posts in 2014. The results show that the three solidarity groups generally applied resource mobilization theory. Posts reporting some form of a violation contained the most correlating content. Human rights theme rose to the majority of the total number of posts. The most used contents in the posts aim for audience sympathy, responsibility and being connected, as for a shared pursuit to occur. Reporting a violation, the most used content, triggers sympathy. Responsibility is motivated by calling followers for action, which is the second most used content by all groups. Reporting news as applied to many types of top used contents, resulted in the group member's feeling connected. The total average engagement for the three groups multiplied highly during the war in Gaza, but sank considerably after termination of the war. However, the average engagement subsequent to the war remains markedly higher than pre-war levels. The patterns of posting revealed tendencies not to post only text, without attaching another format. Posts with links or photo account for a higher proportion. The majority of the three solidarity groups' news resources come from five pro-Palestinian major news websites. Yet, numerous international sources, either mainstream or independent media, were utilized as well.Item Digitizing ethnonational identities : multimediatic representations of Puerto Rican soldiers(2012-05) Avilés Santiago, Manuel Gerardo; Kumar, Shanti; Mallapragada, Madhavi; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Rivero, Yeidy; Fuller, JenifferThe silence and invisibility of Puerto Rican soldiers in fictional and non-fictional representations of U.S. Wars has motivated me to look for alternative spaces in which these unaccounted voices and images are currently being produced, stored, circulated, and memorialized. Within this framework, my dissertation explores the self-representation of Puerto Rican servicemen and women in social networking sites (SNS), (i.e. as MySpace and Facebook), in user-generated content (UGC) platforms, (i.e. YouTube), and also in web memorials. I am interested in understanding how Puerto Rican soldiers self-represent their ethnonational identity online within the overlapping of second-class citizenship. The theoretical framework proposed for this research will apply theories such as 1) articulation; 2) the notion of contact zone; and 3) colonial/racial subjectivities. To complete this goal, my research method draws on online ethnography, textual, and critical discourse analysis. Firstly, I will discuss the limited repertoire of images of Puerto Rican soldiers in TV and film. My argument is that, besides the massive omission of this history, the images and motifs that do escape de facto social censorship will be in conversation with the self-representations. The second chapter is the result of four years of the process of online ethnography on which I analyze the instances of self-representation of Puerto Rican soldiers in SNS. My interest was seeing how those spaces were inflected by an ethnonational subjectivity. The third chapter explores the ways Puerto Rican soldiers, embedded in mash-up cultures, uses UGCs platforms to upload videos that transform the soldiers from passive consumers of images to active producers of content, which tend to disrupt dominant narratives of power. The last chapter explores the emergence of web memorials dedicated to the Puerto Rican soldiers. My main argument is that these instances of self- representation in online spaces are in conversation with the moments of silences and misrepresentations of Puerto Rican soldiers in traditional media, but also have become acts of enunciation in which the particular Puerto Ricanness of the Puerto Rican soldier is affirmed within complex, layered histories of imperialism, racism, heterosexism, and second-class citizenship.Item Discussing controversial issues on social media : examining the role of affordances, fear of isolation and de-individuation(2018-12) Oz, Mustafa, Ph. D.; Chen, Gina Masullo; Johnson, Thomas J; Murthy, Dhiraj; Hardesty, Sharon; Stroud, Natalie JThis dissertation sought to answer whether people more free to express their opinions on controversial topics on Twitter versus Facebook? Three specific affordances support this question: the networks people engage with on each platform, how identifiable they are to other users, and the visibility of their posts (Treem & Leonardi, 2012). In this dissertation, I draw from three related theoretical frameworks to support my argument: the spiral of silence (SOS), the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE), and affordances theory. The results suggested that there were significant differences between Twitter and Facebook in terms of one’s willingness to express opinion. In summary people were more likely to express their opinion on Twitter than Facebook when they think the majority does not support their opinion.Item The Ethical Implications of the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal(2019-12) Arora, Nikhil; Zinolabedini, DariusItem Evaluating the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as new publishing platforms for newspapers(2010-05) Ju, Alice; Chyi, Hsiang Iris, 1971-; Sylvie, GeorgeWith the growing popularity of social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter, newspapers have started to use these sites as alternative platforms for news delivery. Analyzing the use of Facebook and Twitter by the top 74 U.S. newspapers, this study examines the effectiveness of social network sites as news platforms. The results showed that most of the major newspapers have adopted social network sites but reached a very limited number of subscribers. After controlling for print circulation, there is no significant correlation between the number of social network subscribers and the number of website visitors. Overall, the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as news platforms remained questionable.Item An examination of source credibility and word of mouth best practices for social media marketing with an emphasis on Twitter(2011-12) Alexander, Lauren Elizabeth; Wilcox, Gary B.; Atkinson, LucyBecause social media is a relatively new digital medium and Twitter is an even newer medium, it is important for practitioners and academics to understand how to create and utilize the best messaging strategies to induce persuasion, win brand advocates and create a sustainable, credible presence for brands on social media platforms such as Twitter. The author seeks to examine the theoretical and practical relevance of social media, with an emphasis on Twitter as well as explore how the theories of source credibility and word-of-mouth can help to better understand and measure promotional message and strategy effectiveness.Item Facebook as a multilingual communication site(2013-05) Olsen, Carolyn Anne; Doty, PhilipAs Facebook grows beyond a billion users (Zuckerberg, 2012), a decreasing percentage of those users are English-only speakers. Facebook provides a platform for multilingual conversation to occur, which requires that Facebook display non-Latin scripts. Because of the hegemony of English and the Latin alphabet on the Web, non-Latin scripts are often “ASCII-ized.” Displaying non-Latin scripts well facilitates communication for multilingual users and creates a place where they can explore their identity linguistically as they post on Facebook. This study examines what factors contribute to multilingual Facebook users making linguistic posting choices. Many have named Facebook as a successful multilingual Web site, thus it is reasonable to expect that Facebook is an exemplar of multilingual social networking sites. This study is an examination and critique of Facebook’s multilingual translations. To address questions of how Facebook’s interface facilitates or impedes multilingual conversation, the researcher recruited twelve active, multilingual Facebook users to participate in individual interviews and a small focus group. Besides English, these users spoke and posted in the world’s four other most widely spoken languages: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi. The researcher found that multilingual Facebook users did not always have a choice in what language they would post. Users faced obstacles ranging from the Facebook app distorting script display to hardware bias limiting users’ text entry. Furthermore, participants’ linguistic presentation was not dichotomous between two languages; multilingual users and their friends are accustomed to operating in a multilingual space. The larger implication of these findings is that Facebook, despite pioneering massive translation projects, has not solved the problem of linguistic representation for social networking sites. Facebook’s solution is not scalable to less widely spoken languages because even languages with many millions of speakers, such as Spanish, have flawed implementations on Facebook.Item Facebook Blues(2018-11-07) O'Neill, ConnerItem Facebook use in college students : facing the learning motivation of young adults(2012-08) Huang, Chu-Jen; Schallert, Diane L.; Falbo, ToniThis study explored college students’ perceptions of Facebook, focusing on their views of Facebook as an informal learning environment, how the features of Facebook motivate students’ learning, and the relationship between motivation and interest triggered when using Facebook. Participants were surveyed via an online survey program in order to examine whether their perceptions and experiences with Facebook (Madge, Wellens, & Hooley, 2009) and how the features of Facebook motivated users’ learning. This study provides evidence to support the idea that interest and motivated actions on Facebook are related. For example, students mostly read (click) posts that are related to things they are learning and therefore they are mostly self-motivated to reply to posts in which they are interested. In addition, in support of the four-phase model of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), students’ positive feelings, which is interest, plays a crucial role in developing individual interest which leads to self-regulated learning.Item Facebook’s effect on emotional reactivity to in-lab peer feedback manipulations(2016-08) Steele, Ann Katharine; Telch, Michael Joseph; Carlson, Caryn; Gosling, Samuel; Hixon, John G.; Holahan, Charles J.; Pennebaker, James; Burke, MoiraPeer feedback is a foundational currency on the social networking platform Facebook. Facebook users share photographs and personal updates their friends can then “like” or comment on – feedback often seen by users’ friends. Negative peer feedback on Facebook can have severe consequences: media outlets have attributed teen suicides to bullying on Facebook, and some worry Facebook is dangerous for young people. While Facebook provides an additional channel for peer feedback, it is unclear whether feedback on Facebook, in the absence of face-to-face feedback, prompts emotional reactivity. We conducted three studies investigating the emotional effects of Facebook-mediated peer feedback on university students. In each we measured affect and self-esteem before and after controlled manipulations of two factors: feedback valence and communication channel. In the first study, participants believed they were evaluated to determine whether they were “likeable”. We compared participants’ emotional reactivity to acceptance or rejection feedback (feedback valence) delivered after a peer evaluation manipulation occurring either on Facebook or face-to-face (communication channel). In the second study, participants were told they would join a group in determining the “most likeable” student amongst them. We compared participants’ emotional reactivity to supportive or bullying feedback (feedback valence) delivered on Facebook either privately or publicly (communication channel). In this study we additionally measured changes in participants’ perceptions of their own social status and the social status of the person delivering feedback. In the third study, we tested whether demographic and psychosocial variables moderated the effects found in the second study. We found no appreciable differences between face-to-face and Facebook-mediated feedback. Bullying on the Facebook Profile dampened self-esteem more than bullying through Facebook’s private Messenger client, which had no appreciable effect on self-esteem. Moderation analysis revealed that only people reporting depressive symptoms indicated that bullying on the Facebook Profile dampened their self-esteem. These results suggest Facebook does not itself amplify or blunt the emotional effects of peer feedback, and instead confirms the important role individual differences play in emotional reactivity. Individual and environmental triggers of emotional reactivity, such as psychosocial vulnerabilities and sociometric status, may remain the best targets for reducing the negative effects of peer victimization.Item Fake News Can't Be Flagged Down(2019-11-05) Wyatt, Sloan; Dannenmaier, Molly
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