Search results

Title: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hearing on data privacy and protection
Date: 2018-04-10
Collection: G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
Description: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies about the way the social media and networking company has handled user data. In his opening statement before the joint Senate committee hearing, Zuckerberg says the company is working on steps to prevent tools from being used for fake news, foreign interference, and hate speech. Zuckerberg apologizes for the way Facebook handled user data security and is grilled by members of the Committee over issues of data sharing, privacy, his business model,...
Show moreFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies about the way the social media and networking company has handled user data. In his opening statement before the joint Senate committee hearing, Zuckerberg says the company is working on steps to prevent tools from being used for fake news, foreign interference, and hate speech. Zuckerberg apologizes for the way Facebook handled user data security and is grilled by members of the Committee over issues of data sharing, privacy, his business model, advertiser disclosure, and fake news. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) chairs the hearing.
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Title: The informativeness of consumer opinions on firm fundamentals : evidence from Amazon.com
Creator: Jin, Shunyao
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This study examines whether online consumer product reviews contain information that is associated with firms' earnings and stock returns around earnings announcements. Ex ante, it is unclear whether consumer reviews are useful to investors because consumer reviews have not been easily accessible or widely disseminated. Based on 18,794,143 consumer reviews posted on Amazon.com during 1996-2014, I construct quarterly measures of abnormal tone and abnormal rating of consumer reviews and link...
Show more"This study examines whether online consumer product reviews contain information that is associated with firms' earnings and stock returns around earnings announcements. Ex ante, it is unclear whether consumer reviews are useful to investors because consumer reviews have not been easily accessible or widely disseminated. Based on 18,794,143 consumer reviews posted on Amazon.com during 1996-2014, I construct quarterly measures of abnormal tone and abnormal rating of consumer reviews and link them to earnings surprises and earnings announcement returns. Focusing on concurrent earnings surprises, I find that negative abnormal tone is significantly associated with more negative earnings surprises while positive abnormal tone is not associated with positive earnings surprises. My analyses of abnormal returns around concurrent earnings announcements show that negative abnormal tone is positively associated with earnings announcement returns, but positive abnormal tone is not. Finally, I find that disagreements in review ratings (measured as the standard deviation of consumer review ratings) are positively associated with unexplained trading volume around earnings announcements, while disagreements in review tone (measured as the standard deviation of consumer review tone) are not. Taken together, these findings suggest that abnormal review tone is more useful than abnormal review rating in explaining concurrent earnings surprises and earnings announcement returns, but the disagreements reflected through the distribution of consumer ratings is more informative about the unexplained trading volume around earnings announcements. My results suggest that both the rating and the tone of consumer reviews are informative, but along different dimensions."--Page ii.
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Title: News organizations' news link sharing strategies on Twitter : economic theory and computational text analysis
Creator: Pak, Chankyung
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation explores news organizations' social media strategies to disseminate their news stories as emergent quasi-editorial decisions. As in traditional editorial decisions, how news organizations share their news links on social media determines the visibility of certain stories and makes certain aspects of news stand out or be unobtrusive. By illustrating how these practices on Twitter resemble and deviate from traditional ones, I argue that social media open up a new path by which...
Show moreThis dissertation explores news organizations' social media strategies to disseminate their news stories as emergent quasi-editorial decisions. As in traditional editorial decisions, how news organizations share their news links on social media determines the visibility of certain stories and makes certain aspects of news stand out or be unobtrusive. By illustrating how these practices on Twitter resemble and deviate from traditional ones, I argue that social media open up a new path by which news organizations mediate news information, relatively free from journalistic norms and routines embedded in the older media and traditional editorial processes.To answer a fundamental question, ?Is there a reason for a news organization to be strategic on social media?? I presented an economic model based on competition for limited attention of social media users. In this model, the scarcity of users' attention capacity relative to the volume of information propagated via social media creates competition between news\ organizations. The model illustrates that one news organization's attempt to capture users' attention undermines the chance for other organizations to do so. Thus, a news organization should strategically decide how many news links it is going to share considering how many others would share. A simple empirical test confirms the model's prediction that news organizations will reduce the proportion of news links they share on social media as more news is published by all organizations. Computational text analyses shed light on the more qualitative aspects of news dissemination strategies on social media. First, using a recently developed machine learning technique, Structural Topic Model (STM), I investigate news organizations' selective news link sharing as a new layer of gatekeeping. The result indicates that the common concern that commercialized media drives news toward human interest rather than newsworthiness is crystallized more visibly on Twitter than on news websites. Further, a comparison of the selective link sharing across different media types shows that topic selection differs depending on a given topic's popularity on Twitter and a news organization's specialty in the topic. Even though a news organization may consider a certain topic to be important in its editorial decision, so that the organization has become specialized in that topic throughout its history, it would not share much about the topic on Twitter because popularity in the short term dominates link sharing strategies.I found that regional media convey less negative sentiment through news stories than other types of news organizations. This seems to be associated with the less controversial news topics they frequently cover compared to national and online media. However, news paraphrasing for Twitter homogenizes emotional framing across different types of organizations. In particular, regional media catch up to other types by adding even more negativity on news paraphrases for Twitter. This finding provides another significant indication that social media strategies are governed by different logic than that which governs traditional editorial practices. Major empirical findings provide evidence that the social media strategies of news organizations are already functioning as a separate information-mediating process. I argue that the distinctiveness of social media strategies as quasi-editorial decisions raises a practical need to publicly monitor news organizations' behaviors on social media to learn whether they will provide news that is informative and diverse enough for news readers' informed decisions. The automated data collection schemes and computational text analysis techniques I adopted in this dissertation will inform the design of infrastructure for such public monitoring.
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Title: Social Media Disclosure and Analysts as Information Intermediaries
Creator: Lee, Kwangjin
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Using a sample of S&P 500 firms over the period 2012–2014 and Twitter data, I investigate the effect of social media disclosure on financial analysts as information intermediaries. On one hand, social media is a low-cost mechanism for direct communications from the firm to its investors, so may substitute for information intermediation by analysts. On the other hand, following Mosaic theory (Pozen, 2005), analysts (i.e., the crowd of the experts) have a comparative advantage at placing...
Show moreUsing a sample of S&P 500 firms over the period 2012–2014 and Twitter data, I investigate the effect of social media disclosure on financial analysts as information intermediaries. On one hand, social media is a low-cost mechanism for direct communications from the firm to its investors, so may substitute for information intermediation by analysts. On the other hand, following Mosaic theory (Pozen, 2005), analysts (i.e., the crowd of the experts) have a comparative advantage at placing relevant pieces of information into the broader mosaic, implying that the importance of analysts as information intermediaries may increase with the volume of tweets released by the firm and by the crowd of “the public”. I find firms’ financial tweets are associated with larger analyst following and lower analyst forecast error. This finding is consistent with analysts using social media information as a complement to other information sources, providing richer analyses to investors. I also find that the market reaction to analysts' forecast revisions varies positively with the level of social media activity. Together, these findings suggest that social media disclosure serves as a complement to information processing by analysts, as opposed to a substitute. This paper contributes to the literature on financial analysts by providing evidence that even in the era of social media disclosure, the role of analysts as information intermediaries remains important for the efficient functioning of capital markets. It also contributes to the literature on the impact of social media on capital markets by providing a deeper understanding of the impact of unregulated and unstructured disclosure on the general information environment of financial markets.
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Title: Resistance is not futile : exploring user resistance in technical communication
Creator: Nguy1EBDn,0302 Minh Tâm (Graduate of Michigan State University)
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Despite ongoing investments to technology and usability in technical communication—and despite ongoing commitments to humanistic perspectives concerning those two domains—scholars of technical communication have yet to explore the topic of “user resistance” explicitly. User resistance gained prominence in fields like Information Technology (IT), Management Information Systems (MIS), and related fields and has traditionally been conceptualized as oppositional, hostile, or adversarial—a...
Show moreDespite ongoing investments to technology and usability in technical communication—and despite ongoing commitments to humanistic perspectives concerning those two domains—scholars of technical communication have yet to explore the topic of “user resistance” explicitly. User resistance gained prominence in fields like Information Technology (IT), Management Information Systems (MIS), and related fields and has traditionally been conceptualized as oppositional, hostile, or adversarial—a phenomenon meant to be avoided before it occurs. Because of this, traditional definitions of user resistance value the systems with which users engage, with little work theorizing the contexts, behaviors, and agencies of actual users. My dissertation responds to this lack of a user-centered approach by offering a thick literature review that examines how resistance is defined and situated across a range of scholarship. From this literature review, I offer a theory of user resistance that draws on the concept of “everyday resistance” (Vinthagen & Johanssen, 2012) to value users and their contexts. By situating the work done on resistance and providing a theoretical concept of user resistance, I then rhetorically analyze two examples of user resistance on the social networking site, Tumblr to illustrate how and why users resist in dynamic online spaces. The first example demonstrates how users resist within a system to design changes and the second illustrates the how users resist systems of power and oppression created and upheld (implicitly and explicitly) by the site developers and designers. Through an analysis and discussion of these examples, my dissertation seeks to start conversations about user resistance in the domain of technical communication and pivot existing conversations outside the field from a negative phenomenon meant to be avoided before it occurs, to a productive area of inquiry for technology design. Ultimately, I argue that attending to user resistance allows for a more nuanced and engaged approach to user-centered, participatory, and ethical design principles. By examining user resistance, technical communication researchers and practitioners can attend to the local, contextual, and most importantly dissonant needs of users.
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Title: Social influence on the Net : a mindset approach
Creator: Sah, Young June
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Social media afford a context within which users interact with other users. Recognizing variations in contexts afforded by social media, the current study classified social media into two types, i.e., relational media, which allow users to build individual social connections, and categorical media, which support group-based connections. Effects of relational and categorical media were examined, employing a mindset approach as a theoretical framework. The mindset approach manifests the...
Show moreSocial media afford a context within which users interact with other users. Recognizing variations in contexts afforded by social media, the current study classified social media into two types, i.e., relational media, which allow users to build individual social connections, and categorical media, which support group-based connections. Effects of relational and categorical media were examined, employing a mindset approach as a theoretical framework. The mindset approach manifests the situated nature of cognition, emphasizing individuals’ tendency to harness immediate contexts in meaning-making processing. Based on this postulation, the current study proposed that social media induced distinctive mindsets, entailing self-concept, goal-orientation, and concrete-abstract level in perceiving others.The current study also examined effects of social media on users’ group identification and belief change. Based on previous literature on social identity, it is proposed that distinctive mechanisms determine group identification in relational and categorical media. For relational media users, perception of individual relations to other users was expected to mediate the effect of relational media on group identification. In contrast, for categorical media users, perception of being a member of a group and perception of a homogeneous group were expected to mediate the effect of categorical media on group identification. Furthermore, based on the automatic social influence literature, the present study proposed that relational and categorical media, compared to non-social media, induce greater belief changes, and the belief changes are mediated by group identification. The predictions were tested using an online experiment (N = 705), in which participants used a mock-up social media, in which they formed social connections of either relational or categorical type, or used it without building social connection. Participants read others’ posts and comments revealing their opinions on health-related issues. Participants’ mindset, social perception, group identification, and belief changes were assessed. Results revealed that using social media influenced participants’ mindset: The relational group reported greater in-group self-concept and considered in-group goals more important, and used less concrete terms when describing their group members. Also, the categorical group considered in-group goals more important. Furthermore, using social media influenced group identification: The relational and categorical group reported greater group identification than the control group. Yet, the relative contributions of predictors of group identification differed across the conditions. For the relational media, relational perception was a dominant determinant of group identification and homogeneity perception was the least influential. For the categorical group, homogeneity perception was a predictor as significant as others. Lastly, effects of social media use on belief changes was not different across the social media type.The current study contributes to our understanding of how social media influence users by employing a novel theoretical framework, mindset approach, in examining subtle differences generated by social media. The mindset approach enables us to find nuanced effects: Different types of social media afford distinctive mindsets and psychological mechanisms for group identification.
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Title: Measuring boundary spanning success in enterprise social media
Creator: Yu, Ya-Wen
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The study aims to explore empirical proxies of boundary spanning success by developing measurement for hierarchical alignment, goal alignment, and time lag for three boundary spanning activities occurring in enterprise social media. The study employs Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and Linear Models (LMs) to test the effect of distinct boundary- spanning types and tie strength on each of the success measures. The findings show that strongly tied individuals who engage in information search...
Show moreThe study aims to explore empirical proxies of boundary spanning success by developing measurement for hierarchical alignment, goal alignment, and time lag for three boundary spanning activities occurring in enterprise social media. The study employs Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and Linear Models (LMs) to test the effect of distinct boundary- spanning types and tie strength on each of the success measures. The findings show that strongly tied individuals who engage in information search activity can achieve boundary spanning success, as it is much easier for them to get the response in a short time compared to more weakly tied individuals. Trust as measured by symmetric (strong) tie thus can achieve boundary spanning success. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.
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Title: Sentiment mapping : point pattern analysis of sentiment classified twitter data
Creator: Camacho, Kenneth
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Varieties of sentiment analysis and point pattern analysis are being applied to social media data to address a broad range of questions, but they are rarely used in tandem. This study outlines a methodology that combines these two approaches to analyze the spatial distribution of sentiment classified opinions f\rom social media data. Twitter postings on natural gas were downloaded and classified using a variety of sentiment analysis methods into positive, negative, and neutral categories. The...
Show moreVarieties of sentiment analysis and point pattern analysis are being applied to social media data to address a broad range of questions, but they are rarely used in tandem. This study outlines a methodology that combines these two approaches to analyze the spatial distribution of sentiment classified opinions f\rom social media data. Twitter postings on natural gas were downloaded and classified using a variety of sentiment analysis methods into positive, negative, and neutral categories. The classifications were then converted into spatial points using the location data associated with the tweets, whereby point pattern analysis techniques were applied to the points to examine the patterns of positive and negative tweet locations with respect to a background rate of neutral tweets across the contiguous Unites States. Basic temporal visualizations were also constructed to explore the variations in sentiment over time. Considerations are discussed on the accuracy limitations of sentiment analysis and the potential for a variety of applications using these techniques. With careful implementation, this methodology can open the door to a range of spatiotemporal analyses of social media sentiment.
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Title: An examination of WeChat : predictors of news use on a closed messaging platform
Creator: Peng, Zhao
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "News use on social media channels enables users to actively select and read news based on their interest and needs. The present research studied news use behaviors on the closed-messaging platform WeChat. Concepts from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Usage Model and Task-Tech Theory were used to test what perceptional and technological factors influence users' WeChat news behaviors. Results showed that the perceived fitness between task and technology, effort expectancy, facilitating...
Show more"News use on social media channels enables users to actively select and read news based on their interest and needs. The present research studied news use behaviors on the closed-messaging platform WeChat. Concepts from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Usage Model and Task-Tech Theory were used to test what perceptional and technological factors influence users' WeChat news behaviors. Results showed that the perceived fitness between task and technology, effort expectancy, facilitating and social influence significantly related to Chinese students' WeChat news use while performance expectancy did not predict news use behavior."--Page ii.
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Title: Factors that affect group generative collaborations in enterprise social media
Creator: Averkiadi, Elisavet
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Innovation is closely linked to a company's ability to survive and thrive. As a result, companies are becoming increasingly interested in group generative collaborations - the conception of novel ideas and solutions through group exchanges. This exploratory study investigates the prevalence of generative collaborations in ESM-based groups and identifies antecedents of such collaborations in groups. Additionally, the nature (i.e. language) of these collaborations is explored. A mixed methods...
Show moreInnovation is closely linked to a company's ability to survive and thrive. As a result, companies are becoming increasingly interested in group generative collaborations - the conception of novel ideas and solutions through group exchanges. This exploratory study investigates the prevalence of generative collaborations in ESM-based groups and identifies antecedents of such collaborations in groups. Additionally, the nature (i.e. language) of these collaborations is explored. A mixed methods approach is employed for this study, comprised of a content analysis of text-based data from an ESM platform, building a machine learning classifier model, and a predictive regression model. The results of this exploratory study show that approximately 44% of exchanges on an ESM platform contain elements of generative collaborations. Furthermore, the predictive negative binomial regression model illustrates that a group's visibility (closed or open), the bonding and bridging behaviors of group members, and the size of a group are significant antecedents for group generative collaborations. These outcomes are valuable insights that help advance our theoretical understanding of ESM-based group generative collaborations and could also help improve these collaboration behaviors in the context of ESM platforms, and possibly beyond.
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Title: Toward a sustainable online Q&A community via design decisions based on individuals' expertise : evidence from simulations
Creator: Liang, Yuyang
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Online Q&A communities have become an important channel for internet users to seek information and share knowledge. Existing research extensively focuses on the individual components of Q&A communities, such as content quality and user characteristics, but fails to provide a comprehensive understanding of the communities as complex social systems, whose behavior depends on the interactions of a large number of social agents. In this dissertation, I integrated the key components in online Q&A...
Show moreOnline Q&A communities have become an important channel for internet users to seek information and share knowledge. Existing research extensively focuses on the individual components of Q&A communities, such as content quality and user characteristics, but fails to provide a comprehensive understanding of the communities as complex social systems, whose behavior depends on the interactions of a large number of social agents. In this dissertation, I integrated the key components in online Q&A communities via agent-based modeling to provide a systematic examination of Q&A communities and help inform better community design to manage users' expertise. I conducted computer simulations and virtual experiments based on existing findings and theories as well as data from a large online Q&A community to understand how two design decisions, including expertise indication and question routing, influence the sustainability of a Q&A community as well as result in possible trade-offs involved in implementing these design decisions. Results indicate that these design decisions are likely to lead to a larger membership size and a higher rate of solved questions. In addition, implementing design decisions will also influence the member structure of a community. Question routing tends to prioritize experts' needs and benefits while expertise indication is more likely to attract beginners. These findings suggest that these design decisions should be leveraged according to the development stage a community is in. This research also demonstrates the value of agent-based modeling in terms of generating insights for Q&A community design by showing the underlying structural outcomes of the design decisions.
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Title: Seeking or encountering news on the Web : the role of need for cognition and need to evaluate
Creator: Lee, Heysung
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Previous literature has dealt with news consumption patterns on the web, but not many attempts have done to clarify individual differences by focusing on a role of personality variables. This study suggests that high need for cognition will lead digital news consumers to actively seek out news websites to get political information, whereas low need for cognition will lead them to passively encounter political news on social media. The results of the online survey indicate that need for...
Show morePrevious literature has dealt with news consumption patterns on the web, but not many attempts have done to clarify individual differences by focusing on a role of personality variables. This study suggests that high need for cognition will lead digital news consumers to actively seek out news websites to get political information, whereas low need for cognition will lead them to passively encounter political news on social media. The results of the online survey indicate that need for cognition does not predict news consumption on the web, but only need to evaluate positively correlates to news website usage. Also, both variables positively correlate to active sharing and commenting on political information in social media, attention to political news, and political knowledge. -- Abstract.
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Title: Effects of organization-level internet governance : a mixed-method case study approach to social media governance
Creator: Brooks, Brandon A.
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: As more and more people utilize mobile devices, wearable technology, and other Internet protocol (IP) based communication systems, the effects of Internet governance on individual users will need to be better understood. Important aspects of the Internet are coordinated at multiple levels, including macro-level global institutions like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), organizational-level governance, and in the form of emerging norms at the level of individual...
Show moreAs more and more people utilize mobile devices, wearable technology, and other Internet protocol (IP) based communication systems, the effects of Internet governance on individual users will need to be better understood. Important aspects of the Internet are coordinated at multiple levels, including macro-level global institutions like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), organizational-level governance, and in the form of emerging norms at the level of individual users. Global organizations govern architectural and other high-level aspects of the Internet like domain names and Internet protocol address allocation. Most Internet governance research has focused on the working of these governance bodies, but little research has dealt with the effects of their decisions and of organizational level governance on individual users. Individual users’ experiences are mediated by organizational governance rules within the Internet. For example, Facebook operates within the confines of the Internet and other organizations operate within the rules and affordances of Facebook. Individual users’ experiences on the Internet are mediated by Facebook, but also by other organizations using social media. I position my dissertation within the theoretical framework of this broader Internet governance research agenda, but focus on the organizational level, which is not well understood yet. My primary focus is meant to be an initial step in examining Internet governance effects on individual users by exploring whether organizational social media governance has measurable effects on individual users. I examine this question using a novel mixed-method research design beginning with a case study of a county government followed by a quantitative empirical inquiry. Interviews and document analysis were used in the case study. Facebook page data were collected through a partnership with the county. Using multilevel regression analysis, my findings suggest that the organization was able to govern the internal use of social media, but the effects of governance on user engagement (measured by likes, comments and shares from the public on Facebook) with citizens turned out to be weaker than hypothesized. However, the findings show the importance of organizational engagement in generating discussion with the public and sharing organizational content. When developing social media policies, it is important to consider how account level cues and message level cues are perceived by the public and specific audience of the account. My study shows that more theoretical work needs to be done in conceptualizing the behaviors of individuals as they relate to macro- and organizational-level Internet governance. For organizations developing social media policy, my study suggests the use of flexible policies that can be used if needed to achieve compliance.
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Title: Engagement in online brand communities and marketing research online communities (MROCs)
Creator: Baldus, Brian J.
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The focus of this dissertation is to develop insights regarding the use of online brand communities (i.e., discussion forums, blogs, or other social media sites centered around a single brand or branded product) and marketing research online communities (MROCs) as strategic marketing assets to influence brand and community outcomes. This is one of the first academic research studies of MROCs. Technological advances in the last decade have fundamentally changed the tools available to marketers...
Show moreThe focus of this dissertation is to develop insights regarding the use of online brand communities (i.e., discussion forums, blogs, or other social media sites centered around a single brand or branded product) and marketing research online communities (MROCs) as strategic marketing assets to influence brand and community outcomes. This is one of the first academic research studies of MROCs. Technological advances in the last decade have fundamentally changed the tools available to marketers and enabled them to socially interact with a broader base of consumers. I developed and validated scales to measure the diverse motivations online brand community members have to participate in online brand communities using 5 rounds of quantitative and qualitative data collection from a total of 660 online brand community members. I found that there are 11 distinct motivations online brand community members have to interact with online brand communities. Additionally, I developed and tested a model to test the effects of fit between marketing activities and community member motivations to leverage social dynamics and influence brand and community outcomes using longitudinal surveys and secondary data from 256 members of 8 MROCs. There is strong support that online brand communities and MROCs can be used as strategic marketing assets to enhance brand assessments (i.e., brand commitment and oppositional brand loyalty), supportive brand behaviors (i.e., word-of-mouth, defending the brand, and willingness to pay a price premium) and supportive community behaviors (i.e., participation intentions and community participation). In addition, I also found counterintuitive results for the leveraging effects of marketing activities and engagement. Overall, this research contributes to the strategic marketing literature, marketing practice, marketing research firms, and marketing consultants by assessing the degree to which online brand communities and MROCs can be used as strategic marketing assets to influence a loose hierarchy of effects for brand and community outcomes. Furthermore, this research contributes to the relationship marketing literature by classifying the motivations online brand community members have to form relationships with firms, brands, and other community members.
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Title: Socio-technical barriers and benefits of leveraging social media within the Writing Center and the classroom at Michigan State University : understanding the conflicts caused by different modes of production on group behavior
Creator: Ullmann, Noah John David
Date: 2010
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Online discussion forums and the effects of ostracism and synchronicity on psychological needs, social perceptions, and motivation
Creator: Bedell, Karen V.
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Feeling ostracized in the presence of others threatens psychological needs and mood but little is known about feeling ostracized online. Three studies examined online social ostracism." -- Abstract.

Title: Social media and user engagement : a self determination perspective
Creator: Khan, Muhammad Laeeq-ur-Rehman
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Industry professionals and scholars in academia have probed the question of how best to engage audiences. Social media has facilitated various business opportunities as well as provided organizations with platforms through which they can engage their stakeholders. A key issue surrounding customer engagement is how it is conceptualized and what factors facilitate and support user interaction on social media. In this dissertation, the Self Determination framework served as the theoretical...
Show moreIndustry professionals and scholars in academia have probed the question of how best to engage audiences. Social media has facilitated various business opportunities as well as provided organizations with platforms through which they can engage their stakeholders. A key issue surrounding customer engagement is how it is conceptualized and what factors facilitate and support user interaction on social media. In this dissertation, the Self Determination framework served as the theoretical foundation for understanding customer engagement on Facebook brand pages. The research model was based on the premise that individuals are likely to symbolically engage on social media when they feel self-determined to do so based on three key factors: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Through a survey of students at a large Midwestern university (n=745) this dissertation found: 1) social media self-efficacy positively predicts symbolic customer engagement in the form of sharing on Facebook brand pages; 2) time spent on Facebook is a positive predictor of liking, commenting, and sharing; 3) social media experience is a negative predictor of symbolic customer engagement in the form of liking and commenting; 4) social skills negatively predict symbolic customer engagement in the form of commenting, and 5) customer relationship with the brand and community predict symbolic customer engagement in terms of liking, commenting and sharing. This research contributes to the body of knowledge in the realm of communication and marketing through strengthening our understanding of how online brand communities and relationships serve as strategic assets for organizations in building brand engagement. Findings in this dissertation are limited by the characteristics of the population studied. Further research is recommended to better understand the different types of engagement and how such engagement impacts user perceptions.
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Title: The Black-Latin@ collective : identity negotiation among Black Latin@s on Facebook
Creator: Donawa, Violeta A.
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The purpose of this work is to explore the relevance of race as reflected online via the social networking nites (SNS), Facebook. Specifically, a Sociological Discourse Analysis of The Black-Latin@ Collective `group' discussions on Facebook from 2007-2008 was conducted to understand whether Afrolatino/as' dialogues engage constructions of race as evident in U.S. and Latin American discourses. In these discussions, evidence suggests that AfroLatino/as negotiate situational insider-outsider...
Show moreThe purpose of this work is to explore the relevance of race as reflected online via the social networking nites (SNS), Facebook. Specifically, a Sociological Discourse Analysis of The Black-Latin@ Collective `group' discussions on Facebook from 2007-2008 was conducted to understand whether Afrolatino/as' dialogues engage constructions of race as evident in U.S. and Latin American discourses. In these discussions, evidence suggests that AfroLatino/as negotiate situational insider-outsider statuses within AfroLatina/o, Latino/a, and African-American spaces based on race, color, and language use. These Facebook users expressed finding community within a special interest group, though conversations encompassed varying levels of support, and sometimes conflicting approaches to addressing colorism and racial discrimination among Latino/as. The study's findings also suggest that agents of socialization such as family, work environments, and media reproduced racial hierarchies and impacted users' perceptions of race and color. Commenters challenged the Latino/a homogenization reflected in the U.S. Latino/a-Black-White racial trichotomy. Finally, participants discussed the complexity of adopting the label `AfroLatino/a.' Overall, findings illustrate that as U.S. demographics changes, race as it intersects with other identities is continuously relevant in everyday life.
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Title: Embodied rhetoric in scenes of production : the case of the coffeehouse
Creator: Pigg, Stacey Lynn
Date: 2011
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Embodied Rhetoric in Scenes of Production: The Case of the Coffeehouse develops and enacts a framework for conceptualizing and studying rhetoric and writing practice. This framework develops insights of theorists like Michel De Certeau, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Bruno Latour who call for attention to the actions, practices, and intentionality of active bodies for meaning making. The framework further places the insights of these theorists in a socially and materially rich context that emphasizes...
Show moreEmbodied Rhetoric in Scenes of Production: The Case of the Coffeehouse develops and enacts a framework for conceptualizing and studying rhetoric and writing practice. This framework develops insights of theorists like Michel De Certeau, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Bruno Latour who call for attention to the actions, practices, and intentionality of active bodies for meaning making. The framework further places the insights of these theorists in a socially and materially rich context that emphasizes the role of non-human actors in scenes of production, including writing technologies, places, and times. I enact this theoretical framework through an empirical approach for accessing the everyday practice and experience of rhetoric and writing in a local Michigan coffee shop. This empirical approach focused on the Gone Wired Café in Lansing, Michigan and drew on field observations and videotaped writing sessions to access places and moments of bodily action, as well as interviews to collect individuals' stories of use and routine. Through this analysis I argue that the coffeehouse embodied is not only a civic institution, but also a workplace where writers construct individualized writing spaces around mobile technologies. Central to this work that takes place in the contemporary coffeehouse is the role of spatial practices related to maintaining proximity and distance to objects that matter to writing--including people and technologies. Coffeehouse writers often go to great lengths to preserve a level of interaction with people and objects that facilitates work but maintains sociality, avoiding lengthy face-to-face conversations in favor of brief interchanges through social media. Drawing on the moment-by-moment unfolding of participants' work sessions in dialogue with their stories, I find that coffeehouse writing unfolds in repetitive, patterned, and systematic ways. In routine writing tasks, participants draw on habits from other parts of their lives and draw on writing practices that have been successful in the past. As they draw on common temporal topoi including crunch time and routine activity, writing emerges as an ongoing system of arrangement and creation that builds on stores of past behaviors and materials. Finally, many coffeehouse writers use social media to structure their writing time/space, indicating that contemporary social media is more that just distraction in the coffeehouse, even for academic writers who merge it as a planned part of writing activity or who "wander" when facing non-routine writing tasks. I demonstrate how acts of digital connecting are central to work done in the coffeehouse, both as a contemporary backdrop for mobile composing and as a central tool for building relationships and audiences for writing. The implications of this activity, and of this way of looking, suggest that we may indeed benefit from using the virtual/physical body and its movements as an indicator of rhetorical practice as the nature of work and workplaces rapidly changes. The research further suggests that we consider the role of knowledge work practices in writing, especially as we design contemporary pedagogical interventions
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Title: Intentionality assessments and the evaluation of online behavior
Creator: DeAndrea, David C.
Date: 2011
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: INTENTIONALITY ASSESSMENTS AND THE EVALUATION OF ONLINE BEHAVIORByDavid C. DeAndreaIn many online settings, the content that appears on a webpage is created by both website owners and viewers. This study employed the folk-model of intentionality to examine the process through which people evaluate collectively created web content. Specifically, this study investigated how website owners can alter the extent to which they are held accountable for content posted by others by responding to the...
Show moreINTENTIONALITY ASSESSMENTS AND THE EVALUATION OF ONLINE BEHAVIORByDavid C. DeAndreaIn many online settings, the content that appears on a webpage is created by both website owners and viewers. This study employed the folk-model of intentionality to examine the process through which people evaluate collectively created web content. Specifically, this study investigated how website owners can alter the extent to which they are held accountable for content posted by others by responding to the content. Results indicated that subjects perceived website owners who responded to content generated by others as wanting and intending to share the content to a greater extent than website owners who did not respond to the content posted by others. In turn, perceptions of desire and intent influenced assessments of intentionality and blame. Ultimately judgments of blame were associated with interpersonal evaluations of the website owners. The results illustrate the explanatory utility of the folk-model of intentionality in a new context, help clarify how components of the model interrelate, and underscore the potential for more parsimonious models of blame.
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