Girl gamers, while a substantial part of the gaming population, are often largely ignored in both the gaming industry and academic literature. In particular, there have been few investigations to date on what comprises the identity of a girl gamer, particularly outside the context of gameplay. To that end, the current study aims to investigate how girl gamers enact their identities as girl gamers on Twitter, a social network site. Eight Twitter accounts whose users self-identified as either Gamer Girls or Girl Gamers on a Twitter user directory where identified and the profiles and tweets of each collected for a two week period. This data was then analyzed according to Hecht’s communication theory of identity in order to determine how girl gamers enact their identity in an online context.

The object of this master’s dissertation has been to investigate one-person enterprisers’ (OPE) experiences of conducting both personal identity and brand at social network sites (SNS). The purposes of this research have been to elaborate on sociological theories of brand and identity in a network society context and to present hypotheses on how SNS can be developed to empower all OPEs. Since this field is rather unexplored in sociological research, and because it is the experiences of the OPEs that are the focus of the research, ethnographic methods, i.e. qualitative interviews, were chosen. These interviews were then analysed, primarily through Erving Goffman’s theory of self-presentation, Manuel Castells’s theory of identity, and the sociological concept of life-conduct deriving from Max Weber. The findings provoked both theoretical and empirical conclusions. The theoretical hypothesis is that Castells’s and Goffman’s respective theories should be used as back and front end interpretations of everyday life conduct. The empiric hypothesis provoked is that some OPEs have a strategic (as opposed to a sincere) approach to SNS. These OPEs are experiencing alienation and anomie. To manage this, SNS need to focus more on tools for social communication and less on methods for making SNS ends in and of themselves.

This study explores how people with medical concerns seek and perceive social support via Weibo—a social network site in China. The study conducts both a content analysis and an in-depth interview for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of social support on Weibo. Altogether 2548 postings and replies from four Weibo support groups—the Breast Cancer Group, the Arthritis Group, Baby Eczema Group and Children’s Health Group—were categorized into 9 types with a deductive thematic analysis; twenty participants from these four Weibo groups were recruited in the in-depth interview to explore how people seek and perceive social support from Weibo. Weibo stands out as a platform for people to exchange social support for its convenience, multiple functions, and strong ability to connect each other. Though there are some disadvantages of Weibo social support identified by Weibo users, they can, to some extent, be avoided and reduced under appropriate administration.

In the context of public debates about the ‘sexualization’ of ‘tween’ (preteen) girls and their use of social network sites (SNSs), this study explores girls’ online practices, experiences and reflections of their engagement with Facebook. This project is part of a growing body of research that prioritizes talk ‘with’ girls, rather than ‘about’ girls, as a way of contextualizing issues related to their girlhood. I argue that preteen girls’ identities on SNSs can be reimagined as cyborg-subjectivities as girls disrupt binaries through ongoing discursive negotiations of gender and sexuality depending on moment to moment online/offline interactions. Utilizing examples from an online ethnographic observation of eighteen 12-13 year old girls in Christchurch, New Zealand, I discuss how these girls constituted online subject positions through co-constructive relationships with friends. I explore how girls utilized SNS technology to explore and engage with discourses of gender and sexuality. I discuss how girls’ ‘played’ with both conventional and alternative femininities and sexualities in their online photographs and discuss how these images resist classification as ‘sexy/innocent’, ‘children/teens’ and online/offline. This research also reconsiders how identity is understood on SNSs and utilizes a poststructuralist theoretical framework to explore how online identities are embodied and ‘citational’ of shared online/offline subject positions. In addition to ethnographic observation, this research explores girls’ talk and reflections about their Facebook practices through a focus group discussion and a qualitative questionnaire.

Girl gamers, while a substantial part of the gaming population, are often largely ignored in both the gaming industry and academic literature. In particular, there have been few investigations to date on what comprises the identity of a girl gamer, particularly outside the context of gameplay. To that end, the current study aims to investigate how girl gamers enact their identities as girl gamers on Twitter, a social network site. Eight Twitter accounts whose users self-identified as either Gamer Girls or Girl Gamers on a Twitter user directory where identified and the profiles and tweets of each collected for a two week period. This data was then analyzed according to Hecht’s communication theory of identity in order to determine how girl gamers enact their identity in an online context.

Esta pesquisa propõe-se a estudar a apropriação do aplicativo Snapchat pelo Portal UOL para produção de conteúdo jornalístico. O foco está em observar as stories, que são narrativas criadas a partir de fragmentos de até 10 segundos que desaparecem após 24 horas, produzidas pelo perfil do UOL. Para isso, selecionamos as stories que foram produzidas sobre política e republicados no site TV UOL, totalizando 28 vídeos com 657 fragmentos, chamados de snaps. A análise empírica foi dividida em duas etapas: uma de caráter quantitativo, que busca observar a ocorrência de elementos previamente mapeados nos snaps; e outra qualitativa, cujo olhar recai sobre como esses snaps são estruturados para criar as stories. Como resultados, apontamos elementos frequentes, como o uso de snaps nativos e a preferência por vídeos frente a outros formatos multimídia, como fotos, textos e áudios. Também observamos que as stories não seguem um padrão e aliam formatos narrativos diferentes, como cobertura do local dos fatos, entrevistas e bastidores. / This research proposes to study the appropriation of the Snapchat application through the UOL Portal for the production of journalistic content. The focus is on watching stories, which are narratives created from fragments of up to 10 seconds that disappear after 24 hours, produced by the UOL profile. For that, we selected the stories that were produced on politics and republished on the site TV UOL, totaling 28 videos with 657 fragments, called snaps. The empirical analysis was divided in two stages: one of quantitative character, which seeks to observe the occurrence of previously mapped elements in the snaps; and another qualitative, whose look falls on how these snaps are structured to create the stories. As results, we point out frequent elements such as the use of native snaps and the preference for videos versus other multimedia formats such as photos, texts and audios. We also note that stories do not follow a pattern and link different narrative formats, such as spot coverage, interviews, and backstage.

abstract: Most new first-year composition (FYC) students already have a great deal of writing experience. Much of this experience comes from writing in digital spaces, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. This type of writing is often invisible to students: they may not consider it to be writing at all. This dissertation seeks to better understand the actual connections between writing in online spaces and writing in FYC, to see the connections students see between these types of writing, and to work toward a theory for making use of those connections in the FYC classroom. The following interconnected articles focus specifically on Facebook--the largest and most ubiquitous social network site (SNS)-- as a means to better understand students' digital literacy practices. Initial data was gathered through a large-scale survey of FYC students about their Facebook use and how they saw that use as connected to composition and writing. Chapter 1 uses the data to suggest that FYC students are not likely to see a connection between Facebook and FYC but that such a connection exists. The second chapter uses the same data to demonstrate that men and women are approaching Facebook slightly differently and to explore what that may mean for FYC teachers. The third chapter uses 10 one-on-one interviews with FYC students to further explore Facebook literacies. The interviews suggest that the literacy of Facebook is actually quite complex and includes many modes of communication in addition to writing, such as pictures, links, and "likes." The final chapter explores the issue of transfer. While transfer is popular in composition literature, studies tend to focus on forward-reading and not backward-reaching transfer. This final chapter stresses the importance of this type of transfer, especially when looking back at digital literacy knowledge that students have gained through writing online. While these articles are intended as stand-alone pieces, together they demonstrate the complex nature of literacies on Facebook, how they connection to FYC, and how FYC teachers may use them in their classrooms. They serve as a starting off point for discussions of effective integration of digital literacies into composition pedagogies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2014

Esta pesquisa propõe-se a estudar a apropriação do aplicativo Snapchat pelo Portal UOL para produção de conteúdo jornalístico. O foco está em observar as stories, que são narrativas criadas a partir de fragmentos de até 10 segundos que desaparecem após 24 horas, produzidas pelo perfil do UOL. Para isso, selecionamos as stories que foram produzidas sobre política e republicados no site TV UOL, totalizando 28 vídeos com 657 fragmentos, chamados de snaps. A análise empírica foi dividida em duas etapas: uma de caráter quantitativo, que busca observar a ocorrência de elementos previamente mapeados nos snaps; e outra qualitativa, cujo olhar recai sobre como esses snaps são estruturados para criar as stories. Como resultados, apontamos elementos frequentes, como o uso de snaps nativos e a preferência por vídeos frente a outros formatos multimídia, como fotos, textos e áudios. Também observamos que as stories não seguem um padrão e aliam formatos narrativos diferentes, como cobertura do local dos fatos, entrevistas e bastidores. / This research proposes to study the appropriation of the Snapchat application through the UOL Portal for the production of journalistic content. The focus is on watching stories, which are narratives created from fragments of up to 10 seconds that disappear after 24 hours, produced by the UOL profile. For that, we selected the stories that were produced on politics and republished on the site TV UOL, totaling 28 videos with 657 fragments, called snaps. The empirical analysis was divided in two stages: one of quantitative character, which seeks to observe the occurrence of previously mapped elements in the snaps; and another qualitative, whose look falls on how these snaps are structured to create the stories. As results, we point out frequent elements such as the use of native snaps and the preference for videos versus other multimedia formats such as photos, texts and audios. We also note that stories do not follow a pattern and link different narrative formats, such as spot coverage, interviews, and backstage.

While there is a growing trend to use social media for public health promotion, research on its actual potential to influence health behaviors is limited. This dissertation explores whether and how social network sites (SNSs) can be used to promote physical activity (PA) through electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Composed of two studies, this dissertation explores PA-related eWOM from both the senders' and receivers' perspectives, and examines actual messages. The first study uses a web survey and explores the antecedents and communication consequences of eWOM about leisure-time PA (LTPA), and the behavioral consequences of eWOM among college students. The second study is based on a content analysis of public Twitter posts in the U.S. in 2011 regarding PA. Based on Sun et al.'s (2006) Path Model of Antecedents and Consequences of Online Word of Mouth, it was found that undergraduate SNS users with higher affective involvement and stronger social ties with their SNS contacts were more likely to provide opinions or information about PA. People with stronger social ties were also more likely to seek opinions or information. Both opinion leadership and opinion seeking were associated with forwarding and chatting. Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior, the first study also found social support of PA via eWOM on SNSs is associated with both affective and instrumental attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC), while social negativity of PA via eWOM on SNSs is associated with instrumental attitudes and PBC. Affective attitude, instrumental attitude, and PBC, in turn, predict intention to participate in LTPA. Moreover, when putting all these different constructs together to predict intention, social support via eWOM was found to indirectly influence the intention to participate in LTPA through the constructs in the Theory of Planned Behavior (including affective and instrumental attitudes and perceived behavioral control). Applying the components of both the Path Model of Antecedents and Consequences of Online Word of Mouth and the Social Cognitive Theory, the second study examined Twitter posts of PA-related eWOM. PA modeling dominated the different aspects of social influence. Most people chat rather than forward information, and provide rather than seek opinions and information about PA. PA type is associated with PA modeling in multiple ways. People with more followers are more likely to forward information about PA. This dissertation widens and deepens the understanding of PA-related eWOM on SNSs by the application of theoretical frameworks from both marketing and health behavior fields. The results suggest that people who find PA interesting and fun, perceive themselves as close to their contacts on SNSs, and have larger social network on SNSs can be recruited as opinion leaders in future interventions to promote PA. These opinion leaders can provide PA modeling and social support though SNSs which will increase their contacts' positive attitudes and PBC and consequently increase their intention to participate in PA.

More than half a billion people use Online Social Network Sites (OSNS) today. They disclose personally identifiable information such as names, date of birth, email address, phone numbers, and home address on their profiles. Some OSNS users also disclose their political and religious views and personal interests. The huge commercial potential of OSNS users’ information and the integration of OSNS with third party advertisers and/or aggregators pose threats to users’ privacy. This thesis reports a study which contributes to our understanding of the form and nature of online privacy by critically analysing the privacy concerns related with the failed launch of Facebook’s advertising tool Beacon. Beacon is an interesting case study because it highlighted the privacy concerns of OSNS users. Qualitative data was gathered from 29 weblogs (blogs) representing user opinions (492 comments) published between 6th November 2007(when Beacon was launched) and 28th February 2008 (when commentary had dwindled). A thematic analysis of the blogs contributed in the development of a taxonomy of privacy concerns of OSNS users specifically related with the third party information use. Noticeably, the concerns such as commercialism, terms of service (TOS), lack of user control, lack of user awareness and data protection influence user perceptions of online privacy. The limitations and key implications for designers and service providers of OSNS are also discussed.