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.

This study examined the positive perceived impacts of cellular phones in the Nigerian society.The purpose of the study was to analyze the impacts of this technology in Nigerian society These impacts analyses were on the perceived changes in safety and well-being amongst users, satisfactions amongst users, and perceived connectivity amongst users of this technology. The researcher used employed facilitators to distribute survey in several cities in Nigeria. One Hundred and twenty-four people participated in survey questionnaires using five scale points. Results were summarized using descriptive statistics at 95% confidence interval level. From the results, the hypothese were retained that underserved customers outnumbered overserved customers in the Nigerians cellular phone usage, cellular phone usage has had some impact on the perceived safety and wellbeing of its users. In addition, the hypothesis also showed cellular phone usage has increased the perceived connectivity between the user and family.

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This study focuses on a component of computer-mediated communicated which is labeled computer mediated technologies (CMTs) and is composed of the latest group of internet technology and digital media including social networking, Web2.0, Smartphone and Videoconferencing. The computer mediated technologies (CMTs) have the potential to facilitate scientific collaboration between scientists from north and south. This dissertation is a quantitative study that investigates the relationship between CMT use and collaboration, CMT use and research productivity, scientific collaboration and research productivity in Kuwait and the digital divide between developing and developed countries. This study answers the following questions: (1) To what degree has the scientific community in Kuwait adopted CMTs? (2) Are there any differences in the use of CMTs between faculty members (at KU) and researchers (in KISR) for scientific collaboration? (3) To what extent is CMT use associated with scientific collaboration in Kuwait? (4) To what extent is CMT use associated with research productivity in Kuwait? (5) What is the relationship between scientific collaboration and research productivity in Kuwait? The results show that the scientific community in Kuwait is very connected to the internet and has adopted using CMT channels in their daily work. However, there is a difference between academia and research scientists in their educational and collaboration activities. The difference is more notable when Kuwaiti scientists collaborated with scientists in the U.S. and Canada and there is a relationship with the use of CMTs for collaboration. The findings further suggest that scientists who graduated from developed countries collaborate more than scientists who graduated from developing areas. Also there is a correlation between gaining a PhD from developed countries and increased publication in foreign journals. The results support the assumption that collaboration leads to research productivity. But there is a real problem facing the Kuwaiti scientists because they spend little time on their research activities.

This is an investigation of the diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet, by community broadcasting organisations. In order to understand ICT diffusion processes in community radio stations, this study focuses on a particular project which saw a large scale diffusion of Internet technologies across Australian community radio stations at the beginning of 1998. The Community Access Network (CAN) project was an initiative of the Australian government, and saw funding for the provision of an Internet ready computer to every licensed community radio station in Australia. In approaching this subject, this research employed social constructivist assumptions, expecting that ICT use, and in particular the CAN workstations, would vary from station to station, reflecting the cultural and organisational conditions in each environment. As such the study aimed to understand the ways in which ICT technologies have been used and understood by community ralo station management and their participants. Since community radio stations are organisations, this study employed Everett Rogers' framework for understanding diffusion of innovation processes within organisations, acknowledging that organisational variables act on innovation behaviour in a manner over and above that of the aggregate of individual members of the organisation. This approach provided scope for the investigation and comparison of organisational factors, as well as meaning making on the part of individual participants. The research was based on data collected from two case studies, chosen on the basis of their divergent social, cultural and organisational environments; 4EB in Brisbane, a metropolitan, ethnic community radio station; and 2NCR-FM in Lismore, a regional, generalist community radio station. Ethnographic methods of observation and interviews were employed to collect qualitative data, providing insider accounts of community broadcaster's use, experience, and understanding of the new technologies in their day-to-day broadcast practices. By looking at two different community radio stations, this research acknowledges points of similarity and difference across these organisational situations, identifying factors that contribute to variation in technology take-up in particular station programming emphasis, perception of need, organisational resources, role of innovation champions, training, ICT policy and broadcaster variables. Evidence drawn from these case studies, and the specific ICT investigated, contributes to a general understanding of factors in the diffusion of ICT technologies across the community broadcast sector, providing a frame of reference for anticipating subsequent innovation diffusion. In particular, there are implications for future diffusion projects which plan to deploy new technologies across the community radio sector. It also contextualises community broadcasting and ICT use within the field of new technology uptake by broadcast sectors in general.

The Zika virus is associated with the devastating birth defect microcephaly, and while a vaccine was not yet available in early-2017, several were under development. It is imperative to identify effective communication strategies to promote uptake of a new vaccine, particularly among women of reproductive age. Moreover, though the Zika outbreak has received much social media attention, little is known about these conversations on Instagram. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, was to understand current Zika-focused communication on Instagram and to inform effective communication strategies to promote future Zika vaccine uptake intent. The study aims were: (1) explore Zika conversations on Instagram; (2) determine effective message characteristics to increase Zika vaccine uptake intent; and (3) explore salient demographic, healthcare, and psychosocial factors related to Zika vaccine uptake intent. A content analysis of 1,000 Zika-focused Instagram posts, found that these messages primarily focus on perceived threat constructs, yet they elicited little engagement. In addition, 10% of all Instagram posts mentioned conspiracy theories, and these messages elicited high engagement. A 2x2 online experiment tested the effect of message framing and visual type on Zika vaccine uptake intent. The 339 participants – all women of reproductive age – each were exposed to one of four messages (gain vs. loss-framed, and infographic vs. photo). There was no interaction effect of framing and visual type (p=.116), nor main effect of either framing (p=.185) or visual type (p=.724) on vaccine uptake intent. When testing the effect of these variables on those known to be predictors of behavioral intent, gain-framed messages were associated with higher subjective norms, perceived benefits, and self-efficacy. Data from the same online survey was used to examine whether demographics, healthcare-related variables, and psychosocial variables predict Zika vaccine uptake intent. Attitude (p<.001), subjective norms (p=.002), perceived benefits (p=.001), self-efficacy (p=.031), perceived susceptibility (p=.030), and cues to action (p=.020) were predictive of higher Zika vaccine uptake intent, as was being African-American (p=.042). In summary, messages promoting the Zika vaccine should be designed to complement the high perceived threat of Zika while activating positive social norms and perceived benefits in order to allow the public to respond efficaciously.

This thesis deals with the analysis of a Wired High Speed Serial Data Link (PAM2) which is commonly used throughout the data-communications and tele-communications industry. The goal of this study is to build a scalable simulation tool using Matlab that ultimately uses Receiver Bit Error Ratio (BER) as the metric for data link health. This study is also designed to aid in link specification development. The Matlab and theoretical development is broken up into three sections being Transmitter (TX), Channel (Hs) and Receiver (RX). Realistic noise impairments can be added to each section along the signal path creating signal stresses commonly seen in data center applications. The TX function is designed to create random and periodic timing jitter, voltage noise and deterministic pre-distortion filtering effects. For the channel response s-parameters are used as the model result for many commonly seen channel loss and reflection scenarios. The RX model uses signal to noise ratio and vertical eye margin to determine the equalized link BER. The study results show many tradeoffs between noises, RX Equalizer, RX gain and RX BER. The simulation results also reveal that there is no closed form solution for converging the modern closed-eye PAM2 detector.

There has been considerable zeal regarding the democratizing promises of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This belief has resulted in the proliferation of ICT development initiatives in education through public private partnerships. However, there are critical scholars who caution against an overly celebratory perspective of ICTs and expose the ways in which they may be contributing to the exacerbation of existing inequalities. This thesis was inspired by Dan Schiller’s book, Digital Capitalism (1999) with the purpose of examining how digital capitalism is evident today. 'Digital capitalism' refers to the relationship between politics, economics, and technology that explains the shift in the use of the Internet from aiding government agencies to serving private commercial interests. Through a political economy of communication approach, this thesis examines a new model of public schools in which IT companies are partnering with various cities and districts to equip students with the 21st century skills needed to participate in the labor market. These partnerships are designed to benefit marginalized youth that do not have access to ICTs so the study looks at one of these schools encompassing this new innovative model in order to examine the benefits and limitations of these partnerships The purpose of this thesis is to examine the way digital capitalism is playing out in education today in order to shed light on the political and economic forces driving these initiatives while examining who the decision makers are as well as who benefits and why. It has a dual objective of contributing to current digital inequality scholarship and informing policy-making. This thesis ultimately argues that there is a need for more targeted and individualized policies that serve each district’s unique needs, which works to fulfill the policy objective. It challenges the notion that technology is a neutral artifact that is separate from broader political, social, and economic processes.

Humans are social creatures. Yet when the pandemic forced the world into lockdown, social interaction became limited and more intentional. I explore the forms of communication people turned to during this time through a series of podcast episodes. I interview people who can provide first-hand experiences of how major areas of life changed. The areas I focused on are digital literacy in the elderly, online connections versus in-person ones, telehealth, education, journalism, and social media. The episodes can be listened to on the Disconnected website.

The purpose of this study was to develop two tape-recorded synthetic speech discrimination test tapes and assess their intelligibility in order to determine whether or not synthetic speech was intelligible and if it would prove useful in speech discrimination testing. Four scramblings of the second MU-6 monosyllable word list were generated by the ECHO l C speech synthesizer using two methods of generating synthetic speech called TEXTALKER and SPEAKEASY. These stimuli were presented in one ear to forty normal-hearing adult subjects, 36 females and 4 males, at 60 dB HL under headphone&. Each subject listened to two different scramblings of the 50 monosyllable word list, one scrambling generated by TEXTALKER and the other scrambling generated by SPEAKEASY. The order in which the TEXTALKER and SPEAKEASY mode of presentation occurred as well as which ear to test per subject was randomly determined.