Because distance learning (DL) programs provide students educational opportunities with minimal restrictions on location and/or time, the number of institutions that provide DL courses has grown at a tremendous rate over recent years and is projected to increase in the future. Foreign language courses through DL, however, have been criticized for limited opportunities to engage in speaking activities and to develop oral proficiency. While previous research consistently reports no significant differences, the focus of those studies has been the comparison of outcomes assessments between face-to-face and DL courses. This study analyzed the types of interactions that occurred in the virtual foreign language classroom while using asynchronous audio-based CMC, known as voice boards, to learn Spanish at a rural community college located in Southwestern Virginia, Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC). An embedded multiple-case study design and computer mediated discourse analysis were applied with activity theory to analyze the interactions holistically. During a 10-year period, the amount of students enrolled in on-line only courses or in the virtual campus at PHCC increased from 97 students in the summer 2001 session to 655 students in the summer 2011 session. These results showed a 575.3% (n = 558) increase of students enrolled in DL. Only 37.7% (n = 507) of the students attending the community college during the summer 2011 session were enrolled in only FTF courses. These increases were a result of students' needs to pursue degrees of higher education while working and taking care of family and other personal obligations. Students enrolled in the SPA 101: Beginning Spanish I course explained that employment schedules, family obligations, and financial reasons motivated their decisions for taking a DL course. When completing audio-based discussion board assignments, experimentation with the language was observed and participants took advantage of opportunities to listen to recordings multiple times before submitting responses. Forty-seven percent of the utterances were categorized as containing questions to encourage continued discussion. However, lexical chains for those utterances showed that only 11.6% (n = 11) of the utterances followed a three link chain of initial post-response-response (IRR) that represented extended conversations in the voice boards. / Ph. D.

From images of distance education (DE) in advertisements to examples of extant DE theory and practice, and finally to a possible dystopia and utopia for DE, this dissertation investigates the rich representations at the intersection of feminism, pragmatism, and web based distance education. It is composed of three parts. The first part is the construction of a feminist-pragmatic theoretical and analytical tool, motivated by images of DE in commercial advertisements. These images include control of nature (and the natural body), gendered experience, transactions of bodies and tools, loss of bodies, and atomic individualism. In response to these images, the main unifying theme of the tool is organic holism where the world as a dynamic system connects with culture, biology, history, and context. It draws heavily on the work of John Dewey, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Shannon Sullivan, Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, and Carolyn Merchant in order to form a rich weaving useful to instructional technologists and philosophers of education. The second part explores three examples of extant web based distance education using this tool. Lastly, I explore alternatives to current instantiations of distance education including a dystopia and a melioristic option that I call sustainable technology. / Ph. D.

Touch is an expressive and powerful modality in affect conveyance. A simple touch like a hug can elicit strong feelings of affection both in the touch initiator and recipient. Therefore delivering touch over a distance to a long-distance family member or significant other has been an appealing concept for both researchers and designers. However compared to the development of audio, video channels which allow the transmission of voice, facial expression and gesture, digitally mediated touch (Remote Touch) has not received much attention. We believe that this is partially due to the lack of understanding of the capabilities and communication possibilities that remote touch brings. This dissertation presents a review of relevant psychological and sociological literature of touch and proposes a model of immediacy of the touch channel for affect conveyance. We advance three hypotheses regarding the possibility of remote touch in immediate affect conveyance: presence, fidelity and context. We posit that remote touch with relatively low touch fidelity can convey meaningful immediate affect when it is accompanied by a contextualizing channel. To test the hypothesis, two sets of remote touch devices are designed and prototyped which allow users to send/receive a squeeze on the upper arm to/from others effectively. Three in-lab user studies are conducted to investigate the role of remote touch in affect conveyance. These studies showed clearly that remote touch, when contextualized, can influence the affective component in communication. Our results demonstrated that remote touch can afford a rich spectrum of meanings and affects. Three major categories of the usage are identified as positive affect touch which serves to convey affects such as affection, sympathy and sharing, comfort etc., playful touch which serves to lighten the conversations, and conversational touch which serves to regulate the dynamics in the discourse. Our interview results also provide insights of how people use this new channel in their communication. / Ph. D.

In 1984, Stephen North said of writing center research: "There is not a single published study of what happens in writing center tutorials" (433). In the eighteen years since then, writing center practitioners and scholars have produced impressive research and development work, but few empirical studies have added to the sub-field of computer-mediated writing conferencing, though there are more than 300 online writing labs, OWLs, listed on the National Writing Centers Association website. This study started with the understanding that there are significant behavior, communication, and tutoring technique differences between online tutoring and face-to-face tutoring that can affect tutor training, which the research from the fields of computers and composition, computer-mediated communication, and writing centers shows. The purpose of this research was to describe the nature of the online writing lab tutorial. Qualitative analysis was used to prepare a full picture of the online tutoring sessions of three tutors over a six-week period in the Radford University Writing Center. The researcher took the role of participant/observer/interviewer for the sessions. Interviews and talk during conferences with the tutors, were transcribed, coded and contextualized, adding to the understanding of the tutor?s online work. Using a functional analysis model created by Gere and Abbott (1985) and applied by Hewett (1999), transcripts of the tutorial conferences were divided by linguistic idea units and coded according to function, intent, and consciousness. Additionally, a coding scheme was created out of the interview transcripts and from the tutorial responses of this study that focused on the technical and social aspects of the online conferencing, which helped objectify the nature of computer-mediated conference. / Ph. D.

This study examines collective identity, a concept that is used in social movement theory to understand why people are motivated to participate in social movements and social movement groups. Collective identity is a social-psychological process that links the individual to the group through a series of group interactions that revolve around social movement activity. This is a qualitative study that examines collective identity in an online social movement group and an offline social movement group. Reports from the two groups are compared to see what variation exists between these two different groups. This research is one of the first examinations of collective identity outside of conventional face-to-face group settings. The research presented in this thesis demonstrates the difficulty a social movement group that exists online might have in generating a collective identity because of an absence of face-to-face interaction. / Master of Science

This study replicated a common experiment, the Desert Survival Problem, and attempted to add data to the body of knowledge for deception cues. Participants wrote truthful and deceptive essays arguing why items salvaged from the wreckage were useful for survival. Cues to deception considered here fit into four categories: those caused by a deceivers' negative emotion, verbal immediacy, those linked to a deceiver's attempt to appear truthful, and those resulting from deceivers' high cognitive load. Cues caused by a deceiver's negative emotions were mostly absent in the results, although deceivers did use fewer first-person pronouns than truth tellers. That indicated deceivers were less willing to take ownership of their statements. Cues because of deceivers' attempts to appear truthful were present. Deceivers used more words and more exact language than truth tellers. That showed an attempt to appear truthful. Deceivers' language was simpler than that of truth tellers, which indicated a higher cognitive load. Future research should include manipulation checks on motivation and emotion, which are tied to cue display. The type of cue displayed, be it emotional leakage, verbal immediacy, attempts to appear truthful or cognitive load, might be associated with particular deception tasks. Future research, including meta-analyses, should attempt to determine which deception tasks produce which cue type. Revised file, GMc 5/28/2014 per Dean DePauw / Master of Arts

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur stor erfarenhet svenska studenter har av, och hur stor rädsla de har för, nättroll. Ett annat syfte var att undersöka om erfarenheten har ett samband med deras eventuella rädsla för nättroll. Studien ämnar även undersöka vad svenska studenter har för definition av nättroll. Datainsamlingen utgjordes av en elektronisk enkät bestående av en självkonstruerad Likertskala (Troll-Likert) som distribuerades via webbplattformen survey & report. Skalan har aldrig tidigare använts i annat forskningssyfte. Deltagarantalet var 93 studenter. För att undersöka och analysera resultatet användes såväl kvantitativ som kvalitativ metod. Till den kvantitativa delen användes Spearmans rangkorrelationskoefficient och en enkel regressionsanalys. I fråga om den kvalitativa delen användes tematisk analys enligt Braun och Clarke (2006). Resultatet av studien visade att studenterna både hade en hög erfarenhet och rädsla för nättroll. Regressionsanalysen resulterade i ett värde på r2= 0,120. Spearmans resultat visade på en signifikant korrelation mellan rädsla och erfarenhet och regressionslinjen visade att studenternas rädsla kan till 12% förklaras av deras erfarenhet. Den tematiska analysen resulterade i ett tema som sammanfattar respondenternas definitioner av nättroll: personer som provocerar fram reaktioner för nöjes skull. / The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Swedish students have experience of, and / or fear of, online trolls. Also, if there was a connection between them two. The study also intended to investigate what definition of online trolls Swedish students had. The data collection was made up of an electronic questionnaire consisting of a self-designed Likert scale (Troll-Likert) distributed via the web survey & report. The questionnaire has never been used for any other research purposes. The number of participants was 93 students. To investigate the results both a quantitative and a qualitative method were used. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and a regression analysis were used as in the quantitative method and a thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2006) was used in the qualitative method. The study showed that the students both had a high experience and fear of online trolls. The regression analysis resulted in a value of r2 = 0.120. Spearman's results showed a significant correlation between fear and experience and the regression line showed that the students' fear can be explained to 12% by their experience. The thematic analysis resulted in one theme which summarizes the respondents' definitions of online trolls: people who provoke reactions for pleasure

Empirical evidence suggests that individuals can hold different interpretations of a technology. In this research, I explore the question of where these different interpretations come from. What influences an individual s interpretation of a technology? And what is the nature of these interpretations? I explore these questions through studies of computer-mediated messaging systems, including instant messaging, photo-enhanced instant messaging, multimedia messaging (cameraphones), and mobile messaging (BlackBerries). In this research, I draw from philosophical hermeneutics, a domain of study examining the nature of interpretation, and present a technological hermeneutic, a descriptive theory of how individuals interpret technology how they come to understand the meaning of the technology in their own lives. This theory offers insight into the myriad resources individuals draw from when constructing an interpretation of technology, including their own experiences with related technologies as well as their interactions with others use and understanding of the technology. This theory also offers insight into the nature of the interpretive process. Interpretations are dynamic and evolving; individuals continually draw from new experiences, reengaging and reinterpreting technology. Interpretations are also hybrid and synthesized; individuals draw from multiple resources in an active process of interpretive bricolage.

Magister Artium - MA / Social networking sites are used on a daily basis, to communicate with friends we have known for quite some time as well as make new friends from all over the globe - a global phenomenon. According to Aparicio (2011) the use of social networking sites have given way to a new “social dynamic” where friendships are formed with individuals from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations. Larsen (2007) continues to state that social network sites make for the creation of new friendships and the maintenance of new relationships. Using social networking sites to develop relationships provides us with new social skills, but through constant use of these sites we lose valuable interpersonal skills learnt through the use of face to face interaction (Aparicio, 2011). This thesis investigated the notion of social networking sites, specifically focusing on interpersonal relationships and language use within the networking context. The social networking site in question is that of Twitter, as majority of existing studies in this area focuses on the more popular Facebook. The main objective was to determine whether social networking sites, specifically Twitter, influence the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships and language use. Participants included a group of 11 males and 11 females (22 in total), ranging from the ages of 17 to 33 and from different geographical locations (e.g. United Kingdom, South Africa, Tokyo, and so on). These participants frequently keep in contact with each other. Four ways in which Twitter has been adapted to emulate face to face communication have been found, namely: (1) the use of Paralinguistic and Prosodic Features to imitate speech, (2) Ustream, although not prominent within the data collected, is used to make up for the lack of face to face communication.This, however, is one-way; only one user provides a video link while those communicating with him or her (as there can be more than one) would type messages, (3) as expected a variety of shortenings can be found within the data collected. Shortenings imitate speech among the younger generation, and (4) participants make use of an informal register, as the most common type of relationship found on Twitter is that of friendships. Both strong and weak ties exist in the collected data; with weak ties being the majority. It is possible for weak ties to become strong ties. All online relationships start off as weak and gradually, over time, become strong ties. This is done through establishing trust between participants and communicating on a regular basis. Paolillo (1999) found that online relationships manifests as both weak and strong. However, “online ties are not ‘branded’ as weak ties” and these ties differ in quality; “those who have regular contact have strong ties and those with less frequent contact have weaker ties weak”. Social support is evident in the collected data and possible in online, textbased communication. In is manifested in four types of support, namely: instrumental, emotional, informational, and appraisal. The most common type of support found in the collected data is that of informational support. With regards to support activation strategies, most tweet fall under the ‘ask’ and ‘cry’ types of strategies. Also, considering the amount of emoticons found in the data, little or no emoticons were found in the activation strategies. There are also more indirect support activation strategies as opposed to direct. This could possibly be due to the fact that majority of the ties are ‘in the weak stage’. Textese has not been adapted in anyway; the same elements used by texters and IMers are used by tweeters, such as initialisms, phonetic spellings and contractions. Although present in the Twitter data, elements of textese did not occur as frequently as that found in e.g. Bieswanger’s (2007) and Thurlow’s (2003) studies; however more elements of Twitter language was found. If anything, the characteristics of textese are well-suited for Twitter; as shortened forms of words would make it easier for users to maintain a character count below the imposed limitation and it promotes the idea of writing quick and concise messages instead of filling message space with irrelevant content. With regards to the difference in the way male and female participants use language in terms of the linguistic characteristics of textese and the language unique to Twitter and the use of paralinguistic and prosodic features, it can be said that females tend to use these characteristics more than males do.

In this thesis, I use a multi-perspectival analytical approach to investigate the paralanguage of naturally occurring work-based Instant Message conversations. My research into the field of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) has shown that written non-verbal cues have been considered as important means of contextualising text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC), yet their scholarly treatment has been scant. Previous findings about the importance paralanguage in CMD have been further strengthened by the findings of the field of business communication: in the virtual work environment the lack of audio-visual information has been found to contribute to miscommunication and consequently hinder cooperation. The linguistic devices and discursive strategies that are used in order to compensate for the limitations imposed by the text-based communicative channel have therefore been identified as in need of further exploration. In this thesis, I have outlined a CMC cue system based on the previous findings of CMDA to investigate the range of cues used as non-verbal signals in workplace text- based CMC. I have also used a multi-perspectival approach based on the theoretical frameworks of interactional sociolinguistics, communities of practice, relational work and politeness and conversation analysis (CA) in order to investigate the range of interactional roles of paralanguage during computer-mediated business conversations. The interpretive CA-informed analysis I have conducted has provided evidence of the important role of non-verbal signals during the contextualisation of complex transactional and relational communicative goals in the workplace. The analysis in this thesis has provided two significant results: firstly, by incorporating the findings of research into paralanguage of spoken as well as other written genres it resulted in a comprehensive description of the orthographic and typographic non-verbal cues used in text-based CMC and, secondly, by drawing on the multi-perspectival framework, it allowed for a description of the complex interactional functions of these cues during the contextualisation of content and relational intent and the creation of interactional coherence in IM.