Family group chats are a popular form of technology-mediated communication. Family group chats represent an understudied area of family communication. In this qualitative multi-method study, I aimed to investigate how and why families use family group chats and how family processes are enacted within them. This grounded theory study was informed by family systems theory and uses and gratifications theory. Families participated in multi family member group interviews and were invited to submit the last one-month's history of their family group chat. Forty-nine participants from thirteen families across the United States participated in this study. I identified four themes from the data: (1) entering the chat, (2) growing and aging with the group chat, (3) accepting terms and conditions, and (4) holding the invisible string. I present a theoretical explanation of how these themes interact. Family group chats held a significant place in family life that extended family members' availability to one another and kept them in near constant contact, even when they were separated by geographic distance. I propose the possibility of family group chats as a protective factor to increase family functioning. This research generates future directions for the field and has implications for families, professionals who work with families, and group chat application developers. It provides one of the earliest investigations into family group chats from a family science perspective. / Doctor of Philosophy / Family group chats have grown in popularity over the last decade as a way for multiple family members to communicate at once. Yet, in the family science field, little is known about how families use these chats. In this study, I examined how and why families use family group chats to perform family processes, which are the interactions that make up family life. I used qualitative methods to study this topic and was guided by two theories, family systems theory and uses and gratifications theory. I invited family members to participate in a group interview and submit their family group chat text messages from the last month. Forty-nine participants from thirteen families across the United States participated in this study. I identified four themes across the family interviews and group chats: (1) entering the chat, (2) growing and aging with the group chat, (3) accepting terms and conditions, and (4) holding the invisible string. I present a visual model to explain how these themes work together. I found that family group chats held a significant place in family life that extended family members' availability to one another and kept them in near constant contact, even when they were separated by geographic distance. I suggest the possibility of family group chats as a protective factor that may improve family life. This research can guide future research on this topic and makes an impact for families, professionals who work with families, and for companies that develop group chat platforms.

Advances in speech recognition and voice synthesis software now allow "smart agents" (e.g., voice-controlled devices like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home) to interact naturally with humans. The machines have a skills repertoire with which they can "communicate" and form relationships with consumers – managing aspects of their daily lives and providing advice on various issues including purchases. This dissertation develops three essays that examine the role played by the smart agent's voice (rational vs. emotional) in such relationships. The social cognition and persuasion literature on interpersonal communication serves as a comparison backdrop. In Essay 1, I investigate how identical purchase recommendations delivered in a rational or an emotional voice elicit different consumer responses, when the voice is ascribed to a human versus a smart agent. I argue that consumers distinctively categorize smart agents and humans, which, in turn, leads them to have different expectations when interacting with them. In Essay 2, I focus on how a smart agent's vocal tone (rational vs. emotional) influences consumer compliance with the agent's recommendation as well as the role of trust as a mediator of the underlying process. I find that the level of intimacy in the relationship between the smart agent and the human user moderates whether the voice effect on persuasion operates through trust that is cognitively or affectively rooted. In Essay 3, I examine the proposition that consumers may anthropomorphize a smart agent both mindfully (consciously) and mindlessly (non-consciously), depending on the agent's voice. In addition to using extant measures of the degree to which anthropomorphism is explicit (conscious), I develop an auditory analog of the implicit association test (IAT) that assesses implicit (non-conscious) anthropomorphism. In additional experiments, I further assess the robustness of the auditory IAT test and demonstrated a dissociation between the measures of the explicit and implicit subconstructs of anthropomorphism. Taken together, these essays contribute to our understanding of the factors driving consumer relationships with smart agents in the rapidly evolving IoT world. / Doctor of Philosophy / Advances in artificial intelligence technologies are creating "smart devices," i.e., machines that can "understand" how people talk and respond meaningfully to such communication in their own voices. Thus, familiar voice-controlled devices like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home are now increasingly able to "communicate" and form relationships with consumers – managing aspects of their daily lives and providing advice on various issues including purchases. However, little is known about how a smart agent's vocal tones (rational vs. emotional) may influence how consumers perceive and relate to the smart agent. My primary goal in this research is to contribute to our understanding of the role played by the smart agent's voice (rational vs. emotional) in such relationships. Specifically, in Essay 1, I investigate how identical purchase recommendations delivered in a rational or an emotional voice elicit different consumer responses, when the voice is ascribed to a human versus a smart agent. I argue that consumers perceive smart agents and humans as belonging to distinct categories, which leads them to have different expectations when interacting with them. In Essay 2, I focus on how a smart agent's vocal tone (rational vs. emotional) influences consumer compliance with the agent's recommendation as well as the role of trust as a mediator of the underlying process. The level of intimacy in the relationship between the smart agent and the human user influences whether the voice effect on persuasion is driven by trust that is rooted in cognition (knowledge, competence) or affect (caring, warmth). In Essay 3, I examine whether consumers imbue humanlike qualities (anthropomorphize) a smart agent both mindfully (consciously) and mindlessly (non-consciously) based on the agent's voice. In addition to using available measures of conscious anthropomorphism, I develop an auditory analog of the implicit association test (IAT) to assesses implicit (non-conscious) anthropomorphism. In additional experiments, I assess the robustness of the auditory IAT test and the relationship between measures of mindful and mindless anthropomorphism. Taken together, the research reported in these three essays contributes to our understanding of the factors driving consumer relationships with smart agents in the rapidly evolving IoT (Internet of Things) world.

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

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Parents and children increasingly spend time living apart due to marital separation and work travel. I investigated parent--child separation in both of these contexts to find that current technologies frequently do not meet the needs of families. The telephone is easy-to-use and ubiquitous but does not provide an engaging way of communicating with children. Videochat is more emotionally expressive and has a greater potential for engagement but is difficult to set up and cannot be used by a child without the help of an adult. Both telephone and videochat fail to meet the needs of remote parenting because they focus on conversation rather than care and play activities, which are the mechanism by which parents and children build closeness. I also saw that in both types of separation the motivation to connect at times conflicted with desire to reduce disruption of the remote household. To address some of these issues, I designed a system called the ShareTable, which provides easy-to-initiate videochat with a shared tabletop activity space. After an initial lab-based evaluation confirmed the promise of this approach, I deployed the ShareTable to four households (two sets of divorced families). I collected data about the families' remote interactions before and during the deployment. Remote communication more than doubled for each of these families while using the ShareTable and I saw a marked increase in the number of communication sessions initiated by the child. The ShareTable provided benefits over previous communication systems and supported activities that are impossible with other currently available technologies. One of the biggest successes of the system was in providing an overlapped video space that families appropriated to communicate metaphorical touch and a sense of closeness. However, the ShareTable also introduced a new source of conflict for parents and challenged the families as they tried to develop practices of using the system that would be acceptable to all involved. The families' approach to these challenges as well as explicit feedback about the system informs future directions for synchronous communication systems for separated families.

This qualitative study examined fifteen organizational members across four international technology companies to discover how they behave and manage daily interactions in a virtual environment within a geographically distributed team. Using a grounded theory methodology, an extensive analysis of the interview data was conducted. Three core themes emerged that focus on the individuals’ attempts to manage impressions in an environment that demands multicommunication. The themes of time stacking, participation predications and performance are discussed in detail using the theoretical lens of impression management. / text

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies, Theatre, and Dance / Nicole M. Laster / Goffman (1959) suggests that it is through communication that we are able to form impressions of self and express our identity to society. With the emergence of computer-mediated communication and social network sites we’ve witnessed a new form of communication online, and as a result, the traditional forms of impression management used to construct and display identity have shifted to include not just speaking or writing our identity, but displaying who we are through photographs online. This research investigates the connection between the use of a particular social network site, Facebook, and the pattern of impression management techniques through the management and addition of photographs on the site. A two-month ethnography of 16 participants was conducted followed by 3 interviews. Results indicate that digital natives (individuals who have grown up heavily in the presence of technology) tend to convey a variety of conflicting online identities through images, resulting in a “no consequences” generation that, while concerned with privacy, are more concerned with communicating an impression that fits within their primary social roles.

The purpose of this study is to gain in-depth knowledge of how the members of online communities form impressions of organisations that use online communities in their communication activities. Online impression formation has its peculiarities and in order to succeed companies need to better understand this phenomenon. In order to appreciate and evaluate an interaction, those involved in it must know their own identity. Hence, individuals as well as companies engage in identity production by trying to project a favourable impression. The process of identity production can take place in both the offline and the online world. This study focuses on the online world, more specifically on online communities, by investigating how online community members form impressions of companies that produce their identities in online communities. Technology has changed customer behaviours dramatically. People have embraced the Internet to meet and interact with one another. This behaviour is in line with the postmodern assumption that there is a movement towards re-socialisation. Online communication platforms connect people globally and give them the possibility to interact and form online social networks. These platforms are interactive, and thus change the traditional way of communication. Companies therefore have to embrace those interactive ways of communication. In the online world consumers are quick to react to communication weaknesses. Inappropriate corporate communication activities can affect the image they have formed of the company in question.