This study examines the impact of political information conveyed through computer-mediated social networks. Using a popular social networking website, Facebook, a randomized field experiment involving Georgia State University undergraduates explores the extent to which computer-mediated peer-to-peer communication can increase political knowledge. For this experiment two Facebook profiles were created, one to administer information about the 2009 Atlanta mayoral election and the other to administer timely entertainment information. Students were randomly assigned one of these profiles to “friend.” Students choosing not to “friend” their assigned profile were aggregated to create an additional control condition. Treatments were administered to those who “friended” their assigned profile for the seven days preceding the mayoral election. To assess the transfer of knowledge between the profiles and the students a subsequent in-person survey was conducted (N=374). Results reveal that being exposed to political information by a peer through a social networking website increases the probability of recalling at least some of that information by 18.2 percent. Notably, the same method of exposure to entertainment information produces no significant effects on the recall of that information.

When internet-mediated messaging and social networking applications were introduced in mobile phones, mobile messaging entered a new paradigm. Users can easily create profiles and communicate with other users instantly at anytime of day and anywhere in the world. This paradigm however, has brought forward new privacy issues. Over the course of this exegesis I aimed to explore different aspects of privacy issues related to mobile messaging, including users' awareness and the control of the privacy issues when using social networking messaging. This was demonstrated by conducting a project, which involved development of a mobile phone application and a role-playing game. The project created a frictional scenario of users communicating via mobile messaging. My research revealed that the participants lacked awareness of privacy violations when using mobile messaging, and tended not to modify their behaviours immediately when privacy breaches arose. This research contributes to the existing body of research in the area of mobile messaging privacy, and advocated user awareness of privacy issues in this domain. It could potentially be used as a base for future research.

Social networking services are relatively new phenomena and they have attracted so much attention around themselves. These services have been seen by many organizations as a po-tential tool to facilitate knowledge sharing. However, very few have successfully adopted such services. Many problems which lead to failures arise when it comes to developing and implementing social networking services with the goal to facilitate knowledge sharing.The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the failure of one social networking service to satisfy the knowledge sharing needs of the organization that has developed and implement-ed it in-house.Interviews with three employees of the company were arranged. The interviews were done with time intervals in between. This gave us the opportunity to rearrange the questions that were going to be asked to the next interviewee. The interviews were really helpful and gave us a good insight of the problem with the development and implementation of the social networking service that the organization was facing. After the interviews were conducted, a questionnaire was elaborated and sent out to the employees in the organization.The results we came up with were really interesting. A table with failure factors for the so-cial networking service used in the organization was made and a model suggesting the steps an organization should follow for the successful development and implementation of a so-cial networking service that facilitates knowledge sharing internally was developed.We found out that the failure was not in the social networking service itself but in the way it was presented, positioned and communicated to the employees of the company. They never took the service seriously for its intended purpose which was knowledge sharing within the organization and that led to the cancelation of the project.

Social networking sites (SNSs) are growing in popularity and diversity. Prior research has shown that SNSs use is correlated with various personality traits including narcissism. To date, no work has examined the association between SNSs use and self-actualization. Given the potential overlap of narcissism and self-actualization, the goal of the present study was to first examine the conceptual overlap of these two intrapersonal characteristics. We then sought to examine the associations between SNSs use, narcissism, and self-actualization with an expectation that self-actualization would mediate the association between SNSs use and narcissism. One thousand six hundred and four adults completed an online survey with questions to assess their demographic traits, SNSs activities, and personality characteristics. Results indicated some overlap between narcissism and self-actualization; but, in general, each was a distinct personality trait. Results also demonstrated that the association between self-actualization and SNSs usage was not significant. Contrary to our prediction, self-actualization did not mediate the association between SNSs activities and narcissism. Finally, the study found that narcissism scores were reportedly higher after using SNSs than they were prior to SNSs use.

Baigiamajame darbe išnagrinėtas internetinių socialinių tinklų tyrimo procesas bei tam skirti įrankiai. Darbo pagrindą sudaro trys dalys, kuriose: apžvelgti populiariausi internetiniai socialiniai tinklai, jų realizavimo technologijos; išanalizuotas internetinių socialinių tinklų tyrimo procesas, pasiūlytas trijų etapų tyrimo modelis, apžvelgti kiekviename etape naudotini įrankiai; taip pat pateikiama pasiūlyto modelio realizacija „PERL“ programavimo kalba, analizuojanti socialinio portalo „Twitter“ duomenis ir sugebanti pateikti trijų tipų ataskaitas. Darbą sudaro 6 dalys: įvadas; internetiniai socialiniai tinklai; internetinių socialinių tinklų tyrimo proceso modelis, tyrimo įrankiai; internetinių socialinių tinklų tyrimo modelio realizavimas; išvados; literatūros sąrašas. Darbo apimtis – 61 p. teksto be priedų, 28 iliustr., 2 lent., 18 bibliografiniai šaltiniai. Atskirai pridedami darbo priedai. / The research theme of this master’s final work is social-networking analysis process and tools relevant to it. The framework of this thesis consists of three parts: an overview of the most popular online social networks and their implementation technologies; a research on social-networking analysis process with a three-stage model proposed, all stages and tools relevant to them analyzed; also, implementation of the proposed model, written in “PERL” programming language, able to analyze a social portal named "Twitter", also able to provide three types of reports. Structure: introduction; social-networking; social-networking analysis process model, analysis tools; social-networking analysis process realization; conclusions, references. Thesis consists of: 61 p. text without appendixes, 28 pictures, 2 tables, 18 bibliographical entries. Appendixes included.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / Web services have expanded to become popular in application development. Web services technology represents an important way of communication between different applications across different platforms. Unlike traditional client/server models, such as a Web application or Web page system, Web services do not provide the user with a GUI. Instead, Web services share business logic, functionality and data through a programmatic interface across a network. Web services are services or functionalities that are exposed to the internet and serves as online or web APIs. These services which are online APIs can be called from your code and use the results in your applications to offer specific functionality to users. This project consists of two applications the client and the server application. The server application is an online REST API (Web Services developed using REpresentational State Transfer (REST) protocol) which provides all the functionalities as a service across the network that are required to develop a social networking web application. The client application is similar to any other social networking web application where you can create a profile, delete profile, send messages to your friends, post things, like and comment a post. This applications sends request to the server application using HTTP requests and get the responses. These responses are then consumed in the application to provide the required functionalities to the end user.

Research suggests that personality may dictate specific Internet behaviours or preferences. However, literature to date has been piecemeal and has tended to focus on generic use. One area that remains relatively unexplored is the influence of personality on engagement with social networking sites (SNSs). The current thesis aims to fill this gap by exploring the influence of personality on motivations for using SNSs and behavioural patterns within them. Eysenck’s EPQ-R short form (extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism) and Beck’s SAS (sociotropy and autonomy) were used to explore personality, both globally and specifically. Phase one of the thesis employs a ‘uses and gratifications’ framework to investigate how personality may predict motivations for using SNSs. Principal component analysis identified ten distinct motivational components, which were then successfully predicted by personality variables through regression analyses. It is therefore suggested that differing personality types vary greatly in their reasoning behind SNS usage. Results support theoretical assumptions. Phase two of the research looked at Facebook behaviours and profile construction. A content analysis of participant profiles was conducted with the help of questionnaire methodology. Data analysis suggests that personality was not a particularly strong predictor of self-presentational differences in this context; although subtle differences were present. The final phase of the research explored the perceived Facebook experience of users. A thematic analysis of an online student discussion board was conducted in order to generate distinct themes surrounding Facebook outcomes. These were used within Q Methodology to generate a concourse, through which Q sort statements were derived. Results generated four shared viewpoints of the Facebook experience, which were subsequently associated with personality through the use of traditional R methods. Again, although not particularly strong, theoretically supported associations can be seen. The thesis explores personality within SNS use in a depth previously unexplored. The conclusion makes theoretically-sound assumptions surrounding personality and SNS use as a media choice.

Depression has a high prevalence among college students. Because it is a highly private (i.e. experiential) and socially stigmatized mental illness, it often goes undetected in daily life. The basic research question behind this line of research is how students' postings on their social networking websites can be used for the early detection of depression. The current research investigates how well depression can be gauged from MySpace profiles (Study 1) and Facebook profiles (Study 2 & Study 3). Across studies, the results reveal that depression can be assessed with a moderate degree of accuracy. In addition, Study 3 presents evidence that viewing "mini-blogs" allows for similar levels of accuracy compared to viewing an entire profile and the degree to which a person is Extraverted or censors information about themselves (e.g. Impression Management, Public Self-Consciousness) influences the degree of accuracy. Overall, the results speak to the idea that social networking sites can be a cost effective and clinically relevant tool to detecting depression.

Social network sites are online spaces that can be used for interaction between young people and youth work practitioners. The focus of this thesis is social network site interaction that falls outside the guidance of the local authority, through unsanctioned interaction on practitioners’ personal but also work profiles. Twenty one practitioners and fourteen young people were interviewed, using a semi-structured interview guide. Three inter-linked themes emerged through the research process; space and place; trust development and boundary management. Young people wanted to interact with some practitioners through the practitioners' personal profiles but the majority of practitioners would rather interact with young people through work profiles. Young people viewed and trusted these practitioners as friends and were willing to share their personal, but also socially intimate information with them. Most practitioners viewed their relationship with young people as a professional relationship and aimed to maintain personal and professional boundaries. However, practitioners did not extend this same awareness to the boundaries of young people. This was further confirmed by the practice of client searching through a variety of profiles to access socially intimate information of young people. Where practitioners and volunteers lived and worked in the same geographical spaces, these multiple relationships increased uncertainty with regards to unsanctioned SNS interaction. Other practitioners were either fearful or opportunistic of these relationships and used them to gain further socially intimate information about young people or turned a blind eye to these relationships due to uncertainty of how to respond. This thesis extends knowledge and theory concerning youth work practice at a time of change, and also new spaces for interaction online. Civic courage and incentives that outweigh deterrents lead to unsanctioned connections for practitioners. For young people this interaction was based on the type of friendship they perceived they had with practitioners. Studying perceptions regarding this interaction revealed cycles of perpetual negative practice, personal and socially intimate boundaries and different views on the type of relationship that young people and practitioners developed with each other.

This study explored attributes of a Facebook brand page (FBP). Seven variables were derived from the framework and applied to FBPs. The goals of this research were to discover which attributes contribute to a successful FBP, determine which attributes increase purchase intentions, and help marketers determine where to focus their efforts. A total of 421 surveys were gathered from men and women ages 18 and older. The methods of this research included factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. Results yielded two loading factors for the trustworthiness variable and supported hypotheses of trustworthiness increasing purchase intentions. It was also discovered that participation positively influences purchase intentions. It is advised that information content be monitored to avoid information overload.