Orientador: José Alcides Gobbo Junior / Resumo: Com as novas formas de interação e de consumo surgidas com o advento da internet e das redes sociais digitais tem sido importante identificar os atores mais influentes e centrais da rede, dentre estes, os de maior destaque são os influenciadores digitais. Esse profissional fortaleceu a aplicação do marketing de influência, que está atrelado à estratégia de marketing das marcas e à gestão delas nas redes sociais digitais. As marcas de luxo, descobriram o impacto de longo alcance e o potencial de viralização da informação que a aproximação com influenciadores pode promover para seus produtos e assim começaram a investir em ações de marketing e campanhas direcionadas exclusivamente para o Instagram, o grande desafio é mensurar a eficácia e a popularidade das postagens. Tendo em vista o cenário apresentado, busca-se estudar empiricamente se as propriedades estruturais da rede das marcas de luxo e a interação de atores com alto índice de centralidade impactam a popularidade dos posts das marcas de luxo brasileiras no Instagram. Para atingir o objetivo de pesquisa foram analisados os perfis oficiais do Instagram de vinte e seis marcas nacionais desse segmento, com dados coletados por web scraping. Os influenciadores da rede foram identificados com o uso da análise de redes e os dados foram analisados por meio da regressão linear múltipla. A teoria de influência social e a teoria de redes serviram de base para o estudo. Como resultado foi identificado que a presença do influenciador... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: With the new forms of interaction and consumption that emerged with the advent of the internet and digital social networks, it has been important to identify the most influential and central actors in the network, among which the most prominent are the digital influencers. This professional strengthened the application of influence marketing, which is linked to the brands' marketing strategy and their management in digital social networks. Luxury brands have discovered the far-reaching impact and potential for viralization of information that the approach to influencers can promote for their products and thus began to invest in marketing actions and campaigns aimed exclusively at Instagram, the big challenge is how to measure the effectiveness and popularity of posts. Given the scenario presented, we seek to empirically study whether the structural properties of the luxury brand network and the interaction of actors with a high centrality index impact the popularity of Brazilian luxury brand posts on Instagram. To reach the research objective, the official Instagram profiles of twenty-six Brazilian luxury brands were analyzed, with data collected through web scraping. Network influencers were identified using network analysis and the data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. The theory of social influence and the theory of networks served as the basis for the study. As a result, it was identified that the presence of the influencer with the highest centrality index... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Children's classroom engagement is important for their learning and academic achievement. Extending Kindermann's (2007) study of peer influence on adolescents' engagement to an ethnically homogeneous sample, the current study examined how different aspects of diversity affect the peer influence process. Three types of diversity were considered: ethnic diversity existing at the school level, relational diversity at the peer network level, and motivational diversity at the group level. Ethnic diversity was observed in the student body as well as among school teachers and staff. Relational diversity was measured by z-scores resulting from binomial tests reflecting how closely two pair of individuals were connected in the peer network. Finally, motivational diversity was measured as the dispersion (SD) around peer group mean engagement levels, thereby reflecting the diversity of engagement within each peer group. The results indicated that adolescents in this ethnically diverse middle school were overall highly engaged; their engagement patterns were comparable to previous findings from homogeneous samples consisting largely of European American adolescents. Also consistent with prior findings, the mean engagement levels of students' peer group members were a significant predictor of changes in adolescents' own engagement, which suggests peer influence on adolescents' classroom engagement. Although previous literature suggests that individuals in diverse settings tend to be less well connected to one another, the adolescents in this ethnically diverse school were well connected with their peers. Unexpectedly, almost all students' peer groups were ethnically diverse. When the impact of relational diversity was examined to see whether strongly connected individuals exerted more influence on each other than weakly connected individuals (differential influence hypothesis), the results indicated that the strength of connections among peer group members did not appear to play a significant role in the magnitude of their influences on each other's changes in engagement. Nevertheless, the present study suggested new pathways and methods to examine differential peer influences. Finally, the impact of motivational diversity of peer groups was examined using a moderated model based on an interaction effect between peer group motivational diversity and individuals' initial engagement. The results indicated that the positive impact of peer group motivational diversity was moderated by individuals' initial engagement status, such that initially low engaged adolescents benefited from diversely engaged peer groups, whereas peer group motivational diversity had a comparatively small negative effect on initially highly engaged students.

Recognizing the importance of civic engagement to the health of local communities and the overall success of a democracy, this research sought to better understand the relationship between online media use and civic engagement. Specifically, the constructive potential of the social networking site Facebook was explored using the theoretical framework of communication infrastructure theory (CIT; Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001). Results of a cross-sectional survey with a national sample of 375 participants indicated that Facebook does hold potential for civic engagement. The two most important findings of the research were that Facebook facilitated connection to neighborhood storytelling and that connection to storytelling was positively associated with civic engagement. As such, results indicated that Facebook holds potential for civic engagement insofar as the site facilitates connection to neighborhood storytelling. Additionally, Facebook was a regular part of participants’ daily routines, a means to maintain social capital, and a forum for occasional civic participation. Cumulatively, these results highlight a number of strengths that citizens and communities can build upon to improve social capital and increase civic engagement.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis combines human and machine intelligence for consensus decision-making, and it contains four interrelated research areas. Before presenting the four research areas, this thesis presents a literature review on decision-making using two criteria: trust and risk. The analysis involves studying the individual and the multi-stakeholder decision-making. Also, it explores the relationship between trust and risk to provide insight on how to apply them when making any decision. This thesis presents a grouping procedure of the existing trust-based multi-stakeholder decision-making schemes by considering the group decision-making process and models. In the first research area, this thesis presents the foundation of building multi-stakeholder consensus decision-making (MSCDM). This thesis describes trust-based multi-stakeholder decision-making for water allocation to help the participants select a solution that comes from the best model. Several criteria are involved when deciding on a solution such as trust, damage, and benefit. This thesis considers Jain's fairness index as an indicator of reaching balance or equality for the stakeholder's needs. The preferred scenario is when having a high trust, low damages and high benefits. The worst scenario involves having low trust, high damage, and low benefit. The model is dynamic by adapting to the changes over time. The decision to select is the solution that is fair for almost everyone. In the second research area, this thesis presents a MSCDM, which is a generic framework that coordinates the decision-making rounds among stakeholders based on their influence toward each other, as represented by the trust relationship among them. This thesis describes the MSCDM framework that helps to find a decision the stakeholders can agree upon. Reaching a consensus decision might require several rounds where stakeholders negotiate by rating each other. This thesis presents the results of implementing MSCDM and evaluates the effect of trust on the consensus achievement and the reduction in the number of rounds needed to reach the final decision. This thesis presents Rating Convergence in the implemented MSCDM framework, and such convergence is a result of changes in the stakeholders' rating behavior in each round. This thesis evaluates the effect of trust on the rating changes by measuring the distance of the choices made by the stakeholders. Trust is useful in decreasing the distances. In the third research area, this thesis presents Rating Convergence in the implemented MSCDM framework, and such convergence is a result of changes in stakeholders' rating behavior in each round. This thesis evaluates the effect of trust on the rating changes by measuring the perturbation in the rating matrix. Trust is useful in increasing the rating matrix perturbation. Such perturbation helps to decrease the number of rounds. Therefore, trust helps to increase the speed of agreeing upon the same decision through the influence. In the fourth research area, this thesis presents Rating Aggregation operators in the implemented MSCDM framework. This thesis addresses the need for aggregating the stakeholders' ratings while they negotiate on the round of decisions to compute the consensus achievement. This thesis presents four aggregation operators: weighted sum (WS), weighted product (WP), weighted product similarity measure (WPSM), and weighted exponent similarity measure (WESM). This thesis studies the performance of those aggregation operators in terms of consensus achievement and the number of rounds needed. The consensus threshold controls the performance of these operators. The contribution of this thesis lays the foundation for developing a framework for MSCDM that facilitates reaching the consensus decision by accounting for the stakeholders' influences toward one another. Trust represents the influence.

Digital interventions in healthcare have the potential to act as a positive approach to the demographical and social dilemmas existing in sparsely populated regions. Much emphasis lies on designing implementations that are beneficial and used to a large extent. The impact of responsible stakeholders in designing and implementing those interventions is vital to successful outcomes, but research about their perspective on the topic is lacking. The role of voluntariness in eHealth is unclear, and management’s view on determining factors that impact user adoption can contribute to the Information Systems literature. This study aimed to investigate healthcare management’s perspective regarding eHealth. A qualitative study was performed by conducting semi-structured interviews with management and decision-makers in Swedish healthcare on the regional and municipal levels. Their attitude towards the digitalization of healthcare is generally positive, and its benefits for the future are evident. Digitalizing the health sector is seen as necessary as long as equal care and high quality in healthcare can be maintained. Much work lies in increasing adherence to use eHealth solutions, and there is a desire to improve national coordination. Factors that influence adoption are generally compatible with existing technology acceptance literature, but the impact of some determinants differs. The results indicate that social influence has a more important impact in the voluntary context of eHealth than previous literature suggests. An introduction of mandatory elements in healthcare may have benefits for continuous use. Future research about the differences between voluntary and mandated contexts can give rich insight into how to view factors that affect technology adoption and adherence to eHealth solutions.

The introduction of the Low Power FM (LPFM) service by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided a unique glimpse into media policy-making. Because usual allies disagreed over the service, the usually invisible political nature of the debate was made transparent. The project of this thesis is to contextualize the histories of radio policy, non-commercial radio, and the public interest standard to shed light on why it was so challenging to implement even a small, local radio service. Secondly, the thesis will explore the theoretical understandings of the various players in the LPFM debate, as well as the practical functioning of these tiny stations. This project also challenges the low power advocates and media reform movement to actively fight for more substantive media policy regarding civic protections.

Participatory democracy depends on formations of community and social relations, places and spaces for critical discourse, and the organizational and technical capacity for collective action. This study seeks to better understand how these processes are at work in the virtual realm, and more broadly examine the changing nature of political information and discourse in the online context. Toward this end, I examine two sites that embody different yet highly successful models of user participation, collective content production, and increasingly, political action: the political blogging community of Daily Kos and the social news site Reddit. This study is based on three broad theoretical frameworks of community, discourse, and action. I use work by Michele Willson (2006) to explore how community exists in the virtual realm. Drawing upon the scholarship of Jurgen Habermas (1991) and more recent adaptations and extensions of Habermasian public sphere theory from Aaron Barlow (2006), I ask can online communities set the foundation for a public spheres, and if so, how do they function as virtual public spheres? Building upon understandings of online community and virtual public sphere(s), I utilize work by Manuel Castells (1997) and Jeffrey Juris (2005) to understand how community and discourse can enable collective action. These lines of analysis provide the structure through which I examine Daily Kos and Reddit. Using ethnographic methods, I place the voices and perspectives of users within this theoretical structure to produce a comprehensive look at the function of collaborative online political information communities.

This study examined factors important in determining the acceptance of racially charged humor. It utilized a 2 x 3 design in which race of joke teller and group targeted by the jokes were manipulated. It measured people’s level of acceptance regarding the jokes and recorded participants’ behaviors. This study found that under the conditions in which comedians derogated their in-group, White participants demonstrated higher levels of acceptance and a greater likelihood to perform the jokes. This pattern was especially true when the comedian was Black.

In many nations, the 21st century has been about women in politics. Not only are they running for prominent political offices, but they are winning them. The trend toward success for American female politicians has been slower to progress, however, as no women have been elected to the U.S. Presidency to date, and social science research suggests persistent gender biases exist in their news coverage. In order to explore the potential role that media play in continuing this gender disparity in U.S. politics, this comparative study investigates how cable pundit programs – a dramatic, partisan genre of “news” that has risen in popularity since the 2008 election – frame female candidates for the highest national office. A content analysis of pre-election coverage of three prominent U.S. politicians on the national scene, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, on The O’Reilly Factor, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show reveals a small incidence of gendered coverage across these shows overall. Among said coverage found, however, trends in the data suggest that conservative programs employ more gendered frames than liberal programs, and that those frames are particularly negative when referring to liberal candidates (Clinton), and positive when referring to conservative (Palin and Bachmann) candidates. Further, the gender of the pundits, the gender of the cable network production staff members, and the political party affiliations of executive staff/owners correspond to the frames employed by these programs in unique ways.

Det scenkonstnärliga arbetet ger lätt intrycket av att vara nära sammankopplat med personliga intressen och hobbys och anses därmed ofta vara ett lyxigt och tacksamt yrke. Yrket består dock av både mentalt och fysiskt påfrestande situationer som innebär mycket jämförelse med konkurrenter och kräver ett starkt självförtroende av individen för att etablera sig inom branschen. Många scenkonstnärer uttrycker att de ofta förväntas arbeta gratis, oavsett hur mycket tid och arbete som ligger bakom det färdiga resultatet. Syftet med denna studie var att utforska de sociala situationer som påverkar inre respektive yttre motivation hos scenkonstnärer samt vilken påverkan dessa faktorer har på scenkonstnärens identitet. Med hänsyn till studiens karaktär undersöktes syftet med hjälp av en socialpsykologisk ansats med teoretiska utgångspunkter i social påverkan, inre och yttre motivation samt identitet. Tio kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med yrkesverksamma scenkonstnärer inom musik, dans och teater genomfördes. Resultatet visade bland annat att inre motivation främst uppstår i situationer av konstnärligt skapande och i gemenskap med kollegor. Situationerna är viktiga för att scenkonstnären ska motiveras att ta sig igenom påfrestande situationer av konkurrens och höga prestationskrav, vilket görs med hjälp av yttre motivation i syfte att upprätthålla yrkesidentiteten. / The work of performing arts easily gives the impression of being closely connected with personal interests and hobbies, and thus often is considered a luxurious and rewarding profession. However, the profession consists of both mentally and physically stressful situations that involve a lot of comparison with competitors and require strong selfconfidence of the individual to establish themselves in the industry. Many performing artists express that they often are expected to work for free, regardless of how much time and effort that is put into the finished result. The purpose of this study was to explore the social situations that affect the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of performing artists and the impact these factors have on the performing artist's identity. Considering the nature of the study, the purpose was investigated by using a social psychological approach with theoretical starting points in social influence, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and identity. Ten qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional performing artists within the areas of music, dance and theater. The result showed, among other things, that intrinsic motivation mainly arises in situations of artistic creation and in connection with colleagues. The situations are important for the performing artists for their motivation to get through stressful situations of competition and high-performance requirements. This is done with the help of extrinsic motivation in order to maintain the professional identity.