Social media influencers are online content creators who seek audience support, form relationships with their audiences, and shape audience interests, opinions, and behavior. Not only is the influencer economy a cultural market in its own right, but it is also increasingly shaping other cultural industries as influencers serve as cultural gatekeepers who filter cultural products for their audiences (Hirsch, 1972). As social media influencers become powerful gatekeepers and producers, the relational nature of their activities and performance is reshaping norms in cultural industries overall. Lay audiences gain more influence and agency as their evaluations and support are critical for influencer survival and success. Then how has the evaluative landscape in cultural industries changed, and what are the broader social implications of these changes? In this dissertation, I outline the rise of social media influencers both as gatekeepers and producers in cultural markets and argue that scholarship in management and sociology must examine the unique ways in which these influencers’ activities differ from their predecessors’. Chapter 1 defines social media influencers and describes their activities and market dynamics by comparing and contrasting them to their traditional counterparts. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between influencer-audience relational interactions and performance outcomes, focusing on influencers’ role as cultural gatekeepers. Chapter 3 looks at the effects of race and race-based social movements on influencer-audience interactions, highlighting influencers’ role as cultural producers. In all three chapters, the focus is on the sociological theory of relational work, which is the process through which economic actors balance the transactional and social components of their relationships (Zelizer, 2012; Bandelj, 2020). Social media influencers serve as an ideal type to demonstrate how relational work contributes to market value and performance, given the tight balance between their relational and transactional activities. I use mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze channel-, video-, and comment-level data on 1,167 BookTubers (YouTube influencers who evaluate books). I find that social media influencers indeed serve as trusted gatekeepers for their audiences, and that audiences demand not only evaluative content, but also intimate relationships with influencers. Influencers use audience interactions as relational work efforts to build trusting relationships with audiences and gain their support, but this effect is moderated by the perceived trustworthiness of the influencer. The effectiveness of influencer relational work also varies by race, and relational work thus reproduces racialized logics that underlie cultural markets. In sum, this dissertation not only highlights the rise of an important new market actor, but also contributes to theories on how relational work shapes and is shaped by inequality.

This dissertation explores how social media engagement can shape political content on social media by shaping incentives, stimulating content creation, and steering algorithmic curation. Across three papers, I reconcile interdisciplinary findings with the unique attributes of political content. My first paper presents an analytical framework for understanding how consumer interests and algorithmic sorting influence the types of content produced on social media platforms. Building off of a Downsian framework, I model two producers who adjust the content they create in order to maximize their reach, given the production point of their competitor. Unlike typical Downsian models, social media engagement can come both from preferences being very close to content, or very far, what I term concordant and discordant engagement, respectively. I show that polarization of content production can occur with a sufficient prevalence of discordant engagement, even without polarization in the population or producer preferences. I support this finding through interviews with content creators, including media staffers for Members of Congress. In my second paper, I investigate how engagement signals affect the production of comments and original posts, in both political and non-political subreddits. I conduct a series of field experiments on Reddit, contrasting both commenting and posting behaviors. I find that Reddit Awards seem to incentivize increased comments for new users, but do little to move veteran Redditors. I find weak evidence for a relationship in the opposite direction for individuals who post, rather than comment. These results suggest that engagement can affect certain types of original content production, including political content. However, posting and commenting are different behaviors that appear to have distinct relationships with engagement and user tenure. My third paper presents two TikTok experiments designed to highlight how algorithms respond to engagement signals. Again, my aim is to highlight how political content is treated. I conduct an algorithmic audit to show how engagement signals can alter initial recommendations. I find that effect sizes are conditional on the topic of interest, noting that engagement with political content appears to trigger relatively high rate of related recommendations. I support these audit results with a lab experiment, examining how initial engagement signals persist over time. I observe algorithmic behavior over 40 minutes of browsing by treatment-blind users. I find that political recommendations persist for treated accounts, even after significant browsing time. I also present preliminary results for algorithmic effects on user attitudes and experiences.

In the age of computing, we rely on software to manage our days, from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on actualized data from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. Software systems tend to perpetuate a normalized state of equilibrium. Their application in social media, predictive policing, and social profiling is increasingly erasing diversity in culture and identity. Our immediate reality is narrowing towards cultural conventions shared among the powerful few, whose voices directly influence contemporary digital culture. On the other hand, computational collective intelligence can sometimes generate emergent forces to counter this tendency and force software systems to open up. Historically, artists from different artistic moments have adopted collaborative making to redefine the boundary of creative expression. Video Gaming, especially open-world simulation games, is rapidly being adopted as an emerging form of communication, expression, and self-organization. How can gaming conventions such as Narrative Emergence, Hacking, and Modding help us understand collective play as countering forces against the systematic tendency of normalization? How can people from diverse backgrounds come together to contemplate, make, and simulate rules and conditions for an alternative virtual world? What does it mean to design and virtually inhabit a world where rules are rewritten continuously by everyone, and no one is in control?

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic found a fertile ground for the spread of online misinformation, with emphasis on social media. Avoiding misinformation spread requires rapid, engaging, and effective science communication in a clear, easy-to-understand, attractive, and entertaining format that can be readily shared online. Comics fulfill these characteristics, being a promising tool to fight misinformation on social media. The goals of this study were: 1) Develop a novel narrative comic strip to promote recognition of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine among adult social media users (ages 18-65) based in the United States, drawing on the existing research on the Health Belief Model and Theory of Planned Behavior; 2.) Compare the comic strip evaluation and capacity to influence misinformation identification to those of an educational text about COVID-19 vaccination. 3a) Evaluate differences in the key outcomes (misinformation identification, and attractiveness, trust, perceived usefulness, willingness to share, and acceptance of each educational tool) across participants with varying demographic characteristics, health literacy levels, COVID-19 vaccination history, and demographic characteristics. 3b) Across the entire sample, evaluate the correlation between these constructs and health literacy, digital health literacy, vaccine attitudes, trust in science and health authorities, and social media use. Participants (N = 285) were recruited via social media advertisements and randomly assigned to the comic strip group (CS) (N = 92), educational text (TX) (N = 96), or a control 4 group (CL) (N = 97), which had not read any educational material. An online survey accessed the main outcomes (misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, evaluation of the educational tool (attractiveness, trust, perceived usefulness, willingness to share, and acceptance of the educational material). Participants also answered demographics questionnaires, COVID-19 vaccine concerns scale, and questionnaires on Health literacy, eHealth literacy, social media use, trust in health authorities and scientists, and COVID-19 vaccination history. Group CS answered questions regarding transportation into the narrative. There were no differences in misinformation identification between groups, possibly explained by a low sensibility of the misinformation identification instrument, timing of the data collection, and sensitiveness of the vaccination topic, subject to accrued attitudes, such as believing in misinformation. Participants with lower health literacy in group TX scored less on the misinformation identification questionnaire than those with higher literacy, which was not observed in the CS group, indicating that the comic strip may benefit better individuals with low health literacy. Vaccine hesitant/ refusers’ misinformation identification scores seem to have been benefited by the comic strip. The comic strip was better evaluated for trust in its content and acceptance than the educational text. Still, misinformation identification scores were not correlated to any evaluation construct in both groups CS and TX. Transportation into the narrative was positively correlated with all comic strip evaluation constructs but not with the misinformation identification score. Future studies should focus on exploring different styles and sizes of comic strips, using more heterogenous sample and addressing different health topics.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The constant growth in information and communications technology (ICT) broadens the capabilities of researchers to understand and interpret the social world. New multidisciplinary methods of measuring social realities are constantly being developed and improved. This methodological study aims to incorporate novel methods of automated, computerised content- and sentiment analysis software in order to produce a usable instrument for measuring public expressions on democracy from the social network site, Twitter. Adapting methods developed by O‟Connor et al. (2010) and using an online platform called Chatterbox Analytics Ltd., this study attempts to complement traditional survey research data on democracy. The creation of this method allows researchers to automatically and without deep programming knowledge, extract and analyse opinionated data from a substantial segment of the population, namely Twitter users. This is the first study, as far as this researcher is aware, that develops automated instruments for the measurement of expressions on democracy from online social networks. The rationale for the development of this instrument lies in the apparent recent rise in negative sentiment on democracy in academic spheres and political realities alike. Throughout history support for democracy has swayed, which in turn placed democracy on a rocky path of development. As negative opinions on democracy became overwhelming this system of governance was forced to adapt by changing its core structure. This could be the case again today. Authors such as Crozier, Huntington and Watunaki (1975) have already warned of a crisis of democracy in the 1970s. More recently authors such as Dalton (2004) and van Beek (2012) expressed opinions indicating that globally citizens are steadily becoming more critical of political parties, politicians, political policies and the whole democratic process. These negative sentiments might be indicative of what van Beek (2012:12) calls “an erosion in support for democracy”. Traditional survey projects examining opinions on democracy, such as the World Values Survey, offer insights into global expressions on democracy, but are time consuming, costly and complicated to conduct. The method developed in this study allows researchers to complement traditional survey data with insights that are automatically gathered and analysed from the influential social media network, Twitter. This introductory study finds that automated analysis of expressions on democracy from Twitter is indeed feasible. In order to express the extent to which the developed method is feasible, this study offers an example case, examining expressions on democracy from Twitter for the period of 1 May to 31 July 2012. Furthermore the study offers a quantitative manual evaluation of the accuracy of the developed measurement instrument. With the present level of content- and sentiment analysis technology this study finds that the accuracy of the results from this method, though informative, is still limited. The study therefore concludes with an advisory section highlighting methods for future studies to improve on the accuracy of this measurement instrument. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Deur die konstante groei in inligting- en kommunikasietegnologie (IKT) word die veld waaruit navorsers kan put om die sosiale wêreld te verstaan en te interpreteer al groter. Nuwe multidissiplinêre metingsmetodes om die sosiale werklikheid te verstaan, word konstant ontwikkel en verbeter. Hierdie metodologiese studie beoog om nuwe metodes van geoutomatiseerde, gerekenaariseerde, inhouds- en sentimentanalisesagteware saam te voeg om 'n bruikbare instrument vir die meting van publieke uitsprake oor demokrasie, op die sosiale netwerk Twitter te skep. Metodes wat deur O'Connor et al. (2010) en die aanlyn platform, Chatterbox Analytics Ltd ontwikkel is, is aangepas om 'n instrument te skep wat gebruik kan word om by te dra tot tradisionele opname-navorsingsdata oor demokrasie. Hierdie nuwe metode sal navorsers toelaat om outomaties en sonder veel programmeringsvaardighede opiniegelaaide data van 'n beduidende segment van die samelewing, naamlik Twitter gebruikers, te verkry en te analiseer. Hierdie is die eerste studie, sover hierdie navorser bewus is, wat geoutomatiseerde instrumente ontwikkel vir die meting van uitsprake oor demokrasie op sosiale netwerke. Die beweegrede vir die ontwikkeling van hierdie instrument vloei uit die oënskynlike onlangse styging in negatiewe sentiment oor demokrasie in sowel akademiese- as politieke sirkels. Die ondersteuning vir demokrasie het dwarsdeur die geskiedenis sy hoogte en laagtepunte gehad en hierdie onsekerheid het die ontwikkelingspad van demokrasie taamlik met dorings besaai. Die hele kernstruktuur van híérdie regeringsisteem was geforseer om hewig aan te pas elke keer wanneer die negatiewe opinies oor demokrasie oorweldigend geraak het. Dit wil voorkom asof demokrasie weer op die rand van verandering is. Skrywers soos Crozier, Huntington en Watunaki (1975) het alreeds in die 1970's gewaarsku teen 'n krisis rondom demokrasie. Meer onlangs het skrywers soos Dalton (2004) en van Beek (2012) opinies gelug dat burgers reg oor die wêreld stadig maar seker besig is om meer krities op politieke partye, politici en oor politieke beleide en die demokratiese proses in geheel raak. Hierdie negatiewe sentimente mag dalk 'n aanduiding wees van “'n erosie in die ondersteuning van demokrasie,”, soos Van Beek (2012:12) dit noem. Tradisionele opname-navorsingsprojekte wat na opinies oor demokrasie kyk, soos die „World Values Survey‟, bied wel 'n blik op globale uitsprake oor demokrasie, maar is duur, tydsaam en moeilik om deur te voer. Die metode wat in hierdie studie ontwikkel is, kan bykomende insigte tot tradisionele opname-navorsingsprojekte bring. Díé insigte word outomaties ingesamel en geanaliseer vanuit die invloedryke sosiale netwerk, Twitter. Hierdie inleidende studie bevind dat geoutomatiseerde analise van uitsprake oor demokrasie op Twittter inderdaad moontlik is. Ten einde die mate van sukses van hierdie metode wat ontwikkel is te illustreer, analiseer hierdie studie 'n datagreep van uitsprake oor demokrasie uit Twitter oor die tydperk 1 Mei tot 31 Julie 2012. Hierbenewens bied die studie ook 'n kwantitatiewe waardasie per hand wat die akkuraatheid van die ontwikkelde meetingsinstrument toets. Met die huidige ontwikkelingsvlak van inhouds- en sentiment-analisetegnologie vind hierdie studie dat die akkuraatheid van hierdie metode, alhoewel informatief is, tog beperk is. Die studie sluit af met 'n afdeling wat advies oor hoe verdere studies die akkuraatheid van hierdie meetinstrument kan verbeter, toelig.

Magistro baigiamajame darbe yra analizuojama socialinių tinklų įtaka organizacijos marketingo plėtrai. Buvo atliktas socialinių tinklų įtakos organizacijos marketingo plėtrai tyrimas Lietuvoje. Tyrimas atliktas pasitelkus struktūrizuoto klausimyno arba interviu metodą. Darbe taip pat taikyta mokslinės literatūros analizė. Tyrimo tikslas – įvertinti socialinių tinklų įtaką interneto marketingo plėtrai, remiantis Lietuvos įmonių pavyzdžiu bei pateikti su šia sritimi susijusius pasiūlymus. Darbe buvo iškelti du tyrimo uždaviniai: - atlikti ekspertų nuomonės tyrimą, kurio pagalba galima išsiaiškinti, koks yra ekspertų požiūris į socialinių tinklus internetinio marketingo plėtroje Lietuvoje; - pasiūlyti aspektus, į kuriuos turėtų atkreipti dėmesį Lietuvos įmonės, naudodamos socialinius tinklus internetinio marketingo plėtroje. Tyrimo objektas – Socialinių tinklų taikymas marketingo plėtroje. Išanalizavus socialinių tinklų įtaką organizacijos marketingo plėtrai leido įvertinti socialinių tinklų teikiamą naudą organizacijos marketingui bei pasiūlyti organizacijoms į ką reikėtų atkreipti dėmesį prieš pradedant naudoti socialinius tinklus marketingo plėtroje. Magistro baigiamąjį darbą sudaro trys dalys. Pirmame skyriuje yra analizuojamas internetinis marketingas; socialiniai tinklai, jų samprata, tendencijos, atsiradimo užuomazgos, kūrimo principai, įtaka marketingui. Antrame skyriuje yra nagrinėjama socialinių tinklų įtakos organizacijos marketingui, remiantis Skandinavijos šalių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / In master‘s thesis there is analysing social networks‘ influence to organization‘s marketing enlargement. Due to this, there was made a research to find out what kind of influence social networks do to organization‘s marketing enlargement. The research was made using Lithuania‘s organizations‘ experience. It was made using structured questionnaire or interview method. The goal of the research – to evaluate the social networks’ influence to the marketing enlargement in the internet using Lithuania’s organizations’ experience. Also to give suggestions about this topic. There were made two main research tasks in the master’s thesis: First, make an experts‘ opinion‘s research which should help to find out what is the experts‘ attitude to social networks marketing enlargement in the internet in Lithuania country. To suggest aspects which should be analysed by organizations‘ managers, who use social networks as a measure to raise marketing enlargement in the internet. The object of the research – social networks application in the marketing enlargement. Analyzing the influence of social networks to organization’s marketing enlargement let us evaluate the advantages of using social networks in this area. After research there is a possibility to give suggestions to organizations’ managers to which particular things they should pay attention before starting to use social networks in marketing enlargement. Master’s thesis consists of three parts. In the first part there is analyzed... [to full text]

Abstract: - This Master’s Thesis explains the relevancy of sustainable marketing, sustainability, e-commerce, circular economy of recycled paper packaging in the correlation of consumer perception, consumer decision making factors towards recycling and sustainability benefits. Although the paper discusses sustainable marketing in a circular economy aspect potential in regards to recycled paper parcels, the research will mainly focus on the postal carrier company named PostNord based in Nordic countries; the paper will emphasise how the double-sealing recycled paper could increase the number of customers and sustainability ofthe company and consumer perception towards these type of packaging as a parcel. The concept of Sustainability Marketing and Consumer Behaviour has been around for awhile. Since its emergence in the 1980s, the idea has evolved. Much research has been done regarding sustainability marketing, also known as green marketing. As the world is becoming environmentally polluted, many industries propagate it, and consumers need more sustainable products and services. Due to this reason and other respective consumer needs, companiesfrom the manufacturing and service industry have made a strategy to implement short andlong-term to become sustainable companies by becoming carbon-free. Accordingly, postal carrier companies worldwide have developed various sustainable marketing strategies and technological tools to reduce carbon emissions. They simultaneously promote sustainability marketing based on consumer behaviour and perception. The research paper mainly focuses on sustainable marketing, sustainable marketing in the circular economy, and consumer perception and factors affecting consumers’ purchase intention regarding the broad applicability and benefits of double-sealing recycled paperparcels for packaging in the postal service industry. For this particular Master’s thesis paper, the research has taken PostNord as a case study and developed an alternative sustainablemarketing and consumer perspective concerning: Circular economy through the use of recycled paper parcels, organisational resource utilisation, increased current & new customer,consumer perception towards recycled paper parcels, Consumer purchase intention towardsRecycled paper parcels & E-commerce with packaging. The research paper is developed and has referred to various scholarly articles such as Escursell (2021), Kotler (2012) and several other scholars, including yearly sustainability reports of PostNord. The annual sustainability reports of PostNord have mainly focused on increasing its sustainability through technological tools, transportation systems, service and customer relations. This research paper is developed through a cross sectional research method study provided that PostNord is the case study related to using double-sealing recycled paper parcels as an alternative product to its current and potential consumers while increasing their sustainability.

The arrival of the Big Data era has become a major topic of discussion in many sectors because of the premises of big data utilizations and its impact on decision-making. It is an interdisciplinary issue that has captured the attention of scholars and created new research opportunities in information science, business, heath care, and many others fields. The problem is the Big Data is not well defined, so that there exists confusion in IT what jobs and skill sets are required in big data area. The problem stems from the newness of the Big Data profession. Because many aspects of the area are unknown, organizations do not yet possess the IT, human, and business resources necessary to cope with and benefit from big data. These organizations include health care, enterprise, logistics, universities, weather forecasting, oil companies, e-business, recruiting agencies etc., and are challenged to deal with high volume, high variety, and high velocity big data to facilitate better decision- making. This research proposes a new way to look at Big Data and Big Data analysis. It helps and meets the theoretical and methodological foundations of Big Data and addresses an increasing demand for more powerful Big Data analysis from the academic researches prospective. Essay 1 provides a strategic overview of the untapped potential of social media Big Data in the business world and describes its challenges and opportunities for aspiring business organizations. It also aims to offer fresh recommendations on how companies can exploit social media data analysis to make better business decisions—decisions that embrace the relevant social qualities of its customers and their related ecosystem. The goal of this research is to provide insights for businesses to make better, more informed decisions based on effective social media data analysis. Essay 2 provides a better understanding of the influence of social media during the 2016 American presidential election and develops a model to examine individuals' attitudes toward participating in social media (SM) discussions that might influence their decision in choosing between the two presidential election candidates, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. The goal of this research is to provide a theoretical foundation that supports the influence of social media on individual's decisions. Essay 3 defines the major job descriptions for careers in the new Big Data profession. It to describe the Big Data professional profile as reflected by the demand side, and explains the differences and commonalities between company-posted job requirements for data analytics, business analytics, and data scientists jobs. The main aim for this work is to clarify of the skill requirements for Big Data professionals for the joint benefit of the job market where they will be employed and of academia, where such professionals will be prepared in data science programs, to aid in the entire process of preparing and recruiting for Big Data positions.