Social media users generate a large volume of data, which can contain meaningful and useful information. One such example is information about locations, which may be useful in applications such as marketing and security monitoring. There are two types of locations: location entities mentioned in the text of the messages and the physical locations of users. Extracting the first type of locations is not trivial because the location entities in the text are often ambiguous. In this thesis, we implement a sequential classification model with conditional random fields followed by a rule-based disambiguation model, we apply them to Twitter messages (tweets) and we show that they handle the ambiguous location entities in our dataset reasonably well. Only very few users disclose their physical locations; in order to automatically detect their locations, many approaches have been proposed using various types of information, including the tweets posted by the users. It is not easy to infer the original locations from text data, because text tends to be noisy, particularly in social media. Recently, deep learning techniques have been shown to reduce the error rate of many machine learning tasks, due to their ability to learn meaningful representations of input data. We investigate the potential of building a deep-learning architecture to infer the location of Twitter users based merely on their tweets. We find that stacked denoising auto-encoders are well suited for this task, with results comparable to state-of-the-art models. Finally, we combine the two models above with a third-party sentiment analysis tool and obtain a intelligent social media monitoring system. We show a demo of the system and that it is able to predict and visualize the locations and sentiments contained in a stream of tweets related to mobile phone brands - a typical real world e-business application.

Diploma thesis focus on social media as a phenomenon of modern times and their use in a marketing. I will introduce four most frequently used social media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube as well as an outline the possibility of their use in marketing. Marketing strategy in social media I decided to introduce through a concrete example - an international company 3M. This company I chose mainly because it operates in the market of industrial products, where online marketing is not as much used and also because it cooperates with University of Economics. After introducing the basic marketing theories and explanations of basic terms I will analyze an existing 3M marketing strategy in social media and on the basis of the analysis and obtained data I will suggest my own possible marketing strategy for the company 3M, which connects all the aforementioned social media.

This study uses a CDA analysis in order to take a critical look at how linguistic and visual techniques are used to create positive messages about a ‘modern’ brand, British confectionary company, Cadbury UK, in their social media discourse on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The study goes further in exploring how these messages are constructed in a way which according to Aristotle, is ‘persuasive’, looking at how they appealed to emotion (pathos), the character or trustworthiness of the brand (ethos) and how the message created or appealed to logic (logos). The study focuses on critical theoretical perspectives regarding the promotion of consumerism in such marketing operations, whilst also looking at how the messages identified are aimed at ‘persuading’ the audience into accepting consumerist values. This thesis also views social media as a platform upon which much sociological theory still applies such as the idea of ‘self-presentation’ for example, where individuals aim to present themselves in a way which benefits them within a social setting. The main messages identified within Cadbury UK’s social media discourse were: ‘Cadbury UK is a familiar ‘voice’, ‘Cadbury UK is a brand who cares’, ‘Cadbury UK is a source of joy’, ‘Cadbury UK shares festive family values’, ‘Cadbury UK is comforting’ and ‘Cadbury UK is a cultural symbol’. What these messages point out as a general summary is that Cadbury UK had utilised their social media discourse as a way of appearing ‘familiar’ to the consumer, with the aim of creating a ‘friendly’ relationship with them. It was also found that in all cases, pathos played a vital role in making the messages ‘persuasive’. This allowed the brand to communicate with the consumer at a ‘closer’, more emotional level.

This thesis deals with corporations looking at social media. It introduces an evolution of the web and the web 2.0 concept which are directly followed by social media. It defines social media and characterizes its major representatives. At the same time the thesis defines the corporation as an institute that uses social media to make a profit. This use is divided into five dimensions: brand building, customer care, sales, human resources and corporate social responsibility. Theoretical knowledge is applied to the combined research focused on the real corporation - Vodafone Czech Republic. This company is analyzed in terms of the five key dimensions of the corporation on social media, but subjects to analyze are partial social media activities of the company as well - sentiment analysis of online discussions, analysis of engagement on Facebook and analysis of key influencers on Twitter.

This diploma thesis deals with market analysis of Social Customer Relationship Manage-ment tools in companies, introduction to this issue and explanation of the terms that are related to the Social Customer Relationship Management. The aim of this work is to introduce the reader with the general issues of CRM with emphasis on SCRM, to explain how can the SCRM tools be used in companies, to perform a survey on awareness of SCRM in companies and especially to analyze the market of these tools and to determine the suitable products for a midsized company according to established criteria. The document is divided into a theoretical part, which focuses on the concepts of CRM and SCRM, explains their differences and clarifies the social element. The practical part of the work is divided into a survey designed to determine the awareness of Czech companies about CRM and SCRM, and whether they use the social media in business. The last part is the market analysis of tools which evaluates them according to the established criteria for midsized businesses. Evaluated tools were selected according to the Social CRM Magic Quadrant by the Gartner company.

The purpose of this research has been to understand the profession and discipline of investor relations in publicly listed entities in South Africa, and their response to the opportunities and threats of using social media as another channel of communication. These responses include the rationale, and strategies pursued and practised in order to enhance investor relations. To gain an understanding of whether the investor relations practitioners see the role of social media to enhance their programmes, a qualitative research with an exploratory design was conducted on thirteen organisations listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange main board with a market capitalisation amount exceeding R4.5 billion per annum. It was discovered that investor relations was formalised in the form of strategies formulated and the internal and JSE-regulated practices performed suggest that they take pursuit of investor relations seriously. Furthermore, despite the widespread usage or social media for customer engagement purpose, investor relations practitioners do not yet regard social media as a tool that could supplement disclosure requirements as well provide non financial information about companies. This purpose is currently being served by the dedicated investor relations websites only. Based on findings made, investor willingness will also drive the use of social media. Some of the recommendations made include engaging the JSE for the endorsement of social media, implementation of maturity models and engaging investors on their information needs when making investment decisions. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This mixed-methods dissertation study examined how divorced, nonresidential fathers enact their identities as fathers with their nonresidential children via various communication modalities through the lens of Hecht's (1993) Communication Theory of Identity. After a pilot study, data was collected in two phases. In Phase I, fathers responded to an online survey. The results of this phase were analyzed using SPSS. The results indicated that, although there was a large degree of variability in these fathers' use of various modes of communication, several men utilized multiple modalities to interact with their nonresidential children. The results of Phase I also call attention to the enabling and constraining features of various modes of communication as they facilitated and/or restricted certain types of conversations. Phase II consisted of exploring two case studies in which fathers shared redacted transcripts of actual mediated interaction with their children. The transcripts were expanded using Labov and Fanshel's (1977) cross-sectional analysis and the interactions were then thematically analyzed and compared to a typology of fathering roles identified by previous research. The case studies provided two different perspectives of the same issue. Albeit in different ways both case studies demonstrated the inherent link between interaction and identity enactment. That is, one cannot enact his or her identity apart from interaction with others--and in these particular cases, with specific others. The dissertation concludes with a synthesis of the results of Phases I and II in light of several unsolicited emails I received from of my participants. Ultimately, this dissertation study highlights the inseparable connection between interpersonal communication and the means by which communication is mediated.

The belief that society benefits from the adoption of democratic practices and a desire to improve schooling in South Africa, motivate this research. The social objective of the research is therefore to determine what are the causes of the persistent failure of the South African schooling system and to what extent community participation may serve to resolve them. The technological objective is to determine the feasibility of utilising social media for addressing social problems through enabling participative democracy. The potential for community participation in South African schools is therefore viewed through the lens of Internet enabled participative democracy. A design science-inspired research framework is devised in a qualitative study adopting a critical interpretevist epistemology. The study entails three phases applying a mixing of methods to perform critical research, context-based evaluation and critical interpretive evaluation. The first phase reveals the fundamental problems impacting the schooling education system in South Africa and determines that the underlying cause for their persistence lies in a systemic problem of conflicting legislation and policies caused by ideological differences within the ruling tripartite alliance. It further identifies through critical inference, specific practices by school communities which could improve the education system by participative, democratic action. The second phase evaluates the capacity for selected, popularly used social media artefacts to serve as communication and collaboration tools, in the schooling context, to enable community participation. These are found to be inadequate. The third phase is an evaluation of the technologies capable of facilitating activities required to achieve democratic participation of communities in schools and results in the description of an artefact that could enable a “networked social service media” system. The paper substantiates the notion that an appropriately designed, Internet enabled social media artefact, can promote the participation of communities in schools in South Africa.

Ever-developing media and innovative propaganda strategies continually change the ways that political authorities exercise their manipulation of the public, which always causes great concern among scholars in the field of political communication. To respond to the lively debate on the roles new modes of communication can play in the processes of politics in modern society based on the experience of China and also to help scholars adapt to the changing context of China today, we chose one representative trend in the latest political propaganda of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on social media--"cuteness-coated propaganda"--of which we study the impacts on political support among Chinese youth and the mechanisms involved. After conceptualizing and theorizing the cuteness-coated propaganda of the CPC, we design and conduct two studies. In Study One, we firstly recruit 199 participants offline for a pair of between-subjects 2 (selling cuteness or not) × 2 (soft content or hard content) factorial design experiments. In Experiment 1, the cuteness is presented in the form of video, and in Experiment 2, it is presented in the form of pictures. In Study Two, we recruit 386 participants online to join in the online survey-embedded experiments, in which the cuteness is presented in the form of text in Experiment 3 and the form of pictures in Experiment 4. We find that in our research context when the CPC propagandizes with soft-oriented content using the selling-cuteness strategy in video form on Weibo, it improves the specific political support of Chinese youth by increasing their positive emotions or closing the psychological distance between themselves and the propagandist. This finding suggests that the "Double-Soft Model" of political propaganda (utilizing a soft propaganda strategy to publicize soft content) proposed in our thesis can be a very persuasive way of influencing young people's specific political support. However, when the selling-cuteness with soft content is presented in picture form or textual form, it is unable to influence the specific support because it cannot evoke significantly increased positive emotions or psychological closeness. Meanwhile, neither general political support nor national pride is influenced by the selling-cuteness strategy no matter in which form it is presented, which is consistent with the findings of previous scholars. Our research represents a pioneering study of cuteness-coated political propaganda on social media, both theoretically and empirically.

While bringing tremendous benefits to individuals worldwide, the proliferation of online social networks has also given rise to undesirable online harassment behavior. Although users can respond in various ways, little attention has been paid so far to the use of online coping strategies on social media, more specifically, how individuals respond to online harassment by using the available features on social media. This thesis sought to understand individuals' use of online coping strategies. This thesis aims to tackle these challenges to advance the understanding of whether, how, and why individuals use online coping strategies in response to online harassment. Essay 1 develops a typology of online coping strategies based on users' focus of response (i.e., self or initiator) and mode of response (i.e., avoidance or approach). This essay serves as a conceptual background for the two subsequent empirical studies (Essay 2 and Essay 3) that focus on two critical roles involved in online harassment (e.g., victims and bystanders). These two studies are conducted in the social media context. Essay 2 investigates whether and how individuals use online coping strategies in response to online harassment on social media. Results from a scenario-based experiment showed that victims would be more likely to adopt self-focused and approach strategies (e.g., seclusion, mediation, and reporting) when they perceived a high threat of the incident. Confidence in executing the platform functions would increase victims' use of the initiators-focused strategies in both modes (e.g., blocking and reporting) but reduce their use of self-focused avoidance strategy (e.g., seclusion). Trust in social media would lead victims to the self-focused approach strategy (e.g., mediation). Victims with the intensified fear of the incident would be more likely to use the self-focused and avoidance strategies (e.g., seclusion, mediation, and blocking). While Essay 2 focuses on the role of victims, Essay 3 concentrates on the role of bystanders and reporting strategy, which is one of the online coping strategies on social media that support bystanders' interventions. Essay 3 explains why individuals report witnessing online harassment. The results found that four contextualized factors (perceived emergency of the online harassment incident, perceived responsibility to report, perceived self-efficacy in using built-in reporting functions, and perceived outcome effectiveness of built-in reporting functions for tackling online harassment) are important factors for shaping bystander reporting interventions, while the presence of others as an inhibitor that discourages bystanders' willingness to help. This essay also found that socio- environmental and technological factors exert a significant effect on bystanders' willingness to intervene. In sum, this thesis contributes to the area of online harassment by breaking new ground for the study of users' prosocial responses to online harassment on social media. It not only furthers our understanding of online coping strategies but also provides valuable insights for practitioners to design effective coping features to combat online harassment.