This research investigates the ways in which Unilever's LUX soap has repositioned their brand away from their historical association with beauty pageants. This research aims to unpack the ways in which Instagram is utilised by LUX soap to effectively communicate a distinct brand personality. This research identifies that the repositioning of the brand on Instagram was achieved through a strategy that integrated social media influencers and brand events, whilst incorporating social marketing. Not only does this research focus on LUX's branding on Instagram, it critically engages with the content from a postfeminist perspective. This is the secondary theoretical engagement of this work. The paper highlights the ways in which the content is postfeminist in nature and how this was incorporated into the branding messages. The main focus of this dissertation is the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore LUX soap campaigns. Through a mixed methodology of interviews, content analysis, and survey the paper focuses on the ways in which LUX created a relationship with their customers on Instagram and effectively repositioned the brand. The research suggests that three key techniques were repeated on Instagram to effectively create new associations with the LUX brand during the #MoreThanYouCanSee and #EvenMore extension campaign. The paper, furthermore, suggests that the LUX soap campaign employs postfeminist rhetoric in their Instagram strategy. This dissertation argues that the development of a strategy consisting of branded events, social media influencers, and social marketing content allowed LUX soap to reposition their brand.

As the internet creates platforms for online communication, people start to share their thoughts and attitudes about products on social media platforms, either by commenting or by giving likes to the posts. Given the opportunities of possible conversations between the companies and consumers on social media, companies have been interacting with customers on social medias as a marketing strategy. One well-known social media platform used by many scholars to conduct sentiment analyses of consumers within food sectors is Twitter. In this paper, I study consumers’ attitudes towards food companies’ tweets analyzing Twitter data from 2019 to 2020. Concepts relating to ‘innovation’ and food claims are captured using keyword-based analyses. The sentiment analysis is lexicon based, using a lexicon that is specifically designed for social media data. Hypotheses are tested using negative binomial regressions, separately on the 2019 and 2020 data sets. This study shows that both innovation and food claim concepts appear in posts on twitter. Whereas innovation tweets are consistently related to larger numbers of likes, the association of food claims with likes varies.

The growth of location-based social networks (LBSN) such as Facebook and Twitter has been rapid in recent years. In LBSNs, users provide location information on public profiles that potentially can be used in harmful ways. LBSNs have privacy settings that allow users to control the privacy level of their profiles, thus limiting access to location information by other users; but for various reasons users seldom make use of them. Using the protection motivation theory (PMT) as a theoretical lens, this dissertation examines whether users can be encouraged to use LBSN privacy settings through fear appeals. Fear appeals have been used in various studies to arouse fear in users, in order to motivate them to comply to an adaptive behaviour through the threat of impending danger. However, within the context of social networking, it is not yet clear how fear-inducing arguments will ultimately influence the use of privacy settings by users. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of fear appeals on user compliance, with recommendations to enact the use of privacy settings toward the alleviation of privacy threats. Using a survey methodology, 248 social-network users completed an instrument measuring the variables conceptualized by PMT. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the validity and reliability, and to analyze the data. Analysis of the responses show that PMT provides an explanation for the intention to use privacy settings by social-network users. Risk susceptibility, response efficacy, self-efficacy and response cost were found to have a positive impact on the intention to use privacy settings, while sharing benefits and maladaptive behaviours were found to have a negative impact on the intention to use privacy settings. However, risk severity and fear were not found to be significant predictors of the intention to use privacy settings. This study contributes to existing research on PMT in a sense that fear appeal should focus more on coping appraisal, rather than on threat appraisal which is consistent with the results of most studies on protection motivation.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Having representative users, who have the targeted disability, in accessibility studies is vital to the validity of research findings. Although it is a widely accepted tenet in the HCI community, many barriers and difficulties make it very resource-demanding for accessibility researchers to recruit representative users. As a result, researchers recruit non-representative users, who do not have the targeted disability, instead of representative users in accessibility studies. Although such an approach has been widely justified, evidence showed that findings derived from non-representative users could be biased and even misleading. To address this problem, researchers have come up with different solutions such as building pools of users to recruit from. But still, the data is not widely available and needs a lot of effort and resource to build and maintain. On the other hand, online social media websites have become popular in the last decade. Many online communities have emerged that allow online users to discuss health-related subjects, exchange useful information, or provide emotional support. A large amount of data accumulated in such online communities have gained attention from researchers in the healthcare domain. And many researches have been done based on data from social media websites to better understand health problems to improve the wellbeing of people. Despite the increasing popularity, the value of data from social media websites for accessibility research remains untapped. Hence, my work aims to create methods that could extract valuable information from data collected on social media websites for accessibility practitioners to support their design process. First, I investigate methods that enable researchers to effectively collect representative data from social media websites. More specifically, I look into machine learning approaches that could allow researchers to automatically identify online users who have disabilities (representative users). Second, I investigate methods that could extract useful information from user-generated free-text using techniques drawn from the information extraction domain. Last, I explore how such information should be visualized and presented for designers to support the scenario-based design process in accessibility studies.

Social media is reshaping the way college students communicate within their college community, and higher education has recently begun to embrace social media. The most frequently used social networking site is Facebook, and its usage has increased tremendously among college students, impacting the students both positively and negatively. The purpose of this research was to explore the perceptions of community college students regarding the use of social media and social networking sites and the effect of that use on learning, GPA, and graduation as well any differences in perceptions based on students demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, class status, race/ethnicity, and living situation). A 15-item survey was used to collect data from 87 students at one rural community college. The study found that most students use social media often, with their most common social media interaction partners being their close friends and family and the least being professors. In addition, 63.2% agreed that social networking sites were an effective tool for e-learning. Most students took a mixture of online and face-toace classes, preferred Facebook and Instagram, and felt social networking sites had become either less as important or only as important as they were last year. Other results showed that 51% agreed that social networking sites help them get educational materials, 39% agreed that social networking sites have supported their progress to graduate, 37% agreed that social networking sites have positively affected learning, and 32% agreed that social networking sites affected their GPA. The study found that Facebook was preferred by students who were 25 and older, Caucasian, and/or living with their spouse. Students who lived with parents used Instagram more than Facebook, and students who lived with their children took more online courses.

This study provides an analysis of how online fandom affordances are utilized in association with technological Twitter affordances in discussing disabled representation within the Marvel fandom. Associations were found via a quantitative content analysis of 292 tweets that discuss the Marvel fandom and disability identity. When individuals consume media, the media shapes their perspectives of themselves, others, and the world around them. Objects of fandom (often media) are no exception, meaning a fictional TV show can warp viewers' perspectives. When individuals discuss controversial perspectives that stem from an object of fandom via social media a unique environment is formed. In this environment, individuals discuss perspectives that have been impacted by the object of fandom by utilizing social media affordances and fandom affordances to shape and impact the perspectives of other users on the platform. However, there is little information on how Twitter affordances and fandom affordances work together to take part in this cycle. Thus, this study investigates how perspectives, surrounding minoritized disability identity representation, that stem from Marvel fandom media, utilize both fandom and Twitter affordances. It was found Twitter affordances employ fandom affordances in creating content that impacts perspectives. Results found certain Twitter affordances (1) worked in tandem with the fandom affordance of presenting multiple minoritized identities, (2) were associated with critiquing negative Western societal principles, and (3) worked hand-in-hand with the fandom affordance of creating a connection. This study, part of a unique area of focus, demonstrates the importance of Twitter affordances in utilizing fandom affordances to create content impacting perspectives about disability identity specific to Marvel media. Discussion of theoretical and practical implications for the correct representation of minoritized identities within media conclude the study.

This dissertation expands scholarship that posits circulation as rhetoric with ethical implications. From November 2019 to Spring 2020, more than 33 white supremacist crimes occurred at Syracuse University. In response, NotAgainSU, a Black-led student organization formed, demanding accountability and transparency. Protesters built counterpublics with their hashtag activism through #NotAgainSU on Twitter and Instagram. I tracked #NotAgainSU across Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube using digital tools from November 11, 2019 to June 28, 2020; I explored how the hashtag intersected with news by collecting articles; and I conducted surveys and interviews to find out about the experiences of people who saw and circulated #NotAgainSU online. Protesters put counterpublic work into circulating the hashtag that enabled it to accrue collective affective and political value. The hashtag circulated to politicized audiences who joined protesters in what I am calling counterpublic circulation. However, people could appropriate that affective and social value and re-invest it in individual values that were not morally equivalent. This appropriation occurred through an overlapping and necessary kind of circulation that I am calling public circulation, by which I mean circulation that brings content to audiences who depoliticize the content and maintain their positions. The false equation of values is possible through the fictions of an equitable public sphere and a free market that are built into social media company's circulatory systems. News articles used a both-sides model and falsely positioned #NotAgainSU social media posts on equal terms with Syracuse University's arguments. Finally, in reactionary circulation, people could use the same means by which the protesters circulated #NotAgainSU to circulate the hashtag to oppositionally politicized audiences, who re-invested the work of the hashtag into reactionary affective and social capital. Reactionary circulation enabled people to form antifan reactionary identifications to the hashtag and ultimately reinscribed the fiction of white group identity.

This project reports on the results of a study that investigated the social networking use of student and non-student veterans, with a particular focus on the narrative building and identity presentation practices involved in this use. In this dissertation, I argue that stereotypical and exclusionary tropes of the veteran, such as the veteran as war hero and the veteran as wounded warrior, are damaging to our veterans and to others, in both the society and the classroom. However, through the detailed analysis of survey data and data collected from an interview and social networking profile tour with one student veteran participant, I highlight the exclusionary nature of these tropes and argue that the complex digital narratives crafted in social networking spaces can offer resistance to popular tropes of the veteran. The complexity of my participants' digital narratives also offers support for the argument that elements of one's social networking profiles, when viewed independently and decontextualized, can lead to invalid and unfair assumptions about the users' identity. Additionally, I argue that, for my participants, many of whom demonstrated a nuanced and critical understanding of audience, decisions to self-identify as military personnel in social networking spaces are intertwined with perceptions of privacy. Finally, this project culminates in the identification of a number of digital literacy practices present in my participants' social networking use, as well as a set of pedagogical and programmatic recommendations for writing teachers and writing program administrators interested in aiding student veterans in the process of transition and reintegration.

While the field of writing studies has studied digital writing as a response to multiple calls for more research on digital forms of writing, research on hashtags has yet to build bridges between different disciplines' approaches to studying the uses and effects of hashtags. This dissertation builds that bridge in its interdisciplinary approach to the study of hashtags by focusing on how hashtags can be fully appreciated at the intersection of the fields of information research, linguistics, rhetoric, ethics, writing studies, new media studies, and discourse studies. Hashtags are writing innovations that perform unique digital functions rhetorically while still hearkening back to functions of both print and oral rhetorical traditions. Hashtags function linguistically as indicators of semantic meaning; additionally, hashtags also perform the role of search queries on social media, retrieving texts that include the same hashtag. Information researchers refer to the relationship between a search query and its results using the term "aboutness" (Kehoe and Gee, 2011). By considering how hashtags have an aboutness, the humanities can call upon information research to better understand the digital aspects of the hashtag's search function. Especially when hashtags are used to organize discourse, aboutness has an effect on how a discourse community's agendas and goals are expressed, as well as framing what is relevant and irrelevant to the discourse. As digital activists increasingly use hashtags to organize and circulate the goals of their discourse communities, knowledge of ethical strategies for hashtag use will help to better preserve a relevant aboutness for their discourse while enabling them to better leverage their hashtag for circulation. In this dissertation, through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Twitter discourse that used #OrlandoStrong over the five-month period before the first anniversary of the Pulse shooting, I trace how the #OrlandoStrong discourse community used innovative rhetorical strategies to combat irrelevant content from ambiguating their discourse space. In Chapter One, I acknowledge the call from scholars to study digital tools and briefly describe the history of the Pulse shooting, reflecting on non-digital texts that employed #OrlandoStrong as memorials in the Orlando area. In Chapter Two, I focus on the literature surrounding hashtags, discourse, aboutness, intertextuality, hashtag activism, and informational compositions. In Chapter Three, I provide an overview of the stages of grounded theory methodology and the implications of critical discourse analysis before I detail how I approached the collection, coding, and analysis of the #OrlandoStrong Tweets I studied. The results of my study are reported in Chapter Four, offering examples of Tweets that were important to understanding how the discourse space became ambiguous through the use of hashtags. In Chapter Five, I reflect on ethical approaches to understanding the consequences of hashtag use, and then I offer an ethical recommendation for hashtag use by hashtag activists. I conclude Chapter Five with an example of a classroom activity that allows students to use hashtags to better understand the relationship between aboutness, (dis)ambiguation, discourse communities, and ethics. This classroom activity is provided with the hope that instructors from different disciplines will be able to provide ethical recommendations to future activists who may benefit from these rhetorical strategies.

This study applies theories of texts and technologies to examine ways in which fan culture and mainstream entertainment media can shape and be shaped by each other through digital interactions and negotiations. Further, it considers ways in which these interactions have potential to foster community building and advocacy efforts beyond the limitations of the screen. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the subject of asexuality as it is represented in BBC's 2010 television series, Sherlock, tracing the multiple ways in which the traditional boundaries between fans and entertainment professionals have been breached as each group works to engage the other while pursuing their separate objectives, including social change, personal and professional acceptance and/or acclaim, and commercial profit. The dissertation traces four distinct but interconnected types/sites of interface among fans, advocates, mainstream media, showrunners, and celebrities, including 1) mainstream media articles related to Sherlock and those officially associated with it; 2) social media; 3) single-owner or small group-operated fan websites; and 4) fan fiction and associated comments. This interdisciplinary project draws on the work of fandom/digital culture scholarship (e.g., Henry Jenkins, Matthew Hills, Paul Boothe) within a broader framework informed by scholars of digital culture and queer and feminist ideologies (e.g., Donna Haraway, Lee Edelmen, Lauren Berlant), as well as emerging scholarship on asexuality, which is informed by queer and feminist perspectives (e.g., Brenda Chu, Julia Decker, Jacinthe Flore).