<p> The purpose of this study is to specifically look into one businesses website and online efforts to engage potential new hires in providing them with valuable company information. The research questions focused on how effective the company's online advertisements were, as well as the interaction and involvement of the online advertisements. The researcher of this study utilized communication theories based on Todd Gitlin's media torrent theory of oversaturation and Joseph Walther's social information processing theory to conduct research. To conduct the research a survey was given to 20 prospective job seekers and five face-to-face interviews were conducted. The participation in the survey was anonymous and no tracking information was kept. The interviewees that participated in the interview were current employees that were only asked about their application process and the role that social media played in their online job search. The study concludes that most of the prospective job seekers and current employees find social media platforms to be an easy way to find open positions because these online advertisements direct the applicant to the company website for further information. However, many employees also preferred to learn about the company face-to-face, rather than online. </p>

<p> This study investigated the relationships between international students' use of social networking sites (SNS), their acculturative stress and social connectedness. A survey was conducted among 63 international students who attended a rural, Midwestern University in the United States. To keep in contact with individuals from their home country and individuals in the U.S., international students reported using both U.S.-based SNS such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as SNS geared towards their home countries, such as Weibo and WeChat. Positive correlations were found between Guilt and Culture Shock, Culture Shock and Homesickness, Guilt and Homesickness, Guilt and Perceived Hatred, Culture Shock and Perceived Hatred, Perceived Discrimination and Perceived Hatred, Perceived Discrimination and Culture Shock, and between Perceived Discrimination and Guilt. Hours spent per day on social networking sites was negatively correlated with Perceived Hatred, Guilt and Social Connectedness, but positively correlated with Relationship Maintenance, Social Surveillance, Socializing, Culture Shock and Perceived Discrimination. Social Connectedness was negatively associated with all five components of Acculturative Stress and Social Surveillance, but positively associated with Relationship Maintenance. The findings suggest that international students' SNS use may be associated with their ability to adjust to life in the foreign country and to continue feeling connected to a network of social support. The small sample size and other limitations are discussed, as are the potential implications.</p>

<p> This study was influenced by the researcher's personal interest in the topic as well as a pilot study he conducted; it produced results that inspired him to do further research. The Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission assisted in distributing the Qualtrics survey through their Facebook page and Twitter account. Thus, the researcher utilized a non-probability convenience and volunteer sample of 789 Saudi Arabian students studying in the United States. </p><p> This study was guided by the Uses and Gratification Theory to examine the use of smartphones as a news resource and the potential gratifications students experienced with this type of use. The findings showed reliance upon using smartphones for accessing news with several experienced gratifications. An emergent habit of checking news frequently among respondents was revealed by the data analysis. Additionally, the findings indicated that respondents have feelings of being overwhelmed by the large amount of news as well as feeling isolated without their smartphones. The findings point to a noticeable amount of sharing news via social networking sites while using smartphones. Overall, an argument of a cultural impact of using smartphones exists, contrary to respondents' perceptions.</p>

<p> In 2008, a group of masked protesters stood in front of the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles to protest the organization's censorship on the Internet (Knapperberger, 2012). This protest was the first collectivized, localized, and material manifestation of the group Anonymous, a loosely coordinated decentralized group of Internet based-activists that began on the web. Amidst increasing regulation of the Internet, Anonymous is a key subject to watch to determine how contemporary social movements will unfold with the introduction of cyberspace as a place of organization and performance. To provide a foundation for this study, I review social movement theory in the U.S. with an emphasis on visual imagery in protests. While traditional movements relied on public collective action (Bowers, Ochs, &amp; Jenson, 1993), new social movement theory assumes movements rely on private and individual reclamation of identity (Buechler, 1999, 2000). Anonymous fits into neither theory but takes aspects from both, challenging social movement theory to go further and account for the Internet-driven conditions that change the nature of the protester, revealing anonymity and appropriation of images as two distinct markers of contemporary social movements, as initially depicted in the use of the Guy Fawkes mask. Next, I look at geographies of place and how protest changes in cyberspace based on the images that emerge, giving the group aesthetic control over their social construction. Mirzoeff's (2011) analysis of visualized authority explains how Anonymous creates a countervisual to the state control of aesthetic reality by guiding is visual representations. DeLuca and Peeples' (2002) concept of the public screen addresses the promulgation of protest images, which become the primary rhetoric of the movement and a means to establish aesthetic credibility. Anonymous exists as a character in a disembodied cyber-world, with the media creating myths of embodied protesters. Through Bahktin's (1981) analysis of the chronotope, I study the spatio-temporal relationships of traditional social movements and how Anonymous challenges those relationships by establishing new chronotopes that influence contemporary movements. Emerging chronotopes break down the distinction between the protester and the hacker, the public and private dichotomy, and allow for contemporary protesters to break out of these conditions and inhabit a space of legitimacy. Anonymous offers a case study for the future of contemporary social movements that will take place in cyberspace in an era characterized by a struggle over information in a virtual world. Because social movements are no longer primarily defined by traditional media outlets, Anonymous shows how protesters can determine their own aesthetic reality. The chronotopes that emerge speak to the movement's ability to expand social movement theory as both a public and private operation, functioning outside of state suppression tactics and normative restraints. As the chronotopes become recognizable by the public, Anonymous gains leverage in defining its own genre of social movements. Anonymous is a performance without a distinct beginning and end, but operates as an evolving ideological position. The visual realities that emerge into the material world may provide further insight into how the state will allow (or disallow) social movements to occur.</p>

<p> This project sought to understand how individuals establish credibility online through impression management strategies. Applying Goffman's (1959) impression management theory, the literature review highlighted four leading self-presentation tactics that bolster credibility effectively on the Internet: structure and aesthetics of personal websites, publication of content that is consistent, insightful and authentic, the use of self disclosure, and verification of expertise through testimonials and references. These four self-presentation strategies were applied to analyze eight entrepreneurs who have successfully built a credible presence online. These case studies were further developed through the design of online course that teaches entrepreneurs how to use impression management effectively online.</p>

<p> Photography is increasingly used as conversation in social media. Photography has been used as evidence of activity, for influence and identity, and for persuasive rhetoric. Current demand for understanding social photography is due to its modern inclusion as a standard communication process for creating and affirming community. Mobile technology and increased data rates through available bandwidth have resulted in the answer and response interaction cycle now happening with photographs. Facebook users share over 300 million photographs a day (Facebook, 2013) which indicates a mass of communication occurring between individuals, small groups, communities, and the public that does not have the same level of communication understanding as written and spoken language. A second level of inquiry concerns the lower levels of understanding concerning small groups and communities. The majority of communication studies concern individuals, the public mass, and Western hierarchical organizations. This research leverages tools from iconic photojournalism in order to analyze ease of use and applicability for future social photography studies. Hariman and Lucaites (2007) five primary tools of aesthetic familiarity, civic performance, semiotic transcripts, emotional scenarios, and contradictions and crises are evaluated through the data sample photography shared by the Burning Man community. The data set concerns photographs and their associated responses shared through Twitter as a social media tool intended for open, public access. The intent of this study concerns the ability to leverage the process for past, present, and future sharing of photography in order to analyze and apply ways to build community. This analysis reveals the minimal use of sharing a photograph as an emotive invitation to join with the community's performance enables a high success of visualizing community. This study investigates analysis and application tools for visualizing community through social photography. </p>

<p> This dissertation explores the role soft control plays in the relationship between the television industry and short forms of digital media. Following James Beniger and Tizianna Terranova, I define soft control as the purposive movement by the television industry towards shaping audience attention toward predetermined goals through a range of interactions where development happens somewhat autonomously, while being interjected with commands over time. I define such things as media environment design, branding, and data collection as soft control practices. I focus on television as a way to understand how an industry historically patterned around more rigid forms of audience control deals with a digital media environment often cited for its lack of control features. And while there is already a robust discussion on the shifting strategies for the online distribution of shows, there is less of a focus on the increasing importance of shorter forms of digital media to the everyday operation of the television industry. Shorter forms of media include digitally circulated short videos, songs, casual digital games, and even social media, which is itself a platform for the distribution of shorter forms of media. I refer to all these forms of short media as "micromedia" and focus my interest on how various television companies are dealing with media environments saturated with it. </p><p> To do this I look at, for instance, how television companies use the data available on Twitter and appropriate the user-generated content of audiences, as well as how standard digital communication interfaces are utilized to more easily retrofit previous audience retention practices into new digital environments. Through the investigation of how television creates and appropriates micromedia as a way to reconfigure practices into the everyday lives of participatory audiences, I argue that we can see soft control elements at work in structuring the industry-audience relationship. These soft control features call into question the emancipatory role attributed to participatory audiences and digital technologies alike. If we think about media forms in their specific contexts, making sure to focus on their intermedial connections and their materiality, we can complicate ideas about what the categories of audience or industrial control mean.</p>

<p> The goal of this study is to determine the effectiveness of social media in advancing transformational change. Successfully implementing transformational change in an organization is heavily dependent on the support of key stakeholders. But engaging those stakeholders requires effective communication. Transformational efforts often fail because of the lack of credible communication or a failure to define a vision that can be easily communicated (Kotter, 2007). </p><p> Researchers say that the key to successful transformational change is embracing a communication based in the realm of conversation where there is genuine two-way dialogue that is focused on listening and probing for more information (Dobbs, 2010). Creating conversations is a key component of social media: a platform of online tools designed to connect people and easily share information (Jue, Marr &amp; Kassotakis, 2010). Social media has the potential to achieve employee engagement, enhance productivity and increase collaboration (Ou, C. J., Davison, R. M., Zhong, X., &amp; Liang, Y.,2010). </p><p> To determine the effectiveness of social media at driving transformational change a study of existing literature related to transformational change and social media was coupled with a qualitative and quantitative study of organizational users of social media and stakeholders of those organizations. The study employed both a questionnaire and interviews. Results showed a clear preference for the use of social media as an effective form of relationship development and effective communication, but a challenge remains on how organizations can best use social media to create and sustain the relationships required to accomplish transformational change.</p>