Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Previous empirical studies of social media use by nonprofit organizations suggest that its dialogic potential has not yet been fully realized. Yet drawing from content analysis and surveys, these studies shed little light on the underlying motives and values that drive nonprofit social media practices, neither do they address to what extent these practices are effective on social media followers. To fill in the gaps of this existing research, I conducted two qualitative studies to explore the experiences of multiple stakeholders implicated in nonprofit social media use. First, I interviewed social media point persons (SMPPs)—nonprofit employees who self-identified as being primarily responsible for their organization’s social media planning and implementation—and found that SMPPs’ mindsets and social media tactics reflect dialogic principles, specifically those of mutuality, empathy, propinquity, risk and commitment. Second, I conducted focus groups with individuals who followed some of the SMPPs’ organizations on Facebook, and found that their followers want nonprofit organizations to take the lead building a community shaped by connection, dialogue and involvement. By comparing perspectives of SMPPs and their followers, I found that dialogic activities on social media can catalyze a culture of dialogue within a community, encouraging sharing, mutual support and connections. To facilitate the process, nonprofit professionals have taken on the role of a moderator that promotes dialogue centered around the community. Taken together, my research expands our current understanding about nonprofit organizations’ roles in public relations, and raises questions for future research about how nonprofit professionals balance the dialogic culture they work to cultivate on social media with other organizational priorities within an organizational or even sector-wide context.

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We place deficit-model labels on students who fall behind educational expectations and standards. Public discourses about underserved students pervade U.S-American politics and popular culture and tend to portray these students in a negative light. This study aims to uncover similarities between the dominant societal narratives about underserved students and the stories they tell about themselves on social media. I argue that the labels we use and stories we tell about underserved students affect the students’ identities. I ask three research questions: How, if at all, do underserved college students replicate dominant narratives about education in their self-narrations? How, if at all, do students enrolled in developmental education describe other underserved students? How, if at all, do former underserved college students replicate dominant narratives about education in their self-narrations? I analyzed posts from thirty underserved students on social media sites and the replies in their comments from people who have completed developmental education. I used a combination of critical rhetoric (McKerrow, 1989; 1993), intersubjective rhetoric (Brummett, 1976; 1982), and narrative reasoning (Fisher, 1984) to guide data collection and analysis. Results indicate that the students whose narratives appear in this study express shame and worry about taking developmental courses. Their narratives reflect dominant societal narratives about “remedial” students. The narratives analyzed for this study reflect some of the pejorative uses of the word “remedial” and the image of underserved students portrayed in the dominant societal narrative. The students express shame and worry about their futures and academic prospects. Many former underserved students shared their own stories and offered supportive messages in their replies.

Americans currently live in a society marked by a vast surveillance dragnet that has continually evolved over time. One such evolution is the conceptualization of lateral surveillance. First, explored by Andrejevic (2005), lateral surveillance describes peer to peer surveillance. Though this is not a new phenomenon, research on lateral surveillance has been limited. Research on lateral surveillance on social media is even more underdeveloped, with the current literature focusing heavily on lateral surveillance on Facebook (Jiow & Morales, 2015; Lukacs and Quan-Haase ,2015, Ivana, 2013; Trottier, 2012). This is problematic given both the heavy presence of social media in our lives and the amount of lateral surveillance content that is posted across the most popular social media platforms. The current study uses an evolved grounded theory approach to address two main study objectives: (1) examine how college students engage in or avoid lateral (peer-to-peer) surveillance, both actively (as the surveillant) and passively (as an observer of lateral surveillance); and (2) understand what motivates college students to engage in lateral surveillance. This exploratory, qualitative study uses focus groups with college students who report using at least one of the following six social media platforms in the past five years: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, or TikTok. The focus was placed on college students, as they fall into the age demographic of the most active social media users. Drawing on the attitudes and perceptions of 69 Temple University students, across 12 focus groups, a decision-making framework which explains engagement in lateral surveillance was developed. Findings from this study highlighted the complexities and nuances of both general and lateral surveillance. College students believe surveillance is far reaching and omnipresent. However, they make a variety of distinctions about who engages in surveillance. They agree that the government and corporations are the main surveillors (those who engage in surveillance) in this county and are concerned with the amount of data that each of these entities collects about them. In contrast, they do not always view friends and family members as surveillors, despite them using the same mechanisms, such as tracking, watching, and recording, to engage in surveillance. These findings served as the contextual background under which they engage in lateral surveillance as exhibited by the decision-making framework. The decision-making framework provides a step-by-step walkthrough of the process that college students go through when deciding to engage in lateral surveillance. Findings related to the framework showed that there are a variety of situations and themes that influence lateral surveillance decision making. However, the actual decision-making process appears to be very quick and initial motivating factors that influenced the decision to engage in lateral surveillance remain consistent when deciding where and with whom to share the content. / Criminal Justice

This research sheds light on how one particular group of young people, Columbiners, use social media to build and maintain a sense of community. Through a content analysis of 200 Instagram posts containing a school shooting fandom hashtag, or #Columbiner, and drawing on both Critical Youth Studies and Sense of Community Theory, this research demonstrates how Columbiners use their hashtag to create a sense of community on Instagram, to explore what it means to be young and cool, and to make sense of the problems that shape their social world, including school shootings. Exploring how this particular group of young people engage with each other on social media provides researchers an opportunity to listen to young people as they develop their understandings of topics as seemingly mundane as homework to those as serious as school shootings.

The present study investigated the effect of social reinforcement on dating violence perpetration and victimization among college-aged individuals who are regular social media users. The purpose of the study is to add to the current body of research on dating violence as it applies specifically to the college-aged population and to assess the influence of social reinforcement from social media. An anonymous online survey distributed via email and social networks included questions about social media use, dating violence victimization and perpetration experiences, and perceptions of peer beliefs about dating violence. The results reveal that individuals who are regular social media users experience a social reinforcement effect on perpetration rates. This study has implications in understanding our deepening connections to the online world and how those connections impact real-world experiences.

Computational risk detection has the potential to protect especially vulnerable populations from online victimization. Conducting a comprehensive literature review on computational approaches for online sexual risk detection led to the identification that the majority of this work has focused on identifying sexual predators after-the-fact. Also, many studies rely on public datasets and third-party annotators to establish ground truth and train their algorithms, which do not accurately represent young social media users and their perspectives to prevent victimization. To address these gaps, this dissertation integrated human-centered approaches to both creating representative datasets and developing sexual risk detection machine learning models to ensure the broader societal impacts of this important work. In order to understand what and how adolescents talk about their online sexual interactions to inform study designs, a thematic content analysis of posts by adolescents on an online peer support mental health was conducted. Then, a user study and web-based platform, Instagram Data Donation (IGDD), was designed to create an ecologically valid dataset. Youth could donate and annotate their Instagram data for online risks. After participating in the study, an interview study was conducted to understand how youth felt annotating data for online risks. Based on private conversations annotated by participants, sexual risk detection classifiers were created. The results indicated Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Random Forest models outperformed in identifying sexual risks at the conversation-level. Our experiments showed that classifiers trained on entire conversations performed better than message-level classifiers. We also trained classifiers to detect the severity risk level of a given message with CNN outperforming other models. We found that contextual (e.g., age, gender, and relationship type) and psycho-linguistic features contributed the most to accurately detecting sexual conversations. Our analysis provides insights into the important factors that enhance automated detection of sexual risks within youths' private conversations.

This dissertation examines the contribution of user-generated digital content to political candidates' media personas, specifically those of the two major-party contenders in the Texas 2018 Senate midterm election: the incumbent Senator Rafael "Ted" Cruz, and his challenger, Robert "Beto" O'Rourke. Data from online spaces dedicated to each of the candidates on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Tumblr platforms from September 1, 2018 through November 14, 2018 were collected and analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis. Overall, both pro-Cruz and pro-O'Rourke content spaces emphasized the importance of the authentic performance of ethnic identity. In addition, hegemonic masculinity was upheld as an important marker of a candidate's suitability for public office, while stereotypically feminine behaviors were positioned negatively. Heterosexuality was also characterized as masculine (and therefore more desirable in a political candidate), while homosexuality was associated with femininity. Finally, both Cruz and O'Rourke content made arguments based on the personal characteristics of the candidates. While Cruz supporters tended to use traditional symbols associated with the United States and Christianity, O'Rourke supporters used references to popular culture in their characterizations of the candidates. There was also an elision in both communities between American values, Christian values, whiteness, and capitalism. These findings offer several conclusions about digital political participation in candidate image management. First, users generally extend narratives begun by official campaign materials and popular press coverage. Second, traditionally "American" values were upheld across the political spectrum as important for candidates to embody. Finally, the demographics of different platforms can determine what type of content is predominantly shared, as well as whether and how different affordances are incorporated, such as hashtags. As digital content increasingly plays a role in electoral politics, this study contributes to an understanding of the significance of users' digital political participation in forming candidates' images and garnering support.

This study evaluates the impacts of brand storytelling on customers of a craft brewery and distillery in East Tennessee. Brand storytelling is well researched, but has not been applied to niche sectors and customer response. The study consisted of a 15-question survey distributed to customers of Tennessee Hills Distillery and Brewstillery (TN Hills), and received 139 responses. The results were that despite a seeming trend of lack of engagement with the business, respondents value brand stories and can identify unique brand characteristics. Respondents’ answers reflected a personal connection with TN Hills, and connected the brand to grander ideals like the American Dream, community acceptance, and legacy. Thus, customers’ feelings toward a business are influenced by brand storytelling.

Research has shown that the use of technology in curriculum, and art classrooms in particular, can benefit students. This thesis outlines these benefits which include the potential for technology to make learning more personal, assist students in their future careers, and allow opportunity for collaboration. Still, several obstacles impede the full-fledged realization of that potential, often leading teachers to avoid or ignore technology in their pedagogical strategies. This thesis addresses these obstacles and provides practical and theoretical solutions. Once these obstacles are overcome, teachers will be better able to incorporate new technology in their lessons, such as social media, podcasts, open-source websites, and online programs. As an example of art teaching that uses technology, this thesis also provides a sample lesson plan for secondary students, incorporating elements of interactive Web technologies that have been recommended by art education scholars.