<p> Interest in virtual worlds has grown within academia and popular culture. Virtual worlds are persistent, technologically-mediated, social spaces. Academic literature focuses on issues such as identity, sociality, economics, and governance. However studies of governance focus on internal or external modes of control; less attention has been paid to institutions of governance that operate within both the virtual and real worlds. </p><p> In EVE Online, the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) represents a joint venture between developers and users to shape the direction of EVE's virtual society. As a group of elected representatives, the CSM represents societal interests to the game's developer, Crowd Control Productions (CCP). The CSM structures the relationship between CCP and the player base, and shapes how these institutions manage the development process. At the same time, cultural and political conventions of EVE's players at times work against these structures as CCP and the CSM seek to attend to their own interests. </p><p> In this thesis, I examine the intersection of culture, power, and governance, and illustrate the consequences these negotiations of power have for the inhabitants of EVE Online. The historical circumstances that led to the CSM's creation shape its reception among the community. As a model of governance, the CSM was designed as a deliberative democracy to generate community consensus. This feedback is channeled to developers through elected representatives. However, these channels of information hindered discussions necessary for true democracy. I examine how power is generated, leveraged, and mediated by the two cultures in which the CSM is embedded: EVE and Icelandic cultures. I also illustrate the authority and legitimacy of the CSM from the standpoint of its constituents. The CSM is understood within the same cultural frameworks as in-game power structures. </p><p> Primary research was carried out during a one-year period in 2012. During this time, I joined SKULL SQUADRON, a large corporation with a neutral diplomatic mission. Snowball sampling was used to find informants. Three main methods were used to interview participants: face-to-face interviews, text-based interviews through EVE's communication channels, and voice interviews conducted over Skype, an internet-based communications program.</p>

<p> As the popularity of Web 2.0 grows, the relationship between the users generating the content of the site and the groups and companies that own these sites is coming into focus. While in previous years, users often were passive users of websites, now they are actively involved in the sites, providing the content that is consumed. This creates a relationship that can be fraught with conflict as all involved have differing ideas of how these sites should function.</p><p> By analyzing three incidents in the history of LiveJournal, an online blogging and social communication site, this thesis explored how these communities of users and the organizations that own these sites interact. The information for this analysis was gathered through online participant observation, survey, and systematic archival mining, covering the time period from the founding of the site in 1999 until early 2012. I analyzed how the term "community" is operationalized by these stakeholders, how these communities formed and functioned, and how ideas of ownership impacted these interactions and relationships. By understanding these issues, companies and communities can find ways to build partnerships to sustain and improve their sites rather than being locked in ongoing conflict.</p>

<p> People are increasingly looking to online social communities as ways of communicating. However, even as participation in social networking is increasing, online communities often fail to coalesce. Noted success factors for online communities are linked to the community's purpose and culture. They are also related to structures that allow for increased volume of exchange and quality of conversation. Ravelry.com provides a case of a successful, large-scale, online community that has information exchange and conversation as its foci. These activities are supported through the work of thousands of volunteer moderators who sometimes manage groups with more than 3 million members. However, little is known about organizing and supporting volunteer groups to allow for such large-scale growth. </p><p> To find information on moderators' roles and tasks, and how they are supported in the Ravelry community, a study was conducted in 2 sequential phases. Phase I consisted of a survey of 73 moderators who led large, active groups. Phase II consisted of interviews with 8 moderators who led different types of groups within Ravelry, having purposes that range from purely social conversation to technical forums on craft-related work. </p><p> Findings indicated that the tasks moderators performed did not vary greatly, despite differences in their group's purpose and culture. Common among most moderators' duties were encouraging group participation through stimulating discussion or organizing craft-based activities, resolving conflict between group members, and maintaining their site through routine housekeeping tasks. Moderators are motivated to volunteer to do these tasks by love of their group members, and are united by a common interest in their craft. Moderators are most often supported by informal networks of moderators in their own or in similar groups. </p><p> These findings give insight into how to structure large, asynchronous, online conversation-based groups, and how to define a role for people to manage them. It provides an understanding of the work that moderators do, and how their work allows a sense of place to be established for informal learning. </p>

<p> Microblogging service Twitter has taken the world by storm since its inception in 2006, growing from 340,000 users in July 2007 to 500 million active users in March 2013. At the same time, Twitter and other social media platforms are opening up new possibilities for organizations to engage with and be responsive to their stakeholders and to the public in general.</p><p> Despite the widespread use of social media among nonprofit organizations, very little empirical evidence is available concerning publics' responses to the messages they are sent. This thesis describes how stakeholders respond to different communication practices on Twitter. Focusing on the organizations on the <i>"Nonprofit Times 100"</i> list of 2011 as well as the list of nonprofit organizations with the most Twitter followers, this study combines qualitative and quantitative analyses at both the message level and the organizational level to develop an initial understanding of effective Twitter practices among nonprofit organizations.</p><p> Until recently, nonprofits have not fully taken advantage of the interactive possibilities Twitter has the potential to provide. After analyzing 3,415 tweets by 50 nonprofits, it became clear that it was difficult, if not impossible, to identify the "perfect" tweet - the type of tweet that would be most likely to elicit all types of engagement. This study's results suggest that nonprofits should target specific tweets toward retweeting and favoriting engagement, and others toward conversations - and not expect the same tweet to achieve both.</p>

<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>With a surge of digital video content appearing on the Internet in the emerging apparatus of electracy, YouTube launched an archive for new media and steadily grew into a successful global community of individuals who participate by way of commenting, remixing, subscribing, and uploading. Inspired by Gregory Ulmer's notion of digital cognition and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's philosophical approach to the idiot, this thesis reinvents the theory of videocy and chooses to embrace its early association to idiocy. With insight from Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, who take a sociological approach to YouTube, and Sarah Arroyo, who examines participatory composition in video culture, we can envisage YouTubers as producers within a choric (from Jacques Derrida's <i> chora</i>) network. The pedagogical potential of this digital era, as developed by Patricia Lange, and its connection to Tubing, as approached by Arroyo and Geoffrey Carter, will reclaim the "weird" for didactic rhetoric. </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>Higher education scholars, policy makers, and administrators know little about the experiences of undergraduate students who matriculate with minimal experience with technology. It is often assumed that all students, particularly traditionally-aged students, have significant experience with, knowledge of, and comfort with technology. Although that assumption is correct for many students, it is false for others. Despite the enormous increase in the use of Web-based assessment surveys and the increasing importance of accurate assessment and accountability data, those efforts may not be collecting adequate and accurate data about and from all students. </p><p> This study explores the non-response bias of first-year undergraduate students on a self-administered Web-based survey. First, data were collected with a supplemental survey added to the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE). K-means clustering was used with this newly constructed Internet Access and Use survey to classify students according to their Internet access and use experiences. Second, demographic data from BCSSE and the Internet access and use data were included in a logistic regression predicting response to the subsequent National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). </p><p> The Internet Access and Use instrument proved to be a viable way to classify students along lines of their previous Internet access and use experiences. However, that classification played no meaningful role predicting whether students had completed NSSE. Indeed, despite its statistical significance the final logistic regression model using provided little meaningful predictive power. </p><p> Generalizing the results of this study to all Web-based surveys of undergraduate college students with random or census sampling indicates that those surveys may not introduce significant non-response bias for students who have had less access to the Internet. This is particularly important since that population is already vulnerable in many ways as being disproportionately composed of first-generation students, underrepresented minority students, and students with lower socioeconomic statuses. This reassures assessment professionals and all higher education stakeholders that cost- and labor-efficient Web-based surveys are capable of collecting data that do not omit the voices of these students. </p>

<p> Communication now is easier than ever before. One consequence of this is the emergence of virtual communities, unconstrained by physical proximity. We perform two investigations into changing social trends. We study a corpus of 100 years of newspaper articles to see if we can find evidence to support the popular intuition that as news cycles have sped up, the public's attention span has gotten shorter. We find no such evidence: to the contrary, we find that the typical length of time that a person's name stays in the news has not changed over time, and celebrities now stay in the news for longer than ever before. We also investigate a new kind of community on Twitter called a group chat, where members have regular meetings to discuss a broad range of topics, from medical conditions to hobbies. We find that the phenomenon is growing over time, and paint a broad picture of the topics which one could find a group chat to discuss. With a view to helping connect new participants to group chats they may not have been able to find or might not have been aware of, we design an algorithm to rank group chats in the context of a topic given as a query.</p>

<p> Digital literacy is fast becoming a necessary skill for mediating life in the 21st century. Digital technologies, digital media, and digital devices have become ubiquitous and intrinsic in modern society and using one to interact with the others requires specific skills&mdash;digital literacies&mdash;be learned. The purpose of this research was to understand the extent to which Baby Boomers are digitally literate, the digital devices they understand and use, and the purposes for which they are using them. </p><p> Residents living in a specific group of age-restricted communities comprised of people 55 years of age and older were e-mailed requests to participate in an online survey. More than 8,200 homes received the invitations and 659 people agreed to participate. The survey consisted of 17 three-part, forced-choice questions and five demographic identifiers. To analyze the data, the researcher used SPSS and ran chi-square tests on each response comparing Older Boomers to Younger Boomers regarding specific digital activities in which they engaged, the device(s) they used, and the frequencies with which they engaged in those activities. </p><p> The results of this study indicate that the Baby Boomers in the study possess basic functional digital literacies. They use the Internet daily to read news, check weather, and look up recipes, directions, and medical information. While participation in the various activities was fairly even between both Boomer groups, Younger Boomers tend to send and receive text messages, bank online, pay bills online, search for recipes, save online bookmarks, visit social networks, read blogs, and take online classes more than Older Boomers. The majority of respondents were women, college educated, with annual household incomes of $75,000.00 or more. The most popular digital devices used were laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones, respectively and respondents averaged using three different digital devices while engaging in their digital activities. The trend is toward decreasing use of desktop and laptop computers and a corresponding increase in the use of tablets and smartphones.</p>