<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> This dissertation utilizes law and society research, as well as communication advocacy, to frame analysis and offer an extra-legal solution to conflicts between modders, fans who create new content from existing videogames, and game companies. It utilizes grounded theory and the traditional legal adversarial documentary method to abstract and analyze conflict caused by a cease and desist (C&amp;D) letter sent to Kajar Laboratories concerning <i> Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes</i> &ndash; Kajar's mod to Square Enix's <i> Chrono Trigger</i>. Through qualitative analysis of websites, forum posts, and blog comments about the C&amp;D this dissertation discovers the grounded theory Legal Threats Break Moral Communities. Utilizing the grounded theory and legal argumentation a critique is made of proposed legal solutions. A nonlegal solution to ameliorate future conflict is then suggested as a means to satisfy both the needs of modders and game companies. </p><p> In analyzing the conflict this dissertation illustrates how the threat of law stops modders, disrupts the community, and chills future mods. This dissertation reinforces a regulatory understanding of copyright law arguing limited monopolies on intellectual property serve to advance the arts and sciences. Modding, like many forms of participatory culture, promotes valuable science, technology, engineering, and math through self-learning. Mods promote the original games while also generating new art. The dissertation also shows that both regulatory and proprietary interpretations of copyright law benefit from modding. </p><p> Through critique of status quo solutions and analysis of a Microsoft exemplar this dissertation suggests a generic game content usage guide as an extra-legal, feasible solution that advances the goals of all parties involved without requiring legal intervention.</p>

<p> Social networking sites (SNS) have become vastly popular and are drawing research attention rapidly. Recent research suggests valid inferences about personality might be made from observing profile information. We propose social media users can be grouped into typologies based on how they use SNS. The current study tested a proposed typology based on behaviors being exhibited. Facebook users' wall posts and recent activity were observed by trained raters in order to validate five distinct hypothesized categories of usage (e.g., Scrap booker, Entrepreneur, Social Butterfly, Activist, and Observer). As predicted, inter-rater reliability utilizing the typology was found to be significant (.97), indicating a high degree of internal consistency among the raters. There was also a highly significant correlation between raters, <i> r</i>(148) = .95, <i>p</i> &lt;. 001, and a high degree of agreement (kappa = .881, <i>p</i> &lt;. 001 ). Results support the categories proposed for coding online behaviors. Implications for the future use of the typologies in analyzing the behavioral patterns found in SNS activity are discussed to help bridge the gap between the online and the offline selves.</p>

<p> The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the ways in which the media products of the non-profit organization Latinitas revealed ideologies and discourses about identity. The organization purports to empower Latina youth via media education. The media products include two online magazines that feature content for and by the members of the organization. The media products also include a Web site where members of the organization can post and update individual blogs and videos. While not the focus of this dissertation, it is important to note that the organization also hosts various after-school programs and workshops that teach its members about issues related to media education. </p><p> The study was managed in two stages. First, a content analysis of the two magazines was conducted to reveal which ideologies were featured in the magazine articles. Literature suggests that the two most relevant identities to Latina girls are gender and ethnicity. As such, special attention was given to ideologies that directed attention to those identities. Second, a discourse analysis of the blogs and videos hosted on the Web site was performed to reveal whether the featured ideologies carried over into the media product of the members of the organization. Results suggested that the magazines focused on issues of gender while mostly ignoring issues of ethnicity. The blogs housed on the Web site reflected the focus on gender but were also the only place where talk of ethnicity was dominant. The videos were generally not used as a means to express identity and were vehicles for displaying the activities of the organization.</p>

<p> An understanding of the impact of user avatar alteration in relation to social presence is needed to fully realize the potential of Second Life for higher education usages, which the research literature reveals as an environment that provides increased social presence. Prior studies focused primarily on the impact of system design attributes on social presence. </p><p> A social presence measurement instrument was developed that includes the ITC-SOPI Social Presence Inventory by Lessiter, Freeman, Keogh, &amp; Davidoff, J.D. (2001), the Witmer/Singer Social Presence Inventory (2005), and a portion of the Slater (1994) Social Presence Inventory accompanied by researcher developed study specific queries. The comprehensive instrument was used to collect data from a volunteer sample of 65 Dakota State University students from Summer/Fall 2012, 100, 200, and 300 level Sioux Falls, South Dakota University Center computer classes. The quantitative measures were supported by qualitative statements from a fully immersive Second Life class conducted by Glendale Community College, AZ. Computed means and standard deviations from the pre avatar change survey revealed that the respondents did not articulate perceptions of social presence at a significant level. </p><p> Computed means and standard deviations of the pre/post avatar surveys change scores documented that none of the avatar change criteria resulted in significant changes in terms of perceived social presence. A subsequent one way analysis of variance was conducted and avatar attire, construction (body structure), gender or type, and physical appearance (facial structure) did not result in a statistically significant difference in terms of predicting social presence at the .05 level on the comprehensive social presence instrument. </p>

<p> This dissertation investigates how businesses are able to align the collective actions of a disconnected crowd with the strategic goals of the organization. I examined this questions within the context of the business review website Yelp through a quantitative analysis of nearly 60,000 business reviews, 17 in-depth qualitative interviews with reviewers, and a two-year ethnography. Interpreting the results of this data within the framework of the collective action space (Bimber, Flanagin, &amp; Stohl, 2012) indicates that Yelp is able to manage the contributions of a relatively small subset of reviewers through the Yelp Elite Squad. Rather than simply motivating more reviews, the Elite Squad encouraged reviewers to interact more personally with other reviewers and accept increased institutional engagement with Yelp. In encouraging members of the crowd to produce online reviews within this context, Yelp was able to use organizational culture as a control strategy for encouraging Elite reviewers to adopt a pre-mediated reviewing approach to their reviews. This increased the frequency of moderate reviews and decreased the frequency of extreme reviews. This behavior ultimately furthers the organizational goals of Yelp, as moderate reviews are considered to be more helpful for reviews of businesses. Finally, implications for crowdsourcing, big data analysis, and theory are discussed.</p>

<p> This study investigates how professional sports organizations are using social media to develop long-term relationships with supporters as well as to explore additional functionalities social media have within their marketing and communication strategies. This qualitative comparative case study uses relationship marketing as the base theory and semi-structure interviews as the method of data collection. The interviews were performed to key marketing and communication personnel of the Saint Louis Rams (Rams) of the National Football League (NFL) and the LA Galaxy (Galaxy) of the Major League Soccer (MLS) in order to gather valuable insight into this phenomenon.</p>

<p> The advent of Information Communication &amp; Technology (ICT) has resulted into a revolution in the ways of production, dissemination, preservation and accessibility of information. Traditional librarianship has opened its doors and embraced ICT to enhance and improve the quality and quantity of services provided by libraries. Libraries have expanded their scope to Library &amp; Information Centres. With the changing trends of libraries, the users have also moved to advanced stages of accessing the information.</p><p> Theses and dissertations are one of the major sources of authentic in-depth information on a particular topic on which a researcher conducts extensive research work. In spite of being a main source of scholarly communication, the print theses and dissertations is mostly not accessible to outside world. In this way, the important information remains unused and unknown to users. The Electronic format of the theses and dissertations makes it possible for the information content to be used by information seekers.</p><p> &ldquo;Open Access&rdquo; is a boon for the users who strive for information. Policy Guidelines framed by National and International Organizations like UNESCO, BOAI, Berlin Declaration, ECHO Charter, Bethesda Statement, Salvador Declaration, National Open Access Policy and National Knowledge Commission.s Report on Open Access (India) have promoted the benefits of open access for researchers, organizations, public and funding organizations.</p><p> Institutional repositories provide access to various institutional documents through open access. The type of contents vary from books, journals, conference proceedings, theses, dissertations, newspaper clippings, datasets, manuscripts, software, lectures, learning objects, maps, pre-prints, post-prints, research reports, audio-visual material etc.</p><p> The present research work deals with the Electronic Thesis Repositories which are a major form of grey literature of any organization. There are various benefits of ETDs like they help in increasing the citation count of the author and the institution, minimum time required for dissemination of scholarly information, various file formats can be incorporated in the electronic form which is not possible in the print theses and dissertations and they provide a solution of long term preservation of theses and dissertations. In spite of the benefits of ETDs, authors hesitate in depositing their research work in electronic format mainly due to fear of plagiarism.</p><p> There are various concepts in the whole process of setting up of an ETD Program. The present research work aims to study the various concepts of ETDs by analyzing the E-thesis Repositories in the world and collecting data from the Repository administrators through Web Questionnaire. The fourteen research objectives are divided into nine sections of Background Information of E-thesis Repository; Repository Materials; Hardware &amp; Software;Ways of Providing Access to ETDs; Budget &amp; Human Resource; Metadata &amp; Interoperability Standards; Preservation Policies; Copyright Issues;Language Compatibility, Linkages with various National and International ETD Projects &amp; Currency of Information.</p><p> The Review of Literature was conducted exhaustively using various keywords belonging to the area of research from print and non-print sources of information. The major trend observed in the international literature emphasized on importance of ETDs in academic libraries, world wide open access initiatives, overview of country specific ETD Projects, copyright and preservation issues related to ETDs, selection of software and Policy Guidelines framed by international organizations. </p><p> List of E-thesis Repositories was prepared using Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). Only those E-thesis repositories were considered whose interface was in English and which contained English language theses and dissertations. Out of total population of 258 repositories in English Language, 154 were finalized using Krejcie &amp; Morgan Table for Determining Sample Size. The selected repositories belonged to 43 countries and had more than 1000 ETDs in their repositories. The Repository Administrators of these repositories were mailed the Web Questionnaire Link through e-mail for data collection. The Web Survey Questionnaire was developed using SurveyMonkey Web Questionnaire Tool.</p><p> NDLTDs support and promotion of the present research work helped the researcher to get a good response rate of 62.33% from across the world. The USA and UK ranked highest in the list of respondents. The researcher received overwhelming response from various developing countries also. This proved that Open Access Movement is gaining momentum not only in developed countries like the USA and UK but also in several developing countries.</p><p> The researcher in the concluding part has suggested some topics related to ETDs in which research can be conducted.</p><p> The present trend of growth and development of E-thesis repositories assure that there is a promising future of the concept and open access will spread its wings in more and more countries across the world. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

<p> Because data on alumnae/i is difficult to collect and change over time, obtaining up-to-date information on graduates &mdash; for the purposes of highlighting their professional achievements and facilitating networking &mdash; is a challenge faced by many higher education institutions. Social networks provide a means for alumnae/i to share successes, but viewing this information typically involves an account or a paid subscription. In this project, I address these issues by designing and implementing a free, easy-to-use, and updateable Mills Computer Science alumnae/i website backed by a database. The website has the potential to showcase the most recent or impressive alumnae/i achievements and prominently feature all graduates' accomplishments via their profiles. Additionally the database can store manually provided alumnae/i information and extract further data from LinkedIn. Evaluations of the project indicate that users and administrators find the website easy to search, navigate, and update and the information provided helpful. Because of its versatile design, this project could serve similar needs for other disciplines and institutions. </p>