Diss.-- Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009. / "Submitted to Department of Information Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-106)

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2010. / Typescript. "Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in English with a concentration in English as a Second Language." "A thesis entitled"--at head of title. Title from title page of PDF document. Bibliography: p. 59-62.

This thesis presents a qualitative study on the processes of user-generated crowdsourced collaborative translation in Yeeyan, China’s largest online translation community. Collaborative translation is still a relatively emergent area of scholarship and research so far has focused mainly on audiovisual translation practice. Studies which focus on the co-production of written texts mostly provide only a fragmented picture and treat collaborative translation as a linear process. In this thesis, I examine the translation initiated and undertaken by two or more volunteer translators who collaboratively produce a translated text, focusing on how they interact with each other, who they are, why they participate, and what meanings they give to their behaviour. Adopting an ethnographic methodology, I have conducted longitudinal in-depth fieldwork in Yeeyan, using the methods of participant observation and interactive interview. Three types of data are collected: 1) fieldnotes; 2) the material resources archived on the Yeeyan website and the translation manuscripts; and 3) elicited interview data. After my preliminary thematic analysis, I undertake a micro-level discourse analysis, examining the participants’ behaviours, decision-making processes, emerging identity roles and perceptions on competence as they unfolded during the collaboration process. Primarily informed by Wenger’s “communities of practice” theory (CoP theory), the analysis reveals that Yeeyan is first a participatory media platform which provides Chinese readers with access to knowledge and information not available in their mother language, as well as allowing its users to play an active role in the production and circulation of the media content. More profoundly, Yeeyan is an online CoP where a crowd of translators from different professional and disciplinary backgrounds interact with each other regularly for the shared practices they are passionate about and for the shared enterprises they care for. The findings suggest that the process of collaborative translation in Yeeyan is de facto an experience of meaning negotiation. First, competence in a CoP is obtained through mutual recognition from other members as a result of their active and continuous participation. Second, meanings in Yeeyan are not static, but are dynamically negotiated between the participants, depending on the genre of the text being translated, which specialized expertise the translators possess, how competent they are in the Yeeyan community, and what meanings they intend to give to their behaviours individually and collectively. Third, a CoP like Yeeyan is also a complex social learning system which consists of multiple interrelated sub-communities. Yeeyan members’ endeavour to solve translation problems and thereby increase their competence also contributes to forming a shared history of learning. Beyond these findings, this thesis also makes broader methodological and theoretical contributions. It demonstrates how the use of an immersive ethnographic methodology, hitherto seldom applied in the TS field, can provide more holistic insights into translators’ interactions, translation manuscripts and the entire collaboration process. The use of CoP theory offers us a new perspective that explains collaborative translation as a social practice through which – and to which – the participants ascribe meanings in the process of translating and interacting.

Using qualitative content analysis, this research study explored the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) social media use, with specific reference to Facebook, as a communication tool to engage with stakeholders. The study looked at how Facebook is used to promote two-way communication between the government and citizens, based on the principles of the Excellence Theory, which advocates for communication models developed by Grunt and Hunt (1984). The diagonal principles by Kent and Taylor (1998) used as a strategic framework to facilitate relationship building with the public and the organisations, were also explored. The results indicated that the majority of the departments are active on Facebook, however not at a satisfactory level. The majority of the departments failed to use all the six dialogic principles to leverage two-way communication, in particular creation of the dialogue loop which facilitates the building of ongoing relationships and feedback. Some of the departments have not fully taken the opportunity to increase the engagement and dialogue through posting photos on Facebook walls. The numbers of videos posted were extremely low. The majority of the departments utilised the social media platform, Facebook, as a one-way communication, such as publishing of media statements, announcements, media conferences and interviews among others. Most of the departments use Facebook for information dissemination especially on events and campaigns. The poor use of Facebook can be attributed to the challenges such as a lack of resources, especially a budget, lack of skills on effective use of social media, the continuous use of one-way communication by the government and a lack of budget among others. The findings correlate to the previous studies that found a lack of proper engagement, dialogue and interactivity on government’s Facebook pages.

Online social networking services entice millions of users to spend hours every day interacting with each other. At the same time, thanks to the widespread and growing popularity of mobile devices equipped with location-sensing technology, users are now increasingly sharing details about their geographic location and about the places they visit. This adds a crucial spatial and geographic dimension to online social services, bridging the gap between the online world and physical presence. These observations motivate the work in this dissertation: our thesis is that the spatial properties of online social networking services offer important insights about users' social behaviour. This thesis is supported by a set of re.sults related to the measurement and the analysis of such spatial properties. First, we present a comparative study of three online social services: we find that geographic distance constrains social connections, although users exhibit heterogeneous spatial properties. Furthermore, we demonstrate that by considering only social or only spatial factors it is not possible to reproduce the observed properties. Therefore, we investigate how these factors are jointly influencing the evolution of online social services. The resulting observations are then incorporated in a new model of network growth which is able to reproduce the properties of real systems. Then, we outline two case studies where we exploit our findings in real application scenarios. The first concerns building a link prediction system to find pairs of users likely to connect on online social services. Even though spatial proximity fosters the creation of social ties, the computational challenge is accurately and efficiently to discern when being close in space results in a new social connection. We address this problem with a system that uses, alongside other information, features based on the places that users visit. The second example presents a method to extract geographic information about users sharing online videos to understand whether such videos are going to become locally or globally popular. This information is then harnessed to build caching policies that consider which items should be prioritised in memory, thus improving performance of content delivery networks. We summarise our findings with a discussion about the implications of our results, debating potential future research trends and practical applications.

While bringing tremendous benefits to individuals worldwide, the proliferation of online social networks has also given rise to undesirable online harassment behavior. Although users can respond in various ways, little attention has been paid so far to the use of online coping strategies on social media, more specifically, how individuals respond to online harassment by using the available features on social media. This thesis sought to understand individuals' use of online coping strategies. This thesis aims to tackle these challenges to advance the understanding of whether, how, and why individuals use online coping strategies in response to online harassment. Essay 1 develops a typology of online coping strategies based on users' focus of response (i.e., self or initiator) and mode of response (i.e., avoidance or approach). This essay serves as a conceptual background for the two subsequent empirical studies (Essay 2 and Essay 3) that focus on two critical roles involved in online harassment (e.g., victims and bystanders). These two studies are conducted in the social media context. Essay 2 investigates whether and how individuals use online coping strategies in response to online harassment on social media. Results from a scenario-based experiment showed that victims would be more likely to adopt self-focused and approach strategies (e.g., seclusion, mediation, and reporting) when they perceived a high threat of the incident. Confidence in executing the platform functions would increase victims' use of the initiators-focused strategies in both modes (e.g., blocking and reporting) but reduce their use of self-focused avoidance strategy (e.g., seclusion). Trust in social media would lead victims to the self-focused approach strategy (e.g., mediation). Victims with the intensified fear of the incident would be more likely to use the self-focused and avoidance strategies (e.g., seclusion, mediation, and blocking). While Essay 2 focuses on the role of victims, Essay 3 concentrates on the role of bystanders and reporting strategy, which is one of the online coping strategies on social media that support bystanders' interventions. Essay 3 explains why individuals report witnessing online harassment. The results found that four contextualized factors (perceived emergency of the online harassment incident, perceived responsibility to report, perceived self-efficacy in using built-in reporting functions, and perceived outcome effectiveness of built-in reporting functions for tackling online harassment) are important factors for shaping bystander reporting interventions, while the presence of others as an inhibitor that discourages bystanders' willingness to help. This essay also found that socio- environmental and technological factors exert a significant effect on bystanders' willingness to intervene. In sum, this thesis contributes to the area of online harassment by breaking new ground for the study of users' prosocial responses to online harassment on social media. It not only furthers our understanding of online coping strategies but also provides valuable insights for practitioners to design effective coping features to combat online harassment.

No description available.

Public press and companies have increasingly strong interests in the impact on businesses brought about by virtual communities. In recent years, virtual communities have become significant sources of information for consumers and businesses by offering unprecedented opportunities for information sharing. Scholars recognize that information posted in virtual communities has important implications for the behaviors of community members and subsequent economic decisions and market performance. However, relatively less is explored about how the informational value of virtual communities results from an aggregated or fragmented community of information. In particular, the underlying motives and mechanisms of user interactions in virtual communities are challenging to understand because of the amount of information available and the potential noises. To investigate user dynamics and the resulting informational value in virtual communities, I explore three major issues in my dissertation. First, I empirically examine whether community fragmentation or aggregation prevails in the context of virtual investment communities. Results indicate that instead of the common belief of virtual communities serving as melting pots that comprise opinions, online investors, in particular, show strong homophily behavior in virtual investment communities. Second, using data from virtual investment communities, I investigate the interactions among online investors that drive homophily and community fragmentation. I find that psychological needs for supportive opinions mainly drive the information seeking and interaction behaviors of online investors as compared to economic rationales. Following this line of exploration, I also identify the informational impact of virtual communities on user behaviors in the context of electronic markets. With data from online retailers, I examine the possible shrinkage of consumer product consideration that is reinforced by online recommendations. A resultant change of consumer consideration leads to a landscape shift of product competition for online retailers, suggesting strategic implications to manufacturers. All in all, my dissertation contributes to an understanding of the value of virtual communities as informational media, how virtual communities shape online user opinions, and how online user preferences impact businesses and markets in a networked economy. My research pushes the frontier toward understanding virtual communities and sheds light on the insights into exploring online network dynamics. / text