This diploma thesis deals with a question of identification of causality between sentiment on social network Twitter and a price of specific, publicly traded stocks on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). By a multi criteria analysis were chosen stocks of Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc. There is constructed a model, which identifies authors messages on Twitter -- tweets and sentiment which they carry in relation to companies. Success of this model is examined by both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The thesis is trying to provide a solution to current and potential investors and management of the companies in order to take better decisions in allocating funds and managing the companies.

Submitted by Pós-Com Pós-Com (pos-com@ufba.br) on 2013-02-04T15:59:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Alessandra Calheira.pdf: 7332585 bytes, checksum: f2785af9575f9eca3e54ee1f395d1649 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Fatima Cleômenis Botelho Maria (botelho@ufba.br) on 2013-02-04T16:01:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Alessandra Calheira.pdf: 7332585 bytes, checksum: f2785af9575f9eca3e54ee1f395d1649 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-02-04T16:01:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Alessandra Calheira.pdf: 7332585 bytes, checksum: f2785af9575f9eca3e54ee1f395d1649 (MD5) / Essa dissertação analisa a possibilidade da construção do Capital Social de organizações, a partir da comunicação que estas estabelecem com usuários comuns, dentro do Site de Rede Social Twitter. Ao final da pesquisa, foi possível responder a pergunta “Como se dá a comunicação entre organizações e pessoas no Twitter de forma que esta seja capaz de colaborar para a construção e a manutenção do seu Capital Social?”. Para responder a indagação, analisamos, por meio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica exploratória, os aspectos sociotécnicos relacionados à comunicação e como estes contribuíram ao longo do tempo para a formação da indústria da comunicação e, consequentemente, para a formatação do seu modelo de negócio. Investigamos pressupostos conceituais referentes à teoria das redes sociais e dos Sites de Redes Sociais, além de especificidades estruturais do Twitter, possibilidades e apropriações. É importante ressaltar o estudo feito acerca do construto do Capital Social, as principais convergências e divergências conceituais, bem como a sua interseção com a Comunicação Mediada pelo Computador. Na segunda etapa da pesquisa, desenvolvemos uma survey visando conhecer melhor as características do usuário do Twitter seguidor de perfis de organizações; e um Estudo de Caso Múltiplo das organizações Hering e Camiseteria. A coleta de dados realizada para os Estudos de Caso deu-se a partir da captura de tweets emitidos no período de maio a julho de 2011, por meio da ferramenta de monitoramento Seekr. Posteriormente, o conteúdo foi analisado e classificado. A análise dos dados apontou a utilização de recursos comunicacionais que privilegiam o reconhecimento, a colaboração, o compartilhamento e a confiança, práticas que corroboram para a construção do Capital Social. / Facom

The history of consumerism shows that consumer movements in developed countries with capitalist economies in general, and in the United States in particular, have had great success in helping customers get safer products (car seat belts), more information (product labels), and better market regulation (the Consumer Product Safety Act). Consumer interests in developed countries are represented by several sets of organizations with different concerns. These consumer interests are fragmented but well articulated, whereas in developing countries, consumer interests are homogeneous and unarticulated. Moreover, compared with the hyper-connected world we live in today, in the past greater efforts were required to mobilize consumers for consumerism actions such as protests, boycotts, calls for policy change, and demands for more government regulations. The purpose of this study is to develop a testable model of consumerism, with a focus on market settings within a developed country, the United States, and a developing country, Saudi Arabia. The goals are to (a) understand why some consumers go beyond the norm to engage in consumerism behaviors, and (b) whether their level of consumerism differs between that of a developed and a developing country, and if so, why. To this end, a consumerism model based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was developed. The research provides the first set of data and the first quantitative analysis regarding consumerism behaviors in conjunction with the use of an online platform (Twitter) among Saudi Arabian and American consumers. The developed model explained consumerism behaviors. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the Saudi sample had a higher level of intent to engage in consumerism behaviors than did the American sample. Also, this study shows that the Saudi sample had a negative perception of government regulatory practices and a higher level of intent to engage in consumerism behaviors on Twitter than the American sample. Thus, in Saudi Arabia, a country with a restricted civil society and only one semi-independent consumer protection organization, more consumers use Twitter as a consumerism platform than in the US, a country with an unrestricted civil society and numerous independent consumer organizations.

MAJOR PROFESSORS: DR. UCHE ONYEBADI & DR. KATHERINE T. FRITH This dissertation was conducted to determine whom the Kuwaiti newspapers indexed in their news reports during the Karamat Watan protests, and how Twitter influenced the indexing process. This study also examined how and why Twitter affected Kuwaiti journalists' agenda building process during their coverage of the protests. For the purpose of this study, the theoretical framework was the indexing model and the agenda building theory. To answer the research questions and hypothesis in this dissertation the researcher used a mixed method approach, comprising the quantitative content analysis of Kuwaiti newspapers and qualitative in-depth interviews with Kuwaiti journalists. The content analysis results show that Kuwaiti newspapers indexed more public views than official views in their coverage of the Karamat Watan protests and the number of non-official sources is larger than the number of official sources in the coverage of the event- driven news. Also, the analysis shows that during the protests the independent newspapers indexed more public views than the semi- official newspapers in Kuwait. Furthermore, the interviews show that Kuwaiti journalists were not unanimous in their opinions regarding the role of twitter in their agenda building process during the protests. While some of them believed that twitter was a good tool that helped them in their coverage of the protests in particular and other events in general, others said that it was hard to be confident about the credibility of the online sources.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF MOHAMMAD ALOTAIBI, for the Master of Arts degree in Media Theory & Research, presented on March 31, 2015 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: PUBLIC DISCOURSE IN KUWAIT: EXAMINING THE USE OF TWITTER AND DIWANIYA AMONG YOUNGER GENERATION IN THE DECEMBER 2012 KUWAIT PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Uche Onyebadi This thesis assessed public discourse among the younger generation in Kuwait during the country's Parliamentary elections in December, 2012. The research question examined the extent to which Twitter, as a new form of social medium, became an alternative to the more traditional diwaniya, as a forum for discussing salient public issues among the younger generation. The methodological approach in this study was a combination of the online survey instrument and semi-structure interviews. Uses and Gratifications served as the theoretical framework for the study. The major finding in the study shows that Twitter was indeed an alternative to diwaniya as a forum for public discussion and information seeking among the younger generation in Kuwait during the election. Also important is the finding that there was no statistically significant difference in the use of Twitter and diwaniya among younger generation women in that electioneering period. Finally, it was found that the level of education was a significant factor among the younger generation in their use of Twitter and their attendance of diwaniya for information gathering and discussion, as a political activities unfolded in Kuwait during the election.

Social media today is an important source of information about various events happening around the world. Among various social networking platforms, microtext based ones such as Twitter are of special interest as they are also a rich source of real-time events. In this thesis, our goal is to study the effectiveness of using Twitter as a social sensor for obtaining real-time information on road traffic conditions. Specifically, we focus on: i) identifying tweets that contain traffic event related information, ii) classify such tweets into six main groups of accident, fire, road construction, police activities, weather and others, iii) extract fine-grained location information about the traffic incident by analyzing tweet text. Our experimental results show that using Twitter as a social sensor for obtaining rich information about traffic events is indeed a promising approach. We show that we can correctly detect traffic related tweets with an accuracy of 81%. Moreover, the accuracy of correctly classifying traffic related tweets into one of the six categories is 97%. Lastly, our experimental results show that using only geo-tags of tweets is not sufficient for fine-grained localization of traffic incidents due to two reasons: i) a vast majority of traffic related tweets do not contain geo-tags, and ii) the location mentioned in the tweet text and the geo-tag of a tweet do not always agree. Such observations prove that fine-grained localization of traffic incidents from tweet must also include analysis of the tweet text using Natural Language Processing techniques.

Digital currencies (cryptocurrencies) are rapidly becoming commonplace in the global market. Trading is performed similarly to the stock market or commodities, but stock market prediction algorithms are not necessarily well-suited for predicting digital currency prices. In this work, we analyzed tweets with both an existing sentiment analysis package and a manually tailored "objective analysis," resulting in one impact value for each analysis per 15-minute period. We then used evolutionary techniques to select the most appropriate training method and the best subset of the generated features to include, as well as other parameters. This resulted in implementation of predictors which yielded much more profit in four-week simulations than simply holding a digital currency for the same time period--the results ranged from 28% to 122% profit. Unlike stock exchanges, which shut down for several hours or days at a time, digital currency prediction and trading seems to be of a more consistent and predictable nature.

This study is a quantitative content analysis of the Facebook and Twitter communication of the Obama and Romney campaigns on seven dates within the 30 days prior to the 2012 presidential election. Specific rhetorical techniques are explored for similarities or differences in how these techniques have appeared in political communication in legacy media and how they are expressed in social media. Repetition, collective language, self-reference language and Benoit's functions of attack, acclaim and defend are examined. Additionally, the study identified what topics each candidate emphasized in their social media communication. Findings show that both candidates used repetition to reinforce key messages. The use of attacks, acclaims and defenses bore some similarities to uses in legacy media. However, the primary focuses by both candidates centered on motivating citizens to show support for the candidate and get out the vote. Few policy issues appeared in the communication of either candidate. / 2015-09-29

This study explores the extent to which news media agendas relate to each other in a microblogging environment, how the Obama administration's agenda relates to them in this realm, and how these agendas align with the public's list of top policy issues in the real world. A content analysis of more than 4,600 tweets from six accounts in 2013 were ranked and compared to a list of 20 public policy priorities. Findings support previous research that found a significant relationship among traditional media agendas in print. Measures of association between news media and administration agendas show some consistency and some discrepancy. This study did not find as significant a correlation between news media and administration agendas and the public's list of top priorities. These findings suggest a substantial disconnect in Twitter between news coverage and federal-level political leadership focus in relation to the issues that matter most to citizens of the United States.

The growing global Twitter population has prompted social scientists to examine the potential of Twitter-generated sentiments to serve as an alternative to public opinion polls. This thesis intends to study this potential by evaluating the variability of sampled data representativeness that is voluntarily submitted through Twitter. This research examines a case study: President Barack Obama's public approval as viewed by the United States population. The sentiments generated from Twitter were compared to the sentiments from public opinion polls in order to measure the degree of representativeness at both national and state level. The results show that Twitter data are not representative at the U.S. national level. At the state level, Twitter data representativeness is highly varied and such variability can be linked to individual state’s total population.