abstract: The Jon Finn Group, a four-piece instrumental rock band based in Boston, MA, was in need of a website redesign, http://JonFinn.com. They required a website to showcase and sell their music and merchandise, promote upcoming performances, interact directly with their fans, integrate with social networking websites, and administer paid membership subscriptions via a content management system. Making this possible required an overhaul of the website, which was based almost entirely on static HTML files with limited capabilities for dynamic content updates. The band also requested a complete visual design overhaul compatible with traditional desktop computer web browsers, cell phone-based web browsers, and modern touch-based web browsing interfaces. WordPress, a free open-source content management system, was chosen to implement technologies to meet the Jon Finn Group's needs. Using WordPress required the development of a custom visual theme supported by various free and commercial plugins. WordPress and the supporting plugins required customization to extend functionality for becoming a revenue-generating platform through which paid membership subscriptions could be supported and administered. A survey instrument questioning end users on usability was used to measure the success of the website redesign and WordPress implementation. To evaluate the success of the redesign, analysis was performed on empirical data collected from web analytics and responses from the usability survey instrument as well as subjective data including stakeholder feedback and comments provided by the usability survey instrument respondents. Following the completion of the site redesign, it became clear that the site better engaged users than the previous site iteration and met end-users' usability expectations. Web analytics data indicated that users began spending more time on JonFinn.com and viewing more content than they had on the former website design. Usability survey data indicated that 95% of all tested functionality was found to be either "not difficult at all" or only "slightly difficult." Some comments and response data clearly indicated areas for improvement in the design and usability of the site. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.Tech Technology 2010

<p> Facebook is stable and growing in users; however, the social networking site has seen a drop in certain areas of user participation. This study considers the reasons for potential user abandonment of Facebook with a complex analysis into not only the reasons cited by users as to why they abandon Facebook, but also the compilation of those reasons as part of an overall perception formulated about Facebook. Such reasons contribute to the perception of Facebook as user centric or nonuser-centric. The study hypothesizes that through a process of diffusion of innovation, a non-user-centric perception is growing among Facebook&rsquo;s users. Furthermore, the study compounds upon present research on innovation abandonment theory to offer explanation on the correlation between a perception of Facebook as nonuser-centric and Facebook user abandonment. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> Facebook, perception, user-centric, nonuser-centric, diffusion of innovation.</p>

<p>This study questions the way sports fans create (a sense of) community through online conversations. Here, &lsquo;community&rsquo; and &lsquo;internet&rsquo; are seen as invitational terms that suggest an authentic social interaction. By examining the language used by fans to sustain a sense of solidarity in the virtual realm, this study questions the ways in which rhetoric frames the situation. Participation in the virtual space relies on practices of identification derived from physical engagements. By using a rhetorical approach, this study illuminates the way individual participants operationalize a rhetoric in virtual conversations that spiritualize the fan&rsquo;s experience at the base of a sporting hierarchy. </p><p> This study centralizes identification as key to participation and the formation of community identity. The same language practices that work to shape the group also reinforce a sports ideology that spiritualizes fan participation. What emerges as a dominant substance is loyalty as key to identification/participation in the virtual community. This value-based substance offers the fan the ability to re-purpose their role as a profit source in the capitalist sporting structure. Therefore, the individuals focus on loyalty is rhetorical due to the internet space as capitalized communication. This study speaks to the way communication fosters virtual organizations, and points to how our cultured understandings conceal the rhetoric in everyday interactions. </p>

<p> Cell phones are an essential piece of communication technology in today&rsquo;s world. Though pocket sized computers provide the ability to have verbal communication between almost anyone in the world, it is often forgotten that these devices also allow non-verbal communication. Short Message Service (SMS), more commonly known as text messaging, enables cell phones to send and receive short messages from others instead of making a phone call. When using texting, there is a lack of verbal and visual non-verbal cues that we normally experience speaking over the phone or face-to-face (FtF). One of the more often mistranslated functions of communication when texting is verbal irony. Verbal irony is difficult to decipher in text due to the lack of cues. This study examines whether verbal irony can accurately be deciphered in texting, and if it is possible to correctly convey verbal irony in SMS. Additional questions include what category of verbal irony provides the clearest interpretation, the effect of emoticons on understanding, and possible gender differences in interpretation and creation of verbal irony. After collection and analysis of data, the research has shown that it is possible to correctly convey verbal irony if certain patterns are followed. There is an overwhelming use of emoticons, particularly the disappointed face, and the use of ellipsis when creating verbal irony within text messages. In both cases, it shows to be beneficial. There are gender differences in the interpretation of verbal irony including the concept that same gendered senders and receivers are more accurate in interpretation.</p>

<p> An increased number of widespread disasters ranging from storm surge flooding to sprawling wildfires, has increased the pressure on emergency communication. Social Media, through mobile technology combined with volunteer geographic information (VGI), has the potential to enable disaster impacted populations to send and receive crucial information thereby reducing the impact and loss associated with widespread disasters. This study examines how social media impacts emergency and disaster communication by analyzing the results of thirty-three case studies where social media had an impact on communication. Thematic synthesis conducted through the identification of themes derived from study findings indicates that while there are many challenges to implementing a social media enhanced emergency communication strategy, when authorities adopt such a strategy, stakeholders affected by the emergency have more actionable information and situational awareness. Additionally, awareness of the emergency by non-affected stakeholders, such as disaster relief agencies and fundraisers increases exponentially when social media is included in the communication strategy. Findings also suggest that challenges such as information overload, and the dissemination of false information can be overcome when authorities cooperate with affected stakeholders to moderate social media posts.</p><p>

<p>This study was conducted to understand how the Cajun Navy 2016?s organization-stakeholder relationship development strategies (i.e. disclosure, information dissemination, and involvement) evolved over the course of a year from the Great Flood of 2016 to Hurricane Harvey. After the Great Flood of 2016, the Cajun Navy increased their online presence through Facebook and used the social networking platform to connect with other people who wanted to provide help during this crisis. The rapid growth of the Cajun Navy and its increased attention in the media shows that by fostering relationships online, a broader audience can be reached and engagement and reciprocity can be achieved via strategic communication. This study builds upon the social mediated crisis communication model (SMCC) to identify emerging trends in crisis communication on Facebook and how they were used by the Cajun Navy 2016 administrators to gain a following and to mobilize resources in times of crisis.

<p> Social media is rising in popularity as a credible source of information for consumers worldwide. Access to online product reviews appears limitless, and consumer voices are now influencing purchasing behavior far beyond the reach of traditional marketing campaigns. Joining the Internet influencers is a relatively new platform for sharing opinions, employer-review websites. Comments from current and former staff on employer review sites such as Glassdoor and Indeed offer a glimpse into company culture and the employer brand (Ambler &amp; Barrow, 1996). This qualitative, phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of hotel/casino resort employees through an examination of employer reviews posted on the Glassdoor and Indeed web pages of four Las Vegas gaming corporations. A thematic analysis of 1,063 employer reviews was conducted to identify the trio of employer-brand benefits (e.g., functional, economic, and psychological) drawn from Ambler and Barrow&rsquo;s (1996) employer-brand equity theory. Themes related to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974), signaling theory (Spence, 1973), and the instrumental-symbolic framework (e.g., Lievens &amp; Highhouse, 2003) were examined in this study. </p><p> Two questions guided the research: (1) Which employer-brand benefits, if any, cited in the employer reviews of hotel/casino resorts are most frequently associated with positive and negative employee sentiment? (2) What is the relationship between employer benefits (e.g., functional, psychological, and economical) and the overall employee rating given by the reviewer? The results revealed that all three of Ambler and Barrow&rsquo;s (1996) employer-brand benefits appeared in the employer reviews as both positive and negative attributes of employment, with psychological and economic benefits most frequently referenced. Specific to employment in the Las Vegas hotel/casino resort industry, reviewers who gave high employer ratings were quite positive about economic benefits (i.e., salary and wages, unspecified benefits, and the free meal in the EDR) and psychological benefits (i.e., co-worker interactions and company atmosphere), while reviewers who gave their employer low ratings were disappointed with their position&rsquo;s economic (i.e., salary and wages), psychological (i.e., management behaviors, work schedule, and company atmosphere), and functional (i.e., promotional opportunities) benefits. The findings from this study have implications for both marketing and HR practitioners, and this study contributes to the growing body of employer-branding literature. </p><p>

<p> Catfishing - the practice of deceiving others online by creating profiles of individuals who do not exist in the real-world - represents the current moment on the converging timelines of social networking technology and the politics of online self-representation. This type of online deception signifies the culmination of several issues regarding users' relationships to cyberspace: reliance on technology for socialization; increasingly blurred correspondences between offline and online selves; users' propensities to value technological objects over living people; and humanity's predisposition for deception in day-to-day interactions. When all of these strands converge, the result is catfishing, a term coined following the 2011 documentary <i>Catfish</i> that has since spawned a TV show and a tell-all book. My argument moves from an examination of the histories of online hoaxes and social networking to a narrower focus on the social aspects of avoidance rhetoric surrounding the phenomenon to an even more pointed discussion of individual, self-professed motives behind such deception. This project is a call-to-action inviting readers to consider the authenticity of their own interactions - both online and in the physical real - and to champion a stronger correspondence between our offline identities and our online self-representations. In addition, by situating online identity creation as a rhetorical action, I argue that understanding the elements of catfishing can help with teaching first-year writing students about the rhetorical situation, including audience awareness, purpose, convention, tone, visualization, and ethos. Finally, I hope this project will revive a conversation in modern rhetoric and composition theory concerning online identity formation that has subsided within the last decade.</p>

<p> This guide was created to serve as a tool for crisis communications to assist in crafting ethical responses to crises using social media as the primary communications channel. The guide combines Stakeholder Theory (Freeman, 1984)&mdash;a management theory that focuses on the importance of different groups of people, not just shareholders&mdash;with Situational Crisis Communication (Coombs, 2007). The guide also adheres to two of Kant&rsquo;s Categorical Imperatives as the ethical basis and marker. To create the guide, the author relied on archival, or documentary, research to provide the background information and theory to inform the creation of the guide. The guide is broken up into four parts&mdash;an overview of crisis communication, pre-crisis planning, active crisis communication, and post-crisis communication/reputation rebuilding. The guide is meant to be used as a tool, and is not an exhaustive how-to for handling a crisis.</p>

<p> Modern Internet services are multi-tiered and are typically hosted in virtualized shared platforms. While facilitating flexible service deployment, multi-tier architecture introduces significant challenges for Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in hosted Internet services. Complex inter-tier dependencies and dynamic bottleneck tier shift are challenges inherent to tiered architectures. Hard-to-predict and bursty session-based Internet workloads further magnify this complexity. Virtualization of shared platforms adds yet another layer of complication in managing the hosted multi-tier Internet services. </p><p> We consider three critical aspects of Internet service management for improved performance and quality of service provisioning : admission control, dynamic resource provisioning and service differentiation. This thesis concentrates on statistical learning based approaches for multi-tier Internet service management to achieve efficient, balanced and scalable services. Statistical learning techniques are capable of solving complex dynamic problems through learning and adaptation with no <i>priori</i> domain-specific knowledge. We explore the effectiveness of supervised and unsupervised learning in managing multi-tier Internet services. </p><p> First, we develop a session based admission control strategy to improve session throughput of multi- tier Internet services. Using a supervised bayesian network, it achieves coordination among multiple tiers resulting in a balanced service. Second, we promote session-slowdown, a novel session-oriented metric for user perceived performance. We develop a regression based dynamic resource provisioning strategy, which utilizes a combination of offline training and online monitoring, for session slowdown guarantees in multi-tier systems. Third, we develop a reinforcement learning based coordinated combination of admission control and adaptive resource management for multi-tier Internet service differentiation and performance improvement in a shared virtualized platform. It addresses limitations of supervised learning by integrating model-independence of reinforcement learning and self-learning of neural networks for system scalability and agility. Finally, we develop an user interface based Monitoring and Management Console, intended for an administrator to monitor and fine tune the performance of hosted multi-tier Internet services. </p><p> We evaluate the developed management approaches using an e-commerce simulator and an implementation testbed on a virtualized blade server system hosting multi-tier RUBiS benchmark applications. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of statistical learning approaches for QoS provisioning and performance improvement in virtualized multi-tier Internet services.</p>