This document presents a dissertation research study that examined parents of preteens and the protectionist and empowerment Internet mediation and media literacy strategies they reported using to guide their child's use of the Internet. Parents' use of protectionist and empowerment strategies, their confidence level in enacting these strategies, their attitudes about efficacy of these strategies, and the relationship among their attitudes about children's use of the Internet to these areas were examined. The study used an online survey (N=236) of parents who have preteens with Internet access at home, and parent interviews from a sample of the survey respondents (N=40), to gather data from a nationwide sample of parents. Parents were asked questions about their use of, confidence in, and perceptions of effectiveness of protectionist and empowerment Internet mediation strategies, what topics related to Internet use they have discussed with their child, and overall their attitudes about the Internet and children. The survey results show that the majority of parents use a combination of protectionism and empowerment strategies, but more heavily use protectionist Internet mediation overall. Parents reported high confidence in using most of the strategies, with slightly less (but still notably high) confidence in using empowerment strategies. Even though parents reported feeling confident using empowerment strategies, they used them much less than protectionist strategies. Protectionist strategies were also ranked as more effective than empowerment ones. Parents' attitudes about the Internet were also associated with behaviors. Parents' level of comfort in using the Internet and computers was positively associated with their overall engagement in their preteens' Internet use, whether protectionism or empowerment. Parental attitude about the Internet being a good place for their child was associated with the likelihood to use protectionist strategies. However, parents who did not believe the Internet was a good place for their kids tended to talk about more Internet behavior topics with their child. The interviews with parents revealed a typology of protectionist and empowerment strategies with three major themes and several subthemes. The first theme included strategies for monitoring the Internet, the second illustrated the types of protectionist and empowerment behaviors parents use, and the third theme encompassed the values that emerged regarding parents' family communication and roles, comparisons to other families, and hopes about the potential benefits of the Internet in their child's life. Among the three themes parents voiced their life experiences, feelings, and concerns and how those influenced their decisions around protectionism or empowerment. Similar to the survey results, the interviews show that most parents used protectionist strategies, with the most widely used strategies including "POS" (parent over shoulder), and having the child use the Internet in a public space in the home. Few parents who were interviewed co-surf online with their preteens, ask questions about the websites their kids visit, or encourage their kids to create things online. However, parents who worked in fields related to media and technology were more likely to use empowerment strategies. The interviews revealed that parents' use of protectionist or empowerment strategies is complex, and is interwoven with their attitudes, values, concerns, and hopes for the potential of the Internet for their child. This study challenges the field to consider four myths about parents and Internet mediation, including: 1) Parents are either protectionist or empowerment, but not usually both; 2) Parents who are more confident using Internet mediation strategies will use them more often; and 3) Parents who think the Internet is not a good place for kids are more likely to use protectionist strategies; and 4) Parents who are uncomfortable with technology are more likely to use protectionist strategies. Possible reasoning for these misconceptions about parents, and how this speaks to research in the field, are explored. This study encourages parent media literacy education efforts to include a balance and progression in protectionist and empowerment strategies by proposing a Stair Steps of Parent Internet Mediation framework. This framework explains an aspirational process for parent education around the Internet to guide future efforts for those who work in parent media literacy education. / Mass Media and Communication

This study explored college students' use of the Internet and Facebook as well as whether usage patterns, and perceptions about the academic effects of use, relate to time spent studying and/or academic performance. One hundred sixty undergraduate students completed an online survey designed to measure the frequency, duration, intensity, and academic impact of their Internet and Facebook use. Results indicate that students devote a significant amount of time to both academic (M = 1.82 hrs per day) and recreational (M = 2.50 hrs per day) Internet activities, and that Facebook users (n = 153, 96% of the sample) spend an average of two hours per day on the site, accounting for almost half of total time spent on the Internet and approximately 80% of recreational use. Results also show that spending more time on the Internet for academic purposes, waiting longer to check Facebook when studying or doing schoolwork, and spending less time on the Internet for fun, are all significant predictor / Educational Psychology

This dissertation explores how discourses surrounding race and economics inform the way in which videogame creators understand their world and use that understanding to create content. Employing a Foucauldian discourse analysis, the content of two videogames, Skyrim and Max Payne 3, were analyzed. The analysis of Skyrim revealed that race is constructed as an inherently biological phenomenon. Moreover, culture is constructed as emerging from biology. The analysis of Max Payne 3 revealed that capitalism grounds the construction of race so that biology and culture serves to justify the economic position of light-skinned and dark-skinned Brazilians. These constructions come from various sources such as the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and film noir. The dissertation also interviews videogame developers using semi-structured interviews to examine the extent to which content creators are aware of these discourses and how industry norms and economics affect those discourses. Videogame developers revealed that these discourses stem from a market pressure to make videogame narratives understandable and sellable. / Media & Communication

The formation of distinctive Internet cultures, accompanied by the increasing importance of digital mediations for popular culture consumption, has culminated in both popular and academic discussions around the idea of Internet-based music scenes or communities as a cultural phenomenon, referred to as “Internet genres” or “Internet music.” This dissertation presents a comprehensive framework for and definition of Internet music through ethnographic and textual analyses of three separate scenes: vaporwave, hyperpop, and phonk. It interrogates issues of cultural borrowing and hybridity within these Internet music scenes, and how representations of racial, gender, sexual, and national identity are negotiated by both producers and fans. It also explores how the dynamics of the online platforms through which these scenes manifest (including, but not limited to their tendency toward anonymity, low barrier to entry for producers, and blurred lines between producers/consumers) shape these scenes, including how the algorithm-driven organization of these scenes and the influence of meme cultures impact how different identities and cultures are portrayed through these musics. Ultimately, this project interrogates how social and cultural identities and differences come to be constructed and articulated in online environments, and how in a “post-Internet” age, individuals are increasingly using popular media to make sense of their relationships with digital technologies. / Media & Communication

The Internet has infiltrated our daily lives in many ways. Social networking on the Internet is a great example of how the Internet has expanded interpersonal communication. Many individuals have made social networking sites, like FaceBook and Twitter, an essential part of their lives and use these platforms to communicate daily. Until recently, young people have been the primary participants in this fast-growing phenomenon, and older adults' participation in the Internet, specifically social networking sites, has lagged far behind. However, in recent years, there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of older adult participants. The increase in older adult participation in social networking sites is important because it seems to signify a decrease in the Internet usage gap called the "digital divide", and because there is strong evidence older adults may greatly benefit from social networking activity. The aging of the Baby Boomers has resulted in significant growth in the senior age group, reinforcing the timely importance of considering the older adults' "digital divide". This study uses a phenomenological approach to explore the experience of older adult users of social networking sites to determine the reasons why more older adults are now making social networking sites part of their lives. The study revealed both negative and positive influences on this choice that include: early negative personal experiences with technology, positive family influences, an increasing prevalence of technology, and technology's transition from complexity of use to ease of use. Although some resulting attitudes of older adults are negative, such as a need to control the role of social media in their life, online social networking plays a positive role in their lives. The probing, detailed nature of this phenomenological study clarifies influences and offers new perspectives, implying that research could benefit from a broader and deeper inspection. Research should consider, as related to the use of technology by older adults, a closer look at the effectiveness of training, potential gender differences in the choice to use technology, and the consequences of negative technological experiences.

xiv, 203 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / The purpose of this research is to advance understanding of mediated relationships in the form of parasocial interaction (PSI) in local television news branding efforts, particularly the influence of PSI on loyalty and commitment outcomes. This research is the first of its kind to attempt a test of both the TV PSI construct and Web PSI construct and their applicability to local news in the digital age. As part of this examination, the study introduces the concept of viral viewers. Motivated in part by affect, these viewers are willing to promote the station and its content across media platforms. Viewing and visiting characteristics leading to TV station and Web site loyalty and commitment are also identified. This study uses an online survey to explore three research questions and four hypotheses. The population of interest is visitors to local television news Web sites. Television stations in the Pacific Northwest were solicited to take part in the study. Six participating stations posted the survey on their Web sites. Data were collected from 277 respondents. Regression models showed Web PSI, station usefulness/quality, and TV PSI are all statistically significant predictors of loyalty and commitment. Web PSI has the largest beta coefficient when compared to the contribution of other variables. Hierarchical multiple regression also found that station usefulness/quality, site usefulness/quality, TV PSI, and Web PSI partially mediated the relationship between viewing and visiting characteristics and loyalty and commitment. The study concludes that local TV stations must be mindful of producing good content with viral potential in order to acquire help from viral viewers. Furthermore, news personalities remain important to overall brand strategy. This research fills three significant gaps in the literature surrounding local TV news research. First, it brings research on parasocial interaction into the digital age, advancing the application of the TV and Web parasocial constructs. Second, this study reconceptualizes notions of audience and promotion by introducing the concept of viral viewers. Third, it brings together scholarship regarding branding and local TV news, providing a systematic analysis of branding's role in local TV stations' multi-platform news strategy. Indexing (document details) / Committee in charge: Kim Sheehan, Chairperson, Journalism and Communication Scott Maier, Member, Journalism and Communication; Biswarup Sen, Member, Journalism and Communication; David Boush, Outside Member, Marketing

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abstract: The rapid advancements of technology have greatly extended the ubiquitous nature of smartphones acting as a gateway to numerous social media applications. This brings an immense convenience to the users of these applications wishing to stay connected to other individuals through sharing their statuses, posting their opinions, experiences, suggestions, etc on online social networks (OSNs). Exploring and analyzing this data has a great potential to enable deep and fine-grained insights into the behavior, emotions, and language of individuals in a society. This proposed dissertation focuses on utilizing these online social footprints to research two main threads – 1) Analysis: to study the behavior of individuals online (content analysis) and 2) Synthesis: to build models that influence the behavior of individuals offline (incomplete action models for decision-making). A large percentage of posts shared online are in an unrestricted natural language format that is meant for human consumption. One of the demanding problems in this context is to leverage and develop approaches to automatically extract important insights from this incessant massive data pool. Efforts in this direction emphasize mining or extracting the wealth of latent information in the data from multiple OSNs independently. The first thread of this dissertation focuses on analytics to investigate the differentiated content-sharing behavior of individuals. The second thread of this dissertation attempts to build decision-making systems using social media data. The results of the proposed dissertation emphasize the importance of considering multiple data types while interpreting the content shared on OSNs. They highlight the unique ways in which the data and the extracted patterns from text-based platforms or visual-based platforms complement and contrast in terms of their content. The proposed research demonstrated that, in many ways, the results obtained by focusing on either only text or only visual elements of content shared online could lead to biased insights. On the other hand, it also shows the power of a sequential set of patterns that have some sort of precedence relationships and collaboration between humans and automated planners. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2019

The following study examined identity construction and community formation within the comic book fan community on the social media website, Twitter It had three objectives It investigated how comic book fans constructed their respective identities on Twitter, explored how fans came to identify with the comic book community and why it formed, and aimed to discover how the community was maintained and expanded The study applied an ethnographic method that relied on the analysis of dialogue Ten comic book fans (five males, five females) that frequently used Twitter to communicate with other fans were video interviewed It was found that comic book fans constructed their identities using their Twitter biography and profile picture and they all believed they were communicating their true and genuine selves The biography, profile picture, and tweets reinforced the rhetoric of what it meant to be a comic book fan It was this visual and written rhetoric that enabled comic book fans to identify with one another and bring the community into being Without this rhetoric, there is no community The community maintained itself through the continued reinforcement of this rhetoric It expanded itself by bringing comic book fans from different backgrounds, locations, and nationalities together online around a shared interest The study also found that the relationships formed within the community could develop into real friendships, the same caliber of friendship that individuals would normally have with those they knew and met in real life.

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