La montée en popularité des réseaux sociaux sur le Web ont bousculé les modèles traditionnels de marketing établis depuis plus d'un siècle au Québec et ailleurs dans le monde. La question de qui contrôle du message est au centre des préoccupations exprimées par de nombreux experts en marketing. Comment communiquer efficacement dans un univers où les individus sont désormais des acteurs impliqués dans l'échange d'information et d'opinions sur les biens et services offerts par les entreprises? Les internautes peuvent désormais influencer l'adoption de comportements consommatoires, de même que contribuer à faire fructifier ou à anéantir les efforts de commercialisation produits par les professionnels du marketing. Cette recherche a une double visée: d'une part, découvrir l'ampleur de l'adoption des réseaux sociaux comme outils de communication et, d'autre part, anticiper les tendances lourdes en communications de marketing sur le Web au Québec.

The thesis explores the ways in which Americans on two popular social network sites, Facebook and YouTube, conceptualize the issues of crises, specifically financial, health care, and war, in the name of achieving social change and investigates the two-way flow of communication between the government and its citizens through social network sites. The thesis epistemologically feeds from the works of Thomas Hobbes' (1651) theory of government responsibility to society, William James' (1910) theory on crisis and social change, and Hannah Arendt's (1958) theory on collective action and is further guided by the theoretical frameworks of Jurgen Habermas' (1976; 1989) undistorted communication and public sphere theories and Manuel Castells' (1996; 2007) network and mass self-communication theories. Qualitative content analysis through purposive, quota, and sequential sampling of the comments posted on the White House's social media pages is conducted to gauge citizens' sentiments and conceptualizations. The findings show that Americans desire change through increased citizen participation in both politics and the community in addition to higher standards of government accountability. Social network sites contribute by providing a method to facilitate government two-way communication through an unprecedented level of speed and accessibility, which is imperative for social change to occur in the new digital age. Social media sites are conducive to social change because they allow for near-universal access despite geographic limitations, promote government accountability and transparency, and provide a public sphere-like environment for debate and conversation, all of which allow for the betterment of society and provide the method through which crises can be assuaged.

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<p> Social network use is often accompanied by a seductive allure that compels people to showcase themselves in the best light possible. This allure may theoretically be possible due to the concept of social comparison, a notion that is measured in part by the Facebook &ldquo;friend count,&rdquo; a numerical value representing the user&rsquo;s number of online friends in the Facebook community. As there is no known research measuring this effect on current states, to close this gap in the literature it is asserted here that a memorable loss of one of these friends can have negative consequences. This study attempted to gauge the effect of the loss of these friends, colloquially known as &ldquo;being unfriended.&rdquo; This piece posits that being unfriended will increase state shame and decrease state self-esteem. To that end, a quantitative, experimental study was employed using 41 male and female, college-enrolled participants from a Midwest junior college to determine vicissitudes to state shame and state self-esteem after being unfriended on Facebook. An independent measures t-test was used to compare group mean differences between those who could adequately remember being unfriended and those who had little to no recollection of a recent unfriending episode. Results of the statistical analysis revealed that participants in the treatment group had no statistically significant increase in shame or decrease in self-esteem than those in the control group. Additional research in this area is recommended to further investigate additional variables used in this study, overcome limitations, and to fully explore superfluous possibilities such as potential mediators.</p>

<p> This study applied the uses and gratifications theory to determine how audience motives for using niche social network sites compared with motives for using popular social network sites. An online survey presented a single sample (N=554) with items measuring motives for using the popular social network site Facebook alongside items measuring motives for using the niche social network site Ravelry for comparison.</p><p> The results demonstrate that there is a significant amount of overlap between the motives for Ravelry use and for Facebook use. The motives of relaxing entertainment, expressive information sharing, habitual pass time, social interaction, cool new technology, and professional advancement emerged during separate factor analyses of both the Ravelry and Facebook use motive scales. New friendships emerged only as a motive for Ravelry use. The results also showed the most salient motive for Facebook use was social interaction where the most salient motives for using Ravelry were relaxing entertainment and new friendships. The strongest motive for using Facebook related to relationships maintenance, which supports findings of past research. In contrast, Ravelry use motives show members are seeking new relationships through the niche social network site. Implications of the significant differences between motives for using the niche social network site and the popular social network site are discussed. Additional research is suggested to refine the current conceptual definition of social network site and to classify social network sites.</p>

<p> In this research, we focus on identifying false identities in social networks. We performed a detailed study on different string matching techniques to identify user profiles with real or fake identity. In this thesis, we focus on a specific case study on sex offenders. Sex offenders are not supposed to be online on social networking sites in few states. To identify the existence of offenders in social networks, we ran experiments to compare datasets downloaded from Facebook and offender registries. To identify the most suitable string matching technique to solve this particular problem, we performed experiments on various methods and utilized the most appropriate technique, the Jaro-Winkler algorithm. The major contribution of our research is a weight based scoring function that is capable of identifying user records with full or partial data revealed in social networks. Based on our data samples created using metadata information of Facebook, we were able to identify the sex offender profiles with real identity and seventy percent of the sex offenders with partial information.</p>

<p> Newspapers rely on content-based documentary photography to visually communicate current news events. As circulations declined in the mid-1980s, media owners persuaded editors into mixing traditional hard news on their front pages with reader-friendly soft news features. Content-based visual journalism was challenged by the encroachment of visual fluff, altering the character projected to readers.</p><p> Today, newspapers struggle to evolve into online &ldquo;news organizations&rdquo; and visual journalism competes with entertainment, advertising, and marketing to attract viewers. The central question for the future is, will the marketing pressure continue to dilute visual journalism and overload viewers with visual distractions? And, how will design and organization influence the viewers&rsquo; perception of credibility?</p><p> Through a series of elicitation interviews, this research examined how the visual choices that online newspapers make &mdash; their &ldquo;visual character&rdquo; &mdash; influence audience perceptions of news credibility. The responses showed that readers&rsquo; perceptions of credibility are influenced by the visual content on a newspaper Web site. The study participants gauged credibility based on factors like photography use, competing advertising, and design organization. The study also found that linking visual branding to the newspaper print version could add to credibility.</p><p>

<p> This thesis explored the role of sexually explicit material (SEM) on the Internet in adolescent sexuality and education. Does SEM on the Internet affect adolescent sexual attitudes, behaviors, and other facets of sexual functioning, such as fantasizing, masturbation, and sexual self-esteem? In addition, is the Internet becoming the new sex educator? The sample consisted of 492 college students (340 females, 152 males) between the ages of 18 and 23 who took an anonymous, online survey. Among the sample, 98% had seen SEM before the age of 18, first exposure typically occurring around the age of 12. The most popular reason for seeking SEM on the Internet was curiosity. It was found that with more exposure to SEM on the Internet, there was more permissive sexual attitudes, higher levels of sexual behavior, and more sexual fantasizing. In addition, masturbation was more SEM-dependent and compulsive with more exposure. Further, more exposure was related to the twelve aspects of sexuality. For instance, more exposure was related to higher sexual self- esteem, higher sexual-preoccupation, higher sexual-satisfaction, and lower sexual-fear. While males were seeing more SEM on the Internet than females, both males and females were seeing SEM on the Internet for the first time around the same age, though females had more negative feelings about it, and their sexual attitudes and behaviors were similarly affected. It was concluded that SEM on the Internet is a normative adolescent experience and that the Internet is the new sex educator, as adolescents are using it as an informational resource.</p><p>

<p> This study investigates a possible link between a students&rsquo; willingness to engage in out of class communication (OCC) with an instructor and the level of mediated immediacy that the instructor presents through his/her online presence. The hypotheses were that students viewing a Facebook page would be more willing to engage in OCC than those viewing an institutional web page with low levels of mediated immediacy and that students viewing a Facebook page would also be more willing to engage in OCC with their instructor for relationship focused reasons than those who viewed an institutional web page. While both hypotheses were found to be false, this study uncovered a correlation which suggests that the institutional web page creates a higher willingness to engage in OCC for task-focused reasons than a Facebook page and invites further research into the topic.</p><p>