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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/28719 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Bresolin, Jenna |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 144 p. |
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