PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

Introduction: Social media has become a necessary form of communication for young adults in nearly all contexts of life. One such context is in higher education, specifically, university students who are connected and “online” nearly 24 hours a day. Not only are these young adults integrating social media into their collegiate academic experiences both formally and informally, university faculty are also using this form of communication to support their teaching. In recent years, a number of countries in the Middle East have started to use social-networking sites (SNSs) for communication with regularity. One country with a significant proportion of social media users is Saudi Arabia (SA), with Saudi university students being the largest group of active users. In the current study, two scales measuring social media use were translated into Arabic and used with a large sample of undergraduate students in SA. Purpose: Manuscript 1's objective was to examine the psychometric properties (i.e., content and construct validity; internal consistency reliability) of the Arabic version of the Social Networking Time Use Scale (SONTUS) among Saudi undergraduate students. Manuscript 2's purpose was to examine the same psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the Social Media and Academic Performance of Students (SMAPOS) scale in a sample of Saudi undergraduate students. Additionally, the functioning of items in both scales was evaluated across male and female students. Methods: A total of 508 undergraduate students at one, large university in SA participated in this study and completed the Arabic versions of both scales (i.e., the SONTUS and the SMAPOS). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Internal Consistency Reliability, and Differential Item Functioning (DIF) were used to analyze the data. Results: Manuscript 1 results showed that the Arabic version of the SONTUS contained three subscales and overall had good psychometric p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Aryn C. Karpinski (Advisor); Jason Schenker (Committee Member); Lee Seon Jeong (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Tests and Measurements

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation examined media rhetoric in the Los Angeles Times about 51 murdered marginalized women in the “Southside Slayer” serial killer cases. The “Southside Slayer” was five different Black men who did not fit the profile of a serial killer and were able to continue murdering women from 1983 to 2007. The victims and/or killers were all associated at one point with the “Southside Slayer” moniker and/or task force, even though some of the killers were later given different nicknames in the press. The goal of this study was to identify harmful narratives against marginalized women victims, and how they were perpetuated through the Los Angeles Times. Through qualitative archival research and a feminist social constructionist lens, language and word/phrase choices in 126 articles from the Los Angeles Times dating from 1985 to 2020 were examined for the use of synecdoche, derogatory language, and negatively connotative language when referring to the fifty-one women. In addition, use of the victims' names, use of the killers' names, and use of killer-friendly language were examined. Using critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, harmful narratives and dehumanization of the women were perpetuated through the underuse of victims' names combined with overused combinations of synecdoche, derogatory, and/or negatively connotative words/phrases. Digital media of today was also examined, and perpetuation or disruption of the harmful narratives and dehumanization varied.

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Ward Ph.D. (Other); Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Committee Member); Chad Iwertz-Duffy Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Rhetoric; Social Structure; Womens Studies

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2023, Journalism (Communication)

As more and more media outlets use Instagram to disseminate news it is important to examine how this novel way of presenting information affects journalistic quality. By conducting a qualitative content analysis of the Instagram accounts of six media outlets from Germany and the U.S., different quality criteria of journalism, differences between media houses, and different modes of distribution are examined in the given thesis. Results point to the conclusion that high journalistic quality is possible on Instagram. However, major differences between the media outlets are apparent: While a coherent structure in presenting news on Instagram can enhance quality, promoting corresponding online articles on Instagram, a feature commonly employed by private news outlets, results in lower journalistic quality. So far, only digital native accounts extensively make use of the new possibilities of features on Instagram like interactivity while maintaining a relatively high standard of quality. Overall, journalists need to balance maintaining a high-quality standard with adapting to the novel features offered on Instagram. Results add to the state of research on quality in digital journalism.

Committee: Jatin Srivastava (Committee Member); Alexander Godulla (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Hendrickson (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Organizational Behavior

The improvement of digital technology and human drive to connect and communicate have made social media an ever-present part of social life and, increasingly, organizational life. By reshaping the ways people interact, organize, take collective action, create and learn, social media both challenges our current understanding of individual and organizational phenomena and lends importance to the exploration of how these phenomena occur through digital-mediation. Despite this, few studies have explored the role of social media in processes of organization creation and emergent identity formation. Of research conducted on social media, more generally, Twitter and Facebook have attracted the most attention, with few studies conducted within the context of Instagram, a visually-rich social networking platform with over a billion users. Responding to increasing calls for the study of social media's implications for organization studies and for more-specific study of the Instagram platform, this dissertation addresses the role that Instagram plays in affording new ways of organizing, the generative nature of user interactions, and responses to social media visual content in collective identity construction. To accomplish these goals, I have elected to organize my dissertation into three papers. An introductory chapter and literature review set the stage for this work, providing both the theoretical framework for this research and justification of its import to organization studies. The first paper employs qualitative content analysis to understand how users of the social networking platform Instagram enact communication affordances in practice and draws on the social and collective concept of entrepreneuring to explain their implications for organization creation. The second paper draws on narrative thematic and visual analysis to examine how user engagement within the visually-rich context of Instagram fosters the development of collective identity, revealing the important (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ronald Fry (Committee Chair); Philip Cola (Committee Member); Tracey Messer (Committee Member); Peter Whitehouse (Committee Member) Subjects: Entrepreneurship; Information Systems; Organization Theory; Organizational Behavior

Doctor of Education, Miami University, 2022, Educational Leadership

The purpose of this study was to build upon existing research that explored teachers' professional learning expectations and how teachers can utilize social media platforms or social learning environments to aid their professional learning. This information may be used to support thinking differently about time and space for both student and adult learning. Understanding to what extent and why teachers engaged in professional learning experiences in a social media environment can inform future learning options in utilizing these asynchronous platforms. Data generated may aid in the design of engaging professional learning experiences, through social media, that give teachers a venue for rapid, focused, personalized, and asynchronous learning. This qualitative study was limited to a non-random sample of interview participants, which ensured participants had a guaranteed proficiency in using social media environments for professional learning experiences. A survey was conducted to identify individuals who actively engaged in using social media platforms for professional learning, and six qualifying educators were invited to expand upon their experiences through their participation in semi-structured interviews. The open-ended questions inspired a dialogue about their lived experiences, resources located on social media platforms, and interests regarding professional learning during the 2020 pandemic time frame. Responses to the interview questions were coded to examine how and to what extent the teacher participated in a social media platform as a venue for professional learning during the pandemic. A theoretical, thematic analysis was used to identify how teachers participated in a social media environment for professional learning. The responses were coded based on CHAT's Four C's of Participation Taxonomy: Contemplator, Curator, Crowdsourcer, or Contributor (Trust, 2017). Additionally, the responses were coded to identify the type of informal learning experience th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joel Malin (Committee Co-Chair); Ann Haley Mackenzie (Committee Member); Bryan Duarte (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Educational Leadership; Educational Technology

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Agricultural and Extension Education

To address the phenomena of social media marketing of show livestock in Ohio, researchers must understand the elements of social media marketing materials being produced by show livestock producers. This provides researchers with the ability to inform future research of social media marketing within agriculture. Upon examination, it was determined that producers rely heavily on photographs, videos, and graphics (advertisements, flyers, catalogs, etc.). Accordingly, four elements of photography, four elements of videography, and three elements of graphic design were chosen by researchers gain a better understanding of the quality of materials being produced by show livestock producers. This study integrated the use of the Importance-Performance Analysis model to assess the quality of the materials being produced, and the importance the producers put on their elements. The strategies that were identified for this research are the following: the elements investigated for the use of photographs or videos in the posts were (1) exposure (lighting), (2) angle, (3) rule of thirds, (4) quality. If a graphic is included in social media post, the attributes being investigated are (1) type, (2) color, and (3) arrangement. Findings from this study showed that while performance of following the rule of thirds and professional appearance of photographs was high, it was not something that was particularly important to them. Conversely, importance of professionally appearing videos was of high importance, but none of the participants had videos that appeared to be professionally produced. Following the rule of thirds in videos fell into low importance and low performance. Thus, rule of thirds in video may not be an area that producers should focus on at this time. All the other elements of videography and photography fell into the keep up the good work quadrant for the importance-performance analysis. Lastly, all the elements of graphic design fell into the keep up the good work (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Emily Buck (Advisor); Joy Rumble (Committee Member) Subjects: Agricultural Education; Agriculture; Animal Sciences; Animals; Communication; Curriculum Development; Education; Journalism; Marketing; Mass Communications; Web Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

In building from the #MeToo movement, this thesis aims to understand textual, online allegations made publicly by survivors of gendered violence within the specific scene of alternative music. The purpose of this research is to explore themes within these online posts, as well as responses made by alleged perpetrators who are alternative musicians. This research answers questions concerning how survivors and alleged perpetrators construct their narratives of gendered violence, as well as how gender hierarchies are invoked within these accounts. This study uses a qualitative thematic content analysis. Findings suggest that alleged perpetrators construct their responses by using techniques of neutralization and participate in some degree of denial of allegations. On the other hand, survivors construct their allegations through explicit and implicit discussions of consent--specifically about age and use of alcohol or drugs. Lastly, survivors build a community of solidarity through their allegations. These findings indicate how abuse continues to take place within progressive spaces such as alternative music, as well as the importance of survivors' voices in communicating that harm.

Committee: Holly Ningard (Committee Chair); Rachel Terman (Committee Member); Cynthia Anderson (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Sociology; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism (Communication)

This dissertation will utilize trauma scholarship and feminist standpoint theory as frameworks for understanding how women's accounts of gender-based violence have been—and continue to be—un- and under-valued by (and in) the media, culture, and society. The broad goal of this critical cultural and historical study is to 1) name, identify, and classify a phenomenon known as the first-person industrial complex; 2) examine the phenomenon's history; 3) identify systemic barriers to the phenomenon's elimination, including legal and ethical considerations; and 4) encourage others to partake in similar research and writing, and see their own stories of gender-based violence as valuable. Thus, this dissertation will examine the various flashpoints of women's first-person writing that have contributed to today's digital media landscape and will trace the history of the first-person industrial complex through primary documents containing such writing, including newspapers, magazines and digital media outlets. This work will draw from archival sources in order to trace the history of this phenomenon from 1841 to the present utilizing critical discourse analysis; will include qualitative analyses of legal and ethical structures that keep women's stories from being shared in an equitable way; and will conclude with a normative critique of the current landscape, offering potential solutions and new possibilities for research in this area.

Committee: Aimee Edmondson (Advisor); Patty Stokes (Committee Member); Kelly Ferguson (Committee Member); Katherine Jellison (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Ethics; Gender Studies; Journalism; Mass Communications

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Information Technology

This thesis focuses on a user study of a location-based common operational picture (COP) tool titled PIVOT. PIVOT is a web-based program that helps users process and geospatially simulates social media data besides other media sources. This tool aims to enable local decision-makers to enhance their situational awareness of an emerging issue in their area by allowing social media search by location rather than topic alone. Furthermore, this tool enables users to concentrate their study of data sources on smaller, more focused regional areas, potentially allowing them a more linear view of local populations and potentially offering more usable insights. This paper conducts a usability test on PIVOT (shown in figure 1.1) by recruiting participants to engage in a think-aloud activity. The participants perform a few tasks using the tool to check how they can navigate through the tool and check if they can find the required information using available features. Results will be to inform design rationale for similar devices

Committee: Jess Kropczynski Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Shane Halse Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Information Technology

BA, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Over the past 100 years, researchers have begun to explore the options Linguistic Analysis holds in studying psychological conditions. Advancements in computing technologies have resulted in the creation of several automated processes that have expanded the capabilities of researchers, including the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software (LIWC). With the help of these automated analyses, academics have identified correlations between the use of First Person Singular Pronouns and depression, as well as words that convey negative affect and positive affect and anxiety. These correlations vary in strength and robustness, but when combined, they can create innovative tools and techniques for identifying mental illness. In particular, the application of Linguistic Analysis to social media platforms offers the opportunity to quickly and easily identify those at risk, while also posing important ethical and moral questions that have yet to be answered.

Committee: Jocelyn Folk Ph.D. (Advisor); Sharon Sciartelli Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Taber Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennifer Rocke Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Experimental Psychology; Linguistics; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Media and Communication

Social media is an increasingly important space for community formation and interactions. Coinciding with the rise of social media has been an increasing interest in leftist ideologies once outside the mainstream. This analysis seeks to understand the social media siteReddit.com's enabling and constraining features on the community /r/socialism. Using the communicative theory of identity and Marxist media theory not only to look at Reddit and/r/socialism's relationship, but five key functions of a media: capital-economic, media sales and media market function, commodity circulation, domination, and the audience. Employing a mixed-methods approach enabled various data to be analyzed and relationally understood. Qualitative content analysis was used to examine user's salient topics and their uses for the community. Survey methods were deployed to the community to gather demographic data on the/r/socialism community and user opinions on the group's relationship with Reddit. Finally, secondary documents were analyzed to provide greater context to the other findings. Findings from the content analysis of salient subjects showed a preference for contemporary capitalist critique, socialist quotations, and class issues. However, topics impacting women and other minority groups were light to nonexistent. Analysis of platform uses found the top three uses to be a general discussion, information-seeking, and information-giving. The user survey was plagued by low participation and participants who were under the age of consent. As such, data from a community-administered survey filled in the gaps. Secondary document analysis shed light on many features of Reddit, particularly how the social media's systems are designed to elicit data and authenticity. Reddit'sprimary focus was on creating a space suitable for advertising with minimum corporate input. To attract users, Reddit sells the premise of community and interactions. For businesses, Reddit serves as an ad platform that ca (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Advisor); Samuel McAbee Ph.D. (Other); Lara Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yanqin Lu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2021, Journalism (Communication)

This study evaluates the popular Nigerian-based women's magazines, Today's Woman, Genevieve, and Exquisite, to uncover how the editorial content of these publications represent Nigerian femininity and womanhood, using social representations theory, originally coined by Serge Moscovici in 1961, as a theoretical framework. This study also evaluates how the representations of women featured in the editorial content of these magazines align with the theory of africana womanism. By conducting a qualitative textual analysis of 60 articles, this study found that Nigerian women are most frequently and significantly represented by their jobs/careers, the condition of their bodies, their self-esteem/self-sufficiency, the opinions of others, and their life challenges. This construction of Nigerian femininity and womanhood supported the following tenets of africana womanism: ambition, role flexibility, recognition, strength, black female sisterhood, respect, wholeness, adaptable, self-definition, and male compatibility.

Committee: Elizabeth Hendrickson (Committee Chair); Eddith Dashiell (Committee Member); Rosanna Planer (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Black Studies; Gender Studies; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Sub Saharan Africa Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Computer Science and Engineering

Social media websites provide an ideal environment for people to express their experiences on the latest events and share their knowledge about the current technologies along with research advancements. This presents an opportunity for Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Extraction (IE) technology to facilitate large scale data-analysis applications by extracting machine-processable information from user generated unstructured texts. However, information extraction from social media is particularly challenging due to the inherent noise induced by different writing styles of its users and their writing errors such as: typos and non-grammatical sentences. In this thesis, we explore the supervised and semi-supervised approaches to extract structured information from the noisy user generated texts of three widely used social web spaces: Twitter, StackOverflow and ProtocolIO.

Committee: Wei Xu (Advisor); Alan Ritter (Advisor); Feng Qin (Advisor) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Linguistics

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Leadership Studies, Xavier University, 2020, Leadership Studies and Human Resource Development

The purpose of this study is to explore the current trends in levels of coopetition within the craft beer industry, as assessed by their engagement in collaborative efforts with their competitors in multiple geographic markets. While it is well documented that coopetition exists in small and medium-sized enterprises, especially craft breweries, it has not been studied at multiple geographical levels. The aim is to increase the scope of research and provide richer evidence of coopetitive efforts between organizations at local, regional, national levels. This study employed a non-experimental quantitative research method, using archival numerical data retrieved from publicly available databases to compare relationships between amounts of coopetition at the local, regional, and national level in the United States among breweries and 1) brewery age, 2) market saturation, 3) industry maturity, and 4) consumer social media ratings. All results other than brewery age vs. local coopetition had statistically significant relationships p < .05 and p < .01. All correlation coefficients (rs) were positive; most correlation were strong, with only market saturation at the local and regional level, and social media ratings at the national level, being of moderate strengths. These results suggest that coopetition is a beneficial practice for craft breweries. Leaders of these organizations may want to be intentional about which competitors they engage with regarding their geographic location to keep a competitive advantage in their industry.

Committee: Gail F. Latta Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Michael Flick Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Chikeleze Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration; Entrepreneurship

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Political Science

Social influence shapes the political opinions people form and the norms they adopt. I show that three key types of social networks drive the type of social influence people face: fully-connected deliberative networks, social hierarchies based on status, and star networks that group up around a central opinion leader. In chapter one, I lay the foundation for thinking of public opinion as emerging from people's social structures. I then apply the theory to international norm adoption and show that the type of network an individual is placed in has a direct effect on the norms they adopt, over and above partisanship. In chapter two, I use a custom-made Twitter-like environment to show experimentally that hierarchies foster the adoption of partisan-leaning norms as members pursue status. Stars, in contrast, inoculate their members against false claims due to the reputations costs opinion leaders face in misleading their followers. In chapter three, I expand on these findings by priming subjects in a survey experiment with an image of their social structure, and show that placing a political independent in a social hierarchy at the individual-level makes them favor U.S. isolationism, international competition in domains such as trade, and overall unilateralism on the world stage. The conclusion of these two studies is clear: social hierarchies prime competitive political thinking, often leading to the adoption of norms based on false premises, and star networks help their followers sift through the noise and misinformation that prevails in online fully-connected networks. These findings highlight the importance of viewing norm adoption and opinion formation as a social endeavor that is deeply influenced by one's reference network. As online social networks continue to expand, identifying the types of networks that characterize these social environments becomes imperative for students of public opinion and international relations that seek to understand why some norms an (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Skyler Cranmer (Committee Chair); Christopher Gelpi (Committee Member); Richard Herrmann (Committee Member); Jon Krosnick (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Political Science

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Community detection in Social Networks has been a major research interest in recent years. In graphical community detection, the principal consideration is the connection between users in the network data. On the other hand, document clustering is a paradigm where text documents are clustered together based on their textual properties. In this thesis, we have used document clustering techniques on data collected from the social networking site, Twitter to cluster the users associated with them. We then compared the user clusters formed by the document clustering techniques and compared them with the communities detected in the graphical representation to investigate the possibilities of any correlation between these two methods. We utilized tools such as NodeXL and Gephi for collecting and visualizing the network data respectively. For user clustering based on their tweets, we used four different feature representation techniques and two clustering algorithms.

Committee: Anca Ralescu Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Kenneth Berman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dan Ralescu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCE), Wright State University, 2020, Computer Engineering

Features and attributes that describe an event (disasters, social movements, etc.) are heterogeneous in nature. For virtually all events that impact humans, technology enables us to capture a large amount and variety of data from many sources, including humans (i.e., social media) and sensors/internet of things (IoTs). The corresponding modalities of data include text, imagery, voice and video, along with structured data such as gazetteers (i.e., location-based data) and government and statistical data. However, even though there is often an abundance of information produced, this information is fragmented across the various modalities and sources. The DisasterRecord system aims to provide a way to combine (interlink and integrate) data streams in different modalities in a meaningful way, with the in-depth use case of flood events. The DisasterRecord project was originally developed as a demo to showcase the efforts of the team at Kno.e.sis in the area of combining and analyzing multimodal data for the IBM CallForCode challenge in 2018. This thesis represents extensive follow-on work in the areas of deployability, flexibility, and reliability. Specific topics addressed are: a method that utilizes current technologies to easily deploy into cloud infrastructure; the modifications made to add flexibility to add and modify the multimodal analysis pipeline; and reliability improvements to make it a stable and reliable system.

Committee: Amit Sheth Ph.D. (Advisor); Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Valerie Shalin Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Web Studies

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2019, Antioch Seattle: Clinical Psychology

Our culture is steadily becoming more aware, and less tolerant, of sexual harassment and misconduct. This is particularly evident in the wake of the viral Me Too movement beginning in 2017 which highlighted the breadth of personal experiences of sexual harassment on various social media platforms. Often the focus of these experiences is on overt sexual harassment and assault, but less attention is paid to the buildup that can lead to these terrible events. What is more, is that often these events are attributed to character flaws of the perpetrator without taking covert social norms into perspective. This dissertation takes a social constructivist perspective to concretely define sexually objectifying microaggressions (SOMs), a building block of sexual assault, as well as outline their clinical implications. This was done in the hope of expanding cultural competency of gendered microaggressions for both psychology professionals and students, exposing the potential impact SOMs may have on clinical presentations, and espousing the importance of utilizing modern media to better understand our culture. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on the seven top-grossing PG-13 rated films between the years 2010–2016, beginning with a pilot study analyzing a clip from the top-grossing PG-13 rated film of 2009 to measure inter-rater reliability and construct validity. An extensive literature-based qualitative code book was created to conduct this analysis. Results indicated that SOMs were present in all the films, but saturation longitudinally decreased. SOM targets were primarily protagonist characters with both men and women being equally targeted. The primary SOM perpetrator was found to be the audience or viewer of the films. An unexpected result was the high prevalence of idyllic hypermasculinity in the films. Implications and future research directions will be discussed.

Committee: William Heusler Psy.D. (Committee Chair); Chris Heffner Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mo Brown Psy.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Educational Psychology; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Mental Health; Motion Pictures; Pedagogy; Psychology; Social Psychology; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Mass Communication (Communication)

The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the Indonesian government uses social media to establish a dialogue with its public and to participate in a new public sphere facilitated by the Internet. A mixed-method approach of social network analysis(SNA), a survey, and focus group discussions were used to examine the Indonesian government communication model performed on social media, based on the symmetrical communication theory of public relations (Grunig & Grunig, 1992). A network analysis of the Indonesian government's social media conversation in daily communication, campaign communication, organizational crisis, and emergency communication (Mergel 2017) shows that two-way symmetrical communication has been implemented in a limited way. Two-way communication is performed only in daily communication when answering questions related to government services. A survey of the Indonesian government's social media officials (n= 252) at the ministry level revealed that the predominant model of government communication is one way communication in the form of disseminating positive information about the government and obtaining public attention. Additional models included two-way symmetrical communication, two-way asymmetrical communication, and the practice of dominating conversation. A regression analysis revealed that government PR practices on social media was influenced by the government's social media officials' knowledge of symmetrical communication, their positions in the organization, and the number of workshops they attended in the previous year. Focus group discussions of three government stakeholders—journalists, NGO workers, and communication professionals—confirmed the SNA and survey finding. It also revealed that dialogue between the government and its citizens occurred only when government was harshly criticized on social media. Additionally, the Indonesian government applied strategic activities to counter criticism by deleting negative comments a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Drew McDaniel Prof (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Mass Media

MS, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Posting on the internet, including weblogs or social media, is one of the ways individuals seek for an outlet to express themselves or mental health concerns. For many mental health issues such as psychosis, the timing of detection and treatment is critical; short and long-term outcomes are better when individuals begin treatment close to the onset of psychosis. While the internet offers a positive medium for short term therapy, it is not a face to face therapy session, wherein a trained professional is better able to deduce the root of the problem. Many clinicians are adopting electronic communication to strengthen their therapeutic alliance with their patients. The drawback of psychiatry is that it lacks objectified tests for mental illnesses that would otherwise be present in medicine. Current neuroscience has yet not found genetic markers that can characterize individual mental illnesses. A thought disorder (ThD) which is a widely found symptom in people suffering from schizophrenia, is diagnosed from the level of coherence when the flow of ideas is muddled without word associations. A system that can explore the use of speech analysis for aiding in psychiatric diagnosis is highly desirable and would help early detection and effective treatment results. This thesis introduces a framework – Prediction Onset Prediction System (POPS) - to predict the onset of psychosis based on written language habits. A scrape of a multitude of individual comments is analyzed using a trained psychosis prediction module that is able to predict if an individual is psychotic (based on the semantics) using natural language processing, machine learning techniques and a customized corpus with terms consist with psychotic language tendencies created using speech analysis techniques. The effectiveness of the corpus and its implication in psychosis detection is explored.

Committee: Kambiz Ghazinour (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science; Health; Mental Health; Psychology; Sociology; Teaching; Technology