Specialist in Education (Ed.S.), University of Dayton, 2020, School Psychology

Anxiety is on the rise in the world today. The American College Health Association (2018) surveyed 31,463 college students and found that 60.9% of the respondents had experienced overwhelming anxiety at some point within the last 12 months. Social media use has become more and more rampant, with research suggesting that the majority of people in the United States use social media in some form. Media literacy, which incorporates the ability to critically assess and interpret digital content, is a topic are that is increasingly becoming of interest with the pervasiveness of technology. The present study examined the relationship between social media use, media literacy, and anxiety in first-year college students. A sample of (n = 82) first-year college students was surveyed to investigate these variables. Results indicated a significant relationship between social media use and anxiety as well as between social media use and media literacy. No significant relationship was found between media literacy and anxiety. Implications for how educational professionals can serve students based on these results are discussed in this paper.

Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2016, Theatre Arts-Arts Administration

The purpose of this project is twofold: to describe Andy Warhol's self-promotion and marketing strategies within inter/VIEW magazine and then translate them into a social media strategy for artists today. The use of inter/VIEW magazine as a marketing tool by Warhol is new research. This deduction will be gathered from accounts of persons who worked directly with Warhol, within inter/VIEW magazine and images from the magazine itself. By reviewing Warhol's methodology within his use of inter/VIEW magazine as an inherent self-promotion and marketing tool, a social media strategy can be deduced and translated for artists to use within today's technological age.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2013, Communication and Development Studies (International Studies)

Citizen's media in Colombia face a great challenge as they aim to reconstitute the symbolic universes of communities by helping to re-appropriate public spheres, recodify the meanings of everyday life, reinvent their own narratives, and in sum, re-signify `realities' in the midst of violence. “Pasolini en Medellin” is a nonprofit organization located in Medellin, Colombia that works with young people from peripheral neighborhoods, offering a creative Lab to engage in processes of creative ethnography, collaborative creation and collective action that can strengthen individuals and local communities by allowing them to explore, narrate and re-signify their own realities. This ethnographic research explores the case study of Pasolini en Medellin experience in Colombia in order to try to describe how they do what they do, and translate their methodological approach into shared knowledge. By doing so, this research explores directly and indirectly, the roles that citizen's media practices may have in contexts of violence.

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

Despite high adoption rates of new communication technologies in Kenya, the role of emerging technologies in the Kenyan child trafficking market and the influence of online anti-child trafficking activists in combating child trafficking remain under-researched. In this study, I have used digital ethnographic approaches that included virtual interviews, online participant observation, and social media analytics to realize five main findings. First, emerging media technology has been used by criminals to traffic children, whereas it also provides opportunities to online activists to combat child trafficking. Second, there are different types of online claims-makers actively advocating against child trafficking. Third, the claims-makers framed the exploitation and risky situations that victims of child trafficking go through as sexual exploitation, organ harvesting, infant trafficking, child marriage, organized begging, terrorism, organized crime, and child labor. Fourth, the claims-makers used the 5P framework to diagnose and offer a prognosis of the child trafficking situation. Finally, the claims-makers were able to influence diverse sentiments among their target audience. This study has practical and theoretical recommendations for researching and designing social and behavior change interventions against child trafficking and other social challenges.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2019, Theatre Arts-Arts Administration

This thesis is about how nonprofit arts organizations can use Facebook and Twitter as part of their marketing campaigns. Chapter One discusses best practices for using Facebook and Twitter for marketing as written by marketing professionals. The second chapter is a literature review of current studies arts administration professionals have done on the topic of using social media for marketing. Chapter Three focuses on two case studies about two different nonprofit arts organizations in Indianapolis, Indiana. The chapter is divided into three sections. The Methodology section explains how the case studies were put together. The second section is the case study on the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the third section is the case study on the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. I asked each organization the same set of questions about its use of Facebook and Twitter for marketing and then analyzed the content of each organization's Facebook and Twitter pages over a period of one month. I then offered constructive criticism to each organization based on its interview responses and the best practices from Chapter One. Chapter Four is a conclusion of the entire thesis.

MFA, Kent State University, 2018, College of Communication and Information / School of Visual Communication Design

The intention of this investigation is to ascertain a process for creating culturally resonant brands and marketing them on social media successfully. This thesis proposes innovative commerce—the intersection between cultural innovation and social commerce—as a design strategy for doing so. A brand is a product or service that includes a culmination of the experiences and expectations consumers have attributed to it. In its most established form, the brand is a product of design thinking that encourages innovation. There are several methods of creating innovation however, this thesis focuses on cultural innovation. A cultural innovation is an “innovative cultural expression,” and cultural expressions are the conventions that help us understand the world; they are made up of ideology, myth and cultural codes (Holt & Cameron, 2010). It is a relevant tool for businesses and consumers today because commerce and technology have played and continue to play an essential role in shaping society and brands that deliver cultural innovations may have better chances of success in this technology and trade driven world. The social media and the physical worlds have begun to interconnect in significant ways within the last few years. Because traditional origins of cultural expression have been taken over by in large part mass media, social networks provide consumers and brands with sovereignty by presenting a single territory where commerce and technology intersect. This intersection is called social commerce, and social commerce is the use of social networks in the context of e-commerce. This research provides practical instructions on how brands can connect with consumers on an emotional and functional by implementing a design strategy that promotes innovations for social commerce.

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2023, Studio Art

This essay describes my thesis for my BFA degree in Studio Art. This paper serves as a memoir of my journey as a painter to flow state. In this essay I outline how social media addiction causes anxiety and how I overcame that anxiety through being in the present through flow state and finding the sublime in my work.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, Educational Studies

Internet and interactive technology have become increasingly widespread and integral parts of daily life, contributing to the growing number of internet users in China. Gender is a popular topic in diverse fields and areas and plays a critical role in many contexts. The current study focuses on investigating and exploring the differences and similarities between genders among Chinese adolescents in their usage and perceptions of social media. A total of 232 participants (108 males, 123 females, and 1 participant who refused to answer) completed online questionnaires about their usage of social media and perceptions or insights regarding the impact of social media on peer relationships and academic outcomes. The results showed significant discrepancies and similarities between gender among Chinese adolescents in their usage of social media. However, there was no significant difference between genders in their perception of the impact of social media on peer relationships and academic learning. Understanding adolescents' usage and perceptions of social media enables researchers and others interested in the relationship between social media and adolescents to take more effective actions to facilitate its positive effects and inhibit or mitigate its drawbacks on adolescents.

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.

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)

Bachelor of Arts, Walsh University, 2022, Honors

Each year social media usage increases which creates new opportunities for marketers to promote their products and brands. Sports teams and athletes are joining social media platforms and creating their own unique accounts (Cooper, 2015). Fans and followers, new and old, are discovering these teams and athletes while building relationships (Kentrin, 2020). Social media has also proven to be a useful tool in building two-way relationships between teams and spectators (Joanna & Zuzanna, 2020). This has also reigned true in building a team or personal athlete brand (Witz, 2020). Through different sports marketing social media strategies, marketers are learning how to engage fans, increase attendance, and stand apart from other teams (O'Hallarn et al., 2016). The manner in which a fan behaves and engages with different teams and athletes is influenced by social interactions, deals, promotions, giveaways, and relationships with teams and athletes (Fink et al., 2002; Perrault, 2016). Through new applications (apps), athletes and fans are spending more time online (Samet, 2020). These apps allow fans to witness new sides to athletes and teams through increased content which, consequently, helps form connections between fans and athletes (Sharpe et al., 2020). This research analyzed the relationships between teams' and leagues' social media presence on fan behavior by conducting in-depth one-on-one interviews with professionals working in the sports industry at the professional and collegiate levels. A total of eight professionals were interviewed from eight different sports. Questions asked specifically addressed how social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have affected ticket sales, fan attendance/tune-in rates, engagement, brand loyalty, and merchandise purchases. Using content analysis, best practices were determined for increasing engagement and fan behavior and understanding the relationships crea (open full item for complete abstract)

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2020, Antioch New England: Clinical Psychology

This qualitative study looks at adolescents' engagement with media and explores their perceptions of how media plays a role in their lives. For the purpose of this study, media includes watching television shows, watching and reading the news, and involvement in various types of social media. The influence of parents and peers is also explored to examine adolescents' views of whether parent and peer opinions affect the types of media with which the adolescent participants choose to engage. The study used a semi structured interview to collect data with participants from a Massachusetts public high school. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis, which broke the data into various clusters and themes.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2020, Communication

This study explored if law schools are applying Kent and Taylor's principles of dialogic communication to Instagram. A content analysis was performed on 167 individual posts from 10 law schools. Posts were coded for whether or not they met each principle of dialogic communication, and the audience. Engagement between Instagram users was measured by followers, likes, and comments. It was found that law schools are employing Instagram in a dialogic way but that improvements could be made. This study presents a point of reference for other higher education institutions or law schools to consider when utilizing Instagram as a recruitment tool in their communication efforts.

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)

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)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2019, Leadership and Change

More than a decade after the emergence of social and digital media, professional communicators increasingly use these channels to interact with a wide array of stakeholders. Simultaneously, public relations (PR) and communications leaders seek to understand whether their efforts to communicate and engage with stakeholders through these channels are effective in establishing and building relationships, as well as to measure “effectiveness” in the new technology-driven communications landscape. With this study, I addressed a gap in the academic research with regard to understanding the effectiveness of social and digital media as a communications tool by assessing employees' perceptions of their organization with respect to five communication concepts, both in general and based specifically on the company's social media communications. I assessed the relationship between the employee stakeholder and the organization from two viewpoints: first, from the viewpoint of the employees with whom the organization is communicating, and second, from the viewpoint of the communications professionals who post social and digital media messages on behalf of the organization. The results showed that an intervention to educate employees about the organization's social and digital media communications did not result in employees' increased positive perceptions of the organization as a whole or of the organization's sites with regard to each of the five communications concepts. The increase in employees' positive perceptions of the organization's social and digital media sites, which reflected the communication concept “promoting communal relationships,” was significant at p < .10; also, increases for three individual statements that were part of the communications concepts were sufficient for statistical significance. The intervention did result in statistically significant increases in employee use of social and digital media to engage with the organization and in usage of specifical (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2019, Counselor Education and Supervision

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between social media addiction and anxiety, the fear of missing out (FOMO), and interpersonal problems among adult social media users. A national sample of 224 adults completed an online survey consisting of five measurements (the Internet Addiction Test modified for social media, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory T scale, the Fear of Missing Out scale, and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems) and a demographic questionnaire. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis controlling for age and time spent using social media (significantly correlated with the measure of social media addiction) revealed a significant positive association with anxiety, FOMO, and interpersonal problems accounting for 26.1% of the variance in social media addition. These results showed that increased use of social media beyond a certain threshold (qualifying for social media addiction) relates to statistically significantly higher trait anxiety, FOMO, and interpersonal problems among adults. Limitations related to the present study are presented, as are implications for counselor education and supervision and for counseling practitioners. Recommendations for future research related to social media addiction, mental health, and the counseling field are provided.

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.

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Leadership Studies

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote,“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of news writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper” (Sec.51). Jefferson's views are as salient today as they were in 1785. Some 232 years later, a “mass of people” struggle to distinguish between news that is real and news that is false. The largest context for this struggle to date was the 2016 United States presidential election (Pew Center, 2016c). For some, the “fake news” found on social media has become a harbinger for the emergence of a despotic government (Pew Center). The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the phenomenon of fake news through the lived experience of graduate students in the United States. The prospective student participants were pursuing advanced degrees in higher education. This research study utilized the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) approach to analyze how and why people used social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In light of the influence of fake news on the 2016 presidential election, this study also aimed to investigate the reasons why people believed that fake news were appealing. The thematic analysis revealed people were gratified by the use of social media for connecting with friends and family, gathering and sharing information, and as a vehicle of expression. Participants found a significant amount of fake news stories on social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They tried to identify and differentiate between fake news and real news using the fact-checking websites and major news sources. However, the two significant themes that emerged during the interviews illustrated that (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Journalism (Communication)

Using the theoretical perspectives of Spiral of Silence and Securitization, this dissertation examines (1) how censorship practices such as content removal were employed by the United States and the Indian governments to securitize the internet and social media, and (2) whether such practices contribute to an online spiral of silence. To explore these aspects, this study used a mixed-method approach with in-depth interviews and surveys. Seven interviews with authors of Transparency Reports and legal experts provided information about the U.S. and Indian government-initiated content removal process from Google Web Search, Blogger, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter between 2010 and 2015. Surveys with 587 respondents from the United States and India explored self-censorship on Facebook and Twitter, on issues related to national security and government criticism. The findings indicate that in the United States, “defamation” is the frequently cited yet an often-misused reason for content removal, while in India “religious offense” and “defamation” are prominent reasons for content takedowns. On several occasions, protected speech was removed from the internet and social media in both countries. Such acts of state-level censorship, in turn impacts self-censoring on controversial issues by individuals on social media. The implications here are that using the law to criminalize dissent increases self-censorship and this is counter-productive to democratic discourse.