A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

THE CURIOUS CASES OF CANCEL CULTURE

Cancel culture is a complex phenomenon that challenges our notions of civic practices, perpetuates surveillance practices amongst individuals who encourage digital public shaming and obscures communal ideas regarding accountability. Hence, it is imperative to complicate and nuance “cancel culture” to understand the different meanings derived from its diverse mechanizations. Other matrices such as power, platform governance, decoloniality, and more bolster ideas about the phenomenon’s extensive sociocultural reach. Using a critical digital ethnographic approach, I exemplify with the analysis two cancel culture cases uncovering themes such as selective cancelations, cancelation effectiveness, performative activism, performative wokeness, hypocrisy, victimization, and empathy. This study seeks to complexify cancel culture research approaches

Platform Feminism: Celebrity Culture and Activism in the Digital Age

Platform Feminism: Celebrity Culture and Activism in the Digital Age tells the story of digital platforms' role in the feminist movement during the early 21st century. Taking celebrity culture as a potent site at which to analyze the new visibilities of feminism and its responses to a new wave of conservative and deeply reactionary politics, I explore the ways in which networked publics coalesce around celebrity events and, in discussing, analyzing, and critiquing various actors within these events, engage in boundary work around what it means to “be a feminist.” From responses to celebrity harassment to hashtag campaigns supporting celebrity feminism to critiques of imperfect feminist celebrities, this dissertation explores the contentious debates about feminism that arise around celebrity culture within digital spaces. To analyze these discourses, this project draws together literature from three often-disparate academic subfields: platform studies, feminist media studies, and celebrity studies. Using a case study approach, each chapter draws on intersectional feminist theory to examine a celebrity event from 2014-2016 that incited controversy across a variety of media platforms around issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class. I track each event across online and legacy media outlets and engage in multiplatform critical technocultural discourse analysis to analyze how discussions amongst issue publics that coalesce around each event both reflect and further define contemporary feminist discourses in ways that are often distinctly shaped by the digital platforms on which they emerge (Burgess & Matamoros-Fernández 2016, Brock 2016). In contrast to prior feminist media studies research that argues popular culture is largely postfeminist, I demonstrate that feminism, amplified by the famous voices that espouse it and the broad reach of the digital spaces in which it appears, has increased its discursive power so greatly that many aspects of popular culture no longer take for granted the gains of the feminist movement but rather feminism itself. Further, the iteration of feminism that is ideologically dominant espouses the importance of intersectionality, calling out the limitations of white liberal feminism and foregrounding the importance of a feminist platform that interrogates racial, sexual, and class differences. Overall, I argue that digital platforms have emerged as a major techno-cultural infrastructure for the dissemination and negotiation of the positions, goals, and actions of the contemporary feminist movement, which experienced a resurgence in the wake of the crisis of neoliberalism. While established media institutions continue to inform popular understandings of feminism, it is the recirculation, re-mediation, and conversations around print, film, and television media images and discourses on digital platforms that are driving the ongoing shifts in the feminist movement. More specifically, I contend that celebrity culture is a potent site at which the very category of “feminism” is being challenged in these digital spaces. Together, digital platforms and celebrity culture form a crucial discursive arena where postfeminist logics are unsettled, opening up the possibility of a more radical, intersectional, and activist popular feminism.PHDCommunicationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145855/1/lawsonc_1.pd

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt A content analysis of TikTok to understand why product-related user-generated content goes viral.

Purpose: The main goal of this master thesis is to understand why product-related user-generated content (UGC) on social media goes viral by looking at the content-, messenger-, and product characteristics. The social media of interest for the purposes of our research is TikTok. It is important because TikTok is a relatively new social media, and gaining a more profound knowledge of it would be beneficial for both individuals, digital marketers, and brands to increase their reach on TikTok. Problem statement: Why product-related UGC goes viral on TikTok, and what characteristics do the videos hold? Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-method is used, which includes a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The dataset was made using a qualitative content analysis of 500 videos from TikTok. For the quantitative analysis, an ANOVA analysis in SPSS is performed to conclude whether or not the hypotheses can be supported. Findings: Six out of ten hypotheses were confirmed. Two were rejected due to inconsistencies in the sample (skewed numbers). The main findings demonstrated that several characteristics are crucial for creating a viral video. Hypotheses in all three groups, content-, messenger-, and product characteristics, were supported. This demonstrates that numerous attributes in a video are critical for the virality on TikTok. It was found that when creating a TikTok video with the purpose of going viral, the video should be positive and include high-arousal emotions like amusement and curiosity. Also, the product displayed in the video should be unique or unusual, and solve a problem. Lastly, the creator should be entertaining or a good storyteller, and a high number of followers is helpful. Practical implications: Marketers can use this thesis to create improved marketing strategies on TikTok, as well as on other social media. Additionally, gaining a better understanding of how existing and potential consumers react to material online can be helpful to improve and adjust existing social media marketing activities. It is essential for brands who use social media to market and sell their products. Keywords: TikTok, User-generated content, social media, virality, Berger’s STEPP

Public Archaeology in a Digital Age

This thesis examines the impact of the democratic promises of Internet communication technologies, social, and participatory media on the practice of public archaeology. It is focused on work within archaeological organisations in the UK in commercial archaeology, higher education, local authority planning departments and community settings, as well the voluntary planning departments and community settings, as well the voluntary archaeology sector archaeology sector . This work has taken an innovative approach to the subject matter through its use of a Grounded Theory method for data collection and analysis, and the use of a combination of online surveys, case studies and email questionnaires in order to address the following issues: the provision of authoritative archaeological information online; barriers to participation; policy and organisational approaches to evaluating success and archiving; community formation and activism, and the impact of digital inequalities and literacies. This thesis is the first overarching study into the use of participatory media in archaeology. It is an important exploration of where and how the profession is creating and managing digital platforms, and the expanding opportunities for networking and sharing information within the discipline, against a backdrop of rapid advancement in the use of Internet technologies within society. This work has made significant contributions to debates on the practice and impact of public archaeology. It has shown that archaeologists do not yet fully understand the complexities of Internet use and issues of digital literacy, the impact of audience demographics or disposition towards participation in online projects. It has shown that whilst recognition of democratic participation is not, on the whole, undertaken through a process of actively acknowledging responses to archaeological information, there remains potential for participatory media to support and accommodate these ideals. This work documents a period of great change within the practice of archaeology in the UK, and concludes with the observation that it is vital that the discipline undertake research into online audiences for archaeological information if we are to create sustainable digital public archaeologies

Understanding knowledge acquisitions through social media among university students

Universities students tend to own an account on several social media sites making the combination of social media within the learning environment to be simpler. The study focuses on the use of social media and how it facilitates knowledge acquisition. This study adopts qualitative study and conduct semi-structured interview to answer the research questions. Thematic analysis is used to analyze the data. Discussion of the findings is also provided through the use of educational learning theory as the theoretical lens to further understand student’s usage of social media. Besides, this study qualitative study successfully revealed findings and application of social media for knowledge acquisition among students based on educational learning theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, humanism, and connectivism. Although knowledge acquisition using social media is a complex phenomenon, it will definitely help researchers gain more insight into the topics by studying it in different settings and environment. This research contribute to higher learning institutions to identify the useful and powerful platform of social media for knowledge acquisition in helping students achieve better engagement in social media to acquire knowledge. Besides, it also provides an insight on the plausibility of “third variable explanation” for the results of the past studies along with contribution to theoretical development of social media in knowledge management especially in knowledge acquisitio

Vista: May 5, 2011

https://digital.sandiego.edu/vista/1646/thumbnail.jp

Understanding people through the aggregation of their digital footprints

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-172).Every day, millions of people encounter strangers online. We read their medical advice, buy their products, and ask them out on dates. Yet our views of them are very limited; we see individual communication acts rather than the person(s) as a whole. This thesis contends that socially-focused machine learning and visualization of archived digital footprints can improve the capacity of social media to help form impressions of online strangers. Four original designs are presented that each examine the social fabric of a different existing online world. The designs address unique perspectives on the problem of and opportunities offered by online impression formation. The first work, Is Britney Spears Span?, examines a way of prototyping strangers on first contact by modeling their past behaviors across a social network. Landscape of Words identifies cultural and topical trends in large online publics. Personas is a data portrait that characterizes individuals by collating heterogenous textual artifacts. The final design, Defuse, navigates and visualizes virtual crowds using metrics grounded in sociology. A reflection on these experimental endeavors is also presented, including a formalization of the problem and considerations for future research. A meta-critique by a panel of domain experts completes the discussion.by Aaron Robert Zinman.Ph.D