323 research outputs found

    Nobody Can #DragMeDown : An Analysis of the One Direction Fandom\u27s Ability to Influence and Dominate Worldwide Twitter Trends

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    With more than 25 million followers and counting, One Direction is currently the biggest boy band in the world, and its fans—known as “Directioners”—have become one of the most visible and recognizable fandoms to utilize social media, especially Twitter. Drawing upon an updated version of a fan theory highlighting the interpretive community and social hierarchy that exist within a fandom, this study examines the participatory culture among One Direction fans online that helps them create and dominate worldwide Twitter trends, as well as overshadow what is regarded as more serious news topics. Although previous research studies have examined Directioners and other fandoms’ Twitter relationships, none have done so on a global scale. This thesis focuses on the Directioner fandom’s Twitter relationships during three significant events in July 2015. The first was during the fandom’s week-long tribute to One Direction’s five-year anniversary, in which fans successfully created worldwide Twitter trends in dedication to the band members. The second focused on the worldwide Twitter trends associated with One Direction’s 2015 “On the Road Again” world tour, where fans live-tweeted the concerts. Lastly, the third was in regards to the successful trending of #DragMeDown after One Direction surprised fans by releasing its first single (via Twitter) as a foursome, months following the departure of band member Zayn Malik. Using social network analysis to collect tweets related to the relevant worldwide Twitter trends, results showed that the Directioners’ Twitter network is made up of many large-sized clusters and a few small ones, proving a strong participatory culture in engaging with and sharing content across the fandom. Next, the characteristics of top influential users were analyzed to find out if Directioners kept their Twitter network limited to those in the same geographic location or similar in the type of Twitter account being run. The fandom proved to be an open network, without any geographical boundaries in the formation of clusters. This unique global connection throughout the network allows for the easy and fast dissemination of news. Furthermore, the existence and prominence of top influential users proves that there is a social hierarchy not only across fandoms, but also within one. Lastly, Directioners use additional hashtags, attach hyperlinks, and mention other Twitter users in their tweets containing worldwide trends to accomplish different motivations and goals, such as gaining direct acknowledgement from the One Direction band members themselves. Implications can be made suggesting that a large and global fandom like Directioners has the ability to: 1) continue shaping the way social media is used to obtain and spread news; 2) provide valuable insight for industry professionals in terms of marketing and promotion strategies; and 3) potentially make a difference in the world by raising awareness on news topics beyond just One Direction. Future research can be conducted to examine similar fandoms (e.g., Justin Bieber’s “Beliebers”) in the context of Twitter or other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Tumblr. Further research suggests looking into how Directioners continue to utilize social media while One Direction is on its hiatus. Overall, Directioners have a complex system of news trending on Twitter that is built on an intense emotional investment to their idols, where top influencers are able to push out information to an extensive network of followers. These smaller networks play a key supporting role in the difficult task of executing and maintain worldwide Twitter trends on a regular basis. Directioners use Twitter to maintain One Direction’s relevance in pop culture, while establishing their own status as prominent and savvy social media users in the digital era

    Social Media

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    In this chapter you will: 1) understand the dynamics of social media-based communities, their composition and behaviours 2) learn to conduct a social media audit including competitor analysis 3) recognise the importance of a blog as a centre of digital presence development 4) use amplification strategies to develop brand presence explore the concept of social capital and its relationship to brand engagement activities 5) develop tactics for measuring social media based, their quality and quantity

    Investigating How School Counselors Using #scchat on Twitter Advocate for Marginalized Student Populations: A Social Network Analysis

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    Advocacy work for marginalized student populations can help eliminate systemic barriers in schools. School counselors interact with millions of P-12 students daily and have the unique skills to advocate for marginalized students (U.S. Department of Education, 2019; Edirmanasinghe et al., 2022). Social media platforms such as Twitter allow school counselors to advocate outside of the school setting. It also allows them to obtain professional development and connect to other professionals (Schultz, 2022). In this study, the researcher seeks to learn how school counseling professionals\u27 use of Twitter changed over ten years when using the #scchat hashtag and how their advocacy for marginalized student populations on Twitter has changed over time. Twitter Application Programming Interface (API) data was collected via NodeXL over a ten-year period, allowing the researcher to identify sample years of network data to answer the research questions. The researcher used Social Network Analysis (SNA) to identify relationships and influencers within the networks and quantitative content analysis to analyze the frequency of hashtags, specific words, and sentiment. The results show significant growth in using #scchat regarding the number of tweets and users. The density of the graphs decreased as the networks became more extensive, and the number of group clusters increased. The results also show increased advocacy over the ten years using words such as advocacy, advocate, equity, race, ethnicity, racism, transgender, LGBTQIA+, Black, Latinx, Asian, and Native American

    The value of social networks

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    Nowadays the growth of social networks is becoming more significant. Few are those who place themselves outside of this phenomenon as each passing year more and more people are involved through these online platforms. Social networks also significantly change the relationship client company. With social networks, consumer power is significantly increased and companies are now more than ever obliged to deal with consumer feedback. However social networks have also opened the door to other possibilities for companies to communicate, it is easier now to reach the end consumer due to the widespread use of networks. Social networks have become the only way for small businesses and startups manage to communicate with their customers. However the link between social networks and return was never clear and with platforms, like Facebook, cutting down the distribution of organic content it is imperative to have a mechanism or method that enables companies can assess the value of a campaign facebook . From this research is intended to obtain a method of analysis and to show it can be applied not only to a better understanding of the value of networks but also the management of day in the pages.Nos dias que correr o crescimento das redes sociais Ă© cada vez mais significativo. Poucos sĂŁo os que se colocam Ă  margem deste fenĂłmeno pois a cada ano que passa mais e mais pessoas estĂŁo envolvidas atravĂ©s destas plataformas online. As redes sociais alteração tambĂ©m significativamente a relação empresa cliente. Com as redes sociais o poder dos consumidores se aumentou significativamente e as empresas vĂȘm se agora mais do que nunca na obrigação de lidar com o feedback dos consumidores. No entanto as redes sociais tambĂ©m abriram a porta a outras possibilidades para as empresas comunicarem, Ă© mais fĂĄcil agora chegar ao consumidor final devido Ă  massificação das redes. As redes sociais passaram a ser assim a Ășnica maneira de negĂłcios pequenos e startups conseguirem comunicar com os seus clientes. No entanto a ligação entre redes sociais e retorno nunca foi clara e com plataformas, como o facebook, a cortar cada vĂȘs mais da distribuição de conteĂșdo orgĂąnico Ă© imperativo ter um mecanismo ou um mĂ©todo que permita Ă s empresas conseguirem avaliar o valor de uma campanha no facebook. A partir desta pesquisa pretende-se obter esse mĂ©todo de anĂĄlise e mostrar com este pode ser aplicado nĂŁo sĂł para a melhor compreensĂŁo do valor das redes mas tambĂ©m Ă  gestĂŁo do dia nas pĂĄginas

    Aging Pipeline Infrastructure in the United States: How do a changing policy mix, issues of energy justice, and social media communication impact future risk analysis?

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    Over two and a half million miles of pipeline cross the United States today, half of which is over fifty years old and thus was designed, located, and debated without today’s modern environmental policies in place. Aging pipeline infrastructure, such as the (infamous in Michigan) Enbridge Line 5 pipeline underwater crossing at Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac, has undergone increased public scrutiny and risk analysis this past decade. This has led to the potential for policy changes in the historically stable energy services institution associated with pipeline infrastructure regulation. While policy process literature generally describes how policy changes over time, it is missing research on how new goals and new technology, such as energy justice and social media, impact agenda setting and decisions when added to the policy mix. This dissertation first investigates the evolving federal pipeline regime policy goals through an advanced policy mix analysis. Next, it argues that energy justice research can be advanced through deterministic approaches and analyses. Last, this dissertation uses a social network analysis to explain why aging pipelines are on today’s policy agenda through social network analysis. By understanding how the pipeline policy mix has changed over time, including through the addition of modern topics such as energy justice and modern technologies such as social media, policy and decision makers can improve prioritization of risk analysis for aging pipeline infrastructure

    Measuring and improving the readability of network visualizations

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    Network data structures have been used extensively for modeling entities and their ties across such diverse disciplines as Computer Science, Sociology, Bioinformatics, Urban Planning, and Archeology. Analyzing networks involves understanding the complex relationships between entities as well as any attributes, statistics, or groupings associated with them. The widely used node-link visualization excels at showing the topology, attributes, and groupings simultaneously. However, many existing node-link visualizations are difficult to extract meaning from because of (1) the inherent complexity of the relationships, (2) the number of items designers try to render in limited screen space, and (3) for every network there are many potential unintelligible or even misleading visualizations. Automated layout algorithms have helped, but frequently generate ineffective visualizations even when used by expert analysts. Past work, including my own described herein, have shown there can be vast improvements in network visualizations, but no one can yet produce readable and meaningful visualizations for all networks. Since there is no single way to visualize all networks effectively, in this dissertation I investigate three complimentary strategies. First, I introduce a technique called motif simplification that leverages the repeating patterns or motifs in a network to reduce visual complexity. I replace common, high-payoff motifs with easily understandable glyphs that require less screen space, can reveal otherwise hidden relationships, and improve user performance on many network analysis tasks. Next, I present new Group-in-a-Box layouts that subdivide large, dense networks using attribute- or topology-based groupings. These layouts take group membership into account to more clearly show the ties within groups as well as the aggregate relationships between groups. Finally, I develop a set of readability metrics to measure visualization effectiveness and localize areas needing improvement. I detail optimization recommendations for specific user tasks, in addition to leveraging the readability metrics in a user-assisted layout optimization technique. This dissertation contributes an understanding of why some node-link visualizations are difficult to read, what measures of readability could help guide designers and users, and several promising strategies for improving readability which demonstrate that progress is possible. This work also opens several avenues of research, both technical and in user education

    Mapping connection, disconnection and power within the social news media network: a case study of the Great Barrier Reef UNESCO 2021 'In Danger' recommendation on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook

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    This research investigates how power is asserted and contested in the ‘social news media network’ (Bruns, 2018) in relation to environmental protection. The integrated mixed methods research design combines social network analysis, framing analysis and close reading to identify dominant actors, information flows and frames within the contemporary news-sharing spaces of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. This includes the tactics that actors embedded in these networks use to further certain frames and information flows, or to re-frame and redirect information to suit their own goals. Applying Manuel Castells’ network theory of power (2011) and drawing upon the mediatised and politicised Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as a case study, this work addresses several gaps in understanding about how the protection of the GBR is being contested online and the power dynamics in decentralised contemporary communication spaces in relation to environmental protection

    Analysis of Saudi Arabian Social Network Using Analytic Measures and Community Detection

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    Recently, Social Network Analysis has received an enormous popularity in the field of social and computer sciences. The majority of the studied problems have concentrated on research of information diffusion and social influence. The aim of this research is to analyze the Saudi Arabian social network to measure its capability for information diffusion. We are targeting Saudi Arabian social network because of its importance within Arab region. It is considered the most dominant and influence among the others. Social Network Analysis measures (degree, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector). Community detection, on the other hand, has guaranteed its ability in identifying corresponding community depends on social properties, network structure, or influencers interests. In this article, Griven-Newman community detection algorithm has been adopted to identify the corresponding community. It has been tested and visualized using NodeXL tool. Experiment was applied on Twitter users. The communities resulted and analysis measures' results showed the suitability of the Saudi Arabian network for information diffusion.

    Social media conversations about high engagement sports team brands

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    This study conducts an analysis of social media discussions related to high engagement sports brands. More specifically, our study examined the English Premier League (EPL). Our study sought to retrieve data systematically over the same day, weekly, for a period of 5-months. After this process we had built twenty datasets and NodeXL was utilised to analyse the data. After we had this data we were able to use qualitative observations to identify key users and conversations that formed around the EPL as well as the connections between the conversations that arose from the brand’s posts and people involved in them. We also analysed the quantitative data underpinning our network visualisations to provide further insights. The most obvious initial finding was that when the EPL tweets, this prompted a large volume of conversations directly related to these tweets. However, we also noted that EPL tweets also help instigate further, sometimes unrelated tweets and conversations. More specifically, we identified that the visualised network of conversations was of a broadcast form, which is characterised by messages being generated by a central account (the EPL) and shared by a number of decentralised users. Based on our analysis we propose the SCISM framework that is likely to be of interest to brands that wish to promote, sustain, and benefit from their instigation of social media conversations

    A Predictive Study of Students’ Self-regulated Learning Skills and Their Roles in the Social Network Interaction of Online Discussion Board

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    Online learners’ learning skills and behaviors are challenging for educators to foresee, particularly what skills may be related to certain social interaction behaviors. Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical to online learning. It is unclear how SRL skills may predict social network interaction. This study empirically investigated: How will SRL skills predict students’ network roles (i.e., in-degree, out-degree, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, reciprocated vertex pair ratio, & PageRank) in the social network discussions of discussion board within online courses? The predictive utility of SRL skills for betweenness and closeness centralities was supported. Learners with greater SRL skills play more influential roles in online discussion network. Learners with higher SRL skills tend to connect to others based on flow and distance of the connections, rather than how prominent (eigenvector) and prestigious (PageRank) of their connections
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